The Pastel Baby Shower

I found out my brother and sister-in-law were expecting their first baby towards the end of last winter. I got so excited to plan the shower I couldn't help but to brainstorm ideas from that moment on. My sister-in-law is a very classy British girl so I had to do it right! I really wanted to make it special, being as she is far from family and home. She chose pastel colors as her theme even before she knew what she was having, which was super helpful for me so I could start eyeing things ASAP! I know it seems a bit extreme to be on the hunt for baby shower supplies at her 12 week mark, but I couldn't help myself! Easter was right around the corner ( the best time to round up pastel colored supplies) and I had my heart set on putting together a candy buffet. I started buying the glass candy jars one or two at a time for the first couple of months. All of them were bought at Marshall's and they ranged between $6.99-$14.99 which isn't bad compared to some of the ones at hobby lobby ( even with a coupon). I made sure to get all of the candy after Easter for the pastel colors and had to make sure I had Cadbury mini eggs per request of the mama-to-be! I jumped the gun a bit on buying the candy. Had I waited, Target still had a large selection a week later for great deals! Either that or I should have gone to the 24 hour Walmart at midnight instead of sending the husband ( you don't even want to know what random things he came back with, haha).  I handmade the labels for the candy buffet with scrapbook paper and pink gel pen.

I then covered some foam blocks found in the floral section with tissue paper and scrapbook paper stickers that came with the scrapbook pad. I bought 2 pads of Colorbok pastel print paper. The scrapbook paper became; the banner, the table centerpieces, and candy buffet table decor. Moving on to the banner...

When I did this shower I didn't have anything but stencils, scissors and some paint. I folded each piece of the printed scrapbook paper into four even squares, then cut. I used pastel colored cardstock and did the same , then ruffled the edges with ruffled scissors. I then stenciled letters on with some white paint. I used mini wooden clothes pins ( found in almost any craft section) and fastened each letter onto curling ribbon. I then curled the edged of the ribbon and was able to have flexibility positioning the banner onto the tablecloth of the candy buffet. Speaking of the candy buffet...

We kept it pretty simple. We had the pastel colored candy; Malted milk eggs, Sweet tart jellybeans, Hershey kisses, Cadbury mini eggs, Gum balls, and Butterfly suckers. I tried to balance chocolate with fruit flavors so there wasn't too much of either kind. we then had mini cupcakes and doughnut holes (glazed doughnuts were mama-to-be's main craving) and a simple cake displayed in the middle. The bags we found at Hobby Lobby...

They originally had brown ribbon, why, I don't know. After tying them all with the brown I realized I HAD to change it to the pink curling ribbon I had on hand! As for the table centerpieces, and this is one of the main reasons I had to do this entry, it is one of the most repinned items on my Pinterest page....

I had had some glass centerpieces left over from my engagement party nearly 8 years ago in storage. I guess I always figured a friend may need them someday or that I'd reuse them for something. A large crate of the these cute little ducks kept catching my eye every time I went grocery shopping. I finally put two and two together, though I wasn't sure if the ducks would fit. It was a squeeze but after filling the glass with just enough water for the duck to float and adding curling ribbon around the top of the vase I realized it'd look super cute over some ruffled cardstock and scrapbook paper! It really just fell into place. I knew I wanted the ducks, and the vases, but I literally came up with these the night before and was even ruffling cardstock at the venue! I wasn't too worried about the water from the glass getting on the paper, just make sure you fill them and dry them really well before placing them on the paper. 

Last, but not least, my favorite part of all the decorations...the tissue pompoms! 

A lot of my girlfriends had asked how they could help with the shower. I ended up inviting them all over a few days before to have them help make and fluff tissue pompoms! These were a great deal and a lot of fun to make! I got six 30-packs of pastel colored tissue paper from The Dollar tree and used 10 sheets for each. I also got pastel colored pipe cleaners to twist around the center. The smaller pompoms are just larger sheets cut exactly in half. Youtube has some great tutorials. I just watched a few and had a go at it. I staggered 3 different colored tissue pompoms hung on curling ribbon with a thumb tack over each table. It really helped fill up the room and set the mood for the party!

