Coolest birthday cakes dot com!

My Milli cake was featured on
http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/ ! So exciting! Last year's In the Night Garden cupcakes never made it on there...

So anyway, follow the link to the cake I made:
http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/coolest-team-umizoomi-milli-cake.html

Xoxo

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Team Umizoomi Cake

Adrienne asked for a team umizoomi cake for her birthday party at school. I made her choose one of the characters from the cartoon (she chose Milli).

So I baked a chocolate cake (made with a pie pan because I didn't have a round pan...).

Then I tinted half a can of vanilla frosting pink and the other half flesh using barely a drop of brown food colouring.

I didn't have to trace out Milli's face onto the cake-- I just drew a mental line where her helmet came down to and frosted that part pink and the rest flesh and flattened it out with a spatula. I added the hair using pink frosting (it was supposed to be red but I used up my red food coloring when I made red velvet cupcakes for adrienne's party at home).

I used a yellow icing tube to pipe out the outline of Milli's helmet and the top of her helmet where her pigtails come out of.

With a black icing gel pen I drew on her eyes and mouth. I used a white icing gel pen to make the white dots on the eyes and draw the flowers on her helmet.

And for the final step, I stuck Twizzlers into the top of the helmet for Milli's pigtails!!

Adrienne was happy about her cake so I was glad! And some of the kids in her class had up to 3 servings of cake! :)






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Paper Bag Dillemma

Ive been unsuccessful so far trying to print on paper bags. They always jam into our big printer and the printer that I used to use for craft projects and such (a canon inkjet printer which can feed the paper from back to front without having to twist it around the rollers)-- the power cord and usb cord are missing.

actually they're not missing. they're with my mother who is about 3000 miles away because I tried to give her the printer the last time she visited and since it couldnt fit into her luggage she decided to leave the printer behind but forgot that the power cord and usb cord were both packed into her suitcase.

so im stuck with approximately 185 paper bags that I can't print on directly unless i either:
A. Buy a new power cord which probably costs almost as much as (B)
B. Buy a new canon printer with the same type of paper feeding system (and Im in luck because I just saw one on sale for like 50 bucks)
C. Buy sticker paper sheets and use that big HP officejet printer we have that's been eating the paperbags in its rollers.

Right now, Im on the lookout for (C) but ive been to 5 different stores and I havent seen any! Ive seen iron-on sheets, vinyl sticker sheets, cd labels etc but no normal plain sticker sheets at all. That used to be sooooo easy to find, right next to the stacks and boxes of letter sized paper but so far no luck sourcing it out. I went to different types of stores too --- a hypermart, an electronics store, a computer shop that sells all sorts of printer accessories, a book store, and a discount store. NONE. ZERO. NADA.

i better keep my eyes peeled!

Twitter Critter

I finally succumbed and created a twitter account! Im in the midst of getting the hang of it though... and it actually feels really strange tweeting with complete strangers like um ashton kutcher. hahaha then again when i do i get embarrassed with my actual friends who are following me because they can see what i actually posted. so here i am wanting to tweet with al these people but then im thinking...

ohhhh crap. those following me will see what i just wrote... should i just discard??

anyhoo. most i guess just stalk these celebs. normally i would too but some tweets i feel compelled to actually reply to!

madness.

Olivia Popcorn bags and goody bags

Adrienne has fever so we spent the entire day at home. She was supposed to be resting but really she was playing the whole day. skipped a nap and went to bed without a fight at 6:30.

Anyway I spent my afternoon making this

and this

They're white images because I bought a whole lot of white paper bags yesterday morning (we're talking 200 paper bags in 2 sizes!) for popcorn bags and loot bags for her party. I went to a packaging supplier to get those plain white paper bags and they only came in 100s. haha. At first I was thinking of getting those chinese take out boxes in red... they're more expensive of course (for the price of 7 boxes, i get 100 of the bigger white paper bags) and although they'd look really cute, I wont be able to stuff as much goodies in them as I can in the paper bags. Anyway I had nothing to lose, the paper bags can be used for a gazillion things including Adrienne's school lunches or tons of arts and crafts projects so I got them anyway.

