Presents for Jolie

I LOVE to sew lately, especially for my favorite people, one of them being my niece Jolie! That amazing little girl turned 3 on May 29 so I tried to come up with some really fun things for her! I started with a shirt with her name on it. Because let's face it, she's not going to find anything premade with her name on it!

I really love the way this turned out! Super simple, but very cute :)

I also really love this flower!! I have made them before to stick on a couple of crafts, so I thought it would be a great way to dot her J.

Next, I bought some cute little shorts at Walmart & added a ruffle to the bottom to match the shirt.

I don't have a ruffler foot for my sewing machine so I had to do it a different way. I turned up the tension to high & the stitch length to the longest. You just sew straight down, & it ruffles itself!! It took some practice, but once I got the kinks it out, it was easy!

This was my second shirt. A cupcake! I know, no surprise!! I think it is soo cute! Aunt Kelly might have to make herself a matching one :)

The top of the cupcake is one fabric, the bottom is two, a green underneath the pink. I did a straight stitch around it & added buttons as sprinkles !

And more ruffles, this time on the sleeves! It's like once I started ruffling, I didn't want to stop :)

This was the last shirt I decided to do for the birthday girl because she's turning 3! (obviously)

I LOVE this!! This is the back of the 3 shirt. Stink is Jolie's nickname from Uncle Drew. She laughs & laughs every time he calls her that. I was in the process of making Drew a shirt that says Double Stink but I got the wrong size, so it didn't get finished in time for the party :(

My last present idea, was total last minute! I saw the towel monogramming on a blog I was surfing & had to do it! I thought it was perfect for a little girl fixing to start swim lessons!

Jolie Kay Lankford

So, that's it! It took a lot of time but it was definitely worth it!! Especially when you see a face like this when she opens her Stink shirt!

And mom sent me this picture from yesterday. She was babysitting & Jolie showed up in her custom Aunt Kelly outfit. I can not tell you how excited I am to see her in it! Mom said she was being a total little show off! I love being her aunt!!

I did do the cupcakes for her party, but I haven't had a chance to post them yet. Coming very soon! Think Disney's Tangled!

Archie Parr

Our friends Kristen & Jennifer threw a baby shower for our friends Amanda & Chris Parr this weekend. The are expecting a boy on July 4th, named Archie. As is the case with our hectic lives, unfortunately the shower in College Station was the same day as my neice Jolie's 3rd birthday party, in Sinton.

 Of course, I got my sewing machine busy for both Archie & Jolie's presents! I sent my present for Archie with Jen & spent the weekend in Sinton with my family & the birthday girl!

 Archie got a onesie with his name on it, a onesie with a coordinating tie, styrofoam letters for the bath & this really cool frog that gets hung up by the tub for all the cool baby toys!

I hated not being there, but I hope Archie will like his personalized clothes!! I checked out Amanda's blog The Parr Family Adventures this morning & she already had pictures posted! And yes, I'm super excited that there's one of mommy Amanda holding up the Archie onesie!! By the look of the picutres, Jen & Kristen did a great job! The decorations are super cute!!

Practice, Practice

So I haven't made roll-out sugar cookies in a while, and after using that pre-made stuff for my sugar cookie fries, I decided it was time. The icing that I grew up using is a mixture of just powdered sugar & water. Super easy & soo good! Only problem is, it doesn't pipe well. Since I'm into trying new things, I have been searching the internet for a good royal icing recipe that I can use to pipe.

I have tried one recipe from the blog Sweetopia twice, once with my Valentine's Day cookies and again at my friend Kristen's shower. Both times, the icing turned out okay, but not great. I can't seem to get the consistencies correct, especially for flooding. So after more blog searching, I decided to try a new recipe from Sweet Sugar Belle.

Hers used less powdered sugar & a spray bottle. Interesting, I know. I'm not sure if it's because I was a little more practiced or patient, but this time, it worked! I broke the icing down into two batches. One, I made thicker for piping & the other had a much thinner consistency for flooding. Since these were just for fun, I decided to use my favorite shapes that would be pretty to pipe. I went with hearts, three kinds of flowers, & an ice cream cone, just for summer! I used very bright & vibrant colors.

It was definitely a learning process. Do you pipe the border & then fill it immediately? Can you layer wet icing on wet icing or does it need to be completely dry? You can see in the ones I did, there was definitely a learning curve!

I really liked the tulips! Very pretty! :)

These little flowers on stems are by far my favorite. Love the yellow petal with a pink center!

