Saturday, April 10, 2010

A week in review...

Oh last week was so hectic! Even though I had quite a lot going on, there is always time to be crafty...

Last Monday, my mother and I were in the car and we happened to pass by a wicker armoire that someone was throwing out. It was sitting on the curb all lonely and abandoned, so we rescued it. It really was the moral thing to do. Eight, yes I said eight, cans of white spray paint later and voila! I ditched my old broken bureau and I now was a fancy armoire.

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Please don't mind the mess around it. The photo was taken before I finished cleaning and rearranging my room. Which by the way, made me realize that I'm a HOARDER!

Here's another inside shot. I haven't hung up any clothes yet, but there's potential.
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Unfortunately I forgot to take some before pictures, but originally the paint was all chipped and it was a very dingy, yellowed color.

The next crafty thing of the week was a gift. My wonderful boyfriend bought me What's New Cupcake by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.


It's an amazing book with so many really cute ideas. On Friday I decided to make one of the designs that were classified as "EZ," meaning they were not only relatively simple, but they also only needed a few ingredients. The cupcakes that I made used M&M's to look like bake sale pies. My only regret is that I forgot to buy silver foil cupcake liners, as recommended by the book.

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The book recommends cutting the corner off of a ziplock bag and using that to pipe the "crust" around the pie. I couldn't quite get the hand of it, so I cheated and used a star tip and a pastry bag. However I did use the ziplock bag method for the lines across the pie.

Instead of buying a bag of M&M's in a single color, which were really pricey, I went with two bags of the regular kind. I did get to spend some fun time separating the candy by color into bags.

Enjoy my cherry, blueberry, and lemon pies!

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Sunday, April 4, 2010

happy easter!

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning to make easter cupcakes. I found my inspiration in one of my favorite crafty baking books, Hello Cupcake by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.



I settled upon the design called "Rabbit Holes." The directions seemed pretty clear and I already had a lot of the candy needed, which was a major plus! One odd thing was that the directions called for white circus peanuts, which apparently do not exist anywhere, only at some obscure online retailer. I bought orange circus peanuts instead and dipped them in white chocolate (which I thinned out a little bit with shortening after my chick pop experience).

Here are the fruits of my labor:
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For the toes, the book called for chocolate covered sunflower seeds. I used mini chocolate chips instead.

Here is a closeup of the "grassy" cupcakes. I originally piped the frosting to look like grass, but it was too soft and got all droopy. (I bought "whipped" frosting by mistake). Luckily, I had some shredded coconut that saved the day and looked like grass.
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The whole process of baking, decorating, and clean up took about three hours. And by cleanup, I mean putting almost everything in the dishwasher!!!

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Happy Easter!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

The greatest invention!

This morning while I was catching up on my blog reading instead of spring cleaning, I found the greatest DIY project of all time.

source: the long thread
The directions are clear, concise, and it's a great way to destash!



Happy April Fool's Day!