Cake pops and stuff

Here's a quick review of class at TCC last week!  We made these cute little guys:

 Here are some cake pop basics:  

Best website: bakerella.com.  Not only is her site really informative, she has the best eye candy!  

Basic recipe:

1 cake mix, baked to instructions

1 can frosting

2 bags candy melts

lollipop sticks

Crumble cake with hands into large bowl.  Don't worry about crust pieces that don't crumble as easily.  They will soften when the frosting is added.  Add about 1/2 can of frosting.  Mix well.  If the mixture doesn't roll into a ball easily, add a little more frosting.  Use a mini scoop to scoop your cake mixture.  Roll in ball with your hands.  Chill the cake balls for about an hour, until firm.  When ready to dip the cake pops, melt the candy melts in a plastic bowl.  Usually, this works best if you microwave at 50 percent power for 1 minute at a time, and then stir.  Repeat until the melts are a nice consistency for dipping.  If needed, add a little shortening to make it thinner, or coat more easily.  Dip a lollipop stick into the candy mixture, just about 1/2".  Then insert the stick into a cake ball. Allow to harden for a few seconds.  Dip the cake ball, straight down and up out of the mixture.  Gently tap the wrist that is holding the cake pop with your other hand to remove excess coating.  Then, either put the cake pop on wax paper, upright, or insert into styrofoam block to cool.  Decorate as desired. 

Helpful hints:

Don't use cake mix with pudding in the mix.

Don't add too much frosting to begin with, you can always add more if you need, but if the mixture is too mushy, your cake pops will be hard to work with.

Coat twice if you want your pops to look nice and round and smooth.

Use toothpicks to apply extra coating, to "glue" on your candy, and to clean up edges.

After dipping for a little while, your melts will have some moisture in them, and also might be getting a little hard.  Zap them in the microwave with a little shortening to get the consistency right.

And last, presentation is everything!  Put them in a cute container!

Here are a couple more ideas from class:

Happy Mail!

 Start with a soda bottle, clean, dry and cut in half with a serrated knife and scissors.

 Gather some cute, lightweight items for the inside.

 Fill up both halves.  Put the bottle back together with packing tape.

 Then decorate.

Add a cute piece of card stock for a mailing label.  Address and put stamps on it.  You can check the USPS first class parcel rates HERE.  Throw it into the blue mailbox!  Enjoy your day, knowing you just made someone happy!

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Teddy bear birthday

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So it's just been like 18 months since this party, but I am finally uploading pix to the computer and trying to declutter my to-do list. Bekah decided to have a teddy bear party, and she wanted purple and teal for her colors.  So we went on a bear hunt-on Pinterest. Because there are a billion cute ideas involving teddy bears!

  
One of the best things about this party was the low cost decor. I learned how to make these awesome tissue flowers and we used them as a main ingredient.  Add in some balloons, with a marble inside so they will hang upside down, twist up some streamers, and you have a lot of bang for your buck!

We put some on the front door, too.

These basic cupcakes are super cute with printables from chickabug.com. 

I actually took the cupcake wrapper (from chickabug) and cut it to fit the front of my plain blue treat bags. A little ribbon, and you have a custom treat bag worthy of any little girl's birthday wishes!

These are teddy bear Oreo pops. Just a double stuf Oreo dipped in candy coating, then mini Oreo for the ears, more googly eyes, a red mike n Ike, and another mini Oreo mouth. 

 I attempted some bear cupcakes-I think these are just mini kisses, Wilton googly eyes, and then an upside down cocoa candy melt with a little frosting mouth and red hot nose.  

I used another tissue pom, this one mini, to dress up my cake plate. I attached some ribbon with glue dots, and it held up well and then came right off when we were done!  I also love using tissue paper to make jumbo confetti.

 

We did two simple activities-one was making headbands with teddy bear ears.( I have no idea what happened to that picture. Or pix of the birthday girl, for that matter!  Probably still in the digital clutter all around me...) But the other activity was making these cute teddy bear cars.  A mini snickers bar, m&ms and teddy grahams, all glued on with candy coating.  We also tried to have other bear-friendly foods: bit-o-honeys, more teddy grahams, nilla wafers and root "bear"!  

A "beary" good time was had by all!  (Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.)