Now my problem is how to print them when my HP officejet 7580 keeps getting jammed whenever i load in a paper bag!!! AUGH! Ive been doing tons of google searches on how to not get a paper jam but twice that I tried, the paper bag got shredded in the rollers. A friend of mine did something similar last year (in fact, I asked her where she found her white paper bags) and I remember she told me how frustrating it was trying to print them.

Anyway im going to try printing again. hope it works at some point!

Adrienne's 5th week of school in pictures

There were no classes on Monday and Tuesday due to Parent-Teacher Meetings. I was scheduled to meet Ms Kathryn on Monday so I went and I wasn't sure what to expect.

I was really surprised. Adrienne has been doing well in school -- apart from the morning tears and refusing to finish up her lunch-- she hasn't had any problems adjusting. Her teachers told me that she's been doing the Montessori portion of school with the bigger kids already and that they are thinking of moving her two levels up next term. Most of her classmates now are either staying in the same class or moving one level up. Im not sure how Adrienne will take the change (new kids, new teachers!) all so soon. But she'll be on the reading program though so that's a good thing.

Anyway since she'll be doing 2 weeks of the holiday camp, her teachers told me that they were going to start grouping her with the kids that will be in her class next term so she'll get to know them. They'll also be going to the gym at turf city every wednesday on a bus!

Im excited for her but at the same time nervous as to how she'll deal with the change.

I also found out that Adrienne has started with mandarin lessons at school! I didnt realize that she was taking mandarin already because she never talks about that part of her day. Most of the time it's always about story time and art or cooking or what she did at the playground or how they had to make a choo choo train to go to "Montestory" (apparently the choo choo train was to move to where the bigger kids did montessori!).

Adrienne's week 4 of school in pictures

The Olivia Invite .... again!

I spent until 3am last night trying to put together a better invite because I felt version 2 was a little cluttered. It had me trying to put all the elements that my two year old wanted (i.e. the cupcake tower with the 3 on it... and eventually she wanted the background with the pink and brown dots).

So... Im down to the final 4. I do like the canvas effect but Im not sure how that will translate once printed. Anyway I still have a good two months to go before the party anyway so there's still time. Personally, I find the top 2 invites the least cluttered (and the only difference was that I put in a canvas effect for the one on the right)... and the bottom left one looks like it's Olivia having her 3rd birthday...

More rainbow cupcakes!

Spent the morning making a second batch of rainbow cupcakes...

Step 1: mix white cake mix according to package directions except I always add an additional egg and substitute 1cup buttermilk for the water called for on the box.

Step 2: pour the mix into several bowls and mix food colouring in each one to make the desired color!

Step 3: layer the colored batter into the cupcake liners. ( I do violet at the bottom, then blue, green, yellow and pink goes on top!)

Step 4: bake according to cake mix directions!

and voila! the RAINBOW CUPCAKES are done!

The Olivia Invite Part 2

I tried printing out the previous version of the Olivia invite last weekend and it came out so blurry! Yup, this was the same invite that I made using MS Paint and it saved as a 17KB file.

You couldnt read any of the little details and even the big texts came out a little pixellated.

So anyway I downloaded digital scrapbooking software and decided to use that to create version 2. I dont know. It looks a little cluttered i think but Adrienne wanted that cupcake tower in the picture and she wanted the invite to be mainly pink (except for Olivia who is always in red). Ive never done digital scrapbooking before so this was my first attempt. It was pretty interesting though but I have yet to get the hang of it!

Happy mother's day!

My two year old made me a card!

Now what did you get???

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Tutu kachoo!

I'm trying out the mobile posting thing right now... And it works!

Now this is so much easier than having to use my computer :)

Anyway

When Adrienne was a year old, I made her a couple of tutu skirts. it took me half an hour to cut up the tulle into strips then knot them onto a garter strip that I sewed together at the ends to make a ring. They were a real cinch to make and now that A is into this whole princess and fairy dress up phase, her tutus have definitely clocked in a lot of mileage!