Holiday card handmade with love!

So I got my new slice last weekend and have been waiting for a good purpose to use it. We are doing a secret Santa gift exchange at work so I thought I'd make a handmade holiday card for the person I received to start things off with. I like to play it safe so I'm going for more of a winter theme than a Christmas theme. It's a great card for a person of any belief!

I used table scatter from my favorite spot, none other than The Dollar Tree. They are little pieces of foam that are already sparkly. They come in the shape of snowmen and stockings and trees too! I also got the ribbon at The Dollar Treevtoo! The rest was up to me and my slice! Can't wait to make my next card!

Have a Slice! Electronic Digital Designer,** Frugal Find**

I am currently,"all baked out." I hit the ground baking from end of august until now and I've been through most, if not all, of my main fall baking recipes a few times already. I needed a break! A change of artistic outlet. I remembered being in one of my favorite spots, the store Tuesday Morning. Last week I saw a Slice cordless digital designer. It appeared to be a smaller version of a Cricut. This Slice came with a cartridge of pictures, fonts, and words, a glass cutting mat, foam embossing mat, a few colors for its drawing feature and some card stock,stickers, project idea cards,and a few other supplies for use. I noticed it was on clearance for $59.99, which was pretty affordable for a craft cutter. So naturally I figured it would have horrible reviews and be worthless to try. Well yesterday, I was getting supplies for a cake at Hobby Lobby when out of the corner of my eye I saw a few of the cartridge cards in various themes on clearance from $49.99 down to $10.79. So I decided to do some research and see what these little Slice's were all about. Being that most reviews were favorable and I only would use mine moderately I decided to go back and see if Tuesday Morning had any left. Much to my surprise they had a few left and were marked down an additional 25% off! Woo-hoo! In total my Slice was $48.30 with tax and all! I figured if it wasn't that great I've wasted 50 bucks on worse things. 

So I got it home and tried it out.....

So far it seems like a cool investment. Being as I don't currently have a party planned I might use it to make a few holiday cards?? This version is from 2009, Slice now has a newer improved Fabrique cutter that is like this version and a more efficient fabric cutter all in one. Many reviews of the one I have note that it too is capable of cutting fabric, so I may try to do an applique and I'll let you all know how that goes! I am about to go to Hobby Lobby now and snatch up one or two of the cartridge cards before they are gone!

Buckeyes, the homemade peanut butter cup!

So this week was pretty busy! There was a Volunteer's Bake sale at the hospital. That's when the volunteers of the hospital ask people to either donate baked goods to sell, or to buy some to help them collect funds for the annual scholarship they offer locally. So I was eager to help, and I did a little of both (baking and buying). I decided to make Pumpkin Cupcakes ( recipe posted last month) and Buckeyes! Buckeyes are an annual Thanksgiving tradition in our family. We are from Ohio ( the buckeye state) and I'm pretty sure that's how they got their name. Now we aren't talking about the nuts here! It's a homemade peanut butter cup essentially. It's as easy as 1,2,3...... No really the recipe is as follows

Buckeyes

Ingredients

1 lb. of butter

2 lbs. of peanut butter

3 lbs. of powdered sugar

1-2 bags of semisweet chocolate chips

paraffin wax ( I use 1/4 of a bar, but litle by little)

Directions

1- Mix butter, peanut butter and powdered sugar by hand until the dough doesn't stick to your hands. Roll into little balls of dough ( size them as you like, I use mini cupcake holders to help determine the size of mine) This part is messy! You can always have someone else add the powdered sugar little by little!

