Minecrafty

I decided to further fuel my son's addiction to Minecraft by making him a creeper pillow. For those of you who don't know a kid who has been sucked into this, skip this post. Lol. 

I plan on doing a tutorial but until I get that together... Here is the finished product. 

Cupcakes - Pikachu

These are cupcakes I made of Pikachu (one of the characters in Pokemon - a show on the Cartoon Network). My nephews were obsessed with Pokemon (12 years ago) and my son got that gene passed down to him. I made these for this 6th birthday party at school . This photo is only half the batch because I ran out of those gummy candies that I used for the ears.

When I decided to make these, it was late, I was tired, it was raining hard outside and I had no cake mix. So, after going out to buy the mix, you can imagine I didn't think it through very well. The cake and face were simple. I used yellow frosting and black Wilton pre-made icing. For the rosy cheeks, I used M&M's.

The ears were the challenge. Since it was so late, I wanted to just use stuff we had in the house.  I tried: cutting graham crackers (too crumbly), cut corners of Madeline cookies (too soft), Gold fish (these actually worked but I didn't want to ice them, and they felt too small), and cut corners of marshmallows (these worked but, again, I didn't want to ice them to make them yellow.

Nothing I had at home actually worked. So I gave up, went to the store tonight and bought those gummy, sugar-coated wedge candies. The problem is, I needed 30 cupcakes and the box only had about 18 yellow wedges. So, I guess I have to go back to the store in a little while. 

The look on my son's face as the yellow cupcakes took shape into Pikachu was priceless and make it all worth the effort. 

Holiday Cookie Packages

For years, my aunt and uncle hosted all the family gatherings. Their home was centrally located for all of us and it was the largest place - which was needed to hold the up to 50 people that would often gather. Their home, though, was a Chinese laundromat in an increasingly deteriorating neighborhood. They lived on the second floor and kept a large apartment on the third floor that used to be rented out. They'd built their lives there for over 50 years, and even though the area and elements worsened, they kept the extended family close. This year, they finally sold the business, the building and closed up shop. They are in their mid-nineties. Yes, they worked up until they closed.   

Now that the laundry is gone, its harder and harder to get together with my cousins. Where we used to visit each other at the laundry once a month, it wasn't until Christmas that we were all able to hook up.

After much schedule organizing, we met at a local restaurant. I was excited to see everyone even if it was just a few hours and I made some cookies for each family and packaged them, personalizing the labels and the contents for everyone. 

I made a ton of cookies over the holidays, probably around 15 dozen and 8 different kinds. Here are a few that  I packaged up:
Shortbread, chocolate bar cookies, glazed oatmeal, powdered sugar greek balls.

Recipes: Shortbread are Martha Stewart. I got them from the ipad app. Greek Balls (see previous post). The others, I will try to come back and post either links or resources one day. :) 

 

Of course, I snuck a few samples for myself. Yum.

For the packaging, I admit, I cheated a bit. My mom has a restaurant in Myrtle Beach, SC, and I got these cool kraft take out boxes from her restaurant supplier. I made the labels and Xyroned them on. I used a corner rounder cutter from Michael's to give the labels a more finished look.
The kraft bags are wax lined bakery bags from Uline. I also made the gift card holders for the teens/tweens with an iTunes gift card and their initials cut out of the back.

Holiday Gift Card Holder

The not-so-recent chain of events which resulted in my losing all the scrapbook pages I'd created for 2011 and some of 2010 also made me lose some of the photos. I have also been less than organized with the photos I've taken since then. So, I'm not surprised that I just discovered photos of the gift card holder I made for my son's teacher and the teaching assistant.

I used red card stock and printed a patterned insert using some of the scrapbooking stash I managed to find. I think it was from MScraps but I don't remember.:(  Then I typed in the teacher's name and cut out the gift card pattern using my Silhouette cutting machine.

Pattern available at Silhouette's website. 

FRONT
(this sample uses left over giftwrapping paper)

BACK

Outdoor Movie Party

I can't believe that I never posted my son's 5th birthday party. It was really fun... from start to finish, beginning with the invitations I hand made. I personalized the envelopes with each child's name and invited the whole family on the inside.I want to credit the paper and template designers but my laptop fried a few months ago and I lost all my stash and all my photos. :( 

I'm pretty sure the papers were from MScraps and the template was from Simply J Studios at ScrapMatters.

Here are the invitation 'ticket', envelope and a close-up of the insert.

And here are some shots of the actual night. The kids all came in their jammies with their blankets and chairs or sleeping bags. We had a Pikachu pinata filled with toys and candy. Each kid had their own bag to fill up - and all the bags were full!

 

Each kid had their own bag to fill up - and all the bags were full!

Each kid got a few flashlight rings (a huge hit!) and glow braclets

We served Pizzas and had two cakes with Ben 10 decoration on them.

For the main feature, we set up a large canvas and projected the movie Astro Boy.

