It's a Dog's Life

My friends who live next door have two beautiful American Bulldogs. These are the sweetest dogs, and they are spoiled just a little bit rotten!

When Mufasa (their "first born") turned one, they did what any parents of a one year old would do - had a birthday party!

And I had the honors of making the cake. I had seen a few pictures of cute cakes online and used them as inspiration to come up with Mufasa's cake.



And I couldn't go to a birthday party without a gift! So I made some doggy treats and then altered this marshmallow creme jar to put them in.



(Sorry the pictures aren't very clear.)

Here is Mufasa with his eye on the cake:


Of course, he didn't get to have any of it. But he and Maya both enjoyed the dog treats!

And here's the whole family:


Denise, Maya, Mufasa, Jorge & Marlon
Aren't they cute?

Let's Try This Again!

Oh My Word!

Has it REALLY been almost a year since I posted something here? I don't know what happened with me! It's been slow - I haven't made tons of stuff, but I still can't believe I haven't posted in so long!

So...I decided to give my blog a little mini-makeover and a fresh start. I found this cute header at The Cutest Blog on the Block and altered it to add my blog name. I don't dislike butterflies, but it probably wouldn't have been my first choice, however, I liked the colors and everything else about it, so it works!

I won't make any promises that I'll be good about blogging regularly. I can't even seem to blog regularly on my main blog anymore! I think one of my problems is I discovered Facebook a while back, and I tend to spend a LOT of time on there!

But I'm at least going to TRY to get back to blogging more!

I'll start by posting a card I made for my daughter for her 4th birthday. One of her favorite shows is "Yo Gabba Gabba" and her favorite character is Foofa. So she wanted a Foofa cake for her birthday.

Since I was planning to do that, I had to make a Foofa card as well! I found an image online and used it as a pattern to make the card as well as the image on the cake.

Here's the card:



And of course, the cake! Ruthi wanted a cookie cake, so this is what I did:

And you know, I didn't notice until just now, as I posted this, that I forgot to add the eyelashes on the cake! I was in such a hurry that day, finishing the cake just before the party. I can't believe I didn't even notice it! I don't think it looked that odd until I looked at the card and cake pictures at the same time! Oh well...Ruthi certainly didn't care!

First Birthday

Yes, I realize it's been well over a month since I've posted here. This poor blog has been very neglected. But honestly, I just haven't done much in the way of creating lately. I've just been quite busy around here and haven't made much time for crafting. Hopefully now that I seem to be getting back to my routines, I'll have more time and will be able to give this blog a bit more attention.

For today, this isn't paper crafting, but it's the latest thing I've accomplished. My friend's little girl turned one last week and had her first birthday party on Sunday. She asked me to do the cake, and I gladly did.

First, here is the invitation she sent out:


She wanted the cake to reflect the invitation. This is what I came up with:

This was only my second time ever working with fondant. And the first time was years ago on a plain round cake. I HATE the taste of fondant. However, I found a recipe online for marshmallow fondant and decided to give it a try. It was so yummy, so I used it. I really like how this turned out. And everyone seemed to like the way the fondant tasted too!

I also made a small cake for the birthday girl. I didn't want to use fondant on it, because it would hinder her from digging in. I wish though that I had had the forethought to mix up some green icing and I would have iced the small cake in green instead of purple. Then it would have looked opposite of the large cake, and that would have been cute! Though, I don't think Hannah cared one bit, as she dug right in.

Here's the little one next to the big one:



And here is the birthday girl. Do you think she likes her cake?

Have a Funshine Day!

My daughter LOVES the Care Bears. She watches the "Big Wish" movie ALL the time. Her absolute favorite is Funshine Bear.

So for her birthday, it was only fitting to make her a Funshine Bear card. So I found an image of Funshine online. I printed it out on cardstock and him out.

I stamped the party hat, cut it out and placed it on Funshine's head. Then I stamped the balloons, cut them out and put them in place. I attatched some floss from the balloons to the hand. I cut the 3 with my Fiskars Shape Cutter and added a little pen stitching.

I think it turned out pretty cute. It's not very girly, but Funshine bear is a boy, and yellow, so I couldn't really "girl it up" too much. I chose a blue background to make it feel like the sky was in the background. She loved it, and that's all that REALLY matters!



And no birthday is complete without the cake! We had been talking about having a "Tea Party Birthday" and a "Tea Party Cake" for WEEKS. About a week before her birthday, she totally changed her mind and insisted she wanted a Care Bear Birthday. So she did.

I planned to do a more elaborate cake... a sheet cake with clouds and a big rainbow in the background and Funshine bear frolicking around. Well, I kind of ran out of time, seeing how I would have had to make some of the parts at least a couple days in advance. So I took the easy way out (for me.) I went and bought the character pan and just did it that way. I stayed up most of the night before her party baking and decorating it. But she LOVED it.



And here's the Birthday Girl!

It's Fall Y'all!

Finally! The weather yesterday and today has been fabulous! Quite nippy in the mornings, and nice and cool all day. I've had our windows open and enjoying the fresh air. It's actually been cool enough that the first part of these two days, I've been wearing a sweatshirt! I love it! It's really making me want to go camping!

Anyway, it's gotten me in the mood to make something with the fall theme. And now that I've "gotten my hands dirty" again, hopefully some creativity will come back to me!

First up, I made these candy corn jars just for fun. I'll end up giving them to someone, just not sure who yet. Super simple, and self explanatory I think. The stamp was from the $1 bin at Michaels, and I just inked part of it. The papers and ribbon were some I've had around for a while, but most likely came from M's as well.


And with some of the same paper, I made these cards. This is the first time I've done 3x3 cards, and I really like this size! They will perfectly accompany the jars above. Again - the stamps I used were in the $1 bin!



That's all for now. I hope to have some time this weekend to work on some more things - if I'm not outside all weekend enjoying the cooler weather!!

The Wedding Cake

I'm finally getting around to posting the picture of the wedding cake I made for my friend Penny. She got married the day before Easter. I wasn't feeling well, with all the allergy crud, but I pulled it off and was pretty happy with it. The florist made the floral arrangement for the top - I don't do flowers! All I had to do was set them on top.

Lingerie Shower Goodies

I posted the invitations I made for my girlfriend's lingerie shower earlier this month, and finally had the shower this weekend. Now that it's over, I can post the things I made for her.
I made a 'honeymoon' paint can filled with goodies for them to take with them. I included 3 frappucino bottles - one with homemade bath salts, one with bath gel and the third with peanut M&M's (her favorite), and two candles, all with the same papers/ribbons I used on the can. I also included some other non-altered things in the can.
I loved the rose patterned paper - not sure who makes it. The solid paper is from The Paper Company and is actually Metallic Jewel Bronze and is much prettier in person. It looks quite bland in the picture. All the ribbons are from Michael's.


I also made this candle for them. I found a great tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers and couldn't believe how easy this was! I messed up the first time, but quickly learned how to get it just right so I started on a new candle. I really love the way it turned out. I cut out a place in the top to insert a tealight so they can actually use the candle, and just replace the tealight. That idea came from Splitcoast as well.

I made these cute little favors for the guest. It is a bag of homemade bath salts. I made the topper using MSWord and just stapled them to the bags.






And this is the cake. It was very yummy if I do say so myself. It was chocolate with cream cheese and raspberry filling. The idea for decorating it came from Family Circle magazine - Sept. 1998 issue. I had this put aside knowing one day I wanted to make it. The chocolate wraps were a bit of a pain to make, and didn't turn out completely perfect, but it worked. I don't think I'll ever do it again due to the fits it gave me! But everyone liked it, and it did taste good!