Ok I need to cut this short... Off to a playdate!
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Adrienne's 3rd week of school in pictures

There are no pictures of her making cookies because that was the day Adrienne led a revolution. Apparently she led a group of kids to bang on the tables that Wednesday (and i remember because i was lined up to go birthday present shopping at a toys r us sale) and as punishment, she didnt get to make cookies and instead was sent out to play with the montessori toys.

I do recall she that she told me about sticking things on a necktie for daddy that Tuesday when we were walking home from school.

west coast park and ikea

we spent the morning making sand pies at the west coast park. lunch at mickey d's and on our way back homewe stopped by ikea. Adrienne loves it at ikea and heads for exactly the same thing each time... the play kitchen! Its the exact same play kitchen that we have at home except it apparently has more appeal when its at the store! So she spent a good hour there pretending to wash the dishes and set the table.

The Olivia Invite

I worked on the invitation this afternoon but now im second guessing the invite i made. I used microsoft paint and made a jpeg invite as i was hoping to print it out on my photo printer and mail them out to people. i made a 4x6 image but now im not so sure if it will actually print out well on 4x6 photo paper because after i saved the darn thing the file size was only 17KB.... 17??? that'll probably print out as big as a postage stamp if im lucky!

GAAAAAH.

I better do a trial print soon and if not, ive got to redo this all over again!

Olivia themed birthday party planning 1

So I finally got off to a start with the party planning! I have two months to put together an Olivia the Pig themed birthday party for Adrienne who loooooooves the books!


I spent an entire morning printing out Olivia printables off the Nick Jr site. I just clicked on every thing i could possibly use for her party such as......



COLORING PAGES:



And this one came as a party game printable but I figured the stars would make great party decorations:




I still have a whole stack of papers to cut and then laminate. Im glad I finally got something done for Adrienne's party!

Adrienne's 2nd week of school in pictures

Although yahoo (GRRRRRRR) deleted my 2nd week updates, I just realized that I didnt delete any of Ms Kathryn's updates on my phone!

I may have also missed out the end of the first week's updates too since that got deleted as well.

So here goes nothing:

April 15, 2010

11:46 AM Very happy. Beaming with pride loves that crown.

11:51 AM But she is so cool when she gets here. For a first week she is one of the best we've ever had.

WEEK 2

April 19, 2010

9:39AM Happy and settled. Chatting away.

10:10AM No good as gold again.

April 20, 2010

9:52AM Adrienne settled quickly and is very quickly (?)

10:04AM So strange as she is so relaxed when here. We are even thinking of double promoting her next term.

April 21, 2010

9:50AM Another happy smiling morning

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Adrienne's first week of school in pictures

Here's what she did during her first week!

Adrienne's first weeks of school...

Yahoo sucks!! I wrote a whole draft about Adrienne's first 2 weeks of school on yahoo mail and I was updating as the days went by. Then lo and behold, some stupid glitch in their system and everything I wrote was GONE! It was 2 weeks worth of updates that disappeared just like that.

I immediately contacted their customer care center and requested that they restore my mailbox back to a couple of hours before (as it says on their site they only can do so within 24 hours). Anyway I send in a total of 3 requests for it within a span of 20 hours and they get back to me 3 days later saying "thanks for your request unfortunately I cant restore it because it's been more than 24hours." Okay how dumb is that??? Terrible customer service if you ask me. I felt i had done my part (and even requested the mail restoration 2 more times when I didnt get any sort of reply from them regarding my original request) and their dumb customer care people were just sooo sloooow to move. Ive already complained to them about it and all they can say is "oh yeah sorry 'bout that. too bad for you."


SO ANYWAY

This is whatever I've salvaged from that draft. The entire 2nd week update is missing. Off the top of my head, I can remember that it was the Thursday of the 2nd week where adrienne didnt cry when she was being dropped off at school and the Monday of the 2nd week where she came home and talked about chopping bananas.


