Just a Fruit Tray

A friend of mine was having a party, so I asked what I could bring. She suggested it would be great if I brought some fruit. And that is how this began....

I started making jokes that I was going to make the greatest fruit tray ever; so, I started looking at fun ideas to bring a fruit tray, and got pinterest-spired and it snowballed. I saw a really great pin about how to make a watermelon pirate ship, which I obviously concluded would be the coolest thing EVER. But, then I saw a tutorial for apple swans. Well, I had to make those as well. What other opportunity would I have to do so?! And hey, swans and ships are both in the water... so it could work right?

I enlisted a friend to help...and hubby stated that this was my project, and he wasn't helping. My friend bought all the fruit at costco and brought it over for me. We had put the kids to bed already, so it was about 8pm when we started. The party was after church the morning, so it had to be done before bed.

I used  this tutorial for the pirate ship. Hubby quickly came over to assist me (as he almost always does). We didn't to put a skull, because part of the party was for a baby dedication, so we ( I mean hubby, because really he did most of this part) cut a cross on the mail sail. We (I mean my friend) used a melon baller to get as much out of the watermelon as possible We used some of the watermelon to make waves at the bottom as well.

 

As pieces were done, they went in the fridge overnight and were just fine the next day. 

We also cut out letters out of the watermelon. I had seen this posted somewhere.. like this, and they used cantoloupe I believe, which would have been easier because it is harder. Watermelon was finicky. We cut out flat slices of watermelon and used little letter cutters (that I use for fondant).

Lastly, we (I mean me) carved apple swans. Now, this looked like the most difficult part, but was really simple. I followed this video here.

Doesn't it look fun?! Everyone was very impressed. It was a great project... unfortunatley, now my kids always want their apples cut into swans before they will eat them...
Oh well.. What can you do...

400 Triangles Sewn Together ... Baby Love quilt

Well, Well, Well, I'm back. I didn't feel like I had enough time, or was doing enough projects to make this worthwhile. Now, I have a whole backlogs of things I've done, so I am going to give it another go. I really enjoy blogging, and really feel I need to focus on things I like doing, for a break from everything. Life as a working mom of 2 gets stressful... So here I am!

I have been quilting a lot. I still only do baby quilts... I always want to move on to the next project, so I keep them small. And seriously, Wikipedia (thats a legit source right??! ... sorry every professor I have ever had) says that quilts are traditionally made to commemorate a birth (and other stuff.. blah blah)... so there! This quilt is not the last one I made... but, it is the favourite one I have ever made.

I found this tutorial at Must Love Quilts. I had it sitting on my pinterest board for a long time, but my silly friends never found out the gender of their babies! I knew I wanted pinks, so this was not going to be a gender neutral quilt. FINALLY, a friend from church, who lives down the road told me she was having a baby girl (her 3rd BTW), and I knew this would be for her.

 

 

On "Must love Quilts" one of the ideas was sort of ombre looking and this was my original inspiration. I was a little intimidated by the idea of cutting out over 400 triangles and I spent a few hours pondering some shortcut to do this. I realized there probably wasn't one and decided to just get going. After picking out my fabrics, I started cutting out my triangles. When I had a bunch ready, I decided to lie them out to get an idea how it may look. 

 

 

 

At this point I wasn't convinced. It never looks like I am picturing in my head, and I started to get discouraged. So, I impatiently sewed my quilt together in chunks, in no particular order, in the hopes of seeing what it may look like. 

This hodgepodge of strips finally started getting finished, and as I was hanging them in rows on my wall (which Hubby does not appreciate, having pins in our walls) I was starting to like it.

 

 

Now, a few weeks after little Ella was born, I was almost done. She was actually born in February, very close to Valentines Day, so I knew this was perfect!!

 

I love the backing fabric, I had bought it on a whim, knowing I wanted to use it as backing at some point!





 And Done! I am working on taking better pictures of my quilts. After working so hard, I want to have a record of all these things I have made!!

 

 

There are so many variations of this quilt you could make! I know this is definitely not my last equilateral triangle quilt! It was time consuming, but I love it!!

 

Glider chair revamp

Another project I ( well we... My mother helped) took on, was recovering the glider chair. I purchased fabric online at fabric.com. I found it in the clearance section and ordered 3 yards, for a total of $20.94! This covered the chair and the ottoman and we even have a bit leftover. There are tutorials all over the net on how to do it, but we basically traced all the actual cushions for a pattern.

