Felt Christmas Cookies!

After I made my niece's Felt food Pizza restaurant kit.  I have a  new  love of sewing felt food!  Since I am patiently anxiously waiting for my baby to arrive, I have found sewing a nice relaxing activity for when I feel like I need to sit down for a little bit. 

I decided to sew a Children's Christmas Cookie bakery! ( glass of milk not included)

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Tips on dipping cake pops!

Below is a photo of the cake pops that ALMOST failed! 

I have no fancy decorations on these. I was happy just to get them done.  My husband was having a Halloween lunch at work, so I took this as a chance to attempt cake pops.  I looked online for some recipes, and decided to make pumpkin cake pops!

As the instructions said. I made a spiced cake and mixed the cake with pumpkin puree.

I rolled the cake balls and froze them overnight.

Successful so far......not so fast!  It was time to melt the chocolate so I could dip them.

First. I attempted to melt wilton orange chocolate morsels.  FAIL. those burned in no time.

Then. I attempted to melt the dark chocolate in the house.  FAIL. It was WAY too thin to actually coat the cake pop. .

Here are some lovely pictures of my kitchen sink after melting all the chocolate in my house didn't work!.  I used up all the chocolate in my house.  I ALMOST gave up on these!!

Solution:

I hopped online and found a forum on melting chocolate for dipping. The secret is adding Shortening to the chocolate! This thins out the chocolate enough to dip things. AND unlike oil or butter, It dries thick with the chocolate!!

( I really could have used this tip during my chocolate covered pretzel disaster last Christmas)

and THATS the secret of successful cake pop dipping! ( or any kind of chocolate dipping!)

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Like?   Check out my Dark Chocolate Apple Pops

Homemade Tortilla Chips in 15 minutes!

I have always loved warm tortilla chips you can get at Mexican restaurants.  Especially when you see just a little bit of oil on them still and they are salty.  I am not sure if Mexican restaurants fry or bake their chips, but I tried this simple recipe and was able to make warm baked tortilla chips. 

I just used soft yellow tortillas, salt and olive oil. ( I am sure canola oil would be good as well).

I cut out the tortillas into triangles.

Brushed them lightly with olive oil. and salted them. ( I like mine rather salty)

I baked them at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes ( check them every few minutes)



Wa la! Here they are! These are excellent! I may never buy bagged chips again!

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Fun Halloween treats with wrapped candy!

I LOVE Halloween and I REALLY love all of the cute Halloween treats that I have been seeing in the " Blog World" these past weeks.  I do plan on making some homemade Halloween treats for my husband to take to his Halloween lunch at work. 

However, What about cute things to give to Trick or Treaters?  These days you cannot just make cute homemade treats to give out.  I would not want my child bringing home non wrapped goods unless I knew exactly where they came from. 

My baby is due on Halloween, so I might not get to give out candy this year, I decided to make some " Boo Bags" for some neighbors.  Since I was going to be dropping these off anonymously, I wanted to make sure I was using store bought goods.  

First I made these cute monster Hershey bars!

I started with a king sized Hershey bars. I attached some craft foam with double sided tape.

I then decorated the candy bars with googly eyes and Puffy Paint. I played around with the designs. I went with a monster theme.



Next, I purchased chocolate eye balls and made cute little favors with the eye balls.  These are easy and a little special something you can give to your Trick or Treators.

Hope you like these! I am sure there are many other treats you can come up with using candy that is wrapped! ( its sad that these rules have been established, because everyone loves homemade treats. But thats just the era in which we live)

Baby shower favor idea

Back in August my mom's three younger sisters threw me the most amazing baby shower and it meant the world to me!! I really wanted to make some cute favors for the shower, just so I could let everyone know how much I appreciated everything. 

My first indication would be to make something homemade. But the venue we had the shower at had a rule that anything you brought in could not be homemade.  I brainstormed for a long time to come up with something cute!

You can imagine the check out kids reaction at the grocery store, when a pregnant lady came in and purchased 30 Full sized Baby Ruth's!!! ( It was funny)

This was REALLY simple to make.  I just cut out pieces of card stock and used puffy paint to draw my last name and taped them onto the candy bars. 

I think they went over really well.  We almost used " Sugar Babies" instead of  Baby Ruths. However, I don't really like Sugar Babies and my mom and I decided that Sugar babies would be cute for a shower or a birthday party for twins. 

Hope you like!

Play pizza restaurant in a box

WOW. It has been a LONG time since I have posted! My husband and I moved over labor day, and we have been spending time getting our new house around ( and getting ready for the baby, who will make his/her appearance sometime around Halloween)

Well my darling niece Audrey is turning 4 this weekend, and since I made a Homemade detective kit  present for her brother for his birthday, I wanted to make a special birthday present for her as well. 

Before this project, my sewing history was sewing a few buttons.  I have always had a phobia of sewing.  I think its because sewing machines scare me a little bit.  ( I did not use a sewing machine for this)

I looked online at felt pizza pictures. I did not follow a pattern for this.  After I got the hang of sewing these, It became easier and self explanatory.  ( I'm not a left brainer, a pattern wouldn't help me much anyway)

The toppings that I made for the Audrey's pizza are Green peppers, basil, mushrooms, onions, black olives and pepperoni. 

The peppers by far took the longest!

I also found these " restaurant checks" at Wal Mart.  I thought these would be fun to help Audrey play restaurant. 

I might of gotten a little carried away... ( my crafts often do get carried away) .  I had extra felt left over. I made breadsticks and cookies for Audrey's restrauant as well.  I also just purchased 1/2 yard of fabric for Audrey to use as a table cloth in her restaurant. 

I also made up menus. Here is a picture of the printed Menu.

I placed all the toppings into little bags, and put them into the box that I decorated.  I am going to send this in the mail.

Hopefully she will like it!! I am no longer afraid of sewing!! My mom thinks I need to try to use a " sewing machine" next!

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