i like what i'm herring: treaties, y'all!

I haven't done a cooking post in a while, but then again, I haven't found something so easily delicious worth sharing, so here goes..

Yesterday was my sweet lady-neighbor's birthday. I LOVE my neighbors. They just got married and are around my age. We both have doggies, we watch them for each other, and we all like to drink beer and wine. So it's a win/win for all of us (ya know, watching pups when we're gone and drinking beer/wine when we're together). I'm not sure how they feel about sharing names on here, so I'll refer to them in initials.. P the hubs lived next door when I moved in to my house. He was a great neighbor, letting me borrow stuff like extension cords and whatnot. After we were friends for a bit, he met C. She is awesome. They just got married a few weeks ago, and I love living next to them!

Needless to say, they clearly hear me sawing next door every so often.. I feel semi-creepy, because I'm ALWAYS outside sawing or painting when they're walking to and from their cars, and I'm kind of like that sitcom neighbor that's always saying things like "HOWDY NEIGHBOR!" or "WHAT ARE YALL GETTING INTO TONIGHT?!". Erroneous.

Let me tell you how awesome they are: they gave me leftover craft supply stuff from their wedding! HOW AWESOME! I'll be sure to blog about it once I put them to use!

Back to the subject! I knew that it was C's birthday, so I wanted to make something delicious! Of course I'd been on Pinterest pinning stuff for like ever, so I immediately went to my "eats" board to find something sweet to make (otherwise I would've made something meat-y because that is my forte). I have several birthday-ish recipes filed, but the cake batter fudge caught my eye. I am a HUGE fudge lover. My mom makes the BEST fudge over the holidays, so I thought "hey, I'm going to try this out, and maybe it'll give it a run for it's money".

It is DELICIOUS! So here is the link to the original pin: CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK WHERE I GOT THE RECIPE! She also gives instructions to a non-dairy recipe, so click that if you want to create it that way!

So here is my take on it:

Ingredients: Yellow cake mix, Powdered sugar, Butter, Sprinkles, and not pictured, MILK!

Put a cup of cake mix and a cup of powdered sugar into a MICROWAVEABLE bowl.

Mix it together. I used a spatula that I was gonna use for the rest of the recipe.

Then plop in a 1/4 cup of butter (half a stick.. I cut it up into a few pieces) and 1/4 cup of milk. DO NOT STIR IT. Put it in the microwave for 2 minutes.

Once you remove it, you can stir it until it turns into a thick consistency and pour some sprinkles in there.

Put it into a greased pan. Let me tell you that I didn't read ahead in the pinterest link (which said it fit into an 8x8 dish), so I plopped it into this big one.. It clearly didn't fit..

So what did I do? Make another batch to fill it up! When you buy a box of cake mix, powdered sugar, butter, and milk, you're gonna have extra ingredients. I used the same recipe and bowl, but scooped out all of the thick fudge-y remnants I could before I microwaved the bowl again. Then I mixed, poured, microwaved, and emptied out the new batch into the dish.

After I got it all (semi) even, I put it into the fridge. The original recipe says to leave it in for an hour, but I think it needed a little more time than that.

Well I couldn't leave it as just fudge before I took it to the neighbors, could I? I made one of those ultra-spiffy bunting banners!

First off, I cut out little triangles with tabs on the top. I drew them out on leftover card stock with a bit of color, so you can see the sketching on them. Most of them are folded up here, but you can see a few of the tabs.

I took a skewer that we had and cut it in half. Then I tied some baker's twine to each piece. I held it up before I tied it to get what length it should be.

Baker's twine isn't as giving as you would think, so really measure when you hold it up! After that, I colored the bunting! I made some polka dots and the others were zig zag (not quite chevron).

Then I wrote out the letters with a dark blue sharpie. I laid it out under the baker's twine before I attached it with some tape..

clearly I didn't even it up before I took the picture..

I used clear packing tape, which we all know comes off in two inch wide strips. I pulled off just a little bit, then cut that strip into TINY pieces to attach the bunting flags onto the string.