We then simply placed the new pieces over the old, rather than ripping the whole thing apart. The only spot this posed a problem was the arms because they needed to clip back on the chair and placing the fabric overtop made the, a bit shorter. They took a bit of fiddling to get them back together.

On the ottoman, we made a cover almost like a fitted sheet for a bed. It can be removed and washed if need be. Also, we didn't need to rip it apart and use the staple gun.

It looks like a whole new chair now that it's done! And for less than $25.

 

 

Owl mobile

While putting together the new nursery I wanted to reuse as much as possible from little dude's nursery. I hated the idea of throwing anything out, but I also wanted something "new" for our new little guy. Always seems unfair that the second child (like myself) gets so many hand-me-downs. When I was going through all the baby stuff I found the old crib mobile and wanted to spruce it up.

Before, it looked something like this...

I really did not like it. I looked on etsy for some inspiration and really fell in love with all the felt mobiles. And honestly, they looked simple, but were so expensive... So as usual I decided I could do it myself. I went and purchased felt sheets (really cheap at dollar store or even michaels with a coupon) and embroidery thread. Otherwise, I just used old buttons, pillow stuffing and scrap fabric. For tools, I needed sewing scissors, embroidery needles and a hot glue gun.

I made a paper pattern for my owls. I had one for the main body, one for the stomach and one for the eyes. I used them as a template for each owl. I used felt for everything but the stomach circle, there I just used scrap fabric. After all the pieces were cut out I glued the stomach and eyes to the main body. I then added the detail to the back, the buttons and embroidery. I then stitched the front and back of the owl together, leaving about a 1 cm opening for the stuffing. Using a pencil to push the stuffing in tight and then finished sewing it closed. I then did the same for the stars and moon. I used the embroidery thread to hang it all from the mobile. I also took a long peice of scrap fabric to cover the long plastic bit. Just sewed the two edges together, flipped it inside out and slipped it on.

I love the way it turned out. It is however missing the moon now... Not strong enough for a 3 year old to hang off of...

 

Leftover pizza

How do you get rid of leftovers? I could not get anyone in my family to eat them! They don't want to eat the same thing again... So, I started putting everything ( well a lot) on pizza. They love it. Not only do they get something different. They also get pizza!!

I love homemade pizza, but I always forget to make the dough early enough, so I started using this recipe. It uses regular yeast, but is very quick. Also, I never roll the dough out anymore, I stretch is out. Pulling from the center. I get a rounder pizza and the bread gets us much nicer consistency when baked.

Almost any left over meat works awesome on pizza. Had a BBQ last night, take the left over steak and make a BBQ steak pizza. It works well to mix tomato sauce 50/50 with BBQ sauce for a great base, without an overpowering BBQ sauce taste. Fajitas on Monday? That filling is an awesome topping for a pizza, with a bit of tex mex cheese on top.. Mmm. Chicken and mushrooms left, throw it on...pulled pork? That could be an interesting flavor!

I hope everyone gets creative, has a great pizza night and that less food goes to waste!

 

Cloth diapers?! A Gdiaper review.

Not something I'd ever thought I'd consider. Definitely not something I did with my first little guy. Becoming a mom for the first time is so overwhelming. The information overload in unbelievable. All these products, parenting techniques, advice.... I learned what I could with number 1, but focused on the essentials, which was time consuming enough. Picking a Carseat for example; sounds simple, but there is so much to think about and five million options; and not with simple differences like, which colour do I like best, but type, weight range of the seat, handle options, weight of the seat itself, expiry date lengths (seriously Carseats expire)... I didn't have time to get into anything but the essentials...
Anyways, this time around, with much more time on my hands not learning boring stuff like the difference between powder and liquid formulas, I was able to explore some more interesting alternative options. In a prenatal class I took someone mentioned a product called gdiapers, a hybrid cloth diaper. They have a disposable and a reusesble option. This sounded right up my alley, I could do cloth without committing completely.

Let me explain for those, like me, who are completely confused about this whole concept. These diapers are considered pocket diapers. They have a soft outer shell, called the gpants, a snap in plastic part- the pocket and the insert. The insert, is stuffed into the pocket. Gdiapers sells cloth inserts, which are washed and reused, as well as disposable ones, which can be thrown away or flushed.

