Crayola Model Magic - Ornaments

The children and I had two productive afternoons crafting our snowman ornaments for the Christmas tree. I decided to try out Crayola Model Magic which took about 24 hours to dry, and then painted on the details.

We also made gift tags for our friends and family. I discovered that the paint and marker combination on the tags weren't very effective.

Candy Cane Rudolph

It's that time of year in our household, Christmas crafting! This idea was a slight rendition from our Hallowe'en creepy crawler spiders. My daughter and I picked up a few supplies from Michaels earlier this week with this project in mind. It's a perfect way to spend a Sunday morning. 

Here's what you'll need:

1. Candy Canes

2. Red Pom Poms

3. Royal Icing

4. Wiggle Eyes

5. Scissors

6. Brown Pipe Cleaners

I love how they turned out and the children were also quite pleased with themselves.

The household crafting continues...

Oat Fudge Bars

I started my holiday baking last weekend and I've been holding onto this recipe for a while now so I decided to bake a batch of oat fudge bars for a few 'mum' friends of mine. They ended up rather thick since I didn't have the right pan size so I'll have to make a few adjustments next time. 

Another friend of mine decided to make her holiday baking look more packaged this year so I happily offered split a bulk quantity of white window front bakery bags with her. 

Presenting my packaged Christmas Oat Fudge Bars!

Ninja Birthday Party

It's another, much anticipated... Muppet cake! 

The birthday theme this time was "ninja" inspired by my now 6 year old son. We invited a handful of his friends to celebrate at a martial arts centre and they all learned a few new skills. The children did a 45-minute martial arts class followed by a 15-minute circuit training session and a Samurai sword cake cutting - the highlight of the party!

 My mother-in-law found these cute cutters so I baked up a batch of simple sugar cookies. I used a recipe from Martha Stewart's Cookies book and our friends & family seemed to really enjoy 'em.

I also used the cutters as a template for photo booth props - it was a great opportunity to capture some moments.

After 1.5 hrs of excitement, my son handed out Ninjago Lego party favors to each of his guests.

50 Sucks Lollipop Bouquet

50 is a milestone year wouldn't you agree?

A dear friend of ours turned 50 this year. My friend Isabel has planned a "surprise" family evening of disco bowling! She has requested that the guests assist with the decor, balloons, etc. I like the idea of a candy bouquet!

The supplies list for this fun craft is as follows:

1. 50 Lollipops

2. Styrofoam Ball

3. Glass Container

4. White Ribbon

5. Skewer

6. 50 Sucks Print

7. Sheet Tissue Paper

8. Clear Cellophane 

The instructions/construction is straight forward:

1. Insert 50 lollipops randomly into the styrofoam ball.

2. Pierce the completed ball through the centre with a ribbon wrapped skewer.

3. Affix the 50 sucks print below.

(I wasn't happy with the overall look of glass container and expressed my concerns to my spouse. He brilliantly suggested adding tissue paper! I LOVED this idea!)

4. Fill the glass container with tissue paper. 

5. Add curled ribbon between the visible gaps of lollipop and styrofoam.

6. Wrap with clear cellophane.

In addition to this frivolously fun candy bouquet, we gifted him a monogrammed baseball style cap with his birth year and initials.

Happy 50th Birthday FL!

Creatures 101 by Lauren Kitchens

Registration for Cake Love 2011 began this time last year but I didn't actually register for any classes until early this summer. There was one class that suddenly peaked my interest and luckily I registered in time to Creatures 101 (which sold out) with Lauren Kitchens from the Food Network Challenge. I was super excited to sculpt with rice cereal treats and to finally work with modeling chocolate. I felt the day couldn't come soon enough...

September 24th finally rolled around and the wait was over. It was a 4-hr class which started early at 6 am. I learned that Lauren is extremely creative, informative, and most of all, an awesome instructor. Our class was filled with talent - Just have a look at our sea of Muppets!

As I mentioned on yesterdays blog, it was recently my daughter's birthday so she really put me to the test by having me create another Muppet cake for her. It was a lengthy process that took a good week to complete. I found that modeling chocolate is extremely difficult to make from scratch. And, at one point, I thought that the entire batch was unusable. Thankfully it just required a TON of kneading. 

