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?