Happy Easter

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Romans 10:9-10

9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Life, love and death

Today I lost a friend.  She had breast cancer that eventually spread through out her body.  I'm still pretty emotional about it since I only learned of it a few hours ago.

This woman was one of the strongest women I knew.  I never heard her say a bad word about anyone, she was always kind and she always showed me a great patience.  She was strong in her faith and still thanked God for what she had.  I could only hope to have a tenth of the grace and beauty she carried through her ordeal.

Although she is gone from this earth, I know I will see her again.

Take a moment to let your family and loved ones know how much you love them.

I am a Christian woman, I am not ashamed of this or afraid to admit it.  I ask you to pray for her family to get through these trying times.

This post is for her, not me.  Please do not leave comments.

The merits of patience

Over the weekend, my niece turned 12.  She celebrated with a party at a local laser tag facility.  It was pouring rain (like flood causing rain) so some the party guests did not show up.  This made for the need of a few adults to fill in on the game floor.  My husband and I were happy to oblige.  It was a good thing we were on the same team or it would have been a war just between he and I.  As it stood, at the end of the game, I came in second out of 17 players (my brother in law came in first).  My husband came in eighth.  My accuracy was a bit over 16% while his was around 4%.  The difference?  I guess I was only taking the shots I thought I could get and he was just shooting at everything.  I fired just under 275 shots.  He fired almost 700.  My six year old beat him too.

Rediscovering salad

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I do not like salads made from lettuce.  Any kind of lettuce.  Today I actually made myself a salad for lunch and ate the entire thing. Today I used spinach.  I figured out I really love raw spinach.

Rainbow Tutu Instructions

A friend asked if I would post how I made the tutu for the cake.

I had looked at all the instructions from various websites for how to make one, but I didn't want to have to use hot glue.  I had already bought my tulle off a bolt from Hobby Lobby when it was on sale, so I needed to find something to attach it to and a good way to attach it.  Then I saw the perfect thing.  A styrofoam disc.  I picked a 12 inch disc as it was the same size as the cake board I was using.

I got this one at Hobby Lobby.  I cut my tulle into strips slightly longer in length than I needed.  I cut across the width of the bolt, giving me a strip 45 inches long and about 9 inches wide.  I then cut the length in half so  they were only about 22 inches long (sorry I don't have pictures of this).  I counted the number of tulle strips I had (I cut four of each color) and then divided the circle evenly.  I marked it with a permanent marker so each strip of tulle would be even.

See those little dots?  That was the width I had to fit the strip of tulle into (the 22 inch length).  To hold the tulle on to the foam, I used simple U pins.  I got these at Walmart and they were called upholstery pins.  I used roughly three pins per section of tulle.

I was left with a row of pins showing.

Yes, that is frosting on the tulle.  I took these pictures as I was deconstructing the skirt.  I knew I needed to hide this row of pins, so I wrapped a white ribbon around it, using the pins to secure it down.  I tied a bow and used a pin through the not to hide the ends of the ribbons.

I trimmed the top edge of the tulle to be just long enough to hide my cake board, and cut the lower edge to be even all the way around.  Because the cake ended up being so heavy, I just let the skirt stick straight out.

Although I ended up tossing the tulle and ribbon because it was covered in icing, I saved my foam disc and pins.  I might be able to use this again.

Rainbows and sunshine

On January 14, my baby turned five. She was absolutely determined that she wanted to have a rainbow birthday party, so I tried my hardest to see her vision. Six months ago, I started looking for cake inspiration. I found it on Marthastewart.com.

I knew this would be the perfect cake. With the cake decided, I pushed the party to the back of my mind, but not for long. When I discovered Pinterest, I discovered a very easy way to find inspiration that would have taken me much longer just searching the internet. Off I went in search of inspiration. Here are a few things I found:

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With some rough ideas, I planned what I would need. Normally, I would have started buying things for her party in the two weeks before Christmas. Lucky us, the entire family ended up with a tummy bug during that time so no shopping for me. I was forced to wait until after New Year's so my options were a bit limited when I went out for some things.

Now, Boo knows what colors are in a rainbow and that they total seven, not six. I had to be careful in picking things so it would have all of the correct colors. For the items I couldn't, I explained it really was the best I could do and she seemed to except it. Mostly. After some

grumbling.

Since I did not originally plan to post this on the blog, I did not take pictures as I went. I apologize now and I will from now on.

The day of the party came much more quickly than I had expected. Living in the south means our weather can be anything in the winter. The Saturday before we had a sunny day with temperatures above 70. Luckily, the day of her party it was sunny and in the upper 50's. That meant the kids were able to burn off that energy outside for a while. It was much better that the day of her first birthday party when it snowed! Like I said, crazy winter weather.