2- In a double boiler melt chips and paraffin wax, mix well. For those like me who don't have one, just use a smaller pan inside of a larger pan with boiling water (only enough to fill the bottom 1/4-1/2 full). Ideally the smaller pan should have two handles so it doesn't splash down into the larger one and ruin your chocolate when you look away for a second..trust me it happens!I have done it with a one handled pan no problem, it just takes some more babysitting.

3- Dip dough balls in melted chocolate and paraffin wax mixture using a skewer, fondue pick, or toothpick (I've used a fork before too, it just bothers me aesthetically because buckeyes have one hole at the top not 4)

4- Place freshly dipped buckeyes on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or foil. When the pan is full place immediately in the refrigerator. 

5- After buckeyes have set ( approx. 20minutes) Place them in mini cupcake holders if you want, or just eat them!

6- Store in the refrigerator in a container for longer shelf life ( I like them cold much better than room temperature)

** One batch yields approx. 100 buckeyes

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The Bake sale went well! I did have a few leftover pumpkin muffins, probably because 4 others made pumpkin bread/muffins/cupcakes?? The Buckeyes, however, were gone in a flash! Try them and you'll see why!

Actual Buckeye Nuts...just for visual comparison!

Wild 50th Birthday Zebra Cake

Wild at 50!That's the theme of my friend's mom's 50th birthday bash she's throwing this weekend. All decorations are zebra print with hot pink accents. I, of course was in charge of the cake! Yay! This was a pretty fun project! I started by zebra striping the cake batter. I did pink and white for the top tier and classic black and white for the bottom. The cake was vanilla, not chocolate and vanilla like most of the websites I viewed for tutorial purposes. Here's how it went....

The tutorials showed a nice circle on top of circle on top of circle. Ummm my batter would not do anything except slump over...it wouldn't thin out so i had to give it a little shake every now and then. It appears to have worked but its just not center is all.

Next I gathered all of my decorating supplies....

I got the sugar sheets at Michael's, the cake boards and candles at Party City and the cute foil bows/cake toppers at The Dollar Tree! Here's how it looked when I finished...

I felt like it was cute but missing something. So I tried this....

It definitely took the cake from,simple and cute, to party ready!

Pyramids, Gold, and Whippin it all up!

I was approached Sunday afternoon by a customer at my husbands restaurant about a wedding cake order that fell through for her. She really wanted a pyramid cake in homage to her to-be husbands home country. I was up for the challenge! I had 3 days! Here's what I came up with.....

She wanted a chocolate cake with whipped icing, to feed 50. It was a task getting the top of the pyramid to work, so I borrowed from THE CAKE BOSS and used rice crispie treats to form the top. I used a 10 inch circle, 2-9x9 squares, and one 8x8 square. I iced them and stacked them, then using a serrated knife I carved down each side. I realized depending on how one would cut this cake, it may have only fed 30. So I threw in the two tier! I was going to do sheet cake or cupcakes, but it really isn't much of a difference in time or effort to stack two smaller (an 8 inch and 6 inch) cakes on top of one another and throw some whipped icing on top. I used the stabilized whipping cream icing recipe by Wilton, it was great! Something to note, the first time I made the whipped icing I only had sparkly gold piping gel in a tube so I used that thinking I was eventually going to spray the cake gold anyway, but the icing still came out white before food coloring was applied. To end it I used cake graffiti edible gold spray paint by Duff!

Sesame Street First Birthday

My youngest turned one back in September. I really love throwing kids parties! I try and use my creativity to do the most I can on the budget I set for the party. So I made plenty of trips to the Dollar Tree, of course. Got out all of my crafting supplies and started about a month ahead putting things together. At first I had thought I'd break and buy the licensed party supplies, but I like the look of DIY much better. So I started with making shirts.....

I found these organic long sleeve onsies for $1.50 each at Walmart. I bought about a half of a yard of some flannel Sesame Street fabric,a pack of  felt rectangles, and iron-on, no sew adhesive to adhere to the back. I drew a number one on some card stock, free hand. Then cut it out and used it to cut the number one's from the Sesame Street Flannel. I then placed each number one on a coordinating felt rectangle and cut around until it had enough border to make it pop! I bought matching bows for the girls at Walmart for $1.00 each.