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Hanging Advent Tutorial

I don't even know if I would call this a tutorial, because it was so easy!  I went to Hobby Lobby and bought this driftwood frame, using my 40% coupon.  I know lots of crafty/thrifty people out there would go find a pallet and take it apart and make their own, but I am lazy.  And I don't know where to find pallets.  Or how to make a frame.  So... I just bought one.

Then I took a length of jute twine (like in the picture above, which can be found pretty much at any craft store), and wrapped and knotted it around one side of the frame.  Then I stretched it across and knotted it on the other side.  I did two "clotheslines", but if your frame is bigger or taller, you could do more.  Also, I really procrastinated so we did the 12 days of Christmas instead of a 24 day advent countdown.  

Then I added these:

Mini kraft envelopes and mini clothespins, both from canvas home basics line of scrapbooking, found at Hobby Lobby.  I just clipped the envelopes on to the twine with a clothespin.  

Then I slipped a little card with an activity on it in an envelope.  Oh!  I almost forgot!  I printed off numbers 1-12 from different fonts that I liked and cut them and glued them to the front of the envelope.  

See how cute it is!  Don't forget some baker's twine!  It makes everything cute.  Even brown paper bags.  Especially brown paper bags.  I just tucked some berry picks around each corner, and it was done!  Easy-peasy.  Seriously, the longest part was cutting out the numbers.

Here is my calendar hanging on the wall. What fabulous pix my iphone takes.  Sigh.  Maybe next year Santa will bring me a nice d-slr camera.  :)

There you have it!  If you want to see what we did, here is an example of some of  my activity cards. If you want to use my numbers, here is a file of cards 1-24.  You can just print off whichever ones you need.  I just bubble cut around each number.   You could also buy stickers, but I was too cheap to buy 12 different kinds of number stickers!  Plus, I got to create my own.  Enjoy!

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My big project-the big 4-0 in a box!

Not my big 4-0, of course.  Mine happened a few years ago!  But it was my only sister's big milestone birthday and I wanted to make it extra special.  She lives about 600 miles away-the closest we have been in decades.  We are both military wives and would love to live next door to each other, but it just doesn't work that way!  So I started brainstorming a little while ago.  Should I throw her a party in a funeral home?  Fly her somewhere?  Hire a stripper?  Ok, none of those was going to be feasible, so I did what I do best--shop!  and create!  (well, in my case, copy other people's fabulous ideas) and worry about every little detail on every little project!  Because she is the one person in the world who will appreciate the time and love I put into every last millimeter of her gift!  So I decided to send her a box full of 40 presents. 
                                                   See?

I wrapped the whole thing in more kraft paper and
topped it off with 40 candles.

I found this idea on you are my fave (which is now one of my faves!)

Anyway, I spent an inordinate, but completely enjoyable, amount of time figuring out what forty things I would send her.  I decided to send several categories:  party in a box, my favorite things, crafty stuff, handmade with love, forty and punny, and miscellaneous for anything else!  Here is a list of some of the things I put in:

Favorite things:

truffles (lindt)

Bath and Body works candle, slipper socks, lip gloss

Party in a box:

Confetti (made with a 1" punch and tissue paper)

Balloon wreath (see this post)

Mini pinata (see this post)

40 candles

party horns

Handmade:

A halloween hanging

a mini clipboard covered with scrapbook paper

a twine covered letter (future craft in the car tutorial)

Forty and Punny:

Forty rocks-pop rocks

Forty blows-bubble gum

Forty sucks-40 dumdums in a box

You are flippin' 40- a nice cookie spatula

Whoopie you are 40-a whoopie pie pan

The best part was wrapping!  I love to wrap presents.  I love to wrap coordinating, cute presents.  I love spending many minutes finding just the right detail to embellish my treats!  I used kraft paper and black, cream and red as my palette.  Here are some examples.  

Brown kraft takeout box from thinkgarnish.com, canvas flower from canvas home basics.

Brown burlap bag also from thinkgarnish.com.  Canvas banner from canvas home basics, a crafty scrapbooking brand I  adore.

More canvas home basics, plus super cute ribbon and flowers from my local scrapbook store.  I think the flowers are Prima.

This is one of my faves.  I threaded twine through the grommets on the banner flags.  So cute. 

