Sea Turtle Pincushion

Just a little project I made on a lazy Saturday. It been driving me (and my husband) crazy my stashes of straight pins in drawers, bowls and even in the rug (oops) all over the house. So rather than purchasing that tomato pincushion that everyone has seen. I decided to make one from the scraps of fabric I had in the house, at first I was going to make a hedgehog pincushion but I had green velvet that I wanted to use, so I came up with making a turtle pincushion.

To make the shell I cut large oblong circle about 4 inches in diameter in its smallest width, to give it more texture, I stitched several circular shapes with my sewing machine but this could definitely could be hand stitched.
To make it into a cushion, make several stitches along the circumference of the oblong circle, then pull on the thread to create a pouch, fill with stuffing and pull thread taught closing the pouch, sew the shell closed.
I then used some light brown felt to make the head, legs and tail. The legs and tail are one piece, to create a template for this I placed the finished shell over the piece of  felt and sketch how I wanted the legs & tail to look like, them cut them out & purposely made them uneven to be more realistic.
Here a top view of the turtle:

The turtle head was a relatively easy, just a folded a regular piece of felt in half, then cut it into a rounded edge, then sewed the rounded edge with overcast stitch . I then turned it over, and stuffed it.
To put all the pieces together, I attached the head first, then the larger piece of felt in the shape of the turtle's legs and tail.
Yep it was that easy! Now time to put in the pins..

Happy 1st birthday to the Lambs!

I was invited to a 1st birthday party for two adorable twin girls, of course I asked their Mommy if it was ok if I could make them a cake but since their Grammy is making a big cake for all the guest, she said I could make little "smash" cakes for them. Yay, so excited!

Since I always like to try make all my projects fun & unique. I instantly thought that I would be make a cake related to lambs since I've always thought it was adorable that they (mommy & daddy) called them, "the lambs". I got some ideas from the internet on how I wanted the lamb cakes to look like.

And because the girls are so little, I wanted use a lower sugar cake recipe. I ended up making a the banana cake with a cream cheese frosting that I showed you how to make last week.

But here they are, I love how they turn out.

Lamb cakes for the lambs

To make the lambs, I baked a large sheet of cake, cut out two different sized rounds(4" & 2.5"), stacked and iced the tiers.  I then sculpted the cake into the general shape I wanted, and the arms, legs, ears & face are made of marshmallow fondant. And the number one and their names are made of an almond bark candy. Here a close up of the cakes individually:


I had so much fun making them!!

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I just made this recipe last night, and it turned out great (moist and delicious) , I definitely making this again, I mad a few changes to the recipe adding Cinnamon, less sugar, and using milk + lemon juice rather than buttermilk.

Source

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups ripe, mashed bananas (approximatively 3 bananas)
2 teaspoon lemon juice
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (heaping spoonfuls)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup softened butter (3 sticks butter)
2 cups sugar *I probably only added 1 1/2 cups 
3 large eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 cup chopped toasted walnuts (optional)

Cream Cheese frosting:
1/2 cups of softened butter (1 stick)
1 - 8 oz package of cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups confectioner (powdered) sugar

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees  *Since I've notice my oven does not always heat properly I actually preheated to 300 degrees and then when I put the cake in turned it down to 275
2. Grease and flour a 9x13" pan
3. In a small bowl, mash up banana & lemon; set aside
4. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt; set aside *I added about a tablespoon of Cinnamon
5. In a large bowl, cream butter & sugar until light and fluffy. *this is where I love my KA standmixer
6. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then stir in vanilla extract
7. Add in approximatively on cup of flour mixture, mixing alternately with buttermilk (approx. 1/2 cup) until all flour mixture and buttermilk is added.
8. Stir in banana mixture.
9. Pour batter into pan, bake for approximatively one hour or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
10. Remove from oven and place directly into freezer for 45 minutes, this will make the cake very moist. *For you cold weather ladies, I stuck my cake outside with the snow (as long as it wasn't currently snowing or raining)
11. While cake is chilling prepare the frosting, cream butter and cream cheese until smooth
12. Beat in vanilla extract.
13. Add in about half of powdered sugar, beat at low speed until combined, then beat at high speed until smooth.
14. Taste frosting, continue adding powdered sugar until frosting reaches your desired sweetness *I never add the total 3 1/2 cups of adding powdered sugar 
15. Spread frosting over cooled cake
16. Sprinkle walnuts over frosting

My expensive hobby!

