I've been working on

The bumper for the baby's crib. I'm binding it right now (who needs piping? Not me!) and wow is hand sewing that seriously long edge tedious! I'd say I'm more than half way done though. So hopefully tomorrow I can post a picture of it up in her bed. Don't hold me to that, though, as I do have a baby shower happening this weekend.



Speaking of the shower, I mentioned in my post last week that I was looking for favor inspiration. This is what I decided on. It would have been way better in a sugar cookie with royal icing, but I really didn't have the time to learn a new skill before the party. So chocolate covered Rice Krispy Treats it is. They didn't turn out as cute as I thought. It's hard piping features on such a bumpy surface! Still though, I think at least the kids will be delighted with them.

Huge catch-up post

We have a lot to discuss today. Ready?

I had one of my baby showers (there will be two) on Saturday. Last week, I did a ton of prep. I wanted to schedule a post for all of it on Saturday, but I never ended up having the time to type it out.

The first project I tackled was relatively small, but still cute. I was in charge of one game for the baby shower and I wanted super-simple, but not something everyone had played before. I found a printable Old Wives Tale game, but I didn't so much like the clip art granny in the corner. I decided to take the scraps from my banner and glue them to a "string" I had drawn on plain cardstock. Then, I drew stitching, made copies and printed the game (after some small tweaks to the wording) onto them.



Much improved!

I bookmarked this post from Scissors and Spatulas back in April, when I had barely known I was pregnant for a month. (Something about a baby just makes you plan!) I set out to put my own spin on these favors Friday morning.



I think mine turned out a little more like a gooey mess than the picture perfect favors that Jen made. They were a tasty, gooey mess, though.



And how cute are those tags? I got them from SimplyBabyStuff.com when there was a half off sale. I loved how perfect the pink and green were for my shower, especially when paired with a darker pink bow. The adorable monkey didn't hurt, either!



I took no pictures at the shower until the guests left and all of the kids completely ruined themselves in the sand. I wish I would have, now, but at the time I was having too much fun to stop and get out the camera.



Last, but not least, as if I didn't have enough projects to finish up in the next eight-ish weeks, my mom found me a bookshelf at an antique store. It's solid wood with gold spray paint faux inlay. I wanted something small enough to fit in the room the baby will share with my son. I have an idea of what I want to do with this, but I may just paint it red and tackle the details sometime later, after the baby stuff is done, maybe even after she is born.

Double oven mitt

My sister asked me to make her oven mitts for Christmas awhile ago. I was going to just buy them because of my extensive sewing list, but then she told me why. She was finally ready to throw out the pair our grandmother had got her for Christmas in the last few years before she died. Store bought oven mitts just cannot replace something so near and dear to her, so I started keeping my eye out for any cute ideas.



When this tutorial from Smashed Peas and Carrots showed up in my daily Craft Gossip e-mail I bookmarked it and started plotting. Such a cool and unique oven mitt! I have seen these in silicone before, but never in fabrics. I absolutely love it!

I'm still going to make one single mitt, for those pans that you don't need two hands to take out of the oven. I'm not sure how that one is going to look yet, since I have pretty small scraps of the zebra and gingham prints left, and only about six inches of purple bias tape, but I would like to try to figure out a way for them to match without driving across town to Jo-Ann again.

Monday Moments

Searching through the Sunday paper sale ads, way back in the beginning of December my husband and I saw these gingerbread train kits and decided we had to have one. With two kids who love cookies, icing and are always begging to make something whenever I am, and one kid who especially loves trains, it was an easy choice.



You probably can't read the box in the background but it says, "Create a Treat". Don't let that box fool you. It is not a treat. So gross! I thought it was going to be amazing because my whole kitchen smelled like I had just baked gingerbread...but to get that smell out of a pre-packaged cookie they had to really overload it with cinnamon and cloves. My husband nearly gagged over his bit. I laughed at him and said, "You haven't even got to the aftertaste yet!"



The kids had fun though, putting their own spin on things, and filling the train up with extra candy cargo. Of course in this Sunday's paper there was an add for a five house mini gingerbread village at Target for $2 cheaper. I think that would have been the way to go, everyone getting their own house to decorate instead of trying to crowd four people around one little train. Maybe I'll still pick one up, even though we've already decorated gingerbread this holiday season.

Loving this...

I am still hard at work on the benefit quilts and a rattle pattern to go along with them, but I saw something yesterday that just tickled me to no end.

