Walking thru a Winter Wonderland!

In January my daughter Sugar turned nine years old. I am the mother of a 9-year old. Holy Poop! That is just crazy to me....*sigh*
Anyways, for her birthday party this year, she requested a "Winter Wonderland" theme. Since I was still very much postpartum, I kind of skimped on the planning and decorations this year. Under normal circumstances I go all out for these things. I mean, I'm celebrating the life of my children! Why not go above and beyond?!
However, my baby girl Ballerina was born on December 27th and Sugar's birthday was January 16th so as you can tell, that left me very little time to put into the party so to save on money and to make things a little less stressful, we used a lot of our Christmas decorations for her birthday party. Basically anything that had snowmen, snowflakes, or penguins was saved and left up.

I created large 3D paper snowflakes using a ream of paper. Half of them I sprayed with blue and silver paint and we hung them from the ceiling in random places. I made smaller 3D snowflakes to line our hallway.
In addition to the paper snowflakes, I went to the local dollar store and bought a few sets of silver snowflake garland. I asked my husband to cut the garland in 1 ft sections and hang them sporadically. The decor turned out pretty good.

For birthday cakes, I usually get super psyched and create cakes, cupcakes, and icing from scratch. This time, I was literally too exhausted to make the full effort so instead I picked up some cupcakes from a local bakery and iced them with white buttercream icing. For decorations, I took a 4 lb. bag of Jolly Ranchers and separated the flavors into gallon size Ziploc baggies. I proceeded to smash the Ziploc bags until the Jolly Ranchers were broken into small pieces. Then I spread the pieces over a cookie sheet with parchment paper on it and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. This melted the candy down good. That was when I placed metal cookie cutters in the candy and allowed it to cool on a cooling rack for about 15 minutes. (Don't forget to spray the cookie cutters with non-stick cooking spray!)
When it was completely cooled, I broke the cookie cutters free and released the candy shape. I continued this process with all the Jolly Rancher flavors and placed them on top of the cupcakes as decorations.

They turned out beautiful and the kids were so excited to learn that the stars and snowflakes were candy.
Sugar loved the candy!

Happy Birthday Sugar!!!

Cutsie Hair Bow Holders

So my most recent project came as a result of my desire to save a little money. I was online searching for cutsie holders for my daughters' hair bows. Of my 5 children, 3 are girls so we have drawers full of bows that always seem to get bunched,  folded, scrunched, and molded until they are almost unrecognizable. So I started my search only to be disappointed when I saw the price tag. Some of these things were being sold for $40.00 and that didn't include shipping and handling. Ummm...no thank you. After seeing some of these bow holders I decided that I could pull this off and make some of my own.

I took my daughters shopping for fabric with me. Well I took 2 of them. (My stepdaughter, nicknames Arizona, lives 1800 miles away so she only visits twice a year.) Sugar (my 9 year old) picked out her own fabric, girly skulls behind a pattern of pink and black. Ballerina (my 6 week old) was too busy snoozing in my wrap to be bothered with any shopping questions so I chose her fabric for her.

In addition to the fabric, I picked up two rolls of grosgrain ribbon (one hot pink and one black) and two cork boards.

I bought a full yard of each fabric but ended up only needed 1/2 a yard so I'm thinking I'm going to save the other 1/2 for something fabulous in the future.

So I used my trusty staple gun to staple the fabric around the cork board like so...

After that I used the grosgrain ribbon to make a weaving pattern across the board then promptly stapled the ribbon securely to the back of the board.
Now I realize that this seems like a crud, fast way to make a bow holder but they did turn out beautiful.

Then I added what bows I could find laying around and TA DA!!

Sugar's Girly Skull Holder

Ballerina's Girly Glittery Holder

Not to shabby for a quick afternoon craft! I didn't make a bow holder for Arizona for two reasons: 1 - she isn't here but twice a year, and 2 - she rarely wears bows and when she does, she wears Sugar's.

The Awkward First...

Well here I am...out of my comfort zone. New year, new me! This year marks some very big milestones for me. You see, this year I turned 30! I'm excited. Can you tell? In addition to turning thirty, I am also trying my hand at blogging. This is my valiant attempt. Greetings!

My blog will mostly be about my different crafting and cooking projects. I am a full-time student (majoring in Elementary Education) and a stay-at-home mom to 5 beautiful kids. There are times when I have a lot of time on my hands and get to do many hands-on projects. Of course with 5 kids there are other times when I barely have time to breathe.

With all that in mind, I'd like to say thank you for making at attempt at reading this and hope that I don't bore you to tears.

Carole