They can be purchased online at www.gdiapers.ca, or in Canada at London drugs. If you're not picky on colour you can buy 6 diapers for about 85$.I bought one pack of cloth inserts and then made the rest. Here is a tutorial you can use. Their cloth inserts are really expensive,but doing them yourself is so quick, easy and really cheap! I also purchased a few extra plastic inserts because they tend to get dirty. 6 gpants is more than enough because they done need to be washed each time. The plastic liners and the inserts are what get dirty.
I thought I would use disposables while I was out but I don't find I need to. I purchased a wetbag at a Canadian online retailer called snugglebugz. It's a fabric bag with a plastic liner and you can simply throw all the dirty inserts into it and when it's time to wash, just dump it all in the washing machine and wash the bag right with it. It holds the smells quite well and they come in fun patterns. There are a few reasons I find its working better than I thought. One- exclusively breasted baby poop is water soluble, no rinsing required, just throw it in the wash. Two- babies have a lot of laundry anyways, as a result of poop explosions, puking, ect... So throwing an extra load of diapers in at night really isn't a hardship. Three- I let myself use regular disposable diapers at night, this means that baby doesn't need to be changed as often and less chance of having leaks at night. Lastly, cost! I love that we are barely spending any money on diapers. And when we are done we can actually resell them all... Oh and we are heling to save the environment...
Overall, I love using these cloth diapers. We are pretty much doing exclusively cloth during the day and disposables at night. I find them extremely user friendly (even hubby is one board) and are easy on the wallet as long as you buy the value pack of gpants to begin with.
If you have any questions about your gdiapers, drop me a line :) I'm not an expert yet, but I'm working on it!

Little dude turns 3!!

This year for little dudes birthday we were very busy. I had just finished my last semester at university, I was working full time and I was 7 months pregnant. I didn't have a lot of time to make a huge time consuming birthday cake. When I saw someone do a similar version of this cake I knew our little dude would love it. He's obsessed with machinery.

I went to walmart and found a cheap set of construction vehicles. Then I made a box (! I know shocking...) chocolate cake and iced it with a simple chocolate buttercream icing. After it was all iced, hubby took a knife and simply chopped out a chunk from the side. We positioned the vehicles on the cake and added some Oreo cookie crumbs to the cake to make it look more like dirt. And tada... It was that simple.

 

 

Little Dude #2

We welcomed our newest addition just a few weeks ago ( a story I will tell later) and I'm very excited to show all the projects we did for his nursery... Which he has yet to sleep in....

Being cheap, I wanted to reuse everything for baby #1. At the same time, I wanted this little guy to have an equally impressive room. So, we (a lot done with my mother's execution and my ideas) took almost everything and revamped it. Just a bit of fabric and time for Most things.

After scouring Pinterest for ideas, I had a plan. I really wanted to do owls and use grey, mint and yellow... Hubby wanted monkeys, and this is what you get.... My inspiration board!

Oh, in case your interested, I used dulux paint app to make my board. It lets you colour match anything, add photos and write stuff. It's a great little app.

The top right photo shows the decals I purchased from Etsy at this shop. They were a great find. The lady had a similar design with just the owls and trees, but hubby really wanted monkeys, so I asked her to add some in and she made them custom for us. I did spend a bit more money on them than I would have just buying them in a local store; but these are such a great quality and look like paint once they are up. They also won't leave any marks on the wall when removed, yet aren't peeling at all. They were super easy for hubby to install ( I supervised and gave direction).

The walls were the first big project and then it lead to all the other little ones. I find that when doing a room, I find a jumping off point, a colour, theme, ect. And build from there. This time I started with colours, yellow, mint and grey and then went on to find a theme, owls. I'll blog about all my other projects separately and share some links and/ or give some DIY instructions where I can.

 

I'm back!

This past year was one of the busiest of my life. I graduated university, finished renovations, worked a new full time job and prepared for a new little one, who arrived July 15! So, now I am one maternity leave for the next year (yeah canada!) and I am able to update on all the projects I have completed this past year. Yes I have still done a lot, but just haven't been able to blog about it. I'm so excited to share all my new projects... I've attached a little photo preview to get you all a bit excited... Stay tuned :)

 

 

 

When marshmallows die and go to heaven...

