Soda Can Jewlery

I saw a picture in a magazine where someone had used soda cans to make necklace, so I decided to figure out how to put my own spin on it. So far I have made flower hair clips and rings. I am so proud of these silly things I feel like a dork. They look so cute in peoples hair and they are not as heavy as you would think. the rings are alot of fun too.

funny story: the can that the big flower is made of came from a crazy old lady that was walking in the middle of the street. I was on my way home from grocery shopping and was going around her but stopped when she waved her cane. I rolled down the passenger side window and she asked if I would give her a ride to her doctors office for five bucks. Apparently her appointment was moved and she couldn't get a hold of her ride so she decided to walk but about killed herself walking up the hill. I didn't have anything too perishable so i said yes. After talking to her for a little bit I found out that she was only in her fifties and can no longer do the outside activities she used to due to a hip replacement. When I dropped her off I asked for her can instead of the five bucks. I thought it made adorable hair flowers. I'm alot braver at asking people for their empty drink cans now because of it.

Anyway please let me know what you think of what I did. I do enjoy getting other peoples opinions(positive and negative).

An {L} Birthday

My baby is two as of yesterday. Crazy. We had a big party for her inside our church building (originally to beat the Houston heat and humidity, but we also avoided having a rain-soaked party.). For food we had chocolate cupcakes, using the same Martha Stewart recipe I always use. It made 36 cupcakes and around 13 mini-cupcakes. For the frosting, I beat 2 cups (4 sticks!) of softened butter with about 2 teaspoons of vanilla paste (you could use extract too). Then I added enough powdered sugar to make a really stiff icing. Finally, a few tablespoons of milk to get it to piping consistancy. I split it into thirds and colored each with Wilton icing colors (leaf green, pink, and violet). I made the frosting the night before the party, so in the morning I pulled it out of the fridge and let it sit at room temp for a bit, before beating in a little more milk. Then I piped it on:

I also made sugar cookies, using cousin Brenda's recipe:

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 cup shortening

2 eggs

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350*F. Beat sugar and shortening together. Add eggs; beat. Add corn syrup, vanilla, baking powder, soda and salt; mix. Add flour and mix until combined. Chill dough for an hour. Roll between lightly floured wax paper to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out cookies with cutters. Bake for 7-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

I found a tutorial for flooding cookies with royal icing. I used Wilton Meringue Powder and the royal icing recipe included (I added some almond extract; around a teaspoon or two).

It was surprisingly easy to do, though it will take some practice to make them look as good as the ones in the tutorial. I need a steadier hand but they turned out just fine (and really tasty):

And finally, as if that weren't enough for a two year old, I made suckers. Same reciped from this post, just some different flavors (grape, watermelon and cinnamon):

I had some issues with the colors. Above are the cinnamon flavored ones. They're supposed to be pink......yeah. Orange happened because I added the flavor before the color. As I started dropping the coloring in, the steam caused by the flavoring hit me square in the face. Think about it: hot, cinnamon-infused steam....my eyes immediately teared up, my throat started burning, it hurt to breathe......it was awful. So I cranked the kitchen fan on and opened the nearest window. I stirred as fast as I could and slopped it into the molds, before retreating to my bedroom (the furthest away). Luckily the girls, who were already down for their naps, remained unscathed. And that's why we have green, purple and.....orange:

We invited a lot of kids (24 + older/younger siblings), so I knew we'd need some good, entertaining games. Going with the theme of "L", we had the kids "Pin [tape] the Spot on the Leopard":

My husband drew this. Pretty awesome, right? After that, it was time to "Leap Across the Lily-pads":

I traced the lid to our cylindrical ottoman on a roll of green art paper and then cut out a pizza slice.

And lastly, we made Lion masks:

My poor husband spent nearly two hours cutting out these masks. He deserves a medal (and a hand massage). We tied some elastic through punched holes and:

ROARRRRR!!!

Octopus Earrings

A post! After 4 months of "Homemade Tortillas". Can you believe it? Neither can I.

Several months ago, I visited my family in Utah and I spent a day with Rachel (the second crafty r). She showed me how to make some simple earrings. I'm not going to pretend to know any of the proper terms or tool names, so bare with me...

Rachel had these nifty loops, some wire (22 gauge? maybe?), and a bazillion beads to choose from. I went with green beads, in two different sizes, and octopus charms (to hang in the middle). I took the wire and started wrapping it around the loop, adding a bead every 3 turns:

Once all of my beads were added and the extra wire cut off, we wiggled the wire until it was centered:

Pretty pretty, eh? Finally, I added the charm and earring piece and voila!

Not a great picture, but you get the idea....

I have a recipe post coming soon. Be excited.

Making Stars

Materials Needed

*needle and thread

*35 main color beads (mc)

* 5 accent color beads (ac)

STEP 1

Tie 10 mc into a circle with a square knot finish, leaving a one to two inch tail. Go through 3 to 4 beads pulling the knot and tail into the circle to hide it. Cut off any of the tail that is still showing. Go through one more bead without pulling the knot through. (doing this keeps the knot out of the way)

STEP 2

String two mc, one ac, and then one mc. Skip the last mc strung, and go back through the ac. (the string will be on the outside of the end bead)

Then string two mc, skip a bead in the ring, and go through the next.

STEP 3
Repeat step 2 around the ring for a total of 5 points. To make the points stronger, go through them again in the same way.

STEP 4

To end the thread, go through one or two beads on the ring and tie a half hitch knot. Do this a couple of times. End by going through a couple of beads and cut off the extra thread.