Remember way back in October when I blogged about some owl cake pops I had made, and how I was going to write to Bakerella about them? Here's a pic to refresh you on these.



Well, when I e-mailed her back in October she very kindly wrote back to me that my idea wasn't quite original, she had made some owl pops of her own, very similar to mine, but with candy necklace pieces for the eyes. I sat there wondering how I had missed those on her site, and knowing that must have been where my inspiration came from, even if I didn't remember seeing them.

Yesterday she made the big announcement on her blog that her book about cake pops finally had a release date. She linked to some sites where you can buy it and see the official cover art. This is the part that tickled me. Go look. "My" owls are in the bottom left corner. The ones she and I e-mailed about way back in October, when no one knew she was writing a book. When the photos and ideas were top secret. I feel sort of vindicated. I knew I was creative, but it's nice to know that sometimes I am as creative as the folks who are getting paid to be.

The whole shebang

I showed you the major cake decor Wednesday. I went to make the rest of the cake last night, as I was worried about drying time (the puppy: not drying out the way I thought she would). Then found out I didn't purchase enough frosting.

Yeah, frosting. You have to layer fondant over frosting to give it a nice base to smooth over. So I ran out of frosting, and did not have the supplies to make more. I decided to go out first thing this morning. I frosted the cake, rolled out the rest of the fondant, cut out my shapes and finished up with this...



All before noon. I feel like a huge success, even though there is definite room for improvement. It would be much more obvious if not for some strategically placed stars. Next time, I'm buying the plastic rolling pin. If I wished I had it making the puppy, I really, really wished I had it when it came time to cover the whole cake today.

Fondant

I spent my day trying my hand at the marshmallow fondant I have heard is really easy, even for beginners. I have to agree so far, even though I haven't tried to cover the cake with it yet.

My first time ever I made a batch, and colored it something like seven different colors and sculpted that decent looking Littlest Pet Shop dachshund.



I can definitely see room for improvement. I need one of those shiny plastic rolling pins. I really thought my wood one was smooth, but it's pretty obvious that it isn't with all of the little pits on the surface of my fondant. Oh and this thing looks like an alien from the side because I had some issues layering it and rolling it thin enough.

Still though, I'm definitely not disappointed in it as a first try. I think I'll be working with it again.

Monday Moments

Sunday was the birthday party for my sweet little boy. He got a tricycle from his grandma. He runs up to it several times a day screaming, "Boike!" He hops on and rings the bell, but is just the tiniest bit shy of reaching the pedals.



He also got a wooden train set and a couple new wooden trains to push along the tracks. He got some motorized trains too and a new train whistle. I think he might just be the luckiest boy in the world.



I even tried my hand at decorating a train cake for him. Unfortunately, having not decorated a cake in almost a year I had no idea that my couplers went missing to my decorating set. I cried for half a minute about how I didn't have time to run to the store and buy new ones, then I used my appetizer gun (made for filling deviled eggs and the sort) to pipe in the icing. It turned out well considering I was using the completely wrong tools for the job, but I can't help looking at it thinking what could have been. My son didn't care. He thought it was amazing and yelled "Train! Choo! Choo! Cake." And then asked to blow out the candles twice because it was so much fun.

I'm no Bakerella

My sister and I briefly considered a woodland theme to her baby shower before we settled on the puppy idea. In the few days we were thinking about it I plotted out making some Bakerella style cake pops as shower favors. I was going to combine the directions she gave for Hello Kitty cake pops with the all body Easter chicks and make cutesy little owls.



I thought I had this in the bag. I've covered a million things in chocolate, I've baked many cakes in my time and I love to decorate. It was much, much harder than I thought. I am ashamed to say how many times I ruined a cake pop, and had to get a whole new thing of chocolate because I got crumbs in it. But I did get a few that looked at least somewhat like I was imagining.



I decided since I finally ended up following through with my idea a week before Halloween that I'd make some more sinister looking owls. I used some red confetti sprinkles for the eyes and switched up the color of the beaks and feet. Then added a little V of chocolate over their eyes.



I actually like my afterthought owls way better than the cute ones, but I still think they need some work. I think I'm going to e-mail Bakerella and see if she'll tackle my idea sometime in the future.

The worst part of this whole experience...after all of my hard work they taste terrible! It has nothing to do with the cake pops recipe and everything to do with the cake and frosting I used (peanut butter and peanut butter). Good in theory, awful in practice.