I have recently discovered the greatest (and maybe easiest) project Ever!! Homemade marshmallows! I had no idea this was possible. Actually, I had always assumed that marshmallows were chemical filled pillows; granted yummy pillows, but still filled with chemicals. I found a recipe on Pinterest and decided to try it out. Here's the link to the recipe.

It calls for "light corn syrup"which I couldn't find, until a little googling taught me that it means light in colour, not light as in sugar content. I could only find golden corn syrup, so that I what I used. I flavored mine with vanilla. I attempted to make ghosts, but, they didn't look great. I made some that I cut into squares, which turned out great. I have been using them in my hot chocolate all week...

I also tried making some in silicone ice cube molds. I have little heart molds from ikea that I used. I greased them well and put a generous layer of powdered sugar/corn starch mixture on them. I filled a ziplock bag with the marshmallow fluff, cut the corner and filled the mold almost full. When I first tried taking them out I was concerned, they were a bit stuck, however,when I flipped the mold inside out, I realized they stayed intact, even if I needed to pull them a bit.

I then got creative and decided to coat them in chocolate. I just melted chocolate chips and added a bit of crisco to make it runnier and smoother. I attempted to just dip them, but they got messy and didn't look uniform. After a bit of pondering, I cleaned the silicone molds, dried them well and put some chocolate in the bottom of each on. Just about a 1/4 full. I then took the marshmallows and pressed them back into the molds, into the chocolate. This worked great. I tired putting them in the fridge, but the chocolate cracked when I tried to pop them out again. So, I put them in the freezer for 20 min or so. Then they popped out great.

I took mini cupcake liners and dipped them in a tiny bit of food color, mixed with water. Let them dry. And this is what I ended up with...

I think that they could make a great Christmas present for friends. I am going to keep trying and see what different combinations I can find and better ways for the chocolate. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to take an hour (including prep and clean up) to try making your own marshmallows. They're way better than Any store bought ones and are sure to impress everyone!!

 

Homemade Cheese

So, we did it! Mom and I took the plunge and made mozzarella cheese!! It was super easy using the instructions here. The citric acid was easy to find, you can find it at most wine stores. The hard one to find was the rennet, but, it can be ordered on the Internet for cheap. The entire time we were doing it we were sure it must be wrong, nothing seemed to be exactly as the picture.

Here is our version of how it went down...

The final product... Drumroll please....

It turned out exactly as it should!

And throw it on some pizza and you get?

...a masterpiece... This is what my mom made for dinner... I will use mine tonight!!!

Adding it up, it's pretty cheap... You barely use anything other than the milk, so it was probably less than $5 for all the cheese!!

Little Dude's Room

I have been wanting to blog about my little dude's bedroom for quite a while. He is now 2 and a half, so no longer a nursery, but a big boy room. This was a big project and was a lot of work. We had just bought our house and there was still a lot to do. In this room, we had to pull the carpets and baseboards, the room was basically gutted. We were on a very tight budget for this job, after recently purchasing a home and expecting our first child as a young family.

Hubby started by replacing the carpet and baseboards. He went discs end of the roll place and got some carpet a bit cheaper, which hubby installed himself. He also managed to replace the baseboards himself. Then we needed to paint. This was one of the largest project in the room. I had this idea to do big squares and was inspired by colors on all the baby stuff I had gotten!

After we had colors picked out we wanted to do bedding and curtains. With the help of my mom we came up with some great ideas. We went to Ikea and bought a long beige curtain. We also purchased baby duvet, so we just needed to make a cover. When I was looking around at different bedding sets, they were all super cute, but, they were so expensive and included lots of things,such as bumper pads, that I wasn't going to use. Anyways, we also went to the fabric store and bought some fabrics. We brought along our paint chips and choose fabrics with the same sorts of colors. We weren't that concerned about what the patterns were, because the colors would tie it all together.

My mom took the long curtain from Ikea and cut it to a good length for the window, then with the rest She made the front of the duvet. For both, she cut bits of the colorful fabrics and sewed them in strips. We had also purchased a softer fabric, which we used for the back of the duvet. We used some big bright buttons to fasten it closed on the bottom. With the scraps she made some little pillows for the glider chair.

