Thursday, December 20, 2012

For my son's personal aide I made a special frame

Now, I had this crafting frame from Michael's and a puzzle I had bought at a thrift store for like 50 cents with the idea of doing this very project "one day".

First I took out the puzzle and painted a bunch of pieces in primary colors. I just used paper plates to set them on for drying and this took much longer than I thought it would.

 .While those dried I pained the frame with a very light coat of red, because, well, I like red :)






Then I sat down and used a storage bin lid for my work space and got my glue gun plugged in and ready.






I didn't really know what I wanted to doa s far as a game plan. I thought about just using all but the red pieces randomly placed around the frame on an even, flat plan. But as I started gluing, I decided it would look much better and waaaaaay more fun if I just kept adding and adding until it stacked up and had a nice collection of puzzle pieces to look at so .....
I went with it and doesn't it look FUN?! I took some cardboard stock and cut it to fit the pic hole, using the paper that came with it for a guide. Then I took his school pic and did my version of homemade laminate, packing tape! lol

Once I had it all set, I gave it a heavy couple of coats of clear coat to seal it and I am in love with it. I would make myself one too but I used almost all the pieces I painted and I have too much left to do to paint myself some more. Maybe after the holidays. lol Here it is shiny with the clear coat added....

And here it is with his photo and the little candles I made her in her favorite color :)

Teachers, aides and bus driver gifts. CHECK :)

OK, for the bus driver I decided a pretty little smelly jelly would be great to have for the bus. I had these perfect plastic containers already, I just needed to decoupage them and it would be adorable!

So, take ugly little containers and coat with goo like so....






Then I used wrapping paper to coat it and smeared it down good with more decoupage and commenced doing the top part which was not
as easy or as fun as the bottom portion :)

I made up my jelly beads while this dried and added the scent. Then when it was all done, I hot glued some ribbon around the outer edge and added some sparkly snowflakes for flare and ta-da! We have smelly jelly :)

















Now, I also made mugs for the 3 aides that are in his class but aren't so much involved with him. I bought 3 mugs at the $1 store. I had thought about printing his school pic in black and white and decoupaging it on there, but I wanted the mugs to be dishwasher safe so I used hobby enamel and did some free hand snow flakes. Not my best artistic talent but hey, it's homemade with love right? lol

 and gathered up some plastic spoons. I melted some almond bark and gathered up some fun stuff for dipping them in.
I used crushed peppermint, heath bar pieces, mini choc chips and butterscotch chips.
Now I apologize for not getting pics of the process but, working with melted chocolate doesn't really give me an opportunity for photo ops. 
But, here they are all coated with yummy things....
Well, I put a few in little holiday treat bags and added several packs of hot coco with marshmallows and wrapped all that up in tissue paper...ta-da! anther gift down.


Saturday, December 15, 2012

Smore's Pops for holiday treats

Yet ANOTHER cute idea I found on Pinterest. I saw this adorable pin on there and decided it would be a fun treat that wouldn't be another cupcake or cookie. Although I am doing some cute cupcakes, I decided to send a treat every day of this last week instead of making everyone separate goody bags so...here is one of the 5....

First, I lined my cookie sheets with foil and laid out graham crackers along them. A marshmallow on one side, a couple of chocolates on the other...set my oven for 400 and popped them in for about 5 minutes, but I watched to be sure.

 Now I thought letting them get kind of brown would make them better but I think it made it harder for them to stick together so....just get them soft then pull them out.
Also, I tried just laying my sticks on top, but it worked better when I shoved them up in the middle of the gooey part.
OK, smores are assembled. I popped them in the freezer which helped them hold waaaay better than not freezing them, and melted my almond bark. I just set them down in the chocolate and spooned it over the whole thing then gently scraped my spoon over the graham as I pulled it out so it wasn't too much chocolate on them.
Then I laid them on wax paper and added some festive sprinkles just for fun.....

And there they are! Fun little smore's pops!

All wrapped up and ready to go! <3


Triple Chocolate Peppermint Treats....my style

So, I always do mad holiday baking and this year, with my new Pinterest obsession, I decided to stray from my traditional line up of goodies to package for friends and neighbors.

A pin led me to this tasty looking recipe that I just happened to have all the ingredients to make already here at home.

Now, I have a TON of baking going on so I didn't make the cookies from scratch like the recipe calls for, I already had a package of double chocolate chunk mix for another idea I scrapped so I just added about 1/4 cup of Coco to the mixture to make sure they were super chocolate tasting. I also decided that making them in mini muffin pans would make icing and covering them in crushed mint would be much easier so...I made mini muffin cookies. Baking them was a bit tricky since I had to gauge how long to cook them, I think these took about 12 minutes.







