Welcome to the Greatest Show!

What a week it has been! I am so blessed to have been able to celebrate two very important little boys in my life! This weekend, Mr. Evan and I made the trip down to Augusta for my ADORABLE nephews' joint birthday party! First of all, I have to say, my sister is AMAZING! She threw together a really beautiful, classy, FUN circus-themed party for my nephews. She thought of everything! There was so much amazing stuff that I can't even begin to describe it all! Hopefully I can add some pictures later to show you all exactly how amazingly talented she is as an event coordinator.

Until then, I guess I can talk about how awesome I am. Ha...just kidding. But I do want to share the fun cupcakes I made for the boys.
When you think of the circus, the first things that come to mind are clowns, elephants, lions and popcorn. Or at least that's how it is for me. So I decided to start there. Brooke had also wanted to have a "big top" cupcake on the very top of the stand, so that's where I'll begin to explain.

Obviously I made the cupcakes (Kroger brand cake mix- I got cheap and lazy with this) and iced them (Kroger brand vanilla icing) and got started on the fondant.

Have you ever bought fondant? It's expensive. And it tastes like crap. So I wanted to know if there was some way I could make my own and make it tasty. I found the best recipe on Wilton.com for marshmallow fondant. This stuff is so freaking easy! And YUMMY!

What you need:

• 16 oz mini marshmallows 
• 2 lbs of confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar)
• water
• a microwave-safe bowl
• a microwave
• crisco
• food coloring

Pour those marshmallows into the bowl and put about 2 tbsp of water in there. Nuke 'em! 30 second intervals and stir in between until it's all creamy. Next you're going to want to dump about 3/4 of the bag of sugar into the mix and stir in a bit. When it's got a good enough consistency that you can pull it out, grease down your counter-top and your hands and pull that lump of lovely sugary goodness out and knead it til you think your arms are going to fall off, adding powdered sugar in there to make it a little firmer.

Once you have it fondant-y feeling, you can separate it into balls for each color you need and get to work coloring it. Knead it to death while mixing those colors in. I needed yellow, red, orange, green, blue, grey and white. Guess which one was easiest to make? :)

I had a whole bunch of cookie cutters that I got from Ikea and let me tell you, they saved my life this week! To make the big top, I cut a circle out of both red and yellow then used my mini pizza cutter to make the triangles. Then I put them on top of a third red circle with yellow and red alternating. Note: put a little water on the bottom red one before placing the colored triangles on top and then put a little cornstarch on top and roll out a little bit. You want to mesh them together by doing this. Before you put this on top of the cupcake, make a little icing pyramid and stick it in the freezer for a few to firm it up. Place the "big top" on the cupcake and then make a tiny orange ball for the very very top.

For the lion, you need to roll the orange fondant pretty thick and cut out as many circles as you want (I did 8). I used an exacto knife to cut tiny triangles out of the edge to make the lion's mane. Then you need to roll it out a little bit so it overflows the cupcake liner. Then cut a yellow circle out for his head and tiny half circles for his ears. Roll a little orange ball for his nose.

Elephants! I just free-handed this one. You can figure this one out...

Clowns. This was a hard one for me since I HATE clowns. Terrified of them, really. But anyway, I used a heart cupcake for his hair and free-handed the rest. I had some little eye sprinkles handy that I used for the eyes. Easy-peazy.

For the popcorn, I had to mix some white and yellow together but not mix them up very well. Then I just free-handed some shapes and scrunched them up and attached them to a colored background. Then I cut some white stripes (really thin) and placed them on red fondant and rolled it out. Then I cut some popcorn buckets and attached them on top of the "popcorn" to make these cute little things.

For the stars, polka dots and stripes, I cut out the tiny shapes and placed them on colored bagrounds, rolled them out and cut circles out.

Got it? Good. Now make  100 of those little suckers and You're done! :)

Hippity Hop Hippity Hop!