As for the furniture, The crib was a gift from the Inlaws, and we put an old bookshelf in the room, that my dad had made for my mom, years ago. Lastly, we looked everywhere for a dresser/change table. Everything was so expensive. I waited until babies r us had a big sale. When we went they were clearing out a lot of stuff. The one I got was more than 50% off the original price and then the guy loading it in our van took a chip out of the bottom, so we got it even cheaper. It was a great deal!

When we were traveling in the mountains shortly after little dude was born, we found these stuffed animal deer heads. If you can imagine, they were kind of cute. After much debating, we bought one (which we call ray). This however, turned into a bit of a joke, and now we also have a bear hear and a polar bear rug... Overall, I still love his room and like that it is a bit different than other babies room; there is not a "theme" per say, but, just colors that we liked.

 

Safari Birthday

My good friend asked me to help her make her son's first birthday cake. I decided it was the least I could do to celebrate the fact that they had survived their first year together as a family. I was excited to help, but nervous when she said that there would be almost 60 guests at this party! This meant it would have to be much larger than any of the cakes I had made so far.

She choose the theme "safari." After much googling, I came up with a few ideas. The original idea looked somewhat like this. 2 tiers, covered in fondant. On the inside I made a marble cake, chocolate and white cake. It ended up being pretty neat, because when it was cut it looked like zebra stripes. ( just google "zebra cake batter design" and you will see what I am taking about and how to do it). We also decided to do a little smash cake in the shape of a safari hat.

I baked the cakes, leveled and added crumb coat, with the help of my husband, the day before we decorated. Then, I let them set overnight in the fridge to make the icing nice and hard. The key is to cut the "domes" that form while baking all the way off to leave a level top on each cake. Then, put a thick layer of buttercream of the top. Take the second layer, and place it cut side down on the buttercream. It can be pressed a bit to make it completely level on top. Now you have the somewhat smoother bottom on top, which is much easier to ice than the crumbly side that was cut. A generous layer of buttercream is added on the whole cake. This is important because it helps the fondant stick.

I had pre made the fondant with the help of my mom. She has a kitchen aid mixer, so it makes the process much simpler. I made marshmallow fondant, as I mentioned in other posts, however, this time I precoloured them all in the mixer to avoid having to do it by hand again. This simply required a bit of planning to know approximately what I wanted. I did leave one chunk white, so that I had some for extra colors if I decided to make any changes to the design, which inevitably happens.

In the morning, I covered each layer with fondant to make transportation much easier. I finished the safari hat, which was just a small rounded cake, which I had baked in a small well greased metal bowl. I covered it in buttercream and beige fondant, added a few strips and voila, it was done. That was a pretty simple task. I took all the cakes to my Fellow mommy's house and with the help of a 1 year old, 2 year old, a 16 year old sister and a dog, we finished decorating the cakes. I pretty much let my friend have control over the decorations, just helped her with the technical issues, such as how to glue fondant together (with water) and how to clean off cornstarch (with vodka).

The final product ended up being really cute and was definitely a hit at the party.

I learned at least 2 lessons from this project; one, always make sure you know the scope of a project before agreeing to it... And two, I 100% understand why they charge so much for these cakes. If I were charging, I calculated that I spent about $50 on supplies and approximately 10hours planning, baking, making and decorating this cake. This one year old hit the jackpot this year with a $250 present :).

 

Summer fun

I would say that summer is officially over now. Not only is it getting cold (it's only 11c today), but, I am also back in class (my last year of university). I haven't blogged much, for 2 reasons; the first, summer was crazy, the hotel, that we call our house, was busting at the seams all summer. And 2, because I wasn't at school, I wasn't using my Laptop and blogging on the iPad is a bit of a challenge. But, now I am attempting to use a new app to see if I can more easily and efficiently blog.

So, back to the summer; other than lots of guests and mini-trips, we spent a lot of time outside in our garden. We have a lovely rainy summer, so we ended up with quite the harvest. Apples, tomatoes, peppers... It was great. However, it all seems to ripen at the wrong time.

