Cake Decorating, Or Something Like It…

Awhile back, I needed to make a cake for a friend.  The plan was that MC was going to take it tailgating at the University of Minnesota Gophers football game.

The problem was, I has no ideas.  Nothing.  The cake was baked and I stared intently at its bare rectangular form and cursed it silently in my head.  Finally, I went to the Twitter and threw a shout out that said something to the effect of ‘HELP’. 

And help arrived in the form of Marie from Celebration Generation. 

Her instructions were easy enough – go find a picture of whatever I needed (in this case, Goldy Gopher, the U of M mascot) and print it out.  I was once again out of printer ink, so I sketched out Goldy, and cut out an outline to set on top of my cake.  I used a sharp knife and slowly cut around the outline of my template:

 

Since one of Bitty’s favorite shows is Cake Boss, I knew my next step was to ‘dirty ice’ the cake.  I had put the cake in the fridge uncovered for an hour or so after I cut it out.  This firms up the cake and makes it a little less crumbly.  Then I threw a huge plop of my frosting on top and covered the entire cake:

 

{It doesn’t matter if crumbs get in the frosting, they will be covered in the final coating of frosting.}

Next, you’ll need some wax paper.  Although I didn’t know it yet, this is where the whole thing blew up.  Marie’s instructions were quite simple but I didn’t remember this step… and it’s kind of crucial.

{Place wax paper over your printed picture}

Since I had cut out the shape on my cake, I needed to reverse my picture so when I flipped the designed gopher head onto my cake, it would be facing the right way.  Hang with me for a minute and I’ll come back to this; I know it sounds confusing…

Also, since I am not a professional, I did not have the tips and sqeezy bag decorating thing.  So I improvised:

I scooped my frosting into a zip lock bag and squeezed it all into one corner of the bag, trying my best to make sure there were no air bubbles in the frosting.  Then I cut a small hole in the corner of the bag.  All I needed to do now was trace the outline of my printout with the icing: 

Once the outline is done, place your creation in the freezer and let it harden.  Then you can fill in your outline with whatever colors you need.  For Goldy I would have used brown for his face and white for his teeth and eyes.  After piping the other colors in, place it back in the freezer until it’s completely hardened.  When it’s ready you would just flip it over on top of your cake and bang! you look like a professional baker. 

However, since I didn’t make a mirror image of my picture, I would not have been able to flip the frozen creation on top of my cake.  It would have been backwards, dagnabit.  If I had just left the cake as a rectangle, instead of cutting out the shape, it would have turned out just fine. 

Of course, you could just head over to Celebration Generation.  Marie has these instructions, but better because she’s an actual, real life baker.  Go ahead.  Check out her awesomeness.  You know you want to. ;* )

Fingerprints on the Fridge…

Before MC and I purchased our shiny new stainless steel fridge, I asked the sales guy point blank:  Is this fridge going to show fingerprints all over it?  Because that will simply drive my brain batty…

And that sales guy looked me right in the eyes…

And lied.  LIED!  Won’t show fingerprints, my hiney!  It’s entirely possible that my refrigerator is actually a fingerprint magnet and can collect fingerprints from children who aren’t even in the same room with it!

But that doesn’t even come close to the aggravation resulting from the next problem I had with my shiny metal behemoth.  Ohhhhh, no.  Not even close.  My fridge’s next problem? 

Rust. 

{Rust. On a ‘stainless’ steel fridge.  I kid you not…}

I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, but I was now the owner of a rusty, fingerprinty, stainless steel fridge.

{People, I cannot make this stuff up...}

For about a week, I literally did not make eye contact with my fridge.  My brain simply couldn’t handle the double abomination of fingerprints and rust.  But, reluctantly I concluded that ignoring the fridge did not, in fact, take care of my rust/fingerprint problem and I would actively have to do something in order to fix it.

So I went to the place where all solutions exist: the Internets.  And the Internets gave me several different options.

