Cake decorating with a coloring page!

As I frantically searched online for an EASY way to decorate Em's cake with a lalaloopsy doll, I was getting frustrated with how complicated it all was. I'm not very handy when it comes to artistic things. I can do music and that's all the art I can do! I was very excited to find an answer to prayers in one of the e-mails I received a few days before the cake had to be made. Cake decorating with a coloring page!

What you do is print off your coloring page and tape it to the back of a piece of glass. I just took one out of an unused frame. Then you tape wax paper to the front of the glass and then color your picture in with frosting. Then you stick it in the freezer until it is frozen (about 20 minutes or so). When you are ready to put it on the cake you untape the wax paper and flip it over onto the cake and then peel back the wax paper. So easy even I can do it!

I didn't take pictures step by step because there are already tutorials out in blogosphere for that. But I did take a picture of the cake I made for Emma.

Isn't she so cute? This one was really easy to do because there wasn't a whole lot of detail and only a few colors to do. I wanted to do pink hair but Emma wanted her to look just like the picture so that's what I did. The frosting for the face was a little runny but it still froze well. A thicker frosting is best though. You can see the cupcakes and other details on the cake on our family blog childsfam.blogspot.com.

Here are the links to the tutorials that I saw:

http://sunshineandasummerbreeze.blogspot.com/2012/08/avengers-birthday-cake.html#

http://www.brasstacksandbasics.com/2011/08/super-fancy-cake-decorating-tutorial.html

Mother's Day for Grandma

Every year for mother's day my mom wants a picture of the grandkids. With everybody's schedule it's hard to coordinate a time to get them all together. So this year I decided to assign everyone a letter and have the mom's take pictures and send them to me. Then I created this page and had it printed at Walgreen's in an 8x10. And since I had a free 8x10 code this gift was free! I did purchase a frame for it so there was that little expense. I took a picture of a heart around my stomach for the grandchild that will be arriving in November. The kids loved it and I love how diverse and different everyone's letters are. Just like the kids are!

CHEESE Party

Back in January I did a cheese party. I found the original idea from the website thedatingdivas.com and loved it. My sis. in-law wanted to do an ugly sweater contest for Christmas but we could just never get it together. So when I saw the Cheese Party I thought..we could wear cheesy sweaters! I thought that was such a great idea...then I read further in the post and saw that they did that too. Ok, so not original but still a good idea. So I sent out a cheesy invitation, had everybody bring a cheese to eat and wear their cheesy sweaters. We had cheese pizza, cheese cubes, mozarella sticks, cheese sticks, brie, swiss cheese wheel and nacho cheese dip. And don't forget all the stuff you need to eat cheese with, crackers, fruit, chips and bread! I printed out the Jeopardeese game from the website and we played that. I had a cheese grater as the prize for the "Gratest Sweater" and it is a trophy that will be passed every year to the next champion. I tried to find some of those yummy cheese balls from my childhood for the winner of the Jeopardeese game as the "Cheese Ball" award, but since I couldn't find them I had to just settle for regular Cheetos. I had the kids play the "Cheese Touch" game from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. All I did {well my sis. in-law made the cheese for me} but we just made a piece of cheese out of paper that looked like it was mold and had hair on it and then we slapped it on the back of one of the kids. They had to be very secretive and not say who had it on their back. If you discovered that it was on you then you had to secretly put it on someone else's back and so on and so forth. If you told someone that they had it on their back then you had to "eat" the cheese and forever have the curse of the "Cheese Touch!" The kids loved it! I also had some photo-props to take silly pictures with. I had mustaches, lips, feather boas, funny hats and all sorts of things. I think everybody had a great time. As soon as I clean up my hard drive and make some room for the thousands of pics I have on my camera I will post some fun pics!

Hands of Service

I thought I'd share a fun little idea if you need to thank someone for doing service. I have a program that I call the FISH program that I felt inspired to do. But more on that later...I asked a friend who is an instructor at Mandalynn Academy, which is an Aesthetics school, to come and do some pedicures for my "FISH Girls." She brought some of her students to help and we had free pedicures and some fun and much needed girl time. I was really grateful to my friend and her students for offering their time because pedicures are soooo expensive. I made soup and had rolls and cookies for lunch when the girls were done. I also sent them home with a gift bag. I bought some inexpensive, but nice, gloves at Walmart and some Werther's caramels and put a tag on it that said "You're so sweet for offering your hands in service." Cute right? Well, I thought it was. I sent my FISH girls home with a pedicure set that I bought at the dollar store and a small vial of oil courtesy of the students along with a card that explained how the Savior helps us "exfoliate all the hardness of our souls" through the atonement and how His love helps us "to be smooth"...much like our feet during a pedicure. Anyway, it made better sense when you read the whole thing (which I spared you and did not include it here) and a few of the girls told me that it really helped them put the atonement into perspective for them. This would make a fun YW Activity or RS Activity...or just a fun girls night like we did!

here is the gift bag with the tag

here is the gift bag that shows you the "sweet" candy.