I am excited to be making two cakes (well actually 3) in the next few months, I am making two smash (small) cakes for my friend's twin girls first birthday, next week (I need to get cooking!) and I am making a wedding cake for a friend in May. I'm very excited!
I purchased some used baking pans from a woman on craigslist for $30, probably would have cost about $100 new, so I am pretty pleased. I purchased some cake boards (the piece of cardboard that the cake sits on) from Fante's, a kitchenwares shop in South Philadelphia that has everything I might want for cake decorating and cooking in general (if I only had a couple hundred dollars to play with).

my craigslist find!

Since I am starting the two little smash cakes this week to be ready for the weekend, I purchased ingredients this weekend: flour, butter, baking powder, eggs, applesauce, cream cheese, powdered sugar, brown sugar and a bunch of other things I needed...Total = $35 

I really hope this turns out great!

Another happy recipient!!

My brother just posted professional pictures of his new family, so adorable! Katherine of Katherine Chambers Photography did such a great job (they made my heart melt), she based out of Cleveland, OH. But I was pleasantly pleased to see that a few pictures included a crochet bear hat I made!!
In all honestly it wasn't hard to make, I didn't have a pattern or anything just winged it after seeing similar hats (made it in a car ride to go see little Hunter last November).
Here's one of my favorite shots:

http://www.katherinechambers.com/

Koala Onesie

I've been slowing putting together a care package for a special friend who is also having a little girl in April. I wanted to make her something for her new arrival that is somewhat personalized, I know her favorite color is pink and she loves koalas.
I am a bit of a perfectiveness & hadn't had a clear idea of what I wanted the finish product to look like, so this project has been started & restarted several times (the reason why it took months to finish). I tried using several different materials (yarn, tulle, embroidery thread, felt), at one point the onesie was partially knitted, had a pink tutu, and had handmade felt flowers on it. But I needed to "edit" my ideas, so this came up with:

I ended up just using gray & black felt, a little bit of pink fabric and some embroidery thread to finish it up. I like they way it turned out, it is a goofy koala but it's cute.

Here's a close up:

Tree Hugger onesie!

I had an idea to make a coworker a gift for his impending little girl, well she came here about month early, so I was in a rush to finish it quickly before it was too late. My coworker is the biggest tree hugger (self-proclaimed) I know, I mean the man is a vegetarian & eats from fabric sandwich bags (which I think is awesome). Since I always try to make my gifts a little more personalized, I wanted to incorporate his love for mother earth.
Since I have plain white onesies leftover from my 3-pack of Carter long sleeve onesies purchased at target for my last project.
I was inspired by this picture of a barrette I came across when I Googled "tree hugger":

So I went to the craft store and purchased and also rummaged around the house for thing I had:
1- sheet of brown felt
1- sheet of dark green felt
Green fabric paint (something that will contrast against the green felt)
Brown fabric paint
Green embroidery floss/thread (something that will contrast against the green felt)
Brown embroidery floss/thread
Lightweight Fusible Interfacing (to protect baby's sensitive skin)
Freezer Paper (my new favorite media, it's paper on one side & wax on the other, it can be ironed to create screen printing templates among other things, the only place other than the internet that I can find it where I live is at the supermarket where the aluminum foil & sandwich bags are)

First I organically cut a tree out of the felt, perhaps if I do this again I'll make templates & take more picture (sorry).
Next I went on the computer and messed around on word processing program (i.e. Word) to figure out what style font I liked.  If you have a ink-jet printer you can print out the text/design straight on to the paper-side of the freezer paper but if you have a laser printer like me, you'll gonna need to print out on regular paper (since the heat from the laser printer would clog up your rollers and create a gummy mess) and then trace it on to the freezer paper.
I then used "Exacto" knife (razor blade) to cut out the letters out of the freezer paper, I can't rationalize buying one of those Cricut (personal cutting machine) yet... maybe if I start a business or something.
I then dabbed on the paint on to the felt waited for it to dry (about 2-3 hours), then peeled off the freezer paper.
But I felt it still needed definition, so I used the green embroidery thread to spruce it up the lettering and attach it on the onesie. I gave it some more personalization, using the freezer paper & brown again to include the mom's, dad's & baby's first initial in the heart.
I really love the way it turned out!!