Now, the icing. The recipe calls for 4oz of softened cream cheese and 3
cups of powdered sugar. The directions say mix until smooth. Well, mine wasn't smooth so I just added the other 4 oz of cream cheese and then we had magic. It also calls for 1/2 cup melted white chocolate morsels which seized on me so I added about 1 1/2 tbsp of shortening and it was nice and liquefied to add to my still stiff icing.

Once I got the icing set, I went about crushing the mint candies. What a mess! But, I got them crushed and put them in a small bowl.

Then I iced my lil muffins, and gently rolled each one in my crushed peppermint. I know myself and this was much less of a mess than me trying to sprinkle the mint on the cupcakes. That candy is very sticky and I am glad I went this route.

There you have it! I am not a mint fan so I haven't tasted them yet but, they look pretty stinkin' cute and will go with my other mix of goodies quite well. I should have more goodies to post as the evening goes on, I have about 5 things in process right now :)


Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Oreo Turkeys, I am SO late getting this posted!

So, someone on my Facebook posted these adorable little turkey treats and I thought they would be wonderful to make for my son's classroom rather than the usual cookies or cupcakes.

Preview of the disaster...

I will not mention where I found the tutorial because I was furious when I set about making them. She made it sound like it took 15 mins or less and was just a pinch to put these little darlings together. Um. NO. Not even a little bit.

Now, I am going to post my little adventure and the end result which would be MUCH cuter if I ever made them again, which I WON'T be, but I will add my suggestions as I go along.

First I took a package of Oreo cookies (if you are going to try this,be sure to get the double stuffed ones), I only bought one because my son's class is small, and ended up needing to do MUCH reconstructive surgery to get what I needed out of that. By her instructions I gently worked candy corn pieces between the 2 cookies so that they are just barely into the white center to hold them.

Sounds easy right? Nope. Maybe if I had the double stuffed ones it would have helped but you would NOT believe how fragile these cookies are when you are trying to do anything other than eat them! :)



Now, I put 5 candy corns in each cookie, but you can do more if you like. Then I laid them all down with a separate section for the broken ones that needed put back together. She said just put a dab of black icing on either side to hold and let that dry while you work on the other parts. HA! I knew icing takes hours to dry "hard" so I decided to use almond bark for faster drying and more sturdy hold.

* I think if I were to do them again, besides using double stuffed ones, I would just take off one cookie, add the candy corn, put some melted chocolate then reattach the top cookie. Less trouble, stronger, faster hold.

Next we attach the tail feather part to the "base". Again, I used almond bark rather than icing and put the base cookie against a wall then dipped the "feather side" in the chocolate and set on the base, also against a wall. Sounds backward I know, but I wanted to be sure my "feathers" were even and had the right placement. Sorry I didn't get a photo of this but I was trying to work quickly with melted chocolate :)


Once I had all my lil turkeys lining my kitchen counter walls, I set about getting the other parts ready. First I took my mini Reece's (actually I used a less expensive and easier to unwrap store brand) and cut off just a little fraction of one side so it would sit down nicely on the base.



I also set out my malted milk balls since I was going to do assembly line style construction with the melted chocolate. Once the base parts were dry, I laid them all flat on my work space and dipped the peanut butter cup in my melted chocolate placing the cut side down on the base with the back attached to the feather cookie. I added the milk ball heads as I went along because it's pretty fast and easy if you have everything lined up.



While this dried, I cut the ends off of candy corn to use for the beak. I cut larger pieces than I thought I wanted because I was tired and didn't want to fool with tiny white pieces and melted brown chocolate, but, I like the way it looked with the extra color!

Once I had enough cut, I attached the beaks to the malted milk balls and used tube icing to add the eyes, feet and neck thingie. I know it does not look polished or post worthy but I had so much time and energy in this project, NO WAY was I not going to blog it :)

Now, I think I ended up with about 18 turkeys from one pkg of Oreos and that is with putting many back together with the chocolate. They are rough for sure, but, his class liked them and it was something different than the normal treat routine.

I added some orange food coloring to rice krispie treats and formed little pumpkins with tootsie roll stems and a bit of green icing for vines to finish up this Thanksgiving endeavor. Not my most shining turn out but, I think they are pretty cute considering....



Sunday, September 30, 2012

Halloween Wreath

So, I found this idea on, where else? Pinterest. As usual, I found it months before I actually got around to making it so, I can't remember where to find the original to give credit but I am pretty sure there are many variations and mine is different in that I added my own little embellishments.

Now, first I went online and ordered the feather boas. I only ordered 2 at first but when I started wrapping the first wreath, I knew I was going to make a couple so, I went back and ordered more.

Like any wreath, many different things can be used. I opted to try one of the pool noodles I had seen as an idea when I did Easter wreaths. I tried cutting it in half to make 2 and I am not sure if I would do that again but, it worked.

I spray painted it black a little just in case some showed through and proceeded to wrap it in the boa.