These cookies are alot of work! I'm thinking next time, I might try a combination of my old icing & the new royal icing. Flat ice with mine in one color & then just use the royal icing for piping. That would make it a little easier. We'll see! And since today is the last day of school for Drew, they went to work with him. Enjoy!

My Kind of Cocktail!

This is my excitement from last night, Cupcake Cocktails! I saw these originally on the Hello Cupcake blog, as a special creation for their first newsletter. I loved them & printed all the details out immediately for future use. Well, that was months ago, I can't find the print out & they don't have the instructions online anymore! Frustrating, but I can do this! Well, I did it, but they are not quite as spectacular as I planned them to be. It was definitely a learning experience!

 First, I am going to have to assume that they used smaller, party martini glasses, not real ones. I think this is true because each of my martinis has two cupcakes in it, and it took two whole cans of frosting to fill up just three glasses! I know lots of people like icing, but that is extreme!

Of course, I started with pink. I took 1/2 can store bought icing (sorry, lazy!) & melted it in the microwave. After coloring it a great shade of pink, I poured it about half way into the glass. Then I added one full size strawberry cupcake. This is when I realized I had a lot of glass to fill up! I took another cupcake & cut it into pieces, to fill around the sides of the full cupcake. This is where I messed up. I immediately added more frosting to fill it up. Because I didn't let the cupcakes set in the bottom icing that was firming up, it started to rise to the top. I was able to push it down, add more frosting & kind of smooth it out after about 10 minutes.

Next came green. I know I am totally impatient when I want to complete something, but you would have thought I had learned from my pink mistake. But of course, no, I was in a hurry & still didn't let the cupcake set long enough. For some reason, I could not even get this one to even out as good as the pink. Ugh! So obvious, with the cupcake coming through the surface! Notice the clear sprinkles on pink & green? I used them to try & conceal some of the bumps & make the top look more uniform. Worked pretty well!

And then there's blue! Finally, I got it right!! This is what my cupcake cocktails were supposed to look like. Perfectly concealed cupcake, smooth, flat surface, gorgeous! So cliche, but the third time's the charm!

Isn't it pretty?! So glad at least one turned out the way it was supposed to!!

These may not be perfectly smooth, but I still think they're pretty cute!

The best part was adding the candy decorations! Can you name the candy? Gummy life savers, jelly beans & gobstoppers!

These were so much fun to do, when I was doing it right! Okay, that's going to be it for the week. I'm planning on making something special next week for Drew to take to school for their last couple of days. We'll see!

Cupcake Sliders?!

I have been super busy lately with work, sewing, showers & my sister-in-law's wedding. I feel like I haven't got to be cupcake creative in forever & I have so many ideas built up in my head! I decided that I was just going to make time to make it happen this week! It ended up working out perfect since I got the baby shower cupcake order for Archie. It is way easier to bake some extras for fun when you already have everything pulled out & going! The idea for these hamburger cupcakes & sugar cookie french fries came from one of my favorite blogs- Bakerella. I saw them here on her blog almost 6 months ago!

The "buns" are extra strawberry cupcakes from the Archie order. The "meat" is a brownie! Add some orange food coloring (I was out of yellow) for cheese, green for lettuce & red for ketchup, & you have a cupcake slider!

The french fried are sugar cookies! As a side note- I decided to do this last minute yesterday at lunch so I thought, let's be easy & grab the pre-made sugar cookie mix. BIG mistake! I have never worked with pre-made before & never will again! It took me more time to get the dough rolled out then it would have taken me to make my own!! Okay, back to the fries- see the "salt", it's sugar of course! Let me tell you, just like real french fries, these were addicting!

We ended up making 9 hamburgers. 2 went to the neighbors, 1 with me to work today & the rest with Drew to school. What am I going to do with all our left over goodies during the summer?!

I got a little carried away with my ingredients, but I wanted to make sure you could see them when the top bun was on!

Table for two?

Okay, so as a disclaimer if you actually tried one of these this go around, Drew & I are pretty sure it wasn't a great flavor combination. Chocolate brownie, strawberry cupcakes, green homemade icing, with red & orange store bought icing. I was just trying to use what I had & not run to Kroger!! Sorry!

I have 6 more strawberry cupcakes sitting at my house waiting on me for tonight. Going to do something with margarita glasses! Get excited, pictures hopefully tomorrow!

A shower for Archie

I got a text from my friend Amanda last week to check my cupcaking availability. She is pregnant with baby Archie & the girls she works with at UPA were giving her a baby shower. They happened to ask her if she knew anyone who made cupcakes. Luckily for both of us, she thought of me! They requested 50 strawberry cupcakes, in blue wrappers, with white butter cream icing, topped with blue sprinkles & a 25 blue "boy" toppers. Simple, but very pretty!!