YAY!!! A STAR!!!!
(for the bracelet I made nine stars and hooked them together with jump rings. If you do it, make sure the beads(I used size 11 seed beads) at the top of the points have big enough holes to fit the jump rings, I made a necklace in the same way. Other ideas I had for these were to make them out of crystal and hang them from a ribbon on a Christmas tree. I made some plastic ones that my two year old likes to pretend are the stars on Dora. She throws them in the air and catches them.)
This is the first time I've written instructions for anything, so let me know how I did.
I would also like to hear/see any ideas you came up with. It is always fun to see what awesome things people do with something so simple.

Introducing Another 'R'

My little sister, Rachel, is joining me on this little craft/cooking blog. She is wonderfully talented at beading. The craftiness oozes out her pores and turns into gorgeous things like this: and this:and this:

and this beauty:I'm excited to see what she has in store for us!

Piece of Cake

I did it. It's done. And it looked good! It was such a relief to finish. I tried hard not to stress out but I couldn't help it. Let me take you through the creation of my brother's wedding cake. . .
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A few days before the wedding, I pinned down my brother and almost-sister-in-law to ask some questions, trying to nail down the last couple of details: 3 slanted layers, maybe a topper, maybe not.
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I finished making flowers, adding purple to the yellow, red and blue: I also made some leaves to act as filler just in case my sister was right when she said, "I don't think you have enough flowers.":

I then got the styrofoam discs for the bottom two layers and baked the top layer. The bride requested chocolate cake, so I looked up recipes and made Martha Stewart's Chocolate Cake. It's the first cake from scratch that has worked for me! And it was an easy recipe too. Next, I made my husband cut the styrofoam {I can't stand that stuff. The sound it makes when it rubs against anything. . .ughhhh! Gives me chills and makes my teeth ache.}

It made the most horrifying noise. I could barely stay long enough to take a picture. So, thanks again, Grant! The wedding was going to be Monday evening, so I decided to put the cake together in the morning, not really the smartest idea, but, thankfully it worked. Well, that morning came and I was trying hard not to freak out. My mind was racing through all of the worst-case scenarios it could think of: too few flowers, melting icing, cake layers sliding off of each other, crumbs in the icing, etc., etc. I was so nervous that I kept breaking flowers, which made me more flustered, leading to more dead flowers. . .anyway, my sister helped me by putting the finishing touches on the purple flowers. I moved on to cutting the cake top. My brother told me when I got there that they didn't have a topper. Now the pressure to have a level top layer was gone. So I cut the cake and put the layers together:

Then it was time to frost. I made the Creamy White frosting from my Homemade Oreo post. I tripled it and had just enough. Lucky for me, they {the bride and groom} didn't care if the frosting was smooth or not, so I didn't even try and I actually like what I did better:
For the cake layer, I preped it by freezing it for a few minutes and then doing a thin 'crumb layer' and freezing that again, before doing the final icing layer. So there were no black flecks to be found. Finally, the moment of truth! Time for the flowers:

I started at the top and I have to say that once I put those few on top all of the anxiety went away. My sister and I then finished putting the flowers on. We didn't go all of the way round the cake, but we could have {there were tons of flowers leftover} and looking back, we maybe should have. We were running short on time, I think it was past 5pm and the wedding was scheduled for 6. It still turned out fabulous:

Sweet Peas

I've been too busy the past couple of weeks to make any flowers. Yesterday, I finally made some headway. Behold, the sweet peas:Once I got the hang of them, they were easier than the roses and faster too. I really need to get cracking though. I have less than a week to finish.
I'm planning on doing one more style of flower, in purple fondant. And then I'll just need to make sure I made enough of each. . .

A Wedding Cake Update & Casualty

Since my last (and only) post on my brother's wedding cake, I've learned what they really want for their cake. A 2-3 layer chocolate cake, with white (!) buttercream frosting and colorful fondant flowers going down the side. Kind of a big change from original black and white idea, but funner for me. First, I colored some fondant: And last night, I started making the beginnings of 2 flowers:Tiny, blue forget-me-nots and red roses. This morning I put the finishing dot of royal icing onto the forget-me-nots and I was able to make one full rose and one rosebud:I thought I'd get a lot further along with the roses, but this isn't the same method I used for my sister's cake and it takes a lot longer. I'm hoping it'll speed up once I know what I'm doing. Sadly, I lost a little flower:

But one isn't all that bad.

Homemade Playdough

Growing up, my mom would often make this playdough for us. I loved playing with it, especially when it was freshly made, it's so soft and warm.

homemade playdough

1 cup flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup water

1/2 cup salt

1 tbsp. oil

food coloring

Mix all of the ingredients together in a saucepan:and cook over medium-low heat, until the dough forms into a ball. Here's a halfway picture:and here it is fully cooked:
Let it cool for a couple minutes, then knead until the lumps are gone:
There you have it. Good for hours of fun. Store it in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator. It should last at least a month. Have fun.

Bottle Cap Necklaces

I got together with some friends, last week and again on Thursday, and we made these cute bottle cap necklaces: k hick explains how to make them here. After the epoxy has hardened, just drill a hole and add a loop and chain. Very cute, pretty easy!

Blanket & Pillows

Back in March, I finished my first quilt. It was just a 'simple' rag quilt. I wrote a fairly exhaustive post about the process here.

In April, I made some throw pillows for the living room. Read about them here.

I have a couple more sewing projects in the works and will post about their successful birth or mournful passing.