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Friday, November 18, 2011

Let Her Eat Cake!!

My little big girl is soon turning 5. FIVE years old!? Where has the time gone!?!?

H really wanted to choose her own cake this year and has landed on a princess castle cake. One problem... I don't make cakes and the one she wanted was like $150. YIKES!!
I had something like this in mind...


H wanted something more like this...


You all know me by now. Super cheap, but good quality {if you can get it super cheap} is the way to go. Soooooo... one of my BFF's sister lent me a castle cake kit she had. {HUGE thank you to NB for that!!} I know na-thing-a about cake making or decorating but another of my BFF's has made cakes for her kiddies in the past and agreed to help me! {WOOT, WOOT!} Here's the picture story of my cake making journey. {With a few comments here and there... Ok, ok maybe just a hint more than a few.}

Started out with 4 cakes.
Iced the bottom so it would hold still while on the board, then iced the bottom cake, and top cake.






I couldn't find a 6" round cake pan on such short notice {shout out to all the procrastinators!} so I used my juice jug to "trace" and out line and then cut it out with a butter knife. 




I have to be honest here and say the HARDEST part, was icing the cakes! I am {clearly} not talented when it comes to cake making, but H loves it all the same! {And it helps that this part of the cake is hidden behind turrets!} 

I used a Wilton Cake decorating kit and made the little stars around the tops.  Then I forgot to take pictures for a while!

Here's the towers coming together. They are part of the Wilton Romantic Cake kit. They are PLASTIC!! {Cut the work by 75% I'd say. And they look pretty impressive when it's done! }My friend JJ was my partner in crime helper! We melted white chocolate discs and dipped the towers in it and placed it on the cake base to hold it into place. {Worked GREAT!} Then I took the icing and outlined the windows and the door.
Time to add the tops of the towers! I used waffle ice cream cones and JJ iced them. Then we rolled them in decorators sugar! YUMMMM!

I put more white melted chocolate in the tops of the turrets to hold the cones in place. Worked just like glue once it dried! 



JJ did the grass and it looks awesome! Had NO clue you could get icing to do that!!

The finished product!! Not too shabby for a non-cake-maker eh!? {Yep, Canadian and PROUD of it!}
Here's a few other angles and shots of it.
Back






10 towers for 10 kiddies at her party! Yep, each kiddies gets to eat a cone! {insert evil sugar endued laugh here}


I hope you've enjoyed my journey! It wasn't all that hard, but a little time consuming. But with the right tools {and the right help!} you can pretty much accomplish anything!

Chrissy

Friday, October 07, 2011

Home Made Microwavable Popcorn! {Yes, you read that right!}

As you are likely all starting to realize, I'm pretty cheap economical. I try to save where I can as most mommas do. Here's a little tip on saving money on microwaved popcorn... Make your OWN! Yep, you DID read that right! Here's what you need:

Brown paper bag {like what you used to take your lunch to school in}
popcorn kernels {I buy the uber cheap no name kind.}
Microwave.

That's it! Pour a layer of kernels into the brown paper bag {while the bag is standing up covering the rectangular bottom} then fold up the end a couple of times. Pop it on it's side in the microwave on the popcorn setting and viola! Home made microwaved popcorn without all the mess and cost of Oriville.

Enjoy!!

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Living Room... Thoughts?

As you all know, we're giving some love to our "power-of-sale-fixer-upper." We came up with ideas for the family room, bought flooring, picked fabrics for curtians and are finally going to buy our paint this weekend! Buuuut, I had no idea what to do for our living room. Noda. Nothing. Zilch. Like I mentioned in my previous post, the living room and family room are connected by a large double size doorway that used to have french doors once upon a time. Since I'm on a serious time crunch, I decided tonight after The Hubs was out and kidlets were in bed, it was time to get some ideas!

After viewing thousands about a hundred pictures on google images, I think I've come up with some inspiration for our living room!! {Squeal!} It's not really something I would have normally been drawn too, but I did want blue incorporated into the main floor and when I saw the colours, I knew these were the ones!

Wait for it.........


Ta da!! This was the original picture that I saw and I LOVE IT!!! {EEK!!}Ok, so not all the crazy patterns, but the colours are exactly what I want! Here's another picture:


I really like how the colours mix. We also have a dark wood entertainment unit so when I saw this picture, I knew it would go with our current furniture. {Well, the entertainment unit we're keeping, everything else is going!}  

Ok, one more picture....
These are a bit more muted, but I still love it!

So that's all for tonight! What are your thoughts? I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! Now just to convince The Hubs.....

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Family Room... Help!

So, over the past few weeks The Hubs and I have decided that it's time to tear out the nasty carpet in the living room {that we inherited when we moved in... we did have it professionally cleaned before we moved in so we know there's no lingering stuff under there... just looks gross.} Our family room is right next to the living room with a large doorway, which used to have french doors once upon a time, separating the two rooms. {See nasty, ugly, stained carpet pictured below. Oh, and my little H watching Aladdin. ;o)}



We finally found laminate flooring that we both liked and bought it today! {EEK!!} I had no idea what I wanted for the wall colours though and I had no thoughts on accent colours at all. Luckily Uppercase Living came to the rescue! They've recently featured some mustard & grey tones in their most recent catalogue and at first I thought it was terrible. Buuuut the more I browse the catty, the more I liked it! I found these pictures on google images and it has the colour scheme I'm looking to achieve, but the furniture isn't what I want.