Moving on.....I wanted to make a bunch of different character bags for favors. I realized it could take forever to cut and paste ( I don't have a Cricut machine). I narrowed my choice down to Elmo and Big Bird. I found red and yellow plain party bags at the dollar store in packs of ten. I used cookie cutter circles to trace eyes, and Elmo's mouth (cut bigger circles in half) on construction paper and hot glue to stick them on the bags. I then free hand traced a nose for Elmo onto card stock, and when I made one that looked good enough I used that as my guide to trace onto orange construction. I traced a rounded triangle for Big Birds beak and then folded the construction paper and traced it so the folded line was the back of the beak. That way I had a top and bottom to the beak without having to glue. I traced the inner parts of Big Birds mouth and hot glue those to the beaks. I then cut the pink and blue eyelids, then glued them onto the bags. When it came time to glue on Big Birds beak I decided to glue down the entire bottom portion of the beak ( I originally wanted to glue the crease so the whole beak popped off of the bag). The last thing I did was take a black sharpie and make pupils. They weren't all exactly uniform, but thats what I love about DIY! Inside were Sesame Street themed board books, stickers, and baby flash cards ( all from Dollar Tree)!

I normally make my own cakes, but due to the fact that I was already investing my time in various crafts for the party I decided to give myself a break and ask Walmart to do the cake. I saw a Dora and Diego themed specialty cake in their book and asked if they could use the same format to do a Sesame Street cake, this is how it turned out!

The guest tables were a combination of Dollar Tree Elmo balloons, string, and party wieghts, and Party City summer clearance confetti ( 50 cents a pack, one pack per table)! I also took all plates, cups, napkins, and cutlery and staggered the primary colors for visual effect ( all Dollar Tree)!

At the last minute (12-4am the night before) I realized I wanted to make a homemade banner and that I'd regret if I didn't. So I kept it primary colors, simple rectangles, and traced stencil letters in white paint. I also made labels for the snacks on the table(see picture at top of page) with crayons to look like Elmo's world. We had Elmo's goldfish, Abby's magical marshmallows, Number of the day cookie ( a back to school special at walmart, number cookies in primary colors), and the letter of the day was M for M&M's!I got Sesame Street juice boxes by Apple and Eve in 8 packs at Walmart ( fruit punch has Elmo on it and Apple juice has Big Bird). I wrapped an empty Huggies jumbo pack box with Sesame Street wrapping paper (Dollar Tree) to elevate the cake on.

I also used a party hat I had leftover from another party and felt and fabric leftover from the T-shirts to hot glue and make a party hat for the birthday boy!

The kids area I set up had an empty swimming pool filled with ball pit balls ( Rubber Ducky's pond), a bubble machine ( $6.00 at Walmart, $1.00 for the mega bubbles), various Sesame Street interactive toys from our home collection ( Elmo Live, Cookie counting Cookie Monster, Musical Ernie), and giant inflatable Happy Birthday Elmo (eBay, oh yeah). The little ones had a blast in their safe play zone and the mamas got to enjoy the party too! All in all it was a great time! Hope some of these Ideas help for those of you throwing a Sesame Street party!

Dollar Tree Baby Shower

So a friend of mine is having her second baby girl at the end of November (God willing). She asked me not to "go all out" knowing I can get a bit carried away at times, especially when it comes to parties! So I remembered seeing some super cute new shower decorations at The Dollar Tree! Take a look!

http://www.dollartree.com/party-supplies/Baby-Shower/Pink-It-s-a-Girl-Baby-Shower-Paper-Party-Plates-8-190-/207c346c346p300416/index.pro

Anyways I attempted to use my creativity to make a cake that matches the decorations. I used the Wilton baby buggy cake pan ( using a 50% off coupon at Michaels it was just 7 dollars!) Here's how that went....