I mad a fabric flower out of the ribbon from above.  Put it on a giant gluber.

Side view of the above present.  Ripple cup from thinkgarnish.  Love that website!

And now some real pix from a real photographer!  T sent me these after she opened the box. 

There you go.  My labor of love.  And time.  And much kraft paper and twine.  Special thanks to my hubby who dealt with all this stuff in our bedroom for about 10 days, while I wrapped in my spare time!  Anyone need me to wrap anything?  I am available until December 24! 

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Crafts in the Car

So if you are anything like me, you spend a lot of time in the car. A lot of that time is spent waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I usually read or check email or make phone calls---okay, actually I spend a lot of that time on Pinterest! Anyway, I thought I would see if I could get a little crafting done!

My first project: a balloon wreath! This is part of a much bigger project I am working on- check back later! I have seen several versions of this on the Internet. This is how I made mine.

First, take a straw wreath. Do not remove the plastic! Next, you need about 150-200 12" balloons. Also, a couple of packs of greening or floral pins. They are u-shaped wires.

this is a closeup of the pins

Take a balloon and a greening pin. Place the balloon on the wreath and push a pin into the wreath to keep it in place. The pin shouldn't go through the plastic of the balloon, but the wires should go on either side of the balloon.

If you look closely, you can see the wire around the balloons.  You can do them two at a time, if you want.  I actually only did a few that way, and then switched to just one balloon per pin, because I wanted the flexibility of placing each balloon at a different angle.  Place the balloons every which way until it gets nice and full!  

It is starting look like a wreath!  See, I told you I was in my car!

Here is the finished product!  It really only took me about an hour!  I added some curly ribbon and a bow to finish it off! It would be fun to make this in colors to match your house, or your party decor.  
This was so much fun, I just might keep doing crafts in the car!

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Look What I Made!

I feel like one of my kids, showing my art project to someone!  But I love this wreath that I made last week!  It was super easy to make and made me feel all Valentinesy!  You can find the tutorial here at mine for the making.  It was so fun, I just might make another for someone else....

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Chinese New Year Singing Time

from photobucket-robinkingcullen

I decided to put my singing time ideas on here.  Or the ideas I got from looking at everyone else's fabulous blogs!  :)  Tomorrow we are going to have a Chinese New Year singing time.  I got this great idea from i heart primary music and added a few twists.  She suggests we play rock, paper, scissors with a child and if the child wins, we let him pick a gold coin with a song on it. If we win, then we all review As a Child of God.  Since I could not find any gold coins on a Saturday night, :(  I thought I would make a few of these:

from marthastewartliving.com

Felt Fortune Cookies!  I do have felt around from one of my many craft project remnants!  I am going to put the names of different songs inside as fortunes.  We will probably sing As a Child of God with some different "ways to sing" cards, just to mix it up.  I also thought it would be cute to put these in a takeout box, so I picked one up at Hobby Lobby.

After primary is over, I am going to give the kids one of these:

I am putting a fun size starburst on there.  Once in a while it is good to reinforce learning with food, right?  :) If you want to make some for yourself you can download the file here>  Also, you can download the fonts from here and just make your own!  I used Shanghai and Chinese Zodiac.  Have fun!

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Kitchen Treats

So we all know that I love to create.  And cook.  And often I create through cooking.  I love to make things that bring happiness to other people.  So when I saw this fabulous idea for hot chocolate on a stick, I knew I had to try it!  So here is my first attempt at making this treat.  

I just used ice cube trays for the chocolate mold-not super cute, but the only thing I had to use.

So maybe I don't have a bright future as a chocolatier, but I know where to find cute stuff to wrap treats in!

Glassine bags from garnish, one of my favorite new online stores!  Even their receipts are cute!

And of course, I had to put the marshmallows in cute packaging as well!  I used peppermint mini marshmallows, and vanilla caramel marshmallows.

clear candy tubes from garnish

I put everything in this super cute kraft box and tied it up with a bow!  Who wouldn't be excited to get this in the mail?  I hope it tasted all right.  Although, I think some of my nieces and nephews just ate the chocolate right off the stick instead of making it into cocoa!  :)  Whatever works!

kraft boxes from garnish

I hope to send a few more treat packages out this year.  Just for fun!  So you know that I am thinking of you!

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