Updates-April 2020

Some pictures of what's happening at our house these days.  The world can change quickly and it has... reminding me that we are never really in control.. I'm just grateful for another day on this earth with my beautiful family.

Lego Head Cupcakes

For this year's Blue and Gold for cub scouts our Cubmaster chose a Lego theme.  As soon as I heard, I immediately started searching for fun things to do for Lego themed parties. Hello Pinterest!  I get a little carried away and in my head I had the entire cultural hall decorated from top to bottom in multicolored Legos with photo props and games and...well, let's just say I had to scale it back quite a bit.  My assignment was 24 cupcakes and that was probably just about as much as I could handle in reality with 2 babies and 2 kids who I still needed to keep alive during all the preparations.  I ended up picking up some sprinkles,ordering some candy Lego blocks and purchasing some yellow fondant.  I loved the way they turned out.  I even had someone tell me that they 'LOVED' my frosting and they really didn't care for frosting usually, so that made me smile.  Although I had to fight off my kids from eating all the yellow Lego heads it was totally worth it. (even the 5 extra pounds I gained from, ahem, 'testing')

Zombie Cake Pops

 

My Dad's birthday was yesterday and we had a party to celebrate.  He LOVES zombies.  I wanted to make him something I thought he would like and Zombie Cake Pops were born.  I looked around to get some ideas, but there isn't a lot out there.  I was able to practice before making them for the actual party and it's a good thing I did.  I learned a few things:

 

1) To make cake more dense so they'll stay on the stick better, replace the water with milk and add one egg to your boxed cake mix.

 

2) If the chocolate is too thick you can add a little bit of vegetable oil to help with the consistency and it won't effect the end product.

 

3) I need a better black edible pen.

 

4) If traveling with cake pops make sure to keep them cold somehow.  They DO NOT travel well.  By the time I got to my dad's house (maybe 30 mins away) they had started to melt even with the AC going full blast.

 

  All in all a fun project.  I'm debating not using the metal pan next time and going back to using the Bakerella cake pop method where you roll the balls yourself.  The pan was wonderful and saved a lot of work, but without the frosting in the middle, they just don't taste as good.

 

 

P.S. I didn't know this, but yellow cake and red velvet cake from the box require very different times.  The yellow cake mix cooked for the suggested 23 minutes, but the red velvet cake only required about 14 minutes. Learned some lessons the hard way on this project.  

Mini Scrapbook

I love pinterst.  I do! I have found one flaw though.... I pin things I want to do and then sometimes, when I go back later to actually do them the link is bad.  This happened to me yesterday.  I pinned a tutorial on how to make a chipboard mini scrapbook about 3 weeks ago and when I actually had time to do it the link had gone bad.  So I searched and searched for a replacement tutorial on how to make a mini scrapbook album out of chipboard and just could not find the same thing.  I found others, but I wanted the album to have a specific look. I don't care for the spiral binding or the ring bindings.  Anyway, I ran across a tutorial, which I've already lost, on how to make a 6" x 6" mini scrapbook album.  It was so simple and fast!  I made 7 of them in about and hour and the only reason I stopped is because I ran out of supplies.  I have to say, they are SO easy to make!  I think EVERYONE I know will be getting one or two this year!  The best part is they cost me about 0.12 cents each!  I caught the paper 50% off at Hobby Lobby and had the ribbon and white card stock already on hand!  I think this is a record for the fastest and least expensive gift ever!

Sniff Sniff

My sewing maching is sick. It's at the doctors!  :((  What am I to do without it?

Quilt in the works

Among my stash of fabric, I felt a quilt calling to me wanting to be made.  Here it is...still working on it.  I followed a tutorial from 'Rea' called 'Crayon box quilt tutorial'.

Baby Shower Cake Pops

My sister's baby shower was this weekend and I was in charge of treats. I attempted to make cake pops.  They still need work, but they turned out much better than the first time.  I'm on lookout for a cake pop stand next.