Gingerbread House

So...about a month ago I bought a gingerbread Halloween house kit on clearance with hopes of turning it into a Christmas gingerbread house.  Well, after trying to put together the house pieces with regular frosting and it falling multiple times, we ended up eating the cookie pieces.  On our second try I bought a gingerbread house already put together ready to load up with candy.  Here is our second attempt:

New shirt for Milly

Soooo....I went to the fabric shop to find something for my friend who found out she was having a boy.  Hooray!  Well, I didn't find anything for her but I did find some new fabric for Milly.  Imagine that!  Seriously, I should not be allowed in there.  I did make this new shirt out of the super cute fabric I found.

As for my friend's baby boy, I was looking for some dog material.  The only prints I could find were super cartoon-y dogs that did not float my boat.  It's a good thing anyway because I found out she is going with a fox theme for the nursery.  Now back to the fabric store for some fox material!

Rainy Day

Tropical Storm Andrea is keeping me and Millyana from outside fun.  So I have put together some rainy-day-Milly's-nap-time activities for me.  We will see how many necklaces and bracelets I can actually finish today.

Thrift Shop Find

Way before there was Grumpy Cat there was Omar-the Discontented Cat.  I found this cute little book at the thrift shop and thought it was funny.  But when I picked it and flipped through it I had to have it because of the sweet little illustrations.

Very discontented

The copyright is 1925 so it has that very Victorian look of children's illustrations that were popular in the 20s and 30s.  The illustrator is Katherine Sturgis.

Please to meet you Jenny and Jack.

So looking up Katherine Sturgis on the internet, I found a lot of gorgeous children's illustrations.  But I did stumble on this hilarious gem that she illustrated.

Food coloring Easter Egg Dye

This was the first year we were painting eggs with Miss Milly.  I managed to make it to the night before Easter without preparing the eggs and no egg dye.  Fabulous.  So I boiled the eggs the night before and searched the my favorite fall back, Pinterest, for some way to color these eggs without the help of Paas.  Thank goodness I discovered I had the ingredients to make dye.  I used 1 cup of water, 2 tablespoons of white vinegar, and food coloring.  Whew!  I used about 10 drops of food coloring for each color and even mixed a couple to make more than just the primary colors.  I was concerned that they would be too light in color and run a whole lot but they actually turned out really well.  Mill had so much fun and I used another Pinterest tip of using a wire whisk to put the egg in to make it easier for her to dip them.  We had a wonderful relaxing Easter and hope you did too!

(Yes, that is a tiara in her hair.  :) )

Revisiting Ferdinand

When we go to storytime at the library, I will usually randomly pick up a few books for Millyana.  The last time we were there I picked up one of my childhood favorites, "Ferdinand the Bull."  I remember just loving it as a kid and when I was reading it to Milly before bedtime, I fell in love all over again.  The story is just so sweet and this time I could not stop looking at the illustrations.  The detail and intricacies of each illustration made me pause to study them before turning each page.  

The book is illustrated by Robert Lawson an artist born in New York City who began illustrating in 1922.  As I did more research on him, I discovered more beautiful illustrations that just make you have to stop and take a look.  It is that 1920's style that I just love. It is so detailed that when you look closer and closer you can't help but find little pictures hidden inside little pictures, like a sleeping elf or the little dipper sitting in the sky.   

Sweet Ferdinand

From Little Prince Toofat

New Eyeglass Case

I finally went in to get glasses.  I always tell myself I don't need them but this time I could truly see a difference.  And they are super fun!  Next step, search for the perfect super cute case to hold them in.  Well, I couldn't find a fun/cute case to meet my fun/cute standards.  Then I realized, DUH!  I should make one.  So I searched Pinterest to find the cutest case tutorial and found exactly what I was looking for at a blog called sewfantastic (what a so fantastic name!)
The tutorial is so easy to follow.  Mine came out a bit bigger than what I wanted but it was so quick and easy to put together, I can easily make another with a few adjustments on the measurements.  I used an old t-shirt that didn't fit anymore but I liked the design and colors so much I couldn't throw it away.  I used pieces of fabric from my scrap pile which is always a good thing.

Polka Dot Cake

My sister-in-law's birthday is in the beginning of the month and she wanted to spend it somewhere warm. My brother and sister-in-law just were not going to get that in Virginia so they planned a long weekend visit with us.  Hooray!  Unfortunately it was not quite as warm as it usually is in Florida while they were here but definitely warmer than Virginia.  We still packed in a lot of activities and even a trip to Anna Maria Island.  Their visit went by too quickly and can't wait for them to come again.

Now I really enjoy baking and was excited for the opportunity to bake a birthday cake for Ombretta.  I had seen this cake on Pinterest from the blog Once Upon a Pedestal and decided (at the last minute) this would be such a fun cake to try to make for her.  I always have these grandiose ideas of making these elaborate things and always seem to bite off more than I can chew.  But I still started putting it together a couple of hours before they were supposed to get here.  

I don't have many pictures of the preparation because, like I had said, I was whipping this together at the last minute.  The original blog post has great step by step instructions.  I will just throw in my 2 cents.  I started off with one white cake mix.  I prepared it following the egg white steps so I would not get the yellow tint from the yolks like the blog suggested.  I took half of that batter and separated that into four little bowls and added food coloring until I got the color I wanted.  (I used a lot to get brighter, richer colors.)  My step mom had bought me a cake pop pan and was especially grateful that day to have it.   Each color made about  four balls each and I baked them for about 20 minutes.

Colorful Cake balls!

  After that, I prepared the other cake mix.  So now I have one and a half cake mixes prepared.  I put a thin layer of mix on the bottom of the pan, placed some cake balls randomly in the pans and then covered them up as much as I could.  Now in the original blog, she used 3 six inch round pans.  Well, Target only had nine inch pans when I was shopping last minute so that is what I used.  When they first came out of the oven they seemed too skinny.  That is when I started second guessing myself and thought this grandiose idea was going to back fire on me.  I was kind of sweating while waiting for them to cool thinking it was just going to come out awful.  But seriously,there is nothing a little (or a lot) of icing can't fix.  I just layered it thick to fill in the spaces and it came out a little lopsided but not too bad.  Hooray!

Okay, so it didn't look too bad from the outside.  I just hoped the cuteness had worked on the inside.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Birthday Girl!

Even though we sang and Ombretta blew out candles that night, we just could not eat it after a huge dinner with a surprise brownie sundae for dessert.  But we didn't have to wait long to see if the polka dots came out right.  We decided to have birthday cake for breakfast!  Hooray!  Don't judge, they were on vacation.  When I sliced into it, I was so happy to find out..it worked!

Next time I will definitely use the smaller cake pans and use more cake balls.  But I was so happy it turned out.  It is so fun to do special things for special people.  I think it would be fun to do a vanilla or strawberry cake with chocolate cake balls or the other way around.  Too fun!

  

Milly's Closet

I added a new line in my Pretty Fun shop called "Milly's Closet"  Cute little girl's clothes for your little one.