It's spring break for the Nanners, so I've got one WHOLE week off. What should I do when I have a few days off from watching someone else's kids? I could bake, sew, clean or...go home and help my sister with her kids! Let's do it!

On the road again...

Once I made it safely to Augusta, I hunkered down with the most ADORABLE little guys ever! :) Brody and I took a little trip to Jo-Ann fabric and crafts yesterday because I was in the crafty mood and he's always there. I swear, my sister has done such a great job getting Brody into crafts and art. She's so creative! I knew I had to do something Easter related (although I was tempted to do something golf-related since it's Master's week here, but all I could think of were golf ball cake pops and I need a little break from the baked goods) and it also had to be something fun for a soon-to-be 3-year-old. When in doubt, I shrinky-dink!

If you've never heard of these before, they rock! I love them. Basically you draw, print, paint your design onto a big transparent sheet of plastic and then stick it in the oven to shrink. It's so cool! 

Brody liked the beads at the store so I thought...there must be a way to combine the two...

Presenting the "Hoppy Easter Mini Banner!"

We're going to break this up into two segments: Do During Naptime and Do With the Nugget (that's what I call anyone under 5 years old...they're all little nuggets)

Here we go...supplies:

• Hole Puncher
• Colored Pencils
• Scissors
• Shrinky Dink Paper (any brand) either clear or matte
• Parchment Paper or vellum
• Baking sheet
• Beads
• Some sort of lanyard or ribbon or hefty string to hang things from
• Sharpie
• Sand Paper (only if you purchased the clear paper)

Do During Naptime

First, determine how big you want your eggs to be. Then trace them and cut them out. I accidentally bought the clear paper and colored pencils. These two don't mix so you have to rough up the paper with a bit of 400 grit sandpaper. If you bought matte or if you want to use permanent markers or paints, you can skip this step. Paint would actually have been super fun for Brody but I didn't think about it until we'd left the store already! Oops! 

Write your letters on the eggs. In order for them to show up correctly, you have to write them backwards. I did NOT find this easy! I thought I could do it, no sweat, but I guess I'm not quite as quick as I thought I was... I thought I'd go ahead and have this done before Brody woke up so that he didn't have to wait for them to be ready and I could also make sure that they were perfect...I'm kind of a control freak. 

Punch holes in the top so that you can hang them from the string. It is very important that you do this before you shrink them! 

Do With the Nugget

Once your little ball of energy wakes up, you can have some fun with them! Get out the colored pencils and let them have fun! Make sure they color on the correct side of the egg and that they bear down pretty hard. I had to let go of my controlling nature and let Brody do his thing here. He did a great job though!

Now, preheat the oven to 330 degrees and place a sheet of vellum paper or parchment paper on the baking sheet. Place your eggs on the baking sheet and make sure they don't overlap. 

Once the oven is hot, you can put your sheet in there. Brody LOVED watching this. It only takes about 2-3 minutes for them to shrink. It's pretty cool to watch them do it, too. They curl up a bit but eventually flatten out. I so LOVED watching his face light up while they shrank! (and my sister's friend, Helen, enjoyed it too! haha)

After they've stopped shrinking, pull them out. If they're still curled a little, flatten them with a spatula or piece of cardboard. Let them cool. 

Tie a knot in the end of the string and start placing some beads on there. I did 5 as spacers between words and 3 in between each letter. I let Brody pick each and every bead. He's very particular so he enjoyed this bit as well. As he handed each one to me, I slid it on. When it came time to place the eggs, I threaded them in the same way each time and tied a knot when it was at the right place so it hung facing forward. 

This is the size difference after they shrink. So CUTE!

Keep going until you're finished. Tie a loop at the each end of the string and you're ready to hang it up! :)  

I know this isn't fine art or anything that ground breaking, but it was fun and kid-friendly! 

It's Good to be the King

I love making cakes! It's by far my new favorite thing to do, so I jumped at the opportunity to make a cake for my friend Ben's 34th birthday!

