Exciting!

Ok, so i am super excited! I recieved a message today from Melinda at All Things Crafty and Delicious about a request I had made of her. You see, Melinda designed my favorite box to cut out and give, the now famous cupcake box. So, I asked to see if she could possibly design a similar box for mini-cupcakes. YEAH! and guess what, she has said she had a similar idea and will start working on the design soon. Double YEAH! So, as soon as I get the details, you know I will be posting and maybe one of you will be the recipient of a very special box of miniature cupcakes!

Stealing Away with Gummie Sticks

While reading the fabulous Hostest with the Mostest blog this weekend, I saw the most wonderful, easy and inexpensive idea. Simple gummy candies on a stick- perfect for the first day of school.
There is a tutorial on the website. The tutorial calls for using wooden skewers. I opted for lollipop sticks instead since my kids would be eating them and I really didn't want our first visit to the ER to be because of a special "First Day of School" snack.

Cupcakes, Ballerinas and Cookies

Let me just start this off by saying I am a "first-time" ballet mom. I don't know how things work in the states, but here in EC a ballet receital involves much more than little girls dancing. They moms wanted to give each girl a gift at the end, but considering where we live, no one had too much money so.... we decided on simple cupcakes and I added the decorated sugar cookies as a little bonus.
This amazing cupcake box is thanks to Melinda Ford's brilliance over at All Things Crafty and Delicious. I have to thank Melinda for my first thing ever published in the crafting world. Back in October she asked if anyone would have time to cut the files she so craftily (is that a word?) makes and I jumped at the chance. Along with the million other things she was doing at the time, she hadn't gotten a chance to actually cut out many of her files. Melinda was kind enough to like the box I made and posted it on her blog- it only took me a few more months to get up the courage to post other creations.... and now you can't get me to shut up about them (oh, sorry, bad word around here!- good thing my daughter can't read yet).

So anyway, this is one of my favorite things to cut out and here is the fast ballerina version for my daughters first dance recital.

Take Your Pick

This past week we were having some friends over for dinner and I was bored with just about everything I thought of making for dessert, until..... I decided to make several different types of cupcakes and let everyone enjoy the selection. So, I used this very simple cake recipe from my "Woman's Day Cooking Assistant" app:

2 2/3 cup flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup oil
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Then I scooped out enough for 1 dozen of each of 7 flavors, added the necessary flavors, and voila, a diverse dessert selection. For the icing, I did a basic buttercream and then divided it up and added, vanilla or almond or mora extract and/or cocoa powder, and coconut. The hardest part of the whole thing was keeping track of what was what (I had a cheat sheet for dinner that night).
This was so super easy, only took one cake mix and is something I will definetly be doing again. Now, I just need to find a SVG file for a mini cupcake box that holds about 6-8 cupcakes.

Brookies

Ok, so I was doing my daily reading of Bakerella and she was posting about Pillow Cookies and how she had looked so long for a recipe for them. Basically a pillow cookie is a brownie inside of a cookie- yes, i know heavenly, so i couldn't wait to try them out. My favorite cookie recipie right now is for Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter, Oatmeal cookies, which I found around Christmas Time at My Recipes.com.
I baked up the brownies from scratch, but for those of you in a developed country, just save the time and buy a boxed mix- really... Once the brownies are cooled off, cut them into 1 inch squares and then the fun begins. Bakerella said to use 1/2 a cup of cookie dough per cookie- now that is a huge cookie even for me, so i sized them down and used 1/4 of a cup and that was pretty big as you can see from the pics below.



All in all, I say the "Brookies" are a pretty great way to waste my time in the kitchen- even my son who doesn't like chocolate (yes, he really is MY son) was asking for them. Now, i just can't wait for school to start so I can bake these up to welcome my little angels home on the first day- as well as a little "pick-me-up" for their teachers the second day!

Star Wars Lego Birthday Party

My son decided that for his 8th birthday he wanted to celebrate in Lego Star Wars Style. I did lot of blog searching and google searching and this is what we came up with- lots and lots of blue.

Thanks to the Lego website I was able to download lots of great SW figures and then hand, stick and print onto almost everything in our house. We even had "Jedi Juice Jolts" to add to the Jedi Juice (aka Crystal Light). The Jolts were courtesy of Kool- Aid Fizzes and were a lot of fun and made the juice a nice strange color.


Thanks to the wonderful food writers a friend brought me a few months ago, I was able to write on cookies and marshmallows. I was a little nervous about my "art-work" (using the term very loosly) on the marshmallows, but when the boys started naming off the characters (Commander Cody, Captain Rex etc) I felt a lot better. The gift bags were finished off with Star Wars Tags thanks to Living Locurto- check out all of her Star Wars Lego things.

The Star Wars plates are a fun little thing I started with my daughters Tea Party in February. They are just clear acrylic plates that I can change out by simply gluing different patterns onto the back of the plate. I start by cutting out a simple circle with my Cricut and then add embellishments. I am realizing as I am writing this that I never went back and posted pictures from Bella's party- stay tuned.

I hate to admit it, but I am just now starting to get into decorated sugar cookies- really it has been over taking me lately, so this party had to have some. Please don't judge too harshly, this was my first attempt at piping decorations. In the past I have always, just painted the royal icing on. The lettering is thanks to the wonderful food markers and a little stencil I made with help of the Jedi font and my cricut- it worked wonderfully and made the cookies more uniform.

Anyway, hope you liked our party- my son did and in the end that is all that matters!

I'm Back..... (Poltergist like)

Well, yes I am back. After a long summer with lots and lots of visitors I have plenty of pictures of things to share, now I just need time to post. So, here we go.



I wanted to show you the end of year/kindergarten graduation party I did for my son's school. I have to say the internet was almost essential for the ideas behind this party, not to mention some downloads that made it much faster to put together.

I decided on a beach theme and "Fun in the Sun" so the Soak Up the Sun graphics from Lettering Delights was great and at just $4 for the whole thing it was worth the time and effort I would have put in cutting and pasting other graphics. Check it out! Right now the set is on sale for only $2. Plus they have a Friday Freebie every week if you friend them on Face Book. You can see their "Fun in the Sun" graphics on all of the cupcake toppers as well as the larger signs and banners hanging in the room.

We used beach towels for table clothes and the great balls hanging from the ceiling I found on Hello My Name is Heather. Heather Bailey is one amazing designer- I would love to get my hands on some of fabrics. Anyway, look here for these amazing globes and a pattern that makes it very easy. These globes were cut out by an art class at the school and then because of time constraints assembled by a few adults. I think these globes in a different pattern would be amazing for a baby shower or tea party.

The Graduation Cupcakes were an idea stolen from the amazing Bakerella. If you need inspiration or want to just stand in awe of an amazingly talented baker, check out her site. Fortunately I had enough time to get a few things brought from the states to assemble the mortar boards, but had to make due with the tassels (marshmallows).

The straw umbrellas are simply printed circles with a little detail that can be printed out on any paper that fits your event. Just cut out the circles, fold in half a few times, snip out the center to fit your straws and voila! Custom Umbrella Straws. They can be found here.