Pregnant Belly Cake

Here is a major example of my mother and I getting in over our heads. A good family friend is having a baby this coming November and she loved this cake. We called around to get estimates for the baby shower and the prices ranged between $70-130. Wow! So we decided the the two of us would make the cake instead(neither of us have decorated a cake before). Through some trial and error and with a 6 year old willing to get messy, we were pretty successful.

What You'll Need

3 cake mixes

3 tubs of icing

1 box of fondant

Coloring

Wonder-mold pan

Sports ball pan

Rice Krispie

1. Start by cooking all of your cakes. You will need a sheet cake, 2 of the wonder mold shapes and one half circle

2. Dye 2 tubs of icing the color you need for your sheet cake

3. Ice the cake with 1 1/4 tubs and put in the refrigerator

4. Arrange your wonder mold shapes and your semi circle to look like the mid-section of a pregnant woman

5. Put enough icing on these to allow fondant to stick

6. Cut a foot shape out of your rice krispie and place onto your belly where you want it

7. Dye your fondant(3/4 will go the dress and 1/4 will be your straps)

8. Roll out your fondant for the dress so that it is like a rectangle and then wrap around the rolling pin

9. Lay the fondant across your mid-section and use your hand to make it stick to the icing in the shape you want

10. Cut off the excess leaving enough on the bottom so that it looks like a dress

11. Using your strap fondant cut out a 1.5 inch strap with pointed ends and lay between belly and wonder mold

12. Cut out 2 more straps and attack to top of wonder molds and bring up to overlap to look like the straps on the top of the dress

13. Pull sheet cake out of the fridge and use remaining icing and straight spatula to ice sheet cake to look smooth

14. Using 2 spatulas pick up your mid section and place on top of the edge of your sheet cake so that it is angled diagonally pointed toward the corner

15. allow fondant of dress to flow of the side

16. Add icing border and flowers if desired(can also add glitter and other various decor)

Easy hand-made mini scarfs

My love for crafts started a couple years back and really took off a year ago. So I finished a few projects before I started blogging in the spring. These are one of those project. They were really cute christmas gifts that the kids loved and really fun to customize per kids preferences.

What You'll Need

Knee high socks

button

thread

trim

Velcro

1. Cut feet off the knee high socks and turn inside out

2. Connect each of the cut off ends and sew together

3. Cut out square of velcro and sew onto the where they will link together on the inside

4. Sew on button over the front velcro are to hide the stitching

5. Cut out trim long enough to sew into the opened bottoms. (I doubled mine to make the trim look thicker)

6. Place trim into the opened bottom and sew closed

DIY Body Scrub

Going to the spa has to  be one of my absolute favorite things in the world. It is probably one of the most expensive things as well. So sometimes the best thing to do is create a spa at home and these are really good to soften the skin.  I also think homemade body scrub makes an awesome, inexpensive, and not to mention an easy gift. We used them as prizes for the last baby shower I helped put together and they were very popular.

What You Need

Epson Salt

Organic Cane Sugar

Oatmeal

Non-scented lotion

Non-scented moisturizing soup

Baby oil

Vaseline

Baking Soda

Food coloring

Essential oils or fragrance

Mason Jar

1. Grind down 1/8 cup oatmeal

2. Mix together 2 tbsp lotion, 2 tbsp soap, oatmeal, 2 tbsp vaseline, 1 tbsp baking soda, 2 oz baby oil

3. Add 60 drops of fragrance

4. Mix in 3 cups Epson Salt and 1/4 cup organic sugar

5. Add food coloring and additional fragrance if necessary

6. Seal in mason jar for long term storage or any other air tight jar
7. Decorate jar for gifting

Child's White Coat

So this was one of my wing-it kind of projects. I thought it would be pretty busy, but it definitely was pretty challenging. Though it definitely turned out pretty well after a lot of work and frustration and she was very excited to get it. Extremely excited about her stethoscope to go with it and spent all of her birthday party diagnosing everyone at her party from weird sounds to having too big of belly-buttons. Definitely a good project to finish. If there is enough interest I will try to come up with a full tutorial for the coat, otherwise I definitely suggest trial and error and lots of patience. 

Breakfast at Tiffany's Tulle Dress

The decision to make this dress is linked to an adorable story of a 6 year old who told me she MUST have this dress and she would need to dye her hair brown of course. With her birthday right around the corner, I figured it would be a perfect excuse to try my hand at tutu dresses. This was a pretty simple project and super fun for little girl dress-up or maybe even big-girl halloween.

Things you need

Black tulle-I used 20 yards of 6 in across for hers

Black elastic

1yd black satin

Black ribbon

1. Measure around the chest under the armpits. Take this number and subtract 3 inches and measure out this length of elastic

2. Sew your elastic together at the ends

3. Measure from right below the under arms down to the knees, double it, and add 3 inches. This will be the length you need for the tulle.

4. Cut your tulle into 6 in strips the length you calculated above

5. Put your elastic around something round (I use my leg)

6. Fold each piece of tulle in half, put the middle under the elastic, pull the end through the loop that is under the elastic to make a knot until you have down this with each piece of elastic

7. Measure out your satin so that it will fit around as a kind of slip(this is optional but keeps the dress from being itchy) and sew together edges. You kind of want to make it V shaped so they have enough room to move around

8. Sew the top of your satin tube onto your elastic

9. Add two loops of satin on each side of the tube for your ribbon to go through later

10. Measure your shoulder length and cut out  4 pieces this size and sew where you want your shoulders to go
11. Tie your shoulder ribbons together, these are adjustable which makes it nice to make a perfect fit.
12. Straighten out your tulle and then run your ribbon through your loops and tie around the back
13. Pair with tiara, black shoes, and red fingernail polish :D

Updates and such

I have been MIA for about a month now and it has definitely been a very busy month as far as medical school education is concerned. For the first time in weeks, I have been able to sit down and actually finish a project. There is quite a few things I am working on to look forward to. Within the next couple of months I should be posting tutorials for a panel quilt, child's white coat, tutu dress, child's witch costume, child's cape, diaper cake, and the start of christmas decorations. I am already making big plans for my hand-made christmas and I'm very excited to share it with everyone else. This last week a made a Family Birthday Display for my sister and it turned out great. I tried to stick to one color scheme since there were less families to include and I really liked the result. You can find the tutorial here.

Easy Chicken Tenders

So this is not the most inventive recipe in the world, but it is extremely easy and much less fattening and in my opinion much tastier than regular chicken tenders. More meat less breading.

What You Need

Shake and Bake

1.5 lbs of chicken breast tenderloins

Milk

1. Preheat oven to 350F and place cover baking sheet with foil

2. Pour some milk into a bowl and pour your shake and bake into a different bowl(you can use the bag but then the shake and bake will clump together and you won't have enough for all of your chicken.)

3. Dip each tenderloin into the milk and then cover in shake and bake

4. Bake in oven for 20 minutes