I really wanted to match the decorations with a baby buggy diaper cake. I tried my best, got me some diapers, a pack of receiving blankets, some ribbon and a few bows. I watched a couple YouTube tutorials combined them all, came up with a few new ideas. Boom, bang, pop.....

The shower was simple, sweet, and everyone seemed to have a great time! Thank you Dollar Tree!

Mom's Pumpkin Bread Recipe

Every fall family recipes start to resurface. As the chill comes in I begin to crave the comforts of my childhood. My mom's pumpkin bread is usually the first thing I make to start off the fall/holiday baking season. She got the recipe from her mom, who got it from her best friend, years ago.I use this recipe to make either a few loaves of pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, or even pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They are best served the morning after being made ( they moisten overnight) Here's the recipe!

Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients- 3 1/2 cups flour

                   2 teaspoons baking soda

                   1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

                   1 teaspoon cloves or pumpkin pie spice

                   1 teaspoon salt

                   3 cups sugar

                   1 cup vegetable oil

                   2/3 cup of milk or water

                   4 eggs beaten

                   3 cups of pumpkin ( I use either 2, 15 oz. cans or one 32 oz. can)

Directions-

   Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients thouroughly. Make a hole in the middle. Add oil, milk ( or water), eggs, and pumpkin. Mix until well blended ( I use a hand mixer for a few minutes on med-high). 

Bake loaves of bread for 1 hour, muffins/cupcakes approx. 30 minutes. 

Yields- 3,  2 lb. loaf pans or approx. 48 muffins/cupcakes.

Enjoy and please share your feedback! Follow me on Pinterest Shop,Craft,Bake (AishaAhm)!

Addition 3-23-13 *** Thank you Leena for reminding me that I spaced and completely forgot the cream cheese frosting recipe! Well dear here it is!

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients- 1 package(8oz.) cream cheese, softened

                  1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened

                  1 teaspoon vanilla

                  2 to 3 teaspoons milk

                  4 cups powdered sugar

Directions-

   In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, butter, vanilla and 2 teaspoons of the milk with an electric mixer on low speed until smooth. Beat in powdered sugar 1 cup at a time. Gradually beat in just enough remaining milk to make frosting smooth and spreadable. if frosting is too thick, beat in more milk, a few drops at a time. If the frosting becomes too thin, beat in small amount of powdered sugar. Leftover frosting can be tightly covered and refrigerated up to 5 days or frozen up to 1 month!

She did the mash, she did the monster mash

Fall is my favorite time of year. Old family recipes start to resurface, there's a chill in the air, and Halloween puts everyone in a creative spirit! Recently I was approached by a coworker about a doll cake for her daughter. This wasn't just any doll it was a Monster High doll. Now being that Halloween is right around the corner and the festivities are in full swing everywhere I go I felt a creative fire light within me. I decided to take the challenge! I am a novice decorator for now, but a fairly confident baker at this point. I mostly do cupcakes, but for some reason her request inspired me to view this as one giant cupcake of a project....Heres how it went!

I used the Wilton Wonder Mold pan, tie dyed my cake batter to match the doll ( turquoise  for her eye shadow and lips, and purple for her skin). I then dyed my home made buttercream black and violet. I froze the cake overnight, then "dirty iced" it to lock in the crumbs. Then I put it in the refrigerator for an hour. I went over the it with a layer of violet buttercream and ran a metal spatula under hot water and then around my cake to smooth it. I placed it back in the refrigerator for another 20 minutes. I then made the black roses on top with an open star tip by swirling backwards from the center outwards. I made a spider web ( which kind of ended up looking like ribs, but oh well). I then used the open star tip to pipe texture in violet to the dress and, since I ran out of  violet icing by that point, I made another spider web up the back. I kid you not I thought I felt like I was a modeling manager getting my monster ready for some kind of creepy beauty pageant. All the while in the back of my mind all i could here was... "They did the mash, they did the mooonster maaash."