Option number 1: Vinegar and salt.  I’m not sure what chemical processes are going on with vinegar and salt, but I had used it to get rust out of a shirt once, so it was my first choice.  And it failed miserably.  Undeterred, I moved on to:

Option number 2:  Lemon juice and baking soda.  When I mixed the two, they fizzed like hydrogen peroxide poured over an open wound and I was immediately impressed.  After playing with the foamy mixture for a minute, I gently rubbed it over the rust spots:

{Success!}

ACK!!! It worked!  I still can’t believe it worked, but who am I to question the knowledge of the Internets?  Instead, I will sit back and admire my now non-rusty refrigerator and pretend that it is not still covered in fingerprints.  

{Before and After}

Do you have stainless steel appliances?  What do you use to clean them off… and does it get rid of the fingerprints???

DIY Photo Magnets…

I was cleaning off the side of my fridge recently when I noticed this:

 

 

It's the photo magnet I ordered when Lovely L was in soccer.  Then I noticed all of these:

 

 

This is my fridge magnet graveyard.  If a magnet had an epitaph, it would read something like this:

 

Here lies Fred G. Magnet

1990 – 2011

He was once a useful member of the fridge community,

now he lies useless, untouched

because his owners

no longer needed him

FIN

 

Many of these magnets were from when we lived in Arizona, and a few were just outdated (MN Twins 2009 season schedule?  Yeah, I don’t think we need that anymore). 

I had thrown a bunch away when I was suddenly struck with a fantastic idea:  What if I attached the kids school pictures to the old magnets?  Then when I send out the pictures, they're already set to attach themselves to the recipients fridge! 

 

Genius, no?

 

All I did, was… ready?

 

Glue the picture on with a little bit of Elmer’s rubber cement, center the photo and trim off the edges! 

 

 

 

 

Uh.. sorry for the blurry picture, but while getting ready to take it, I read what’s written on the side of the pencil.  Go ahead, read it… I’ll wait.

 

BEEF!  It’s what’s for dinner, baby!  For whatever reason, that struck me as funny and I couldn’t hold my camera steady. 

 

ANYWAY…

 

Here’s how it turned out:

 

 

I once again apologize, but this time I have no excuse for the lousy photo.  Well, except that I’m too lazy to leave the basement and retake the picture, of course.

 

The picture above is a 3 1/2 X 5, but I also found that I could fit two wallet sized photos onto one magnet as well.  I hope my relatives aren’t reading, or it’s going to ruin the surprise for them…

 

And, if you’re here visiting from SITS today, welcome and I hope you stay awhile and enjoy more of my ridiculousness!

 

 

 

 

Linked up with:

Elphia Designs  *  A Glimpse Inside * Home Stories A to Z * ChildMade *  Lolly Jane  *  Flamingo Toes

Got Wine…

More importantly, if you’ve got wine, then shortly after that you should have an empty wine bottle.  Or maybe not too shortly, I guess it really depends on how fast you drink it.  However, I find that the best wine is always drunk (drank?) with friends.  This generally results in several empty wine bottles pretty quickly.  Moving on…

A year or so ago, I attended a birthday party for one of Bitty’s friends, Little A.  It was a fabulous party.  Little A’s mom had made the most amazing cake and Little A’s grandmother was a most gracious host.  After presents were opened and while the kids played, the adults got to chat and catch up with each other.  As I chatted with Little A’s mom L and her mother-in-law C, I noticed an awesome thing on C’s countertop. 

See the pretty glowing wine bottle with the cutesy little grapes hanging off?  That’s what I spotted and then was gifted with!  Yep, Little A’s grandmother let me take one of her awesome creations home with me.  LOVE it!  Of course I had to know how to make them, and C gave me her simple directions.  Which I will now share with you, but with a Kadbury Spin* on them.

*A Kadbury Spin is when I receive instructions from someone, forget half of them, and then try to muddle through on my own.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

• empty wine bottle
• drill bit thingy from Home Depot or Lowes’ (I’ll explain in a minute)
• cutesy little grapes (I found mine at Michael’s)
• raffia (it’s that straw looking stuff, which I also found at Michael’s)
• mini Christmas lights, with no more than 25 lights on the strand.  Make sure the lights only have one plug dealie.  (go here for an idea of where to find these)

I’m pretty sure that C told me to find the drill bit at Lowes, but I ended up at Home Depot anyway.  This is what MC picked: 

It’s a glass and tile bit.  It looks nothing like the thing that C used, but it got the job done. 