Pioneer Pillowcase Dresses

The girls and I were in a pageant in our stake called the "Kirtland Pageant." It was about Joseph Smith's life up until after the Kirtland Temple was built and they were driven from their homes once again. It was a great experience for the girls and they really enjoyed it. I was having a very hard time trying to find something pioneerish looking at the thrift stores and I was starting to get nervous because dress rehearsal day

was almost upon us. While at Savers one day the light bulb went off in my brain...why not make a pillowcase dress? So I went over to the bedding and found two great pillowcases that I thought looked like it could work. I actually bought both in the set because I didn't know how if I would need to make them longer for the girls or I had also thought of making an apron as well. When I brought them home and started on the project
I realized that these must have been king size because they were extremely long! Anyway, this is what I found. I love that one of them has a ribbon on the bottom so I didn't need to add anything.

So, I grabbed a shirt for each of the girls to measure the arm holes and cut a little bit bigger for the hem.

Super bad pic, sorry! I cut open the seam and cut out the arm holes and then pinned all the way around. I sewed the hems for the arms and for the neck I made a pocket that was large enough for me to pull a ribbon through. Then I pulled my ribbon through and voila! My dresses were done. I had two ribbons on each side to be tied on each shoulder.

Here is what they look like with their aprons on. The people in the Stake had extra aprons so I didn't need to make them any, but I still might do that.

I got so many compliments on them and one lady said they were something she would let her daughter wear all the time. I thrive on those comments because I am NOT GOOD at sewing and doing crafty things. I really enjoyed making these and now I am on the constant look out for a really cute pillowcase to make another dress out of!

Pumpkin Mousse

I came across a Pumpkin Mousse recipe in my Taste of Home magazine and it sounded like a perfect dessert to serve at my Murder Party that I hosted the weekend of Halloween. The first time I made it I added a little too much orange peel and so the orange flavor really over powered the pumpkin. I decided to try and make it again for book club the other night and this time you could taste the pumpkin flavor. I must not be a huge pumpkin fan anymore because I preferred the more orange taste over the more pumpkiny taste. The recipe calls for a pie pumpkin that you clean out and serve the mousse in, but for my Murder Party I thought it would be fun to have individual servings in a mini pumpkin. I think they turned out beautiful!

Pumpkin Mousse (Taste of Home Magazine Fall 2009 pg. 70)

1 medium pie pumpkin

2 T sugar

3/4 tsp cinnamon, divided

1/3 C vanilla or white chips

2 T milk

1 package (3oz) cream cheese, softened

1/3 C confectioners' sugar

1/3 C solid-pack pumpkin

1 tsp grated orange peel

1 C heavy whipping cream, whipped

Cut top off pumpkin; scoop out and discard seeds. In small bowl, combine sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon; sprinkle inside of pumpkin. Replace pumpkin top. Place on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 min. or until crisp-tender. Cool on a wire rack.

Meanwhile, microwave vanilla chips with milk at 70% power; stir until smooth. Cool to room temperature.

In a bowl, beat cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Beat in the pumpkin, orange peel, reserved chocolate and remaining cinnamon. Fold in whipping cream. Remove pumpkin top. Spoon mousse into pie pumpkin. Refrigerate leftovers.

Magazine Editor's Note: The sugar pumpkin is not fully cooked so that it holds its color and shape. It is used as a serving bowl for the mousse.

Patio/Porch Treatment

Please be patient with me as I learn how to do all this stuff. I write this blog not as a professional, but as a scatter-brained young mother who wants to document that sometimes she had a good idea and sometimes they worked out! Proof for my children that I could accomplish a few of the projects I set out to do!
This first one I am quite proud of. When we first bought this home there was a huge cement pad in the back that to me was wasted space. The people that lived here before us had a hot tub there, but I knew that we would never own one in the future. I have always wanted to build on to the house and turn that into either a family room for the t.v. or a music room/sitting room for me to teach piano. This way I would be away from the main house and could teach in peace and quiet. But I also knew that this would never come to fruition.
One day, while looking at one of my favorite blogs, I stumbled across a tutorial of how a woman painted her patio floor to look like tile. I instantly fell in love and felt that this was the answer to my prayers! The blog is beneathmyheart.com and she has so many wonderful ideas. I encourage you to go there and search for her patio reveal. I found the link off of tipjunkie.com
So, here is my ugly patio space before

and here is sort of the after. While searching for all of my pictures that I had taken I realizes that some of them didn't transfer :(
But it still looks good right? I love how it turned out. I furnished it with a coffee table from my house and a variety of chairs that I purchased at DI and I love this space. I also used painters drop cloths for my curtains just like she did on her blog. I love to sit out there while my children are playing and read a book or just watch them have fun. I love to have social gatherings out there and I'm really happy with how it all turned out.
I liked it so much that I decided to do the same thing to my front porch. However, the color that I had for the backyard did not go well with the red brick in the front. After much deliberation my husband and I decided on a light brown color. Well, I painted it and it didn't look right to me. Here's the solid color before the tape is removed:
So I decided to use a darker brown and use the plastic bag technique. I have never ever used this technique before and it took some getting used to for me. So there are a few spots that make me cringe every time I look at it, but overall it looks pretty good. Here's the texture before and after the tape is removed.


I also painted the posts black like I did in the backyard. I'm not as happy with this as I am the backyard, but it's still a pretty good job for someone like me. I'm not crafty, I hate to paint, and I never come up with my own ideas. But I like to try new things and learn from them for next time. Jsut like taking pictures of my projects in progress for posting later....