home made ice cream sandwich cake!

All your prayers have just been answered. This ice cream sandwich cake was the bomb.com and worth every stomach ache it caused. (Smaller pieces next time, eh?) My friend Nicole has been talking about this cake she made once last summer and yesterday afternoon she decided to try it again! I helped a bit but she mostly ran the show and heres how she did it:

• ice cream sandwiches
• coolwhip
• fudge or pudding
• oreos or whatever candy you want!
• wax paper and a cookie sheet
• a slap chop, rolling pin, fist, or foot 
• ziplock bags

1. Lay about 5-6 ice cream sandwiches down wax paper (which you've already put down on the cookie sheet). Make sure the sandwiches are snuggled close to each other.
2. Mix the coolwhip/fudge/pudding together in one bowl and crumble a bunch of oreos in another. I used a slap chop to crush my oreos but mostly because we just wanted to use the slap chop. You can place your cookies/candy in a ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin or if you're feeling extra angsty, your fist. Or foot, if you've really got some aggression to let out :)
3. Add some of the cookie crumbles to the coolwhip pudding mixture and layer it on top of the sandwiches. Follow that by another layer of just crumbles, and then add another layer of ice cream sandwiches. Repeat this again, until you've gone about 3 layers high. 
4. Use the rest of the whipped cream pudding mixture to "ice" the cake on the top and all around the sides. Add the rest of the crumbles to the top!

You're going to want to work fast on this one because this might melt pretty fast. After you've made your cake, stick it in the freezer for a few hours and then you'll be good to go! Cut it up and serve in small pieces-  or big ones if you're not afraid of a serious stomach ache ;)

Take a Seat

  Kyle's brother stumbled upon some old chairs from a Ruby Tues. location that were up for grabs. Though they were in deep need of some TLC, he asked if we wanted them. We got to talking about how we were going to fix the chairs up and Kyle suggested using old t-shirts instead of buying fabric to reupholster the chairs. Brilliant! So, we headed to Savers, dug through a few racks and bought 4 t-shirts for $4 and change. Only 3 chairs are pictured here, though. Sprocket The Dog decided he hated one of the t-shirts as much as I secretly did and decided to shred it to bits. Thanks, I think?

  Anyway, this was super easy to do and heres how you can have awesome chairs, too!

• paint (I used the leftovers from the Chevron DIY I did a couple weeks ago)
• a drill
• sand paper
• old t-shirts
• a staple hammer (so.much.fun)
• pins

1. Flip the chairs over and use the drill to remove the screws and detach the seats. Save the screws! Sure, you could always get new ones but if its not necessary to replace them, just save the ones the chair came with because you already know they are the right size. 
2. Sand each chair, and focus on all the rough parts and edges. Seriously. Giving a good sand job (hehehe) is important because if you don't you're going to see all those rough spots you missed when you paint over them and make more work for yourself in the end. 
3. Apply a few coats of pretty paint! I think the best way to do this is to paint each chair once and by the time you're done with the first coat on the last chair, you'll be ready to add a second coat to the chair you started with. Get it? Of course you do! You're smart! And beautiful! You should probably do a minimum of 3 coats.

 (While your chairs are drying to beauteous perfection, reupholster your seats)

1. Cut the t-shirt right up the center of the back and lay it open with the graphic or front of the shirt facing down. 
2. Place the seat in the center of the shirt (the side you sit on facing down) and use the neck as a guideline to help you make sure the graphic is centered.
3. Fold the t-shirt over the cushion nice and tight and use pins to keep it in place.
4. Once everything is aligned, take your staple hammer and slam it down a few times to secure the shirt on the cushion, removing the pins as you go along. 
5. If you turn the cushion over and feel that the design is just a wee bit off, you can probably get away with stretching the shirt and re-stapling it instead of feeling like you have to pull all the staples out and start again. T-shirts stretch, so use that to your advantage.
6. Once you're done, place your seats upside down on a table and sit the chairs upside down on top of them. 
7. Use the drill to reinsert the screws and voila! You're done!

   For a few weeks now, I’ve had chevron on my mind. I asked Kyle (my wonderfully amazing and encouraging boyfriend!) if I could paint a wall in the snowboard room and he agreed. The snowboard room is just an extra room in his house that is home to snowboards, snowboard gear, and some other stuff. Its the only room in the house that isn’t really ‘done’, so I figured if I paint it and it sucks, no one will see it/he could paint over it eventually.
Shortly after I announced my excitement to start chevron-ing (?), Scott said that I could chevron a wall in his room. YAY! So, I set out to Home Depot for supplies and got started with Kyle’s help. He is literally good at just about everything so I think I definitely had an advantage (which I am super thankful for:) The wall turned out just as I had hoped and I am IN LOVE with it! The guys really like it too which is awesome since its in their house ;)
GET YOUR CHEVRON ON!

• blue painters tape
• a sturdy rule, or measuring tape
• a long level (optional, but super helpful
• an assistant for the measuring part if you’re doing a big wall like I did (optional, but super helpful as well)
• a paintbrush
• a wet cloth or paper towel (for wiping up small errors and drips)

• paint!!
• an Xacto knife or box cutter (to cut the painter’s tape if necessary)

  Decide how thick you want your chevron to be. Scott told me he wanted his THIS BIG, referring to the length between the tip of his pointer finger and his thumb, 7 inches. Kyle and I used the big level as if it was a giant ruler so that we could easily map out the zig zag. To make things a little easier, I’m going to draw and post the real deal how to for lining up your zig zags because its hard to explain without a visual, yanno.
Once you have your lines up, just lay your blue painter’s tape accordingly. This and actually drawing the lines/points is the most time consuming part. Once thats done though, painting will be a breeze! I put down one thin coat for the first application, starting at the top. By the time I got to the bottom, the top was dry enough for its second coat. I gooped on lots more paint for this coat which was perfect. You don’t want to spread your paint too thin but you also don’t want it to drip.
I waited about an hour and a half before I took the painter’s tape off. You should probably wait just a bit longer but I was way too excited to be patient so I peeled it off sooner than later.
The picture above is of me and the finished product. I am in LOVE with it!