Okay, so here's my attempt to reestablish certain posts from the past that have current links to Pinterest. I have copied the text that was written, and I hope that I have the same pictures to go with them. Please bear with me! __________________________________________________________________________________ From July 16, 2012 - Shark Party for my 3-year-old! So this past weekend my baby boy turned three! Since when am I a mom of toddlers? Oh boy! Well, this time Ryan told me he wanted a shark party, so I said "ok." Sure enough, no one really makes "shark" party items (except Oriental Trading, but what fun is that?) so I had to embark into my creative cabinets. Earlier I posted the invites I made, which I am proud of and everyone loved. I am glad, because most of the time my "creative" ideas turn into sloppy messes with good intentions, bad handwriting and misspelled words (see below). So here are a few ideas that are affordable for everyone to do! Use what you have, make what you don't, buy cheap, little items to help you along the way! For the chocolate shells I purchased 2 molds and 4 bags of melting chocolates from Hobby Lobby. Since I can use a 40% off coupon for each individual purchase I paid $1.26 for each mold and $1.96 for each bag of chocolate. So, for $11 all 15 RSVP-ed kids got a "chum bucket" full of chocolate. The utensil jars are old canning jars I had in my cabinets, ribbon from a previous gift and the dividers are cut up cardboard. Total cost $.97 for the blue set of plastic ware from Wal-Mart. I made "chum buckets" for the kids to fill when the shark piñata broke open. They loved it and the parents are glad the cups weren't too big! Well, I think anyway. Ah yes, the shark cake! I had fun with this one, and I honestly didn't know how it would turn out. I did some cake decorating in 4H when I was 13, and that was all. I earned a blue ribbon for everything I made. So did everyone else! For this I baked two 9x13 pans of chocolate cake. I traced a shark onto wax paper from a book Ryan had, then simply cut along the lines. I used the second cake to make the tail and fins. I used 3 store-bought icings (Pillsbury) to cover the whole thing and to make sure the fins would stay put. This was tricky because it was a warm day, so the cake wanted to come off onto the icing knife. Next time I will freeze the cake first to keep it in place and reduce crumbs in the icing. Although, you'd never be able to tell with the frosting spray paint I got! (Wal-Mart wedding cake aisle, $3 each). I added some blue and silver sprinkles (Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart) and voila! Ryan had his shark cake. A touch of crushed gram crackers and some shells for the final touch. My husband and I made this sign from a page I saw on Pinterest. Yes, half this party was Pinsperation! And yes, like I said earlier, I can get spelling wrong, even after we thought we had "checked" it. Consession - try concession. Otherwise it was still cute! My hubs is talented when it comes to wood work, so this was all his doing. Cost? $0. Some of the food we had was a chocolate fountain (a small one we've owned for a few years but never use), cheese, veggies and fruit and pizza. I bought a couple of pizzas a few weeks ago at Costco when they were on sale for $6. If you don't know Costco, then know that each of these pizzas can feed about 8 people each because they're massive! We also had shark teeth (sliced cheese) and drinks. I made a Lemonade Shark Drink from lemonade and sprite. It was gone before the party was over. Among a few other personal touches, this was a great party and an inexpensive way to do it. We all had fun, the cake was all eaten up and nobody cared if I forgot a detail or misspelled a word. Yay! And on top of it all, Ryan loved every minute because he loves sharks. ___________________________________________________________________________________ From May 2011 - Brooklyn Turns 1 Year Old! Here are some pictures from Brooklyn's 1st birthday party. We had a lot of fun even though the kids were stuck inside because of cold weather and rain. The cake came out great! King Soopers was the master of the cake this time, the kids loved the favors and we just ate pizza and played around. The flower pots are made of 3 layers: brownie, ice cream, crushed Oreo's - finished off with a flower glued onto a green spoon. Those were a big hit! After most guests left the sun decided to come out so a few of the kids left were able to play outside until they left for home. My guess, every single child that was here today is currently asleep. Except Ryan, who is at the lake with daddy, Grammy and Pops playing with his RC Boat. ___________________________________________________________________________________ From May 2013 - Brooklyn Turns 2! My sweet little baby who was once as small as a doll has just turned two. Oh my! This summer my first born will turn 4, and he wants a pirate party. So for Brooke's birthday I decided to go with a ducky theme. She has enjoyed exclaiming "DUCKY!" every time she saw one in a book. It was a low-key with just family, but it was fun making her smile none-the-less! My first thought was to make ducky cookies and a ducky cake. As you might know, I love doing party and "event" planning at my own home, even if it's just a low-key