I did wrap it kind of loose so that I had room to push the feathers apart a bit to add my fun stuff:)


i

Now at the $1 store I bought styrofoam balls and eyeball parts, but I also found these packs of skeleton straws that I thought would be cute on there too. I just slid the skeletons off the straws and since they were in 2 parts, just hot glued them together. Then I hot glued the eyes onto the styrofoam balls and used my hot glue to glue sets of eye balls together.



Now that I have everything ready, it was just a matter of placement and arranging. This one is for my son's classroom so I didn't want it to be TOO scary, but I think I managed a fun holiday look.


Of course I was so busy planning the wreath itself, I forgot to add the hanging ribbon first, another little gem I found at the $1 store, but I just pushed the boa apart enough at the top that I could twist the wire edge ribbon and wrap around, then pushed the boa back together to "hide" where I added it.


Of course this pic doesn't show where I "fixed" the spacing better but, you get the idea. On the next one I will make a hole through the noodle, push the ribbon through and just knot it to hold it in firm. 

I always find 100 more idea for each thing I make but....this one sure is fun and I know his class will love it. Once I had all the materials together, I spent less than 45 minutes putting it together and adjusting it all.

SUPER fun! Yes I am aware I am a geek but a creative geek. And that is a good thing! lol

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Ahead of schedule for Veteran's Day decorations

Honestly, I had planned to have these done by 4th of July but, well, I got them done now.

These adorable little cans I found on this blog were super easy and cheap to do. I couldn't find CHEAP spray paint in the right blue so I just dusted some cans I have been saving (coffee, hot chocolate, I save pretty much everything) in white spray paint and then gave them a quick coat in my acrylic blue.

Took a nail and tapped a couple holes in each one...didn't measure or anything.

I had found a star shaped cutter at Goodwill months ago and it came in handy. I just cut a bunch of white paper, I tried card stock but it was difficult and didn't look as good on the cans. I used regular glue to put the stars on, will coat it all with clear spray paint when I am done.

I found the ribbon at the $1 store if you can believe it and the first one I just randomly glued my strands, after that I cut a piece of cardboard and spaced the ribbons more carefully, then just hot glued the cardboard strip  to the inside bottom edge of the can.

I had bought these kind of frilly elastic headbands that never stayed in place in my hair so they have been living in my "potential crafting"pile for a while. I cut the little metal fastener in the middle with wire snips and poked them in the holes, securing on the inside surface with hot glue, totally cute! The others I just used white ribbon.

Anywho, I am going to make more, I certainly have the cans and I find each one gets better.

Sorry I don't have pics of the process, I will try to add some when I do another round.


I even thought about adding some glitter or maybe some blue beads at the bottom of the ribbons but couldn't find a pack of just blue ones. Sometimes, less is more anyway right? I will try to add photos of the process later.
Enjoy!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Zombie Brain Cupcakes!!!!

This is a combo of a couple recipes I found a few years ago and had waiting for some Halloween in my recipe book.

First I made a strawberry cake.


Then I took some white icing and tinted it with black icing tint. I would probably do a pinkish black next time but this is where I started. It looks kind of blue in this pic but, it really is gray.

Now, got the cupcakes out of the oven. And set to cutting holes about dime size in the center of the tops. You need to cut kind of carefully because you are going to save the top of those little circles. I used a paring knife and dug out a little bit of a cavity in the hole and discarded the crumbs. (Actually I ate them :)
Now I have icing bags and tips but I have been cooking all day and didn't feel like digging them out so I just put my strawberry jam in a sandwich bag and cut the corner to squirt the "blood" jelly in the centers. I wanted these to OOZE so I squeezed long and slow to try and get the center as full as possible.








Once I had them all filled with jam, I put the little tops back over the holes. It doesn't matter which one is which, I didn't keep track and it worked out fine.

Now the FUN part! I took a 16 oz "pounder" glass and put the baggie down in it then wrapped a rubber band around the top to hold it while I filled it up with the gray "brain" icing. This was the most clever thing I have done in a while. lol.



A brain has 2 hemispheres right? So I took my icing and scribbled all around half of the cupcake, then went back and did the other half so that it looked like a brain. BUUUT, I let my icing sit out for too long and it was too runny to hold the form :(  I SWEAR they were stinkin' adorable for a minute!


I will post more tomorrow but I wanted to get this blogged before I quit for the night. I gotta get ready for a date with my mister to sit out and enjoy the meteor shower. I will finish these tomorrow and post better BRAIN pics! :)

I can't wait to share these, they are so much FUN!

OK, I finished icing and delivered these goodies but I have decided that when I make these again, I will use a butter cream icing and maybe a bit of meringue powder to keep the brain squiggles a bit stiffer to hold the shape. Here was the finish of my first go round with these fun cupcakes....