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.

Pillows & Cookies

Finally, after almost two months I got my sewing machine out. I wanted to revamp the pillows in the living room. I found this beautiful fabric online and decided to go with it:I love them: The colors feel fall-ish to me and fall is my favorite season, so that's a good thing. On another note, I made some interesting cookies yesterday- RootBeer Cookies:

I found the recipe on Make and Takes and decided to give them a whirl. They were really good, especially cold. I did feel like they needed a little more root beer extract and actually doubled it in the frosting. Next time I think I'll double it in the batter as well. Click here for the recipe.

Orange Cupcakes

Cupcake Batter:

1/2 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup of sugar

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour*

1/2 cup orange juice

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

zest of an orange

*You can buy self-rising flour:Or you could make it. Just sift together all-purpose flour with baking powder, 2 teaspoons baking powder for every cup of flour.*

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a 12-hole muffin tin, either with paper liners or grease. In a bowl, combine butter, sugar, flour*, juice, vanilla and eggs. Beat with a mixer on low until it's mixed well. Increase speed and beat for 2 minutes, until the batter is pale and smooth:

Stir in the zest and spoon batter into prepared pan (I ended up with enough batter to make an extra 10 mini-cupcakes). Bake for 20 minutes (10 minutes for mini), until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Frosting:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons orange juice

In a bowl, cream butter, then add half of the sugar and all of the juice; mix well. Add the rest of the sugar and spread over the cooled cupcakes. Add more zest on top if you want.

opinions needed

So this is my first post on Ruth's crafty blog, and I'm in major need of opinions. I spent somewhere between 4-6 hours working on this pendant and I'm wondering if it was worth it. I made a similar one in blue and brown and I love it, which makes me think its the colors that I don't like. I would love any input, good or bad, it all helps.

I also had a friend suggest making it into a ring. To give you an idea of how big it is, imagine wearing it on your middle finger, it would cover your index and ring finger as well. Thoughts?

Thanks for letting me be on your blog Ruth!

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!

Stripes

I finished this quilt over a month ago, but since it was a present for my new little niece I decided not to blog about it until after I'd given it. I'm very proud of this quilt. I didn't have a pattern, I had just seen a similar quilt at a baby shower and decided I could do my own version. So I worked out how big I wanted it, the number of rows, and width and length of the fabrics; and I wrote it all down. Sadly, that piece of paper was lost in our recent move. And now that it's been so long since I sewed it, I can't remember any of the numbers. I do remember that it took me about 2 days. I cut, sandwiched and sewed the first day and snipped the second. Luckily, this was such an easy quilt pattern. I could easily make another and I probably will. . .

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: