Trying to decide what to dress up the kids as this year didn't come to me very quickly. I certainly didn't plan to slave for hours over costumes that would probably only be worn once and likely be stained with sticky stuff, mangled, and who knows what. After shooting down the idea of Batman (for my 4 year old girl) and Robin (for my 1 year old boy), I decided to go back to basics and I couldn't resist this costume idea from MarthaStewart.com I convinced myself that I didn't really have to sew anything and it didn't really look too hard. And it wasn't. I did end up having to make the pilot's cap which could easily be found here due to time and money constraints. I'm not too fond of making up my own patterns for things so I searched high and low for a free pattern download for this very basic cap and came up with nothing. But somehow, I managed to make my own pattern in two different sizes even. And, it came out great (aside from the dreaded trip to J...

Having done the 3D pumpkin and frog cakes for my daughter's previous birthdays, I decided to do something more of a traditional cake shape but stylized this year. I thought I would do a cute polka dot and bows type of thing to tip the scales more towards a feminine balance. So a couple of days ago I came up with this idea inspired by a Meomi 's September desktop calendar that I totally loved. It didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned it and I wish I had more time to have added a couple extra details. Because I've only been doing cakes in fondant, I'm not used to making decorations with butter cream anymore so my fern leaves were very blob-y. I should have used royal icing but that pesky time thing again. Although this cake is pretty gender neutral I think it fit the "cute" requirement I was looking for. "Monkey pants" gets so excited about cake she even ate the pine cone guy. She also caused me a lot more work when I left her eating her l...

For my daughter's upcoming birthday party, I decided I might try my hand at face painting. I collected some photos from the internet I liked, check out a book at the library, and bought some face paints at the party store. The face paints are not very cheap but cheaper than hiring a face painter, right. Here's a couple of the faces I've tried so far. Now if I can only get my face painting time down to ten minutes from twenty minutes a face for the party. I think I may have to enlist a volunteer to help out too. The painting part is actually much easier than it would seem. The only thing that makes it challenging is that the canvas is constantly moving around (at least my canvas). It's not too hard to wash off, but the black takes a bit more scrubbing as the paint is grease or oil based. It makes for a fun activity especially as it gets too cold to go outside. My 3-year old thought it was "amazing" when she looked in the mirror. I even talked my husband i...