Tutorial: How to make your own cookie cutters.
WHY? Why would anyone bother doing this? See below - for the why and the how. I was inspired by a You Tube video (I think) which I've since tried to search for so I could credit her, but I couldn't, so I took a shot and making my own and thought I'd share it with you guys. 


And here are the finished cookies. I didn't have time to ice them - mostly because they were all eaten, but also because I didn't have yellow food coloring. Maybe the next batch. For the Cookie, I used Martha Stewarts recipe

The Dragon New Year ... and a giveaway

Happy Chinese New Year. This is the Year of the Dragon - MY year. :) Which, if you can do the math, means I'll be 48 at the end of the year. Yikes! With my Aunt getting older and my mom living so far away, I cooked the whole meal (well, most of it) for my family. It was surprisingly so much fun. 

Chinese New Year is akin to Thanksgiving for us. Its a time of reflection, happiness, and hope for the future. So, even if you are not Asian, Happy New Year everyone. May the luck of the Dragon spread to you all

.  

And for the occasion, I have a giveaway printable poster. Grab it here.  

I wanted to make something to go in a frame that I rotate prints in. I am also printing one for my mom's restaurant - with the addition of the restaurant name. 

GONG HAY FOT CHOY

Lego Mania

Have you ever tried to build something with lego and been frustrated by just digging around for the pieces you might need? We did. It felt like it took longer to find the pieces than it did to make anything. My husband decided to separate the bigger pieces by color after a night like this... 

 

We put them in ziplock bags and dumped them into a big box that we'd gotten. The box was perfect for just the bigger pieces but it overflowed when you added all the Legos we had into it. This is the box we started with - our neighbor had gotten 2 boxes as a gift and gave us one.

The best part of organizing the Lego is that the next morning, my 5 year old came down, pulled out all the bags, tossed them all over the floor, took out what he wanted, built his toy then - shocker - put all the pieces back into the bags, pressed the air out of the bags, zipped them back up, and put them all back in the box. What? That made it all so worth it. This is what he built. He called it Wormy and carried it around for a week.

 

But folks, that was just the lead-in ... THIS is what I really wanted to blog about. Take a look at my Lego Organization! 

Lego-Mania

 

i bought some boxes that stacked and (see the handle looking things?) they clicked on to each other so they can be carried as a group. Some of the boxes even had little trays inside to further separate into boxes. This allowed me to break them down by color and some by unique shapes. 

Mainly they were grouped by color according to the ones that had 'regular thickness' and 2 circles side-by-side. 

Here is a detail of the Yellow box. I wish this had a separator so I could keep the 2 circled pieces from the larger ones. 

 

   

(oops, I have a typo below, but its late and I'm too tired to fix it right now.)

   

Voila! My masterpiece!

I know... I call it organized, my friends are calling me uber-anal. But this is how the Legos have stayed, for months, even with my son playing with them regularly. 

So, yeah, I'm a little crazy. Yeah, it took a long time and a good bit of my Christmas break. But I LOVE it. :)

   

WHERE TO BUY IT.

TARGET: the stackable boxes that click into each other - 4 pack (was a bought at a post-Christmas sale and I haven't seen it again ), 3 pack with smaller boxes inside.

K-Mart/Wal-Mart: Baby Tackle boxes (top row), Medium Tackle boxes

Wal-mart: Largest tackle boxes (the ones that held the flat pieces)

How did we get so many Legos?

We started out with our neighbor cleaning out his aunt's house and he gave a couple of boxes to our friends. They didn't need that many so they gave us a big box. I love Lego so we were thrilled. We didn't really have any yet, so that was great. Then my sister got rid of all the ones her sons played with. That more than doubled our supple. Then, we cleaned out my aunt and uncle's home before they moved and they gave us about 4 giant box sets and the rest is organizational history. 

Over this Christmas, we did actually buy my DS some more sets. Don't laugh. But there is a new kind called Ninjago with dojos and other things from the Ninjago Spinjitzu show. 

Pinterest inpired

I have been obsessed with Pinterest lately. There is just so much inspiration on that site. You have to be invited (unless they've changed that) so if you're interested in checking it out, let me know. I love love love it.

Anyhow, I saw some photos people did of their kids with posters of the first day of school. I also saw some others with things about their kids like: favorite TV show, book, etc. I decided to combine these along with his size and other personal stats and made this photo to commemorate each year as he grows up. I just hope I remember to do this every year.

Gulp. He got so big!


(BTW - I wasn't going to put in his name but he typed it, so I wanted to keep it there. )

Office Bake Off

Today was our Baking Contest. It was such a hoot. We were cracking up the entire time. Perhaps it was all the sugar. (ya think??). Tomorrow I'll post the pics and stuff, because I have no idea what any of the names of the entries were, what awards anyone won or anything cuz we were too buzy being all loud and stuff.

I will tell you I made my Double Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti with Pistachios, and The Picky-Palate's Cinnamon Rolled sugar cookies.

One of them won something. I'm not being a tease, because I have no idea what it was it won. LOL

How is THIS for a completely useless post? LOL LOL