Another surprise was my use of homemade fondant. The arms were simple enough to attach in class with Satin Ice, but I found my version to be finicky because if I attached them too soon the fondant would sag down. Then after I decided to let them sit out before attaching, the raised arm cracked almost immediately after I had attached the head. Oh well, I ran out of time to fix the arm problem so I left it cracked.

In the entire rush of things I didn't even get a great photograph of the cake in its entirety. The good news after all this was that my daughter insisted on a strawberry shortcake cake (recipe courtesy of Pioneer Woman) and it was sure outstanding! 

I'll have another Muppet experience in a few short weeks for my son's birthday. Hopefully, the second time around will be less stressful... but probably not!

There you have it, mum inspired by Lauren Kitchens.

Happy (Pinterest) Hallowe'en

Lately, I have been hooked on Pinterest. The ideas on their website are incredible. This year's entire Halloween theme was inspired by Pinterest. Have a boo at what we've been up to...

My daughter is in preschool and she wanted to give them all something spooky so when we saw the idea of pipe cleaner spiders (on a lollipop), we knew we were headed in the right direction. Now, her teachers specifically requested that the children do not share candy with the class so we thought it would be appropriate to attach our little creepy crawlers to pencils. My daughter was so excited to pick up the supplies with me and they were all easily available at our local dollar store. 

Halloween coincides with my little girl's birthday so we were also responsible for today's Halloween snack. I ended up baking a batch of strawberry mini mummy cupcakes - recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart.

The fruit and vegetable platter was too cute to resist but the tricky part was that I had to incorporate 3 different fruits and 3 different vegetables AND still make it look like a jack-o-lantern.

In case you were looking closely, I added apples to the platter in the morning (to avoid serving yucky brown apples), but of course, I forgot to snap a photograph before we headed out the door.

This simplified version of the platter was for my son's class. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the children ooh and ah when they saw it this afternoon.

For the finale - MY JELLYFISH COSTUME - I'll have to admit that this might've been the easiest task as it literally took me all of 5 minutes to tape together.

Happy Hallowe'en folks!

Japanese Okonomiyaki

A friend promised to teach me how to cook this traditional Japanese pizza/pancake called Okonomiyaki and we finally got around to it this summer. The process was straight forward and easy. I have only picked up a few of the key ingredients since and we had the craving for them again.

We've often eaten at Japa Dog, a food stand that serves Japanese-style hotdogs, and we happened to have the wieners and buns on hand. The result, homemade okonomiyaki dogs!

Now, I can't wait to try these with cabbage (one of the ingredients that we didn't have) next time.

Sugar Factory Lollipop

It looks as though I'm not the only one who's intrigued by lollipops. The Sugar Factory in Las Vegas has glamorized and bedazzled the traditional lollipop stick! Unfortunately, I can't think of anyone who would appreciate this version of glam pop.

Bakerella

I love Bakerella's cake pop craze but all that decorating is much too time consuming for this busy mum. I've come the the conclusion that all baked goods to look 'cuter' simply with the addition of a Wilton lollipop stick!

At the end of the school year last June, a lovely parent (who was also a darn good baker) shared some sugar cookies with the class. They were buttery, fluffy and just pure perfection. Can you believe she was nice enough to share her secrets with me?

This is the cookie that became of that recipe. It was a fragile dough that required a lot of patience. I was so pleased with the outcome of these lollipop sugar cookies!

Next on the list of 'cuteness:' marshmallow pops. We had the ingredients in the pantry and the kids wanted to make something special for their friends. So again, we decorated in the direction of Bakerella and decided to cover some marshmallows with Wilton's chocolate candy melts and nonpereils.

I didn't realize the speed required to put these treats together and my younger child had some difficulties decorating them on her own. She was quite proud of her girly marshmallow treats by the end of it.

Their friends were sure surprised, and thrilled recipients of the marshmallow pops. It was a huge hit and we'll have to make them again - thanks Bakerella, for inspiring this mum and her two miniature assistants!