Key Lime Poke Cake

Key Lime Poke Cake is just heaven on a plate. The combination of fresh whipping cream and citrusy lime cake is fabulous. It was an easy Jell-O poke cake that I will make often. I love it {dare I say}, more than the Strawberry Lemonade Poke Cake that inspired it. 

Last month when I made that Strawberry Lemonade Poke Cake, it got the wheels turning on the poke cake flavor possibilities. And key lime anything is my husband's favorite. Last year for his birthday, I made a Key Lime Cake that was....meh. It wasn't moist. And it was just...well, meh. So I decided to give the poke cake a go with the key lime flavor. And WOOHOO! It was awesome.

Just awesome.

The key to this cake was not using just water to make the lime Jell-O. Because plain lime Jell-O tastes like a green lifesaver...not exactly the light, citrusy key lime flavor I had in mind. I wasn't sure this would work. It would either taste awesome or like swamp water. Nobody's more surprised than me that it worked.

My store was fresh out of actual key limes, so I used regular limes, and they worked just fine. I squeezed seven whole limes to get the half cup of juice I used. You can use the bottled lime stuff, but I really like the fresh juice. 

For this cake, you'll need:

• 1 box of white cake mix
• ingredients for cake mix {from the back of the box}
• 1 small box of lime Jell-o
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice {key lime juice would be awesome}
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 1 quart heavy whipping cream
• 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar
• graham cracker crumbs {about 2 squares' worth}
• lime zest {from 2 limes}

Bake cake according to the box directions in a 9x13 pan. Allow to cool completely. Poke holes in cake with skewer {or the end of a wooden spoon}. Make Jell-O using the 1 cup of boiling water, the 1/2 cup of fresh lime juice and the 1/2 cup cold water. While the Jell-O is still hot, pour it over the cake and into the holes. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. 
Make whipped cream with heavy cream and 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar, whipping until peaks form. Top cake with whipped cream and sprinkle with the graham cracker crumbs and lime zest. I thought the graham cracker crumbs were a nice addition to bring in the flavor of a traditional Key Lime Pie crust.
Store in refrigerator. 

This is the consistency I prefer for the whipping cream...a little on the thicker side. One more minute of whipping and I would have had butter. It's a fine line, peeps.

So good and summery. We may or may not have informed the children this cake was in the house. As in, we may or may not have eaten the whole 9x13 pan by ourselves. 

Click on the image below to download the printable recipe. It prints in both 4x6 and 3x5 recipe card sizes.

{i linky-party here}

and at Coastal Charm and Savvy Southern Style

Neglect your chores like me and don't miss a thing:

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Follow on Pinterest | Follow on Google+

Mop It Up Monday #72

Happy Dad's Day and welcome to the Mop It Up Party Linky Party!!

B-T-DUBS: the new and improved party goes live the afternoon of July 6th!
Joining me for this exciting party collab are:
Jamie from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom and
Tanya from Twelve O Eight

Now, your links will be seen simultaneously on THREE blogs at the same time...
all you need to do is link up on ONE of our sites!

Hope you've all had a fabulous week...
here's what I was I up to over here:

{Buffet Makeover with Tutorial and Tips}
{Fourth of July Chalkboard Printable}
{Easy S'Mores Pops}

Here's some of the things from last week's {AWESOME} party, 
now making my to-do list a little longer:
Feel free to grab a button if you were featured. 

<center> <a href="http://www.ishouldbemoppingthefloor.com" target="_blank"><img alt="mop it up mondays feature" src="http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd281/mrsdaviddominguez/button4.jpg"/></a></center>

1. Texas Caviar from Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom

2. Filing Fabric from The Thinking Closet

3. Twix Cheesecake Bars from Annie's Noms

4. Shades of Grey from Juniper and Roses

5. Homemade Limemade from Ashley's Dandelion Wishes

6. Berry Basket Daily Calendar from Endlessly Inspired

7. $45 Back Patio Makeover from Restoration Beauty

8. Home Tour from Coastal Charm

9. Watermelon Mint Iced Tea from Family Home and Life

10. My Fireplace Mantel Reveal from Setting for Four

11. Paleo Flourless Chocolate Cake from Amee's Savory Dish

12. DIY Balance Beam from The Chirping Moms

POST CONTINUES AFTER THE JUMP>>>

Please Click Through for the Rest of the Party {and to add your awesome links!}:

Friday's Freebie: Fourth of July Chalkboard Printable

How about a free Fourth of July Chalkboard Printable for all of your star-spangled celebrating?