Ben loves Crown Royal. Ben loves a lot of other things too, but one of the first things I found out about him was how much he loves Crown Royal. Therefore, when Ben's wife, Phyllis, called and asked me if I had any creative ideas for his birthday, I immediately googled "Crown Royal cake" and came up with my own plan of action.

First I made 2 cakes (red velvet mix, cream cheese icing- this is his favorite icing flavor and I always like to pair it with red velvet cake...) and let them cool. Because I have a crappy apartment and a crappy oven and really crappy cake pans, the cakes came out a LITTLE lopsided. By a little I mean a LOT! (side note...now would be a perfect time for SOMEONE to save up for some nice cake pans...or a house...unless you're saving for something else...

sigh.

fine. cake pans it is)

Anyway, luckily for me, I was able to put the thin side of one on the thick side of the other and it ended up more or less level. With a thin layer of icing in the middle it looked pretty great. Then I eyeballed the shape of a Crown Royal bottle. It wasn't that hard, but if you're nervous, print out an image and cut around. Cover it with icing to crumb coat and prepare for the fondant.

Here comes the fun part! And boy oh boy am I glad Evan was there to help with this part.

I was trying to be cost conscious, so I bought white fondant and some candy coloring. I used this instead of icing coloring because it's not water based and using water-based food coloring in fondant can cause it to break down and soften, rendering it useless. I played with some colors (creating a very unsuccessful brown that is not suitable for human eyes) until I got the proper brown for the bottle, yellow for the cap and purple for the bag. This takes quite a bit of lower arm strength and your hands will get discolored and cuticles will look like crap for a while. Thanks for the help, Evan!

I rolled them out (pretty thick for the bottle so you can make lines in it like on the bottle--the rest pretty thin) and placed them on the cake. First the brown over the entire bottle. Smooth. Then the label in white. Brush a small amount of water on the back of the label and place on the cake. Repeat with the cap and band around the cap.

Here comes that iconic purple bag. I had fun with this one! I played around with it a few times before getting it perfect. I rolled it out, folded part of the top over so it looked like the section where the tie goes. Then I kinda gathered it up like folds in fabric and placed it on the cake. But I forgot to put water down first. So I held the folds in place and picked up sections and brushed water on the area under and placed it gently back down. I also used some extra yellow to make the cording. I rolled it out kindergarten snake style and twisted them together.

I had already gotten Evan to wrap it in plastic wrap but we took a picture of what it should look like thus far...

The next day I painted on the details by combining lusterdust and clear vanilla extract into little paint buckets. I brushed the gold paint onto the label and the cap and ties, bronze onto the bottle and purple onto the bag. I added a little food coloring (because I was too lazy to go to Michael's AGAIN to get more luster dust in the right colors) and it worked out pretty well but a little runny. I made red and purple for the details on the label. I also used the gold luster dust to write Ben's name on the bag and add some details. Here's a hint with that one though, maybe try writing the name on the bag BEFORE you put it on the cake because it was really difficult to do it after. Anyway, sorry for glossing over the last details, but you can be creative after you get the basic shape done. Here's what the finished product looked like. The lighting is quite a bit different, but you get the idea!

Hopefully will have some pics of people enjoying the cake later! :) I really should have taken my own pictures this time, but I had a little bit going on. 

OH! Forgot to mention that for party favors, I made the same oreo truffle recipe from before but did them as pops and just went with purple candy coating. Added some edible confetti with some corn syrup to make it a little more glittery. Then Evan bagged them up and I tied purple ribbons around them and BAM! All done! :) 

Happy Birthday, Ben! Hope it was the best day ever!

You Got a DREAM? In Hollywood, Everybody's got a DREAM!

After a trip to LA with the boy and this Hollywood themed baby shower, I feel like an expert on celebrities! :) Well, maybe I didn't see any real celebrities in California, but I certainly saw quite a few celebrity impersonators at Gen's baby shower!