The picture is crooked and fuzzy because I just finished that yummy bottle of Cupcake Riesling.  Okay, not really.  It’s just a super bad picture.  Not everything I do can turn out great 100% of the time, although I know that’s what you’ve come to expect of me.

NOT!  ; ) 

I got MC to drill the hole in the back of the bottle.  He put the bottle in a sink full of water so that the glass wouldn’t fly out and hit him in the eyes.  Because that would be bad.  I would have also worn safety glasses, but that’s just me.

Applying firm (but gentle) pressure will get the drill bit through the glass.  Once the bit is through, slowly work the bit around the hole you’ve created until it’s big enough to fit the lights through.

After MC finished drilling, I cleaned the bits of label up and then sanded the drilled area so there weren’t any sharp edges.  Holding the bottle upside down, I inserted my strand of lights (I used a strand of 10) and shook them around a little to get them evenly distributed. 

I then took a thin little strand of raffia and tied it to the grapes.  Using my handy dandy glue gun, I glued the raffia together at the back of the bottle.  On the right is my lovely gift from C, and the one on the left is my mine.

Woot!  Later I added a little raffia bow.  Later than that I decided I didn’t like it and removed it, but didn’t take another picture.  Wanna see the the blue one all lit up? 

Of course you do:

Ooh!  Aah!  Sooo purdy! 

Now go out there, find some friends and open up a bottle of your favorite wine… Just don’t forget to save the bottle when you’re done… ; )

Sharing the love and linking up here!

Skip To My Lou                       Tip Junkie                        The Lettered Cottage

Sugar Bee Crafts                    Centsational Girl                Designer Garden

The Stories Of A 2 Z                Shabby Nest                    Tatertots and Jello

Lovely Crafty Home                 Fingerprints on the Fridge

I’m Not Cheap, I’m Thrifty…

Okay, let’s just call it what it is.

I recently had some painting I needed to do.  However, the painting was not getting done because of two things:  Not only did I not want to have to purchase more of the needed paint tray liners, but I also didn’t want to leave the house.   

So… in conclusion, I am cheap and lazy. 

I have been told that necessity is the mother of invention, but in my experience, cheap laziness is.  Which brings me to what I’d like to show you today.  In this post I showed you my amazing prowess in hole patching.  After teaching the wall exactly who’s the boss in this house, I needed to paint over the patched area.  I headed down into the Death Spider Cave of Doom, which is located under the stairs in my basement, and found the paint supplies.  I had the paint, rollers, and metal paint tray, but no plastic paint tray liners. 

Now, I think it’s probably fair to conclude that my paint tray has lived well over its nine lives.  Or whatever life expectancy paint trays have.

Clearly I couldn’t just pour the paint into the tray, unless ‘rust’ was the desired color I wanted on my wall.  So here’s the little trick I used that enabled me to not have to buy paint tray liners (because I’m cheap) or leave the house (too lazy). 

First, I took a plastic bag from the store and pulled it over the paint tray.  Important:  Make sure the bag you use has no holes in it!

Take the handles of the bag and tie them tightly underneath the paint tray:

Hey, look at that: some free advertising for Target.  I really hope they appreciate that ; )

Your paint tray should now look like this:

All that’s left is to pour in the paint and then, you know… paint.  Whatever it is you’re painting at the time.  In my case, the wall.

Another nifty thing about doing this is that I don’t have to wash off my roller when I’m done. I just untie the handles of the bag and turn it inside out so that the paint and roller are contained inside the bag.  I then retie the handles and the roller is ready for storage.  (Note: check for holes and pour extra paint out of the tray and back into the paint can.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m forever painting over scuff marks, handprints, ink, and once, a grass stain.  The roller ends up holding just the right amount of paint to do a quick roll over for when you’re expecting guests and your two year old just drew an awesome picture of you, daddy and the sun on your living room wall. 

I shared my paint tray how-to; what home repair tricks have you come up with?  : )

My Digital Frame Gets a Makeover…

Some years back, a great friend gave me an awesome gift:  A digital picture frame. 