WEEK 1

DAY 1
April 12, 2010, Monday
Pickup time: 10:30AM

I dropped adrienne off at little hands this morning. It was a struggle getting her changed and to have her eat some breakfast before going to school.Anyway when we got there, she seemed ok. She went straight in and I didn't think she realized that I was coming in with her. So when she saw me outside the gate - I waved at her and then she burst into tears!! Someone told me that it was important to say goodbye and not just disappear so that's what I did... Anyway right when she cried, her teacher Ms Kathryn carried her and they walked to the playground and then 4 teachers came to her and were all trying to console her. Then she calmed down after Ms Choi carried her and then she somehow convinced adrienne to get on the swing. Adrienne seemed fine at that point. This all happened within a span of 10 to 15 minutes. Next thing I know she was running around the playground exploring. I was sitting in the car just watching the whole time and decided to drive off when it looked like all was ok.
9:40AM Text from Ms Kathryn: Adrienne is having fun on the swing. She settled quickly. We normally aim for a 10.30 pickup on the first day. Does that work for you?
10:14AM Text: She ate at snack time well and is joining in circle time beautifully.
After class, I asked Adrienne how it went at school. She told me she went on the slides at the playground and at circle time she sang Twinkle Twinkle and Eentsy Weentsy spider. She ended with "I was sad [because] mommy [has to] is coming back for me". So I asked if she wanted to go back to school and she said "no." We asked her about the new friends she made and she was talking about a little girl named "Painty/Paint-tin" and a little boy named "Joe" (apparently their names are Katie/Kaitlin and Jay!"


DAY 2
April 13, 2010, Tuesday
Pickup time: 11AM

When Adrienne woke up she was almost immediately in tears. She kept saying "I dont want to go to school", "I dont want mommy to [say I'll] come back [for you]". She kept insisting that we go together to the supermarket instead. And kept crying nonstop while she was getting dressed and barely ate her breakfast.
Anyway, I asked if she wanted Jasmin to bring her to school today and she said yes but then realized it might only be Jasmin so she said "but i want Mommy too"
So the minute we settled her into the car, she stopped crying up until we got to the school. Then she kept saying "No! I dont want to go!". So I let Jasmin carry her and when we get to the gate where they check temperature Ms Kathryn immediately bent down to get her and Adrienne ran away! She tried to hide behind Jasmin's dress and then moved towards the wall and got caught in a corner so her teacher obviously got her and carried her. And then her teacher tells her "Say goodbye to mommy, give her a kiss" and immediately Adrienne flings her arms around my neck and hangs on really tight and wouldnt let go. The woman had to practically tear her off of me and then she hurried to the back pathway towards the playground so that i was out of sight.
Then i went into the car and I could see adrienne being carried by Ms Choi but she was no longer crying. Then they step away for a minute and im like "oh where did they go???" And Jasmin points out that she's on the swing with another kid.
GAH. At school she cried for about 3minutes and that was it! She was fine!
9:39AM Text update: Adrienne settled quickly and is currently happily playing outside.
9:51AM Text: Happy doing water play. :)
10:06AM Text: Enjoying her sausages at snack now. :) Shall we aim for 11 today?
I picked her up and she was showing me how she was stamping with brocolli and corn and carrots as they did vegetable prints today.
I asked her about her day and she told me that Ms Clemmie had mosquitoes and flies on her foot and did a dance, and that today she and matthew went exploring on the playground and they saw a house through a telescope.
I asked her about water play and she said "I played with a bucket and a scoop then we had to put everything away."
At circle time they sang Twinkle Twinkle and Eentsy Weentsy Spider and they also sang "mee-i- mee-i" [I gave her a puzzled look] to which she says "its a song about a farm" --at which point I realized that was "old macdonald had a farm eieio" . Then she goes on to sing old mc donald had a farm and goes through each of the animals from the song.Right before she went to bed, my mom called and asked her about her day at school. Over the phone Adrienne said, "Me, Matthew and Jay were patting the table like this [makes wild banging motion with her arms on the pillow] and the teachers got mad hahahahahaha" and she kept on laughing as if making the teachers mad was a funny thing. I asked her which teachers got mad and she said in between bouts of laughter "Ms Clemmie and Ms Kathryn got mad! They said "NO patting the table!!" [while mimicing their scolding action and stern face]. It's only the second day of school and already she's in trouble!!



