Wild Thing

I just love this color/pattern combo! This was one of those projects where EVERYTHING fell into place. That NEVER happens! No seam ripping, no mistakes. It turned out perfect and I am going to enjoy it because that won't happen again for a very long time!

She totally rocked the dress in nursery on Sunday!

Pattern: Simplicity 3511

Rubber Ducky Cake

Kaylee loves ducks. So for her birthday, I made her this "wack wack" cake. She LOVED it and helped me every step of the way. I had extra batter, so I made a little 6" cake for her to decorate by herself. This was the first time I had ever used a Wilton cake pan that was shaped. Usually I just use the basic round/square ones and shape the figures myself. With my 40% coupon, I was able to get this for a good price and it made preparing the cake very simple.

Super Mario Birthday Party

 Mario party ideas are few and far between! So I thought I'd post my ideas on here to share. All are original unless otherwise noted. The party was a HUGE success!

There was a Yoshio egg smash. I found that idea online and then found a tutorial on how to make the eggs on You Tube!

 

 

 

The kids popped balloons. Inside the balloons were clues helping them find Princess Peach who was being held captive in the basement by Bowser. The clues inside the balloons led them to cardstock coins hidden around the yard. Once they collected 8 of them (there were 8 kids) they used the last clue to find where she was hiding. When they found Peach, they also found their treat bags.

Every game was called a LEVEL. Level 1, Level 2, etc.

They raced around the yard playing MARIO KART (riding the power wheels). My husband had them make foil helmets before racing, they looked HILARIOUS!

There was a Mario Mix-Up game (totally last minute, I needed one more game the night before!). I printed out 3 8x10 pictures of Luigi, Mario, and Peach, laminated them and put sticky Velcro on the backs. Then cut them in half and mixed up the heads with the feet. The kids had to rearrange them as fast as they could. If they could do it in less than 30 seconds (everyone did it in under 15) they got a coin.

The kids received chocolate coins after EVERY game. They put them into brown lunch sacks that they had decorated at the beginning of the party.

And cake, of course cake. The cake decorations were ordered from E-bay, shipped from China for $12. I saw a photo of a similar cake and decided to give it a try. I used fondant instead of buttercream. It was totally a labor of love and time consuming but turned out perfect!

 

I printed out all of the posters myself by doing an image search online and mounted them on poster board. I think I will do this in the future for parties for my kids. Yes, it uses a lot of ink, but it still cheaper than buying decorations! 

Personalized Soap/Sanitizer Bottle

I LOVE The Idea Room. LOVE LOVE LOVE her blog. I went on there today to look for her embossed candle tutorial, and came across this in the craft section! I've seen these before, but didn't know how to make one. I thought it was a sticker or something on the front. I had everything I needed already on hand.

Laser Jet printer

Transparency (leftover from these)

Clear Soap Bottle

That's it! Our laser jet printer has issues right now. It prints a long black line down the front of each page. Usually we use our ink jet printer, but for this project it worked great since the area being printed was only 3"x4". If you don't have a laser printer, you can go to Kinkos and they'll print out your page on a transparency for usually under $1.

I added our names onto our bottle and love how it turned out. You can create your own template using a document program, or use the one that Amy has on her blog. Full instructions for making one of these can be found on her blog as well.

I think I will make one of these for each of the boy's teachers this year to go with their Christmas gifts. The dollar store has little bottles of soap, so it's a practical, inexpensive and personal gift.

Edible Light Saber Tutorial

From our Star Wars crazed home to yours...

I love Google Images. I click that tab ALL the time when browsing for projects because instead of a bunch of links, I get photos with them! I saw these when I was looking for Star Wars Cake ideas for Dallin.

Here is my Inspiration. There weren't any instructions, but they looked pretty self explanatory and ended up being very easy to make. Aaron made some too!

You'll need some fondant in a variety of colors. I like this recipe for marshmallow fondant. Inexpensive, easy, and I've heard it tastes much better than store bought fondant. I don't care for fondant at all, I think it's the texture, but my kids love the marshmallow stuff. To get the nice bold colors, use Wilton's concentrated food coloring paste. It comes in many colors.