I really like how the blue sprinkles pop on the white icing!

The toppers were cut with my cricut using the Cupcake Lite cartridge. So much fun!

50 is a lot of cupcakes! I tried to get them all in one shot, but that wasn't going to happen! So, here's 12 good ones :)

Last shot I promise! I'm still working on my picture taking skills for blog posting, & am steadily improving! My husband isn't always exactly happy with where I set up my little set, but I'm the one who cleans up, so he just has to deal!! :)

Congratulations to Amanda & Chris!! Can't wait to meet Archie!

Waiting on Nate

My cousin Bobbi & her husband Roy are expecting a baby boy at the end of June. They won't reveal his full name yet, but the part of the name we do know is Nate J Rodriguez. It is their first baby & we are all super excited for them! The shower I helped host was two weekends ago. I got baby Nate's present completed early, thanks to Aunt Sharon & her sewing machine she let me borrow! I was looking forward to the shower especially since we had decided to do "Create your own onesies" instead of the typical baby shower games. (For future reference, I am so not into those kind of games!) I'm sure lots of people have heard of this, or done this before, but I actually saw the idea first on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. :) My idea means it was my job to gather all the materials to make it happen. I bought lots of different fabric paint pens/markers & about 20 onesies in assorted sizes and colors. The idea was that at the shower, everyone who's interested, grabs a onesie & paint & makes a special creation for baby Nate to wear. Anything goes! But, about 2 weeks before the shower, I found out that I would be going to Paris for work on the shower weekend. I was bummed that I would miss the shower & my great idea in action, but I mean, Paris. Sorry Bobbi!!

For my presnet, I appliqued 3 onesies for baby Nate & spiced up an ordinary wipes case! The first one is a black onesie with his name stitched on it :).

I got the idea for this tie onesie from all over blogland, I can't find the specific post! Drew had me looking for argyle fabric, specifically for daddy Roy. He wears it alot! Drew hand drew the tie for me & I just copied & cut it out! Super easy & way cute!

This "N" onesie is cute too, but the back is the best part!

Bobbi & Roy LOVE their dogs. So hopefully, Nate will too!

I LOVE this wipes case! As you can see, I used the same fabrics throughout the onesies & wipes case so that everything would match for Nate! I got the idea for the Wipes Case from my friend Jennifer at Paisley Pink Polka Dots.

Drew was my guinea pig onesie decorator. Anyone who knows us, knows that Drew is really the more creative & artistic one of us! Also not surprising, he decided to do a Dallas Cowboys onesie for baby Nate. The awesome part of this is that my Grandmother Kelly, who will be Nate's Great Kelly, is also a HUGE Dallas Cowboy fan. So this onesie by Drew came with instructions, "to be worn when you visit Great Kelly".

Here's the artist with his work. Like the way he's trying to be all serious? Yea right!! I think he did a great job for his first time with fabric paint!

Word from the shower is that Drew's onesie was in the running for best design!

Also, my mother keeps promising she is going to send me the pictures from the shower showcasing some of the amazing custom onesies, but I am tired of waiting on them. I'll post them when I get them!

Baby Boys

It seems every pregnant woman I know or hear of lately is having a boy! Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVE boys :), but sometimes it's hard for this princess to wrap her head around blue decorating! My cousin Bobbi (one of the above mentioned pregnant women), teaches at the high school in College Station & was helping throw one of her fellow pregnant teachers a baby shower. Bobbi is normally a super baker (duh, she's related!), but due to the fact that she's 8 months pregnant, she called me! Bobbi requested 48 full size cupcakes, half chocolate, half yellow buttermilk, all with blue buttercream icing. For decorating, Bobbi wanted very simple, flat iced with clear sugar sprinkles & white sugar pearls.
I had just purchased the Cricut Cupcake Wrappers cartridge and was itching to use it. I told her that we were going to make wrappers that were onesies, to dress the cupcakes up. Lucky for her, I hadn't tried it out before I suggested it, because it took WAY longer than expected to cut out 48 cupcake wrapper onesies!!

Anyway, they turned out adorable!! And the best part was, because Bobbi felt the need to be around something sweet (yes, me & the cupcakes), she even came over to help decorate!! We had lots of fun decorating & eating the extras, until Drew told us our mouths were blue. O well!!

And meet my cousin Bobbi! Love you!!