One more bear

Another bear has been completed. This one for dd#3-she loves it. She really, really, REALLY wanted one and kept asking about it every day. Checking on the knitting progress each day from the previous evening. Above is the bear before arms and seaming. It is knit from the front legs to the back legs all in one piece.

Next you pick up stitches for the arms - this also creates the head portion.

Then the bear is seamed and stuffed. In this case, a skirt and sleeve ruffles were added to make it look more "girlie". Easy, peasy and well loved already :o).

Some Bakin' going on around here!!

This is a chocolate cake, but not ordinary chocolate cake. First, the base chocolate cake is baked and holes are poked all over the top, then chocolate pudding mix is made and 1/4 tsp of mint extract is added to the pudding mixture and poured over the cake and put in the fridge for a little while. After everything is cold, make the frosting, but add 1/4 tsp of mint extract to the frosting and spread on the cake. THEN, cut up mint peppermint patties and sprinkle them (in our case the sprinkling was very dense) over the top of the cake. TA DAAA

My husband and dd#1 loved this cake, I am not so into mint so it was wasted on me.

These are Flower Bunch Cupcakes from Creative Cakes anyone can make by Jill foster. I used the basic yellow cake and buttercream recipes from wilton for these. The kids had a great time!

These are called Monarchs from Hello, Cupcake! by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson. I used my own basic chocolate cake and chocolate frosting.

This is only a fraction of what we made. We hosted the family so there were QUITE a few of us here!

These are the wings. You melt chocolate wafers in baggies, cut one corner and pipe the outline with the regular chocolate and the insides any color you want. Some of ours are two-tone and some are all pink or all yellow - it just depended on who was making them - then sprinkle with decorations. The 10yr old really enjoyed putting the butterflies together so that was her contribution. These were a complete blast to make and obviously great to eat. The kids were covered (literally) in chocolate after eating these.

Both these books are fabulous. They have great ideas, pictures and instructions. I forsee many more cupcakes from them. There has been a request from the 8yo boy to make the puppies on the cover of the Hello, Cupcake! book so I told him only if we can discover how to do it together. He is more than game!!

4th of July

4th of July was as it should be for our family.....lots of good food and surrounded by lots of family!! A few items made for the kids to wear and have fun with.

Barrettes for all the girls (6 pairs)
Shirts for the boys. This idea is from Familyfun.com - several pipe cleaners are held together and bent in half. Then they are twisted and the ends are pulled apart to create the fireworks stamp pattern. It was VERY simple - to make 11 shirts took 15 minutes (of course this was after all the prep was done :o)

Girl shirts

More girl shirts

and more girl shirts! All the kids loved their shirts and wore them happily. DH and I each had a shirt and wore ours as well.

Some card crafting

These are all made from the book Card Making by Number. It's really a kit that comes with everything you need, but it works great for me. I love the look of handmade cards and besides the ones made by the kids I have been a bit overwhelmed by all the paper and embelishment choices out there - so this is perfect for me - the beginner!

For my sister's birthday
I made two of these - for impending births

This was made for a shower for a cousin. Paper crafting by number - gotta love it!