Cover your surface with some corn starch or powdered sugar. Roll out your fondant into a long rope. This one is about 1/2" thick.

Cut into desired light saber lengths. Ours were 2" in length  and the handles were 3/4 ".

Aaron is demonstrating this :)

Do the same with the fondant that you are going to use for the handles. We attached them to the lights with some clear vanilla extract. Just dab some on the end of the green section with a  paintbrush and add the handle. Push together gently and set on a sheet with waxed paper.

To form the grooves, simply score with a knife.

Let dry for 2 days or until hard. Below you can see the ones that Aaron made. He has some pretty awesome double sided light sabers.

Add them to your cupcakes shortly before serving. They shouldn't be on the cupcakes more than 8-12 hours ahead of serving or they will start to get soft again by soaking in some of the moisture from the frosting.

And there you go! Dallin's class loved these. The children kept asking if they could eat the light sabers :)

Sharing this recipe at Blue Cricket Design, Life as Lori, Somewhat Simple, Finding Fabulous, Keeping It Simple , It's So Very Cheri , Sumo's Sweet Stuff, The Girl Creative, DIY Showoff, Tater Tots and Jello, Today's Creative Blog, I heart Naptime , The Thrifty Home, We are THAT Family, Sew Much Ado, Fun to Craft, Tea Rose Home, Remodelaholic, Hodgepodge Friday,  Seven Thirty Three

Cupcakes in a Jar

I've seen recipes for cakes that are baked in a jar. As delicious as they might taste, they sure don't look appetizing. I saw this idea here, and here for packaging cupcakes in a jar and thought it was so cute! I brought cupcakes into Dallin's class for his birthday, and made up two jars like these.

One for his bus driver. Nice and sturdy packaging so that it doesn't get smashed when she is driving on her route.

And one for his teacher! Maybe an after school snack while she finishes up her day. And there's a bonus! Two cupcakes fit into this little pint sized jar!

I just love these. You can't get more simple and inexpensive than a cupcake. And versatile! I had extra cupcakes, so I froze them to use for making more of these. I'm thinking of doing chocolate cupcakes with orange frosting for Aaron to bring to his preschool teachers next month for Halloween!

How fun would one of these be to get in the mail? Obviously sending one would cost more in shipping than making several batches of them, lol. But if there is space left over in a priority flat rate box, you could sneak one of these in.

For My Little Jedi

My little Jedi (Dallin) requested a Star Wars cake and this is what I came up with. The light sabers on the front were a group effort. I made the red one and Aaron made the double sided one underneath. We had a great time!

And for his class I made these.
Tutorial for making marshmallow fondant light sabers coming soon :)

Sharing this project at Skip to My Lou, Blue Cricket Design, Life as Lori, Somewhat Simple,  Keeping It Simple , It's So Very Cheri , Sumo's Sweet Stuff, The Girl Creative, DIY Showoff, Tater Tots and Jello, Tip Junkie, Under the Table & Dreaming , I heart Naptime , Making the World Cuter, Today's Creative Blog, The Thrifty Home, We are THAT Family, Sew Much Ado, Fun to Craft, Tea Rose Home,  Remodelaholic,  My Frugal Family, Texas Monkey

Bringing Back Memories...

Bet you haven't seen an Easy Bake Oven like this one! Would you believe that is used to be hot pink? Derrick gave it a paint job 3 years ago when I bought this for our boys.

We pulled it out the other night and had a great time! It'd been awhile since we had used it since it is usually a nightmare, but the kids are older and were able to do a lot of it on their own. When we got tired of waiting for individual cookies to bake, we cheated and finished up the rest in the oven.

Kaylee was so excited to get in on the action. I thought she'd be content to help stir, but she got out another box of Jiffy cookie mix (much cheaper than the Easy Bake refill pouches) and started making her own.

She made her own batch of sugar cookies.

With lots of sprinkles.

Aaron decided to add sprinkles to his chocolate chip cookies too.

 Brings back memories of using the ancient little Easy Bake oven at my grandma's house. We would make all sorts of stuff in it and it didn't matter how nasty it looked or the odd texture, we loved it!