gathering. But a chance to make creative foods for my kids' milestones - YES! So despite a painful bout of carpel tunnel syndrome (brought on by pregnancy, and I am desperately awaiting labor any day), I set out to make some cookies and cake. With a simple ducky cookie cutter I went to Pinterest (of course!) and found a sugar cookie recipe and a glaze recipe. I knew I was going to make a chocolate cake using my improvised box recipe (see Sprinkle Cake last post below) and yellow icing. I've never really spent much time perfecting any cookie recipes, but these sugar cookies turned out GREAT! The flavor and texture was perfect and I believe I will not stray from this recipe. Ever. My brother-in-law is getting married in 2 months and has officially asked me to make these cookies as his wedding favors! I am honored and happy to make them. But now the pressure is on! You can find the original recipe here, but I have posted a copy below: *Note - I did not add the baking powder to keep the cookie edges crisp Cookies Ingredients 1-1/8 cup unsalted butter 1-1/4 cup sugar 1 egg + 1 egg yolk 2 teaspoons vanilla extract ½ teaspoon almond extract 3 cups all-purpose flour ¼ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder Directions 1. Cream together the butter and sugar. I set the butter out on the counter for about 30 minutes, chopped into small squares, to bring it to room temperature before beginning. (I have had bad luck with using the microwave to bring butter to room temperature.) 2. Beat in the eggs (I set these out on the counter with the butter to bring them to room temperature too), vanilla, and almond flavorings. 3. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. 4. One cup at a time, mix the dry ingredients into the wet. Scraping down your bowl as needed. 5. Divide dough up into three sections, Saran wrap, and refrigerate overnight. (For some reason cookies just taste better when the dough is refrigerated overnight.) 6. When you are ready to bake, take the dough out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter for a few minutes so it’s not too hard to work with. 7. After rolling and cutting your dough, set your dough shapes in the freezer for about 10 minutes before baking to reduce spreading. 8. Bake on parchment paper lined baking sheets at 350 for 6 to 8 minutes. 9. After removing the cookies from the oven, let them sit for a couple of minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. As for the glaze, click here for the original recipe, and again below I have put a copy below: Glaze 1 cup confectioners' sugar 2 Tbs milk (the website says tsp but I think that was a mistake) 2 tsp light corn syrup (I used honey because I didn't have corn syrup) 1/4 tsp almond extract (You can use vanilla but I wanted a clear flavoring) assorted food coloring *Mix all the ingredients together in the order listed. If mixture gets too thin add more sugar a little at a time. I put the mixture in a Ziplock bag and cut a tiny hole in the corner and piped it onto the cookies. This glaze spreads a little so be careful around the edges, but if it's thick enough it'll set nicely. Give the cookies a couple of hours to set before stacking lightly or packing away. The Cake! This cake was a Devil's Food box cake mix. I doubled the oil, replaced the water for milk and added and extra egg. I have found this makes the cake much better. I baked the cake in a 9x13 pan. I froze the cake until I was ready to cut the duck. I simply took a piece of wax paper and traced a duck to my liking, cut out the shape and then proceeded to cut out the duck. I used an extra piece of cake to make a little wing. After the cake was cut into the duck shape I put on a crumb coat of yellow icing. Again, this icing was store bought (whipped cream cheese) and I just added the yellow coloring. It took one whole container of frosting to do the crumb coat, which showed me I may not have enough to do all the piping. With that in mind I left the top undone and only did the edges and sides, leaving a small amount of white icing left over to make the orange bill. As it turns out, the second container was just enough to do just that. So now the top is still undone. It's 9pm and my carpel tunnel is acting up. No, I'm not heading out to the store just to get another container, and I really didn't feel like looking up a good recipe. So..... I made more glaze! I knew I had the ingredients and the ability to make it fast. I made one batch from the recipe posted above and piped it onto the top and right up to the edges. It worked out great! It did make the cake a little extra sweet, which I told my guests, but it was still a cute cake and tasty! As for the eye, I knew I didn't want to buy a whole box of candy just for one eye (not that there's anything wrong with that! I would've used Junior Mints, but I was budget constrained). So now I'm scouring my cabinets to see what I can use. Ah ha! A Dum Dum lollypop. But what about the "iris"? I had some white chocolate chips left over from another day, and melted about 5 of them together (30 seconds on half power in the microwave) and a little blue coloring. White chocolate does NOT microwave very well, so it it wasn't runny, just sticky. The blue dye gave it just enough moisture to stick together. I'm just glad it worked out. I really wasn't