I cannot believe that my best friend is about to have a baby, but throwing this shower and celebrating with all her family and friends really made it real!

I have to start out by saying that I had the best co-planners imaginable for this shower! Rachel and Petty and I had such a blast putting this all together. Kudos to Petty for the unique (and very Genesis appropriate) theme! After some very productive brainstorming sessions, we had a plan of attack! Petty was in charge of the food and did a FANTASTIC job! Rolled deli sandwiches, pasta salad and spinach salad with feta and cranberries...delish!

Rachel was our baked-goods goddess! She made such a fantastic strawberry cake in the shape of a popcorn bucket. Cute and fantastic!

She and I also had a wonderful time getting absolutely filthy making the Hollywood sign backdrop! Just a quick how-to on this one:

I got a blue sheet from Wally-World (mostly so I didn't have to paint the blue of the sky) and laid it out on top of a plastic drop cloth so as not to ruin my cheap apartment carpet. Then I rolled some left-over black furniture paint onto the bottom half of the sheet to provide a base for the landscape. After allowing that to dry, Rachel and  I had fun! We took every shade of green and brown that I had in my paint-tackle box and squirted and squeezed it out onto the sheet. This, of course, looked AWFUL so we decided to use a couple of paper towels to give it a kind of sponged effect. This looked better but still not great so we folded the sheet back over on itself and blotted it and squished it and crumpled it up so we could make the colors look a tad more mottled. Finally we had something that remotely resembled a landscape!

Rachel had to go home to her adorable son, so I opened the windows and turned on the fans and let that sucker dry. While that was happening, I decided to cut out the letters for the sign. I figured that doing so would allow me to create the best consistency in the width, height and shape of the letters. I cut a piece of letter-sized cardstock down to 8x10 (or maybe a little smaller) and folded them in half to cut out my letters. I wanted to make sure the double letters were exactly the same (and, to be honest, I wanted to save myself some trouble), so I only cut out one of each of those. I used place holders when I laid them out so that I could  ensure the adequate spacing of the letters. I traced them and filled them in with white fabric paint. A couple times. A ton of times, that is...it was quite difficult to make it opaque enough. Then, for a little extra oomf, I covered them in white glitter. It was fantastic. I have to admit!

A couple of other little things we did that made things fun...

E! Microphone and Oscar statuette carved out of florist foam and covered in model magic.

Cake Pops! (remember these from a few posts ago?) Thanks so much to Rachel's roommate, Casey, and her friend Alex for helping us so much with these! You guys saved us so much time!!

Casey also created these awesome paper mums for us! Not only did she save us time, but she saved us money as well. Flowers are expensive!!

Ballot box and ballots for our "most likely mom" awards! There was also a nominee list so everyone could vote, even if they didn't know anyone else at the shower!

Last, but not least, my absolute favorite piece of the puzzle! I created this poster using the same method I did for the giant map a while back. I modeled it on the original "A Star is Born" poster. I recreated the same feeling for the background and everything in Photoshop. It was quite a bit of work, but it was well worth it!

We added in a red carpet and some hand painted details and we had a fabulous time!

 I was so thrilled with the way everything gelled together and how much fun everyone seemed to have! Thank you all for helping us with the details and especially those of you who stayed and cleaned up!

Pack it up, Pack it in...

So, now that I'm back from LA and Danielle's travel themed shower is over, I can share the pics of the cake I did for it! :) Genesis (shocker) organized this awesome shower (that I, sadly, had to miss) and she asked me to make the cake. Everything she did was so well thought-out and adorable, I had to make sure the cake reflected all of her amazing ideas. Just an additional note: this theme isn't so random. Danielle's husband is in the Army and they get to travel a bunch of really awesome places. Three of the places Gen focused on were Savannah, Hawaii and Kentucky. Here we go...