DAY 3
April 14, 2010 Wednesday
Pickup time: 11:30AM

The day started out the same with Adrienne crying at home. Then the crying stopped when we got to the car. The mintue we got to school, the crying started again. Same routine, Ms Kathryn gets her and carries her to the playground and hands her to Ms Choi. She barely cried for a minute though. The moment she got to the playground she was fine.
I didnt get an SMS update first thing in the morning so I had to text Ms Kathryn about how she was doing and if she settled as quick as yesterday.
10:04AM Text: Yes very quickly again. :) Aim for 11:30. Doesnt want her sandwich yet.
10:15AM Text: We just had a few tears. Ok again now. Came on for no apparent reason.
I asked adrienne when I picked her up why she cried and she said a boy kicked her leg during snacktime!!! (So her teacher will sit her with the girls tomorrow and away from her snackroom gang)
I asked her about her day and what she did at school. She told me that she explored again on the playground. She also said "I scared Matthew like this. RRRRRROOOOOOOOAAAR! I roared like a lion and Matthew got scared."
I asked her if they sang any new songs during circle time and she told me that "the teachers and kids sang row row row your boat"
Adrienne also said, "I made muesli bars and mixed it with a big spoon" and demonstrated how she mixed up all the muesli.
I asked her what katie looked like and she told me that katie has blue and white eyes and her hair is the same like Adrienne's and that she thinks she's more friends with katie than matthew.But to answer my question, "So do you want to go to school?" Her answer is still NO she doesn't want to go to school because it isn't "funny"!!!



DAY 4
April 15, 2010, Thursday
Pickup time: 12:15pm

Today started out the same - more whining from when adrienne woke up. She didn't cry on the way to school though and only cried once Ms Kathryn got her and carried her to the back. It probably lasted less than a minute because when she got to the playground she was fine. Then I got the sms updates from her teacher that she was having a good day at school and that she was a fantastic dancer. (Apparently adrienne was telling everyone that she goes to dance class then showed off her moves) so they asked me to come and get her at 12:15.
10:34AM Text: Adrienne is having a great morning. :)
11:45AM Text: She is a fantastic dancer :).



WEEK 3
April 27, 2010, TUESDAY

Last night, when we were asking Adrienne if she wanted to go to school today she responded with "I had to say sorry to Jay." I asked her why and she answered "I pushed him ... with my hands!" I asked her where she pushed him and she said "At the house." (meaning the playhouse at the playground area). I asked her if anyone saw her and she said "Yeah Ms. Diamond (Diane) made me say sorry."
Today we were off to a great start. It took me forever to get ready in the morning that from whining "I dont want to go to school" when she woke up, she started whining "I WANT to go to school! Lets go!"
When we drove into school, Adrienne was waving at Ms Kathryn from her carseat. She was so excited to be going to school that she willingly went through the school gates and when Ms Kathryn told her to say goodbye to m, Adrienne gave a big wave and blew me a kiss and said "Bye Mommy! I love you!"
When I came back to pick her up, she was brought down by Ms Clemmie. Adrienne told me that she hurt her forehead at school and made ties for art. I asked about her forehead and she said that she "hurt [her] forehead on William" and that "Ms Clemmie said to hug william when he said sorry." I asked her if she cried when she hurt her forehead but she said no.
She also told me she pushed Beau out of the house today and Ms Diamond (Diane) told her to say sorry to Beau.
I asked her about the ties she made and she said that she made Daddy's ties. I guess we'll see at the end of the week when we get her art folder back!
Adrienne also told me that they sang songs and Ms Choi sang 'hello how do you do."

I NEED SOME INSPIRATION!!!

I haven't had a jolt of creativity come recently... We've been busy getting ready for Adrienne's first day of school (which was yesterday). She seems to be getting on well despite the tears.

So before her first week of classes, I decided to bring her for a treat at Universal Studios!!! We were there 4 times last week. Then on the weekend we took her for a boat ride.

I do need to start thinking about her birthday party though. We are leaning towards an Olivia themed party. Time to get a laminator and lots and lots of nice paper!