There's so much I want to say about this printable...but I'll try to keep it brief. I live in Killeen, Texas...home of Fort Hood, one of the largest United States military installations in the world. My dad was career military {CW4 Alvin Pawlik, retired}, and spent a lot of time at Fort Hood, as well. The army is near and dear to my heart. I've watched many friends deal with deployment, CPSing and all of the other "fun" army things. They are truly heroes...all of them. Watching these friends deploy {over and over} is just unbelievable. They truly love this country. And give up so much for all of us to be free. So, this popular saying goes onto a patriotic printable with much love and dedication to all of my Fort Hood friends and family.

{Cue Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA}

This high res 8x10 print prints onto a letter-sized page, to be trimmed and framed.

Also, chalkboard prints look best without the glass in a frame.

God Bless our Military.

For information on getting the most out of a free printable, 

click here {includes extensive printing tips and ideas}.

To see all of my free printables, click here.

{i linky-party here}

and at Coastal Charm and Savvy Southern Style

Neglect your chores like me and don't miss a thing:

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Follow on Pinterest | Follow on Google+

My New Printer from Staples Rocks My Socks Off

This post was written for Staples on my behalf. I was not compensated monetarily for this post. I was given product to review and write about with an unbiased opinion. 

All opinions are 100% mine.

--

I print. Like a lot. But, as many of you know, up until now...I didn't print at home. I would go to my local print shop and have them print everything for me. It looks like I may be saying goodbye to Keith at the printing store for a bit. Because this new printer of mine is the bomb diggity. 

Recently, I was contacted by Staples to review a printer. I am certainly a person who could put a printer to the test. And I have. And it still rocks me like a wagon wheel. 

I love this thing:

I selected the LaserJet Pro 100 for a couple of reasons. One being that I've always wanted a laser jet {I've been an ink jet girl for awhile now...time for some ch-ch-ch-changes}. And two, I wanted something that could scan at a high resolution as well. 

My husband set it up for me. Out of the box to print time was twenty minutes.

I did all of the on-screen set up. Since I'm a Mac person running on a more recent system than OS-X, I did have to download a separate driver from the HP site to make it compatible, but it was super easy to do. It downloaded in less than a minute and walked me through the process. Lickety-splickety, my friends. 

And we're able to run all three of our computers to it wirelessly throughout the home. My husband could be on the other side of our house on a laptop and send something to print all the way to my office, where the new printer lives. 

It even has a cool ePrint function that allows you to print from any device on your network...be it tablet, phone, what-evs. How cool is that?

My thing is printables. I make them. I print them. I dig them, man.

But, before this printer, I would have never considered printing something as ink-heavy as a printable at home. But, this baby did not disappoint. 

I love the saturation of the colors and how perfectly matched they are. When printing directly from Photoshop Elements, I had the option of allowing the printer or PSE to do the color matching for me. I chose the printer and it matched everything beautifully. 

Ben's chore chart came right out looking fabulous.

He was, errrrr, thrilled.

Then...the ultimate test. A chalkboard printable. A completely saturated print. 

And then color on top of the black saturation. Bring it.

Man, this thing can print, baby. Can you believe how stunning this looks? 

No printer lines or anything. Just pure saturated color. 

{BTW, this patriotic print will be available tomorrow as the weekly freebie}.

The scanning and copying features also work great. 

Crisp and clear on both functions.

I really got a little too into scanning. 

Cleaned out a few shoe boxes full of old pictures...

And totally tagged like crazy on FB. Nobody was safe.

Can you spot Florence Henderson in the above photos?

We're totally BFF. 

Yeah, except not at all.

One other cool thing about this printer is that the ink consumption is low. I used to burn through ink cartridges on my old printer so fast. This supply level above is after printing a  dozen of those chalkboard printables and a month's worth of chore charts for both kids. And some photos. And my husband even made some copies for church on Sunday morning. We're still rocking it at 100%. 

Awesomesauce.

So, all in all. I'm in love with the thing. 

My new printer from Staples is FABULOUSx10.

