Grandma Rose's Apple Cake

If you live in the Midwest and/or have German/Polish/Eastern European heritage... you probably grew up with this apple cake.  My Grandma Rose used to make it regularly and as a kid, I LOVED it.  It's not a cake that needs frosting and is super delicious plain or with a little powdered sugar on top.  A scoop of vanilla ice cream wouldn't be bad either!  Imagine if Apple Pie and Cake had a baby...this would be it.  I opted to make mine today with NO nuts and I added a tiny bit of Vanilla. 
IT IS SOOOO GOOD!

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1  3/4 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• dash of salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup cooking oil
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
• 5 medium apples, peeled and diced
• 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, toasted (optional)

Directions

1. Grease a 13x9x2-inch baking pan; set aside.  In a very large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine eggs, oil and a ½ teaspoon of vanilla (vanilla is optional);  Add egg mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moistened (batter will be stiff). Stir in apples and nuts (nuts if desired).  Spread batter in prepared pan.
3. Bake in a 350 degrees oven for approx. one hour or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack for at least 1 hour. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

bed

 

Thanks to Mark for building my dream dog bed. It turned out perfect!!  We actually had everything to make this bed... cedar, vintage mod legs, and two beds that fit perfectly inside.  I am partial to the bed that fits directly inside however the bed with the snuggle-up sides is probably preferred by the dogs.  Lottie loves her custom bed.  Now we need to design one for Minnow...perhaps with a built-in step since she's got the luxating patellas in her back legs. 

hang

 

We made some hanging baskets out of a couple of old planters we were no longer using. Some stainless steel (multi-stranded) wire worked perfectly to hang them with a modern look.  A fresh coat of spray paint and a nice bunch of succulents brought these light weight, fiberglass containers back to life. 

These containers were purchased at Joann's about 4 or 5 years ago.

spring has sprung

 

happy holidays

Happy Holidays! It has been quite a while since my last post. Luckily the celebration of Festivus begins with the Airing of Grievances so here I go... blogging here has become so annoying with my photos refusing to download and the layout appearing all whacked out that I no longer want to do this blog. WTF blogger.com? I don't have 5 hours to spend on each post!! And still be unhappy with what ends up posted!! GRRRR. Today blogger.com just refuses to download my picture of our tree this year. We got an Oriental Spruce - alive so it can be planted in the front yard after the Holidays. It's lovely, it really is, trust me. But since you cannot see it, please enjoy my photos of Lottie and Minnow. I wish I could prove that I DO take photos of more than just dogs. I will be using Pinterest for my photos and ideas so find me there if you like. Perhaps I'll start posting again on Tumblr. Who knows.

To protect our Chrismas tree from Minnow's destructive ways, Mark built a nice wooden box around the pot it's planted in. Minnow loves to get into the dirt in a potted plant! I think she still managed to destroy about 8 ornaments but the tree itself survived - hooray!

Our annual holiday hot sauce was finally bottled on Christmas Eve and look out! This year Mark created two different sauces and both of them are HOT! The red one is brutal.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and enjoyed spending time with family and friends. Here's to a creative and fun 2014 filled with puppies and home improvement projects and design ideas and love.

-Beth

lurcher

until recently, I had never heard of a lurcher - a sight hound, scent hount cross breed. yesterday I got to meet my first lurcher, Buder. Just look at the gorgeous orange eyes! part greyhound, part coonhound. I love hounds.

silhouettes

Yesterday was one of those perfect kind of October days where it's a little warmer than normal and full of fall sunshine with bright blue skies. Feeling creative, I took advantage of this beautiful day by sitting outside and painting some dog silhouettes on pumpkins for a window display at the Hydrant. I was completely inspired by some photos I saw of Cloud 7's exclusive pop-up shop at Normann Copenhagen's concept store...