Supplies:

• 2 cake mixes
• Buttercream Icing
• Eggs
• Vegetable Oil
• Chocolate Fondant
• Small packet of white fondant
• Plastic Rolling Pin
• Cornstarch
• Edible Food Markers (get the Americolor ones...they really work!)
• Luster Dust (in Bronze and Yellow)
• Vanilla Extract (everyone suggests clear extract or vodka but all I had was the regular brown stuff, so that's what I used)
• A Pizza Cutter
• Lots of Paper Towels

So I did this on an overnight adventure to the Nanner land...It was the perfect time for this project. They were asleep and I had a great surface to work with!

I started by making two 9x13 cakes and letting them cool completely! If you don't you'll end up with this: 

instead of this:

After you get it cooled and all, cut it to the desired shape. Basically, I chopped off the parts that were too wonky. Yes. Wonky. Then I covered the two with buttercream and smacked them together. (Ok...so I actually smacked them together then I covered them with buttercream, but it sounds better the other way)

Roll out the fondant! Cover your cake with this delicious treat and SMOOTH it out!

Next I took the white fondant and mixed it in with the brown to make the lighter colored straps. I also think I put some bronze luster dust in there too...attach the straps to the cake by lightly wetting the back area of the strap and placing it on the cake. Also made the edging accents this way. But put them on first obviously!

Next I made the buckles. Just white fondant formed and painted with a mixture of yellow luster dust and Vanilla extract. Paint it straight on. Also used this to create the buckle holes.

Here I had some fun. I cut out a bunch of different shapes and used the edible markers to make bumper stickers designed for their specific interests. First there was the "Aloha" sticker for their time spent in Hawaii. Then there were the "SAV" and "AASU" stickers for Dani's time in Savannah. There was also the "Getting Lucky in Kentucky" sticker. That's where they're going next! I also threw in the "I love my soldier" sticker since she actually has that one on her car and the "Army Wife" sticker because that's what Dani is! Last but not least, we've got the Georgia "G" sticker to reflect all of our years spent at the wonderful University of Georgia! :) 

And the Award Goes To...

Forgive the blurred aspects.
Trying to respect anonymity if I can! 

Finally I get to post the pics of Gen's FABULOUS baby shower invites! As you can see, it's a Hollywood themed baby shower. A little unconventional, you say? I say, pshaw! Genesis loves Hollywood and celebrities and I must admit, I join her in this love! ANYWAY...Here's what I did:

Supplies!!!

• Textured Cardstock in White and Red (I recommend getting thicker stuff...I didn't do this as I was in a time-crunch and I was pretty bummed it didn't work the way I wanted it to)
• Red Envelopes
• Paper Cutter
• Scissors
• Laser Printer
• Glue Stick
• Photo Corners in Gold
• Crazy Mad Photoshop skills
• Oh yeah, a fat, happy cat!

Mercedes LOVES bags...

 Ok, design your piece. Go on Photoshop and set up the paper size as A2 Folded. (I'll add the dimensions tomorrow. I'm a little jet-lagged from my cross-country trip this weekend! Yeah, met the boy's mom...so awesome! But that's another story entirely!) I downloaded some free photoshop brushes (also will add the proper credits for those tomorrow as I enjoy giving credit where credit is due) of film strips to use as the background. I also downloaded the official Oscar statue (not sure if this is legal though, but they have it up there for anyone to download...) and tweaked it a tad to make the tickets and the front. The background of the ticket includes a bunch of words about Genesis and her hubby and Hollywood all wrapped up into one. When deciding on text, make sure you include:

• Honoree's name
• Date, Time and Address of the shower
• Names of all those hosting
• Where the parents-to-be are registered
• A way for guests to RSVP (and possibly a date by which they should do so)
• Any special instructions for attire, gifts or directions

And printers...

Now print, my dears! Print away!

Cut out the "tickets" and use a hole puncher on either side to create that "ticket" look. Then glue onto red background and attach adhesive photo corners to use as a frame for the inside of the card.

Front of Card Detail

Inside and Front

 Now insert into envelopes, address and send...oh don't forget stamps!