{i linky-party here}

and at Coastal Charm and Savvy Southern Style

Neglect your chores like me and don't miss a thing:

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Follow on Pinterest | Follow on Google+

Buffet Reveal: Distressing Painted Furniture with Stain

I finished my {new-to-me} antique buffet. Using my fail-proof method of distressing painted furniture with stain, this came together beautifully...

and it's a piece I'm super proud of.

I've been looking on {actually, stalking} Craigslist for the last two years looking for an antique buffet. The problem was...most of the ones on there were already refinished {where's the fun in that?} or way out of my budget...or only sold with an elaborate dining set. 

And then I came across Ashley's ad. We met and instantly hit it off. She showed me her grandmother's antique 100+ year old buffet and my heart went pitter-patter. She was so kind and gave me a good deal on the piece...and even separated it from the dining set it was listed with. And now...she reads this crazy blog of mine {hiiiiiii, Ashley!}.  


She was very quick to point out a few flaws in the finish when I looked at the piece...I wanted to let her know up front that I planned to refinish it. Sometimes Craigslisters may not love the fact that you're taking a beloved piece of theirs and completely changing it up, but she was super excited about it. She was so kind and told me several times that she was happy it was going to someone who really wanted it.

And, I really wanted it. Like a two-year itch, I did. 

The gang's all here. These are all of the products I used to refinish this. The red is Valspar's Fabulous Red...and it totally lived up to its name. 

I love to use a spray stripper. I feel like I have more control that way. And I'm a *slight* control freak. I use the scraper to pull the previous finish off, after the stripper had sat for about five minutes.

No stripper jokes today, friends...I think I stretched that out a bit too much in the last furniture refinishing post and made my mom's friends all blush and call each other. 

I digress...

I have to be honest, the stripping product didn't work as fabulously on this piece as on previous ones. So, it was back to basics. Or semi-basics, I suppose, I pulled out the sander. I started with 150 grit sandpaper and worked my way to 300 sanding the top down.

It took over two hours to sand the top of it down. But, man...it was worth it. 

I got it down to the bare wood and it was so soft and perfect to the touch.

It soaked the stain in beautifully. B-E-A-utifully.

I use the staining pad when just straight-staining a part of a piece. And I still love this look of a stained top and a painted bottom. To be clear, I'm referencing furniture here.

I did four coats of stain on top. {Sometimes I just can't leave well enough alone}.

I sanded with 400 grit paper between the first two coats of stain 

{I also left room for plenty of drying time in between staining and sanding}. 

Instead of stripping the bottom, too, I used the Zinsser primer that is designed to cover anything {because I wasn't 100% sure what the original finish was, as in oil based or not?} This primer really works...I painted a mirror with it, for crying out loud.

Then it was on to the red. It took three coats. Three. But, I persevered.

Truthfully, it could have probably taken a fourth coat, too. But that would have sent me to the looney bin. Each coat took 24 hours to dry...so the three coats took three full days. And I'm just not a patient person.

After letting the last coat dry overnight, I went at the painted areas with the sander.

So many of you have chatted with me about this method, so I made a video just for YOU with the step-by-step process:

You can watch it here. 

Again, to see the complete "aging with stain" process, 

watch my video on this piece, here.

After the aging, I went over the entire piece with satin polyurethane {I did the top twice and sanded lightly with 400 grit sandpaper in between coats}.

I opted to leave the hardware in the original state. I thought about using some Brass-O to clean it, but I decided the aged bronze was a bit more true to the shabby finish I gave her. And truly, I've never redone a piece in which the original hardware was in such great shape that I could use it on the refinished piece. This was a very well-cared for piece!

The only other thing I may go back and do later is mod-podge a pretty patterned paper into the cabinets and drawers {just on the inside}. 

I love how it turned out. 

The stained top with all of its marble-y goodness is my fave.

I can't wait to get her into my kitchen and really enjoy the heck out of her. Can you imagine how pretty all of the Thanksgiving pies will look displayed on this? I'm giddy. 

Do you have any furniture projects on your summer to-do list?

{I still have three more pieces in my garage awaiting refinishing...another day!}

{i linky-party here}

and at Coastal Charm and Savvy Southern Style

Neglect your chores like me and don't miss a thing:

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Follow on Pinterest | Follow on Google+