Ikea hacker and play kitchens

My cardboard play kitchen has been featured on ikea hacker!!

(click on the link for the tutorial)

http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2009/07/recycled-play-kitchen.html

I think this play kitchen lasted us about a couple of months until my little toddler had the grand idea of using it as a chair. It was a lot of fun making it though and it was a lot of fun while it lasted.... until we decided that a wooden kitchen would survive all that toddler abuse!

Mr. Monkey

That's Mr. Monkey and Adrienne's felt crown.

I remember finding a pair of brown socks in sock monkey colors from the $2 store. I bought it right away with the intention of making a sock monkey but then I got really lazy and the socks had been sitting in my craft box for almost a year until my husband found them and thought they were for him but called them "too hideous" to be worn to work. LOL. So I told him I was supposed to make a monkey out of it and he gave me this funny look and then stuffed the socks back in my craft box.

Anyway, shortly after that, I just had that rush of creative juices flowing and whipped out my sewing machine and started stitching away. The toughest part about making the sock monkey was trying to turn the tail, arms and legs inside out. No wait. Make that right side out (because you sew it after you turn it inside out. CONFUSED MUCH?






Well anyway you get the picture. I just followed the online tutorials and turned the hideous brown socks into a friend! Halfway through stitching up the monkey, my sewing machine went kaput! I had to finish it's arm and tail by hand. It wasn't hard at all but it took a little bit longer once the sewing machine was out of the picture.






A friend's son saw the sock monkey we made and asked if he could bring "Moo-Moo" home. (He named it right away-- that's how attached he was to our Mr. Monkey! So I ended up making him one (a slightly smaller version) because I was incapacitated by my sewing machine mishap. And I even made his monkey some felt food lunch so it wouldn't go hungry... fried shrimp noodles!





Since then Ive been collecting socks that I feel would make great sock animals but I haven't found time to make them. I also haven't gotten my sewing machine fixed so maybe once I get that done, I might actually get around to making more sock animals!. I even got the book "Sock and Glove" for inspiration. There are lots of sock animal ideas that I still haven't gotten around to do. But man, if you just do a "sock animal" search on etsy you'll find dozens and dozens of the cutest sock animals. Ever. They use colourful socks with stripes or polka dots or little hearts on them and they look so professionally done. My sewing skills don't come close at all!

Mod Podge

I found some mod podge today at spotlight. They had different kinds -shimmery, matte, glossy... I settled for the glossy one because i couldn't at that point remember which projects i wanted to use it for but i figured "glossy" might be the most useful.

Im excited! Can't wait to try it out. I remember always wanting to make things that required some Mod Podge and since I didnt have any, I even searched for a recipe to make my own. I could never mix up my own Mod Podge though because I was always lacking one ingredient -- clear varnish! I figured, if I had to run to the store to pick up varnish-- then why not pick up some Mod Podge and save myself the hassle of trying to concoct it myself!

There are lots of sites dedicated solely to Mod Podge projects and Mod Podge crafts. Now I just need to figure out what the first one would be... and then of course remember to document it, in case it's a raging success!

Rainbow cupcakes

After a trip to the emergency room on Monday night (thanks to my 2-year old sticking things up her nose), she asked me to make these rainbow cupcakes that we saw online.

I spent the next day hopping from one supermarket to another trying to get right food colouring we needed (I couldnt find the McCormick 4-pack food coloring that we always had stocked up in our pantry when I was a kid) and I also needed a pack of white cake mix for the cupcakes.

They were very easy to make. I just followed the instructions on the back of the box, split the batter into 6 bowls and mixed in the food colouring (one color per bowl). We had pink, orange, yellow, sky blue, apple green and violet.

Then using a spoon, I layered each color into the cupcake liners and baked them! I should have taken pictures of the whole process but i totally forgot to!

The end result??

RAINBOW CUPCAKES!

When you peel off the cupcake liners, you can see how i didnt do such a good job of layering the batter evenly. LOL. oops.

But they were yummy! And it was a nice surprise for a little 2 year old for when she woke up from her nap :)