Truly Outragous!

So I'm thinking of going as Jem for Haloween...I have the pink wig and makeup, it's all hinging now on whether I can find an easy wrap dress pattern and shoes to match.  Here's a makeup/wig test, I'm so excited to try this!

 

Pyramid Cake

My brother is a rather adventurous sort, and each year he tries to outdo his birthday cake from the year before.  This year was a pyramid cake.  It was delicious, german chocolate. Yum! 

Pics of the progress:

Baked 3 9x9 square cakes, lopped off the curved top

Tops lopped and prepared to be frosted

Mmmm...frosting

Frosted! Layer the cakes, frosting only on the bottom and middle cake!

Carefully cut at an angle down the front of the cake, then the back

Frost the top layer and add the pieces you cut off, frosting between the two added pieces as well.  Confused?  Imagine the new top 3 layers as a door on a hinge, rotate it down and you can see how you cut it off the original square cake : )

Top view...almost there!

Now we have to cut the sides to make it a pyramid instead of a prism.  Discard these pieces, or save them to eat later : )

Tada!

Frost the heck outta that cake!

It was very crumbly from all that cutting...if you're good with fondant I think that might look nicer lol

Add the candles...

Top view, 6 on each side, one at the point on top : )

Make a wish and blow those candles out fast!

 

Gobble Gobble Gobble!

Ry's family project was to make a turkey to carry in the Turkey Day Parade.  We asked him what he wanted it to look like and he said he wanted lots of feathers and a pinecone. We were a little stumped at first, a pine cone is so small this was supposed to be a decent sized project. Then my sis got a brilliant idea- disassemble a pinecone and use the...parts?...to creat a huge pinecone. So we did.

We gave Ry a grocery size paper bag and had him stuff it with newspapers, which we then taped shut and somewhat squashed/molded into an oval-ish shape.  We all sat and took apart pinecones, and hot glued them on strips of ribbon that covered all but the bottom of the bag, working back to front. This took FOREVER.

Then Ry helped draw the turkey head/neck on a piece of cardboard, we had to cut it out since it proved to be a little to thick for him. then he wrapped it in strips of batting and I sewed the brown fabric and yellow felt to it.  He cut out the waddle and glued it on, along with the wiggly eyes.  We then miraculously managed to glue/tape it to the bag.  The legs were 3 extra thick pipecleaners twisted together and glued/taped to the underside.

We hot glued the feathers on last, he handed them to us one at a time since we didn't want him to burn himself.  Then he cut out the wings and wedged them into the pinecones.

I think it turned out rather cute : )

Happy Halloween!

We added new decorations to the nursery this year  : )

These are lollipop ghosts for the kiddies...

 

Pumpkins that they colored for our pumpkin patch...

Sally and Linus waiting for The Great Pumpkin...

The Great Pumpkin???

The pumpkins are orange poster board with color pencil, the leaves green poster board with colored pencil, Sally and Linus white poster board (blue for the blanket and bow) with color pencil and marker.

plushies

I saw this cute site for creating your own plushie patterns:

http://www.den.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yuki/plushie/index-e.html

The site gives a video demo, and the program doesn't look that hard to master. I'm going to give it a whirl when I get some free time.

Yay!

Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!

Molly Monkey

I found this really cute pattern the other day, and really wanted to make one...but didn't really have a good excuse to. Luckily my nephew wanted a Christmas present for his kindergarten teacher, who just happens to have a monkey theme in her classroom.

Molly Monkey:



and some close ups:


I modified the skirt pattern to make it pleated and fitted, the shoes I made from regular fabric instead of felt, added lace to the sock tops, switched out the beret for a bow, and embroidered the eyes instead of using felt. I think it turned out rather nice :-)

You can find the pattern here:
http://mmmcrafts.blogspot.com/2008/07/drum-roll-pleasemolly-monkey-pattern.html

Baby Bouquet

So cute! I made it for my cousin

Tutorial Here:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=232407.0

YAY!!!!

My Stitch'nBitch 2008 calendar has arrived!!! My DS cover is on Jan. 18 ^^ I had kinda hoped it would be in Dec., closer to my b-day, but whatever ^^

Table decorations

these are the table decorations i made for my grandpa's 80th birthday party

they were made from branches we got at JoAnn's, and birds nests, eggs, and birds from Michaels. we had a red bird too, but these were test photos so the others could see the decorations we had planned. i also made picture holders with wire and a sculpy base. they were simple, but pretty time consuming. i think we made...24? of these, 2 per table (6ft tables).