about to make any more frosting or glaze just to dab the eye with color. Once the cake was complete I stuck it in the fridge until the party the next day. I put a "2" candle on the tail with some little decorative balloons I had. I think it all made for a cute cake that was appropriate for a 2-year-old. And Brooklyn loved it! As did everyone else. __________________________________________________________________________________ From March 2013- Gender Reveal Party! So this past weekend was Easter and our gender reveal party. Busy but fun! I know a few people have been waiting not only for pictures, but also for the details of the party: the cake, the decor and how we made the reveal. So here's the pics with the corresponding descriptions! First: The Cake! I originally was going to use the filling of the cake to be the actual reveal, but after more thought I decided to have a package wrapped up and then reveal that way. So below is a 5-layer angel food cake with a strawberry filling, masked in green icing and decorated with flowers (Hobby Lobby) and sprinkles. I used 2 boxes of angel food cake (makes about five to six 9-inch-rounds, depending on how full you make them). Filling the cake pans about 2/3 full is the best. Only half full and you'll get some sunken cakes which leads to the "compressed" look. I saved the best cake for the top. The filling went in between each layer. Since I had some sunken cakes I put more filling in the middle, and as you'll see, that makes for an interesting cut when the time comes. The Filling: (I made too much) 2 8-oz pkg of cream cheese 1/2 cup butter 2 cups powdered sugar 1/2 pkg strawberry gelatin 1/2 cup fresh strawberries (food processed into fine pieces) 1 8-oz container Cool Whip Cream together the cream cheese and butter. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time, mixing on medium speed until blended. Add the gelatin and fresh strawberries. Once mixed, add in the Cool Whip (I used store brand) and fold until well blended. Refrigerate until ready to use. Once I assembled the cake, putting a good amount of filling in between each layer, I used one container of Key Lime icing as the crumb coat, (bought at Wal-Mart during Easter time. I am not sure if this is seasonal, so next time I may need to use food color). Angel food cake is very crumbly! After the first coat I put the cake in the freezer to let the icing get hard. This REALLY helped when I put the second coat on to cover up those crumbs. It wasn't perfect, but in the end the cake turned out fine (for my standards). These flowers were bought at Hobby Lobby in the cake decorating aisle. They are gum paste, but I was able to put them back into their container and save them for another cake. The sprinkles (pearls and silver pieces) I've had from another cake-making day, but they were also bought at Hobby Lobby. You don't have to do this, but I was feeling curiously ambitious and started putting the little balls on the bottom. Once you start, it's a good idea to finish! About half way through I got the hang of it and it went a bit quicker. And as you can see, all that filling in the middle made for a slight mess, albeit a delicious one! Okay, so that was the cake. Now onto the guests, who cast their votes for boy or girl by making gender specific onesies. I got the idea at some point in time (probably something I saw on Pinterest, but I don't remember). At first I was scouring stores for deals on onesies when it dawned on me (preggo minds run behind) that I've had TWO kids already and they have old clothes in storage. So then I went through all the bins of clothing (forcing me to filter through the clothes anyway) and I came across 35 useable onesies (not counting ones that were stained!). Once again, a few trips to Hobby Lobby (shocker!) I started purchasing iron-on patches. This takes time if you want to use the 40% off coupon each time you go. I am sure Michael's has similar items, but HL is just down the road from me, thus all things HL. As the guests arrived I had them choose a onesie, a patch or two, and then instructed them to decorate as they wish. I also had fabric paint available so they could add their own embellishments. In the end, I had some awesome new clothes! As for those who made boy onesies, they will either be gifted to my other preggo friends or donated. Some I could possibly add more girly things. We'll see! I had a line strung up so we could hang dry the clothes and take pics! As for food, I just did finger foods mostly. My awesome mother-in-law made an orzo salad and my own parents provided the grapes. I bought some pink and regular lemonade, mixing some blue food coloring to the regular lemonade to make it blue. That was it! People ate and drank as they pleased, the kids played out back (praise the Lord for great weather!) and we had fun. Once all the votes were "made" and people had their fill, we prepared for the big reveal. I bought some items and gifts for our newest little one that were gender specific. When Ryan and I had a date of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, we bought a "woolly mammoth" (elephant) for the baby. I used a table cloth to wrap this thing and tied it at the top with a ribbon. When it came time to reveal, Tom and I simply untied it and let the cloth fall... Yay, it's a girl!