Lets start with the cake. I had only looked at the inspiration picture and did not follow any special instructions. I am bad about just going with instinct. Sometimes it turns out beautiful, sometimes I look at it and think I should really have followed some directions. Well, the cake kind of falls in to both of those categories. I chose to do my cake with my ten inch pans to ensure I had enough cake for all the kids and the parents. I bought seven cake mixes (well eight if you count that I always get an extra in case I mess up) and went to work. I mixed in the color for each layer and over the next six hours ended up with seven different color cakes. I realized right away that I didn't need a whole mix for each color, but I kept going. knowing that I had intended to level the layers down anyway. The extra would give me a second cake to go to in case something happened to a layer. I leveled my layers down to be one inch high. Plenty small enough, right? We will get to that later. I started making my icing. I went with my go to buttercream. I use all butter in it, delicious. After I made 18 cups of icing, I started in on the cake. This had to be the easiest cake I have ever iced. I did not have to tint any of it since the cake was the color. Each layer went on the next easily with a layer of buttercream between. I already knew that I wasn't going to be doing the completely smooth cake Martha had, my cake was going to look like a cloud (I used a Wilton #8 tip). When I finished, the cake was almost nine inches tall. That was not my intention. I realized then that my layers could have gone as small as half inch and I made a mental note of this for the future. I took a picture of the cake at this stage.

This is when I went to move the cake to the cake stand I had made. I could barely lift the thing it was so heavy. Again, smaller layers are better. With my husband's help, we moved it to the cake stand I had made. It promptly broke the stand, which was a 12 inch round piece of styrofoam that I had turned into a tutu (see inspiration photo above) and duct taped to the bottom of one of my glass cakestands (I was using the large portion of the stand as the base thinking it would give more stability, silly me). Luckily our hands were still under the cake and we were able to rescue it from damage (whew). After trying to readjust the foam back on to the plate, we gave up and set the foam right on the table with the tutu fanning out around it. In the end, it looked like that was how it was intended all along.

Doesn't it look like I intended it to be like this? During the party I just didn't mention that it was supposed to be standing. Notice the tablecloth? It is supposed to mimic the sky. I bought some white placemats to be clouds and bought cups, plates and utensils in all the rainbow colors.

My husband believes that I have OCD and bought these things to be in this particular order on purpose. Nope, my OCD had me buy them like this completely without my knowledge. I didn't even realize I had done it until I set them out. See those Hershey Kisses? Have a closer look.

Aren't they cute? They match the invitations I made for her. I just made small images, printed them on to sticker paper and punched them out with a 3/4 inch round punch. These turned out to be a big hit and I have a lot of requests to make some for their occasions.

I also made some sky to go along with the cake.

I did not follow the directions posted in my source above. I made up six batches of blue jello and let it set in the refrigerator. After it was set, I stirred it up to break it into small pieces. My husband piped Cool Whip onto the sides of the cups and I just spooned the jello in. Very easy. For the piping, I just used a disposable piping bag, but I am sure a baggie would work just as well.

The thank you bags were also very simple to make. I just used brown lunch bags (I couldn't find my stash of white, bad organization skills) and cut the tops with craft scissors to give a cloud-like appearance. I then used yarn I had leftover from making Boo a rainbow scarf (see it there in the picture) to tie each bag in holes I punched with a standard hole punch.

I wish you could see the ends of the scarf, there are little clouds on the ends. These bags were stored under the table until the end of the party and this table was used for gifts.

The craft I had the kids do during the party was that lovely ring with the ribbons hanging from it. I chose not to get bells, and I had a hard time trying to find the same type ribbon in each color. Finally I found a sheer ribbon at Hobby Lobby in all the right colors. This is the example I made for the kids to see. I wish I could have found a wider ribbon to fill the ring a bit more. I had already bought those rings at an earlier date from Hobby Lobby. I try to buy when things are on sale.

My daughter wanted a rainbow skirt tow ear dring the party. I found this fabric at Hancock and with the help of a friend, made a simple little skirt. The t-shirt came from Walmart and I sewed on the buttons tat I had found at Hobby Lobby. It turned out cute. Doesn't she look happy?

I will spare you the rest of the party photos. Oh wait! did you see the cake as it was cut? Maybe just two more shots then. Here is Boo blowing out her candles with Daddy's help.

And here is the cut cake!

Pinterest

I discovered a site a few months ago called Pinterest. If you haven't already checked it out, you should. I found a picture of a treat bag that I thought would be really cute for Boo to give to her classmates. The original version is found here. This was my take on it.

I didn't have enough buttons on hand and my eyes were a bit small, but I still think they turned out pretty cute.

I am now determined that I am going to make more things I see on Pinterest. Maybe I will post my results. It doesn't matter if they turn out well, as long as I try.