This summer my little harvest began just as some friends from Germany showed up. That means one lucky guest got to spend days helping me can. (thanks t... Hope you still enjoyed your working vacation :) )

We spent days making apple sauce, apple pie filling, salsa, dill pickles and bread and butter pickles. I enjoyed it and now have a cupboard full of jars for the winter. And don't worry, I sent T home with some as well.

I even made my own labels for all the jars. I bought Avery labels and made a simple design using their templates. I learned that if you are looking for cute backgrounds, the best search option I found was "fabrics." this way they had a bit of texture and were generally cute and simple.

Anyways, here is a little picture summary of the canning project. I will update the blog soon with some other exciting projects I have completed recently!

The Friendship Tree Guestbook

As I have mentioned, I co-hosted a shower for my friend this past weekend. I really wanted to have some sort of gift from the guests. After a bit of internet surfing, I found this cute idea for a fingerprint tree guestbook. I thought it would be a great keepsake for K to hang on her wall to see all the time.

Tools used for this project:

Canvas

Acrylic Paint (Brown, white, Pink)

Permanent Ink

Chalk Ink

Letter Stamps

Rub on Stickers

Paint brush

Pencil

Good White Eraser

It is best to paint the entire back ground of the canvas. I did not, but wish I had. This gives the canvas a more finished look and enables you to go back over pencil marks to cover them up. You can simply use white for this, but any colour will work. The beneifit of using acrylic paints is that once they dry you can paint a light colour over a darker one.

I started with a template I found on google. I searched "tree template" and simply copy and pasted one into a word document. I changed the size to match the canvas I had. I printed and cut it out. I traced around it with a pencil. It looked rough but that is fine.

After I was happy with the outline I painted the tree brown. It took me two coats to give it a dark brown colour. I used the littlest brush and just went slow. Sometimes it is easier to follow to paint brush rather than the pencil lines. This will give you smoother edges and you can erase the pencil later. After the brown had dried I used pink to paint the heart. I practiced quite a few times on another sheet so that I was able to make the heart the perfect size to fit the letters in.

After all the painting was done I used rub on stickers for the birds. They can usually be found at any dollar store. They are much more versatille than stamps or stickers. The only negative is that you need to be careful to only rub the sticker you want. Otherwise you may get the edge of the next one and it can be difficult to remove. Rub-ons are great because they can be used on almost any surface. 

Lastly I used letter stamps to stamp the words I wanted. It is important to measure out your space and plan where you want the letters to go, otherwise you may end up running out of space. I used the permanent ink I had from another project for the words. It dries quickly, so there was less chance of it smearing. On either side of the tree I stamped "Kelsey" and "07 July 12," the bride's name and date of the shower. Underneath I stamped "Showering you with wishes today and forever." I happened to have the words "wishes" and "Forever" with my rub-ons, so I used them instead of stamps. It just gave the picture a bit more dimension.

I made a little instruction sheet and placed it all near the door at the shower. The guests used their fingerprints to make leaves on the trees. For this part I used chalk ink. It takes longer to dry but cleans easier and made a much prettier print. I encouraged the guests to practice on an extra sheet first before doing it directly on the canvas.

Finally, each guest signed their name over their print. It may also be a good idea to spray the whole canvas with acrylic sealer to preserve the colours and protect the canvas.

It ended up working well and was a great keepsake for the bride-to-be.

Stamped Napkins

For the Bridal Shower I co-hosted recently, I really wanted to add some personal touches and what better way than with personalized napkins? I wasn't prepared to pay a fortune for someone else to print them, so I researched ways to do them myself and settled on stamping them.

I purchased a large pack of light pink napkins from Ikea and dark purple stamping ink from Michaels. I bought permanent ink because it's fast drying. While at Michaels, I found a "Bridal Shower" stamp in the clearance bin for a couple of dollars. After that I decided to search for a big "K" stamp. I looked everywhere but couldn't find one the right size.

So, I decided to make a potato stamp. I remembered doing this as a kid and thought it would work well. I cut the potato in half, and then cut out my letter. You could draw on your design or even use a cookie cutter to get a perfect design. Mine was simple so I freehanded it. Just remember, if you are doing letters, you need to cut them out backwards.

I took one napkin and used it for practice. Once I knew how much ink and how much pressure I needed, I stamped each napkin. I used to permanent ink so I was able to pile them on top of each other right away. This easy (and cheap!) project took me less than an hour in total. Great addition to your next party.

