Easter Eggs

Pig chicken - a miraculous creation during our Easter egg decorating adventure.

A basket full of died and glitter eggs :)

 

Some swirly eggs too!

Mommy Sierra

Today my best friend is having a baby! She is such an incredible person and I am so excited to see her share that warmth with Sander.

I remember the day we met. Tall person walking in the hall, who looked a little lost. I too was lost, not sure who to sit by. Strange how the simple things when you are young stay true through life. Who do I sit by in the lunch room, who do I talk to, what do I do to look like I don’t care, what’s the right way to show I do care.

The days flipping through magazines on Saturday morning looking at the pics of a life more glamorous than our own. Talking about dreams and goals that we are now living.

She is still the poised, artistic, and compassionate person I always looked up to. So interesting how one day you open your eyes and realize that the dreams and goals of yesterday are what we are living today.

I am proud to be a part of her life and now she will be the most wonderful mommy.

Congratulations!

Tatting

Tonight Sara and I took a tatting class! It was really pretty fun. The teacher was not the greatest, but it was for sure quiet an interesting and different skill to learn. It was just the two of us and an old lady (that the teacher called by name - though I do not think she got our names through the whole evening).

Tatting is done with a shuttle. This is a small plastic or metal contraption with a hook on one end. The whole process is done through tieing very detailed small knots.

The end product is a hand lace, often used on the end of hankercheif or fine detail work for the hems of sewed items.

Here is a sample of the different thread sizing for reference:


I will describe the full technique and how to do it very shortly and provide some more images. For now I am reminding myself how far I am behind on my blog and putting placeholders to get caught up!!!

My First Wedding Photography Gig

Pictures to come shortly!

Woodland Critters for Sander

I was at first a bit fearful of free patterning so many critters, but the results (if I do say so myself) were adorable.

A few woodland critter bodies:

 

Woodland critter faces:

 

The mobile mounted in Sander's nursery:

I am really happy how well this turned out!

Rainbow Cake with a Dark Side

For my hubbie’s B-Day, I decided to take on a new creative challenge and created a rainbow cake. Yes that is right, rainbow cake.



To add the final touches to the rainbow cake, we frosted the top and made it look like grass. To top of the loveliness I played with the fondant and added a surprise in the sweet grass knoll.

It was my idea a little knee slapping humor letting my husband know he was well into his “turdies.”

Cake Pops

Oh how cute the picture was, but a total fail in the making of our attempted dog pops.

A couple lessons learned in the process of attempting cake pops:

• Sizing – I wish someone had pointed this out before, but you need really precise sizing for the pops to stay on the stick!
• Moistness – I think I added too much frosting (getting over zealous with the left over third of frosting I added it all), it falls of the stick if it is too moist.
• Freeze the balls – it works wonders.
• Dipping – I am an amateur in working with chocolate and dipping is not my talent, but we did have to thin the candy out quite a bit so have some crystallines on hand to do this if you need to.
• Frosting – we had issues using the warm chocolate to get items to adhere to the cake pops, so instead we used dabs of frosting, which worked great!
• Styrofoam – find some good Styrofoam (heavy enough to balance) to support the pops once they are done and ready to dry.

The process seems fairly straight forward –

• Make a cake (you can use a boxed cake set if it is easier)
• Frosting (you use about ¾ cup)
• Roll the balls *Freeze the balls (an extra step we found helped tremendously)
• Heat chocolate/candy coating
• Adhere ball to stick
• Dip and cool

There appearance was a little touched, but they were a hit and very delicious.

Dog Shaped Sugar Cookies

Cookie cutters were a bit deceiving!

I got a four pack of doggie themed cutters to make some cookies for Benny’s first birthday. It was only after making the recipe that we found the dog paw looked like a clover, the doggie looked like a cow, and the dog house was mysterious. The bone was fine, but we served the final results and they seemed to go over well.

In the end, the cookies were delicious and devoured by many little cookie monsters!

(218) It's A Doggie Day

I can't believe our nephew is already 1!

Tonight I cut out Benny's Birthday high chair hanger (aka a mini banner). It turned out pretty darned cute if I do say so myself!

I ended up using a green/white cross pattern on clouds, a cute swirly font, with the piece de la resistance being an adorable dog cut out (that will be a magnet for the keeping).

Tomorrow we are going to try to make some doggy sugar cookies to go with the theme and Wednesday an attempt at a rainbow cake. Wish I would have had enough time to do the cupcakes for Benny too, but with this week being my big boys birthday too it was a bit of a challenge.

And now time to put my dogs to sleep...

(223-219) Little Ladies for a Little Lady

At long last after months of construction I finished Karly's or should I say Addie's mobile!

It was a smidgen behind schedule, but I can wait for little Addison to enjoy the cuteness of the little ladies! Each lady is hand crafted out of a baby/toddler sock. The wing base is from felt and a cross pattern patch of material is embroidered to the felt. Faces are also embroidered and the bugs are given slightly different personalities. To bring out their feminine charm they have pearl necklaces. And what bug is complete with out some pipe cleaner antennas!

 

 

So cute to see the beautiful Miss Addie enjoying her mobile!