My digital frame is like a greatest hits of my family;  it’s filled with an ever changing assortment of general  photo awesomeness.  T Bub’s baseball team winning last year’s ‘World Series’, Lovely L’s talent show performance, Bitty in her soccer uniform, dwarfed by all the other players…  

Awhile back I had moved the frame into the kitchen and although I loved it in it’s new spot, something kept bugging me.  That something was called, ‘This frame does not match the current décor in this room’. 

I tried really hard to ignore my brain’s constant attempts to make me notice the frame and FIX IT, ‘CAUSE IT’S DRIVING ME CRAZY.  And although I was on the verge of going batty from leaving the frame where it was, I couldn’t see any way to change its appearance to bring it in line with the pseudo French provincial feel going on in my kitchen.

Sometimes inspiration hits me and sometimes it’s a complete miss.  This time it hit me while I was at *drum roll, please*… The Dollar Store.  Yes, I see the mock look of shock and surprise on your face.  No, I won’t be changing the name of this blog to Kadbury Is… At The Dollar Store.  At least not any time soon.  Unless… The Dollar Store wants to sponsor my blog and then I can quit my day job.*

*I can’t actually quit my day job, since it pretty much consists of parenting. 

The Dollar Store has a whole picture frame section and right there next to the frames were mats that go in the frames.  My brain did a quick spin cycle and Bang!  What if I covered the digital frame with a mat???  I wasn’t sure what size my digital frame was, so I grabbed two sizes:  8”x10” and 4”x6”. 

Turned out I needed them both.  Since the size of the screen was smaller, I needed the 4”x6”, but the black plastic was really wide and I needed the 8x10 to cover the whole area.  I taped the 4”x6” bit onto the 8”x10” mat and was momentarily stuck again. 

How can I attach the mat to the digital frame?  My first thought after duct tape was hot glue gun, but I wasn’t thrilled with either of those options.  How about sticky Velcro?  Yep, that worked:

I stuck both side of the sticky Velcro to the digital frame, then lined up the taped-together mats to the digital frame and stuck them on.  Now that the mat was attached to the front of the digital frame, all I needed to do was find a picture frame that was more in keeping with the colors of my kitchen:

The gold picture frame is attached to the mat instead of the original back of the frame and the whole thing is held up by the stand that is on the back of the digital frame. 

 

Now the only problem I have in my kitchen is my cooking…

{Mmmm!  Apple flavored cookie blob things!}

Linked up to these funtabulous girls ~ Go check them out!

Skip To My Lou                       Tip Junkie                        The DIY Showoff                  Mad In Crafts

Sumo’s Sweet Stuff                 Sugar Bee Crafts              Making The World Cuter      

The Stories Of A 2 Z                Shabby Nest                        Tatertots and Jello

 Centsational Girl

First Communion / Graduation Gift...

I usually have a million ideas crashing around my cranium, and it's generally pretty hard to grab on to just one. And right now I have an overwhelming desire to say 'one meeellion dollars'. But I won't. Because I already wrote this post once today and it disappeared into the ether, so I'm focused. Like a laser...

I needed a First Communion gift, and this time my brain came through; I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And so off to The Dollar Store I went in search of a picture frame with two picture openings. They had just what I was looking for:

But I have to tell you, I was snort giggling when I found these. Who needs a picture frame with a mirror? So you can look at yourself and look at yourself? Okaaay... if you need that kind of self affirmation, then I'm all for it.

The black frame was for a boy, so I left it alone and set my sights on the yellow one. Two coats of blue later and this is what I had:



I used scraps of fabric and felt for the rosettes and blue twirly thingy and just hot glue gunned them on there. Then I took the mirror out. I headed over to Scrapblog and created a little personalized First Communion thing and put it all together.



That's Lovely L in the frame; I was going to print out T Bub's First Communion picture to put in the boy frame, but I was running out of ink.



After I was finished, I realized these could be used for almost any type of occasion. How about graduations?



1994?!? Okay... in the interest of allowing me to preserve my own delusions, let's not add up just how long ago that was ; )

Linked up here for more awesome craftiness!