Princess K's Castle

Yesterday was my good friend's bridal shower. She asked me to be a bridesmaid, so of course I was all over planning to shower. She choose the theme of "Princess;" So, beware, these next few posts include copious amounts of pink and sparkle.

The big centerpeice for this project was the cake pops. I showed how I make cake pops in another post here. This time I followed the exact same process. I wanted everything uniform in white and pink, so I dipped them all in white chocolate or vanilla frosting dip. I decorated them all with pink sugar or pink candy melts. I generally buy all my decorations at Bulk Barn. This way I can buy small amounts of everything, instead of having to purchase big bags. (I hate having left overs.)

I also made "bridal party" cake pops. I used the bride and groom cake pop tutorial that I found here. I made 3 tuxedo ones, to represent the groom and groomsmen. I made the bride like it says, but then did the same in pink to represent the bridesmaids. The groom was easy to make. But I still need a lot of practice piping, so I found the girl ones to be much more difficult.

After all of the cake pops were made I need to make a display. I used floral foam to build a castle. Three placed next to eachother made the base, which I simply wrapped in wrapping paper. I then cut 4 squares, wrapped them in wrapping paper and placed them on top on all 4 corners. At the dollar store I found a foam castle-making kit for children. I bought a few packs of those. And used them to decorate the castle.

I placed the foam castle on a cake board (99cents at bulk barn). I used a skewer to poke the hole for the cake pops.

Here is the final product...

It was a hit at the party. The only issue was that noone wanted to eat them because they were apparently "too pretty!"

Artist Wanna-be

It has been quite a while since I last posted. Summer is here and we have started getting lots of visitors. But, right now we have a bit of down time so I am able to post my latest craft.

Right before we welcomed our first guests of the summer we (almost) finished our basement reno. We just have flooring left to do...but that is going to take a bit more saving. We have a brand new bathroom, which looks beautiful, however it is still a bit sterile . I wanted to add something to the walls to spruce up the space and add some colour. So, I decided to "paint" a picture. Lets clear this up right away; I am not an artist. I can't draw a picture to save my life and even find tracing difficult.

For me, inspiration always comes at strange times. I was giving my son a bath and playing with his bath markers. We were letting the paint drip down the sides of the tub and it looked pretty neat. I thought it would look great as a painting. I hadn't been brave enough to attempt yet, but I had another project on the go for a wedding shower I am hosting for a friend (I'll blog about this in the next week) and had most of the supplies sitting around. I needed a large canvas, acrylic paints (dark blue and white), paint brushes and acrylic sealer spray(found right next to the acrylic paints).

I simply started at the very top and painted about 2 inches with the dark blue with a thick brush. I then added a drop of blue with a few drops of white paint directly onto the canvas. I mixed it drectly on the canvas and painted another inch or so. I overlaped the colours so that they blended a bit. I then added a line with just white. I blended with the colour above just like before. I dripped my brush in water and blended the edges even more.

Once I was happy with the main background, I took the brush and dripped water through the paint from the top. I started with small amounts and held the canvas at a 45degree angle so I could control the flow of water. It was really fun. After letting it dry overnight I sprayed it with acrylic sealer spray  according to the directions on the bottle so that it would be protected in the washroom.

It reminds me of rain through the clouds.

Not bad for a non-artist, eh?

Summer Centerpeices

For my little Dude's birthday I wanted to make some centerpeices for the tables outside. My initial thought was simple vases with spring flowers. But, I thought maybe something a bit more kid friendly was in order. Little Dude had gotten a tiny pinwheel from my inlaws (who live overseas) in their last care package and he loves it. They look simple enough to make, so I googled a few ideas. It turns out, it is pretty much as easy as I had thought.

I have a ton of scrapbooking paper with pretty designs that I have had for years, so I decided that this would be a perfect use for it. Other than that I used chopsticks (save the wooden ones you get when you order chinese food) and a thumb tack. I used the directions here.... Well, actually, it was the day before Little Dude's party, so Hubby put them together for me!

One they were together, I took the jars that I had made (check them out here), filled them with a bit of sand from the sandbox and stuck the pinwheels in. Any jar would work though, or even a bucket from the sandbox or a glass.

They were a cute addition to the party, and everyone had fun playing with them afterwards.