After seeing these inspiring pictures, The Hubs, H, J and I went to fabricland to find some inspiration! Lo and behold, here's what I found:


The Hubs liked the fabric in the top picture, and I love the one on the bottom. So we took a sample of each to Rona and found some paint chips that will work. {Oh, and they are laying on top of our new flooring!!}


I have a few more that have some green tones and such in it, but you get the general idea. I have one more picture to show you before I move on to the "help" portion of this blog entry... Here's the sample fabric pieces with our current wall colour... {You can't really tell, but the current wall colour is a light yellow. Sort of a butter cup tone. It happens to go really well with the fabric sample that I like.}

My question is; Would you paint the walls yellow, grey or keep it the same?? We are thinking of painting the walls yellow because it will be really bright and warm. It also would be good with the kitchen for now since they family room is open directly to the kitchen and we are doing that room LAST!  I thought of painting the walls grey, but we both think it would bring a cold feeling into the room. {And we have two rooms that are already grey in the house - Hubs office and our bedroom is an earthy grey tone.}

Thoughts please!? Any and all suggestions welcome!!


Sunday, September 11, 2011

Front Door Wreath!

This past weekend has been suuuuper busy! A canceled trip to the zoo because my poor little H was sick meant time to do some things around the house. I painted the basement bathroom, went shopping for tile (didn't find much,) snuck some time to shoot off rockets at the park, {Oh yea, you heard that right! SO much fun!} and ran some errands. {That was just Saturday!} Today we did more errands, finished painting the basement bathroom, and cleaned out the garage! *Phew* Just reading that makes me tired all over again!

While on our travels today, we hit up Michaels because I saw a post for an awesome DIY wreath on one of my FAV blogs, Tip Junkie! I fell in love with the idea, and decided I HAD to make one! {To be quite honest though, I was going to put this off for a few weeks, but when I went into Michaels, the wreaths were right out front, and ON SALE!! Yep, for $2.50 each!} As fate would have it, today WAS the day. {Grin!}

Here's the supplies I needed:

  • Fake flowers {Michaels were 50% off making them $7.50 instead of $16.99 buuuut I am WAAAY too frugal for that nonsense! Off to my fav place, the dollar store! Scored these for $1.25 each!} 
  • Wreath {$2.50 You already know about that.}
  • Wire for the flowers {$1.00 also dollar store!}
  • Wreath hanger {was sadly the most expensive item at Michaels ($4.29) because I couldn't find one at the dollar store I was at and since the Hubs hurt his knees, I didn't want to make him trudge off to yet another store.}
  • Wooden numbers {2 @ $1.29 each from Michaels - the dollar store ones were just too big!}
  • Hot glue gun, paint and paintbrush I already had.
  • That makes a total of $15.37 before that silly HST.
First I took the flowers and cut them off the bunch into individual flowers with my wire cutters.


Then I stuck them into the wreath one at a time careful not to pop off the heads of the flowers. {I also removed the "leaves" but you can keep them on if you want to add a little greenery to your wreath.}

The stems stuck out the back but not to worry, we'll get to that!

Once I had everything where I wanted it, I snapped yet another picture. haha. I do that A LOT!




I wasn't in love with the way it looked, so I decided to shift the cream flowers into the middle and see how it looked....
 Muuuuch better! Next I flipped it over to address the stems that were sticking straight up. I bent the stems, took some of the wire for the flowers, and tied them down to the backside of the branches of the wreath. The original post didn't say anything about how she tied them, so I just kind of winged it. It worked!


Oh, and something I should mention... if you're going to make one of these yourself, DON'T do it over a carpet!! Little bits fall off and covered the table, chair and floor. So glad I did it in the kitchen. {Pay no attention to the ice cream on the floor... I gave H & J ice cream BEFORE their dinner tonight! Best mom ever? I think so! Go ahead... be jealous. haha.}

Once the stems were all tied down, it was time to paint the numbers. I used a primer base and then painted the numbers with acrylic paint and a brush. Normally I don't like the look of a paint brush on wood, but since they were small and I didn't have a can of cream spray paint, it did the trick. The paint was a bit too white for me, but the Hubs suggested I mix a touch of yellow into it, which I did and it worked! He's so brilliant!


I hot glued the numbers into place and that was it!The finished product:


I have to say I was worried about using red flowers since I have a red door, but you know, it looks GREAT! I'm so happy with the way it turned out!

Be sure to visit the original post so you can see some of the other wreaths she's done! They are amazing! Also check out tip junkie for wreaths of different materials. I'm going to do one out of fabric for the girl's bedroom doors soon! Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading everyone!

Chrissy