Something small

I'm not sure how I managed to blank on this, but on Saturday morning I awoke realizing that I had a baby shower to go to that afternoon. Fortunately, I had all the supplies I needed and was able to put together a tag blankie in short order.

I didn't have enough of any one color of minkee so it ended up a little scrappy, but I think it works. If nothing else, I don't think baby will mind. :)

The mojo is not exactly back, but pure necessity got me going at the machine. That's something, right?

Not-so-instant Gratification

The last few weeks have pretty much been a bust, craft-wise. At the end of January, I got a virus that put me out for nearly two weeks. Ugh! And since then, I'm still dragging and lacking motivation. So I've been spending my time trolling the blog-o-sphere looking for inspiration to kick-start the creative juices. I finally found it in the form of a dress: Cake Patterns Tiramisu.
Ooo... after seeing it made up in different fabrics on widely varying body types, I decided I needed this dress. Need, I tell you! And I did NOT want to have to wait for the pattern to ship from Australia... who knows how long that would take? No. I wanted it NOW. And, lo! I found that the pattern is available as a pdf (for less $$$ too!) and I snatched it up.

Ugh.

An hour of printing (to say nothing of the time I spent fighting with my printer to attempt to scale the pattern pages to the correct size).

About 120 pieces of paper.

Two rolls of scotch tape.

2.5 hours of cutting and taping.

40 minutes to trace (having to dodge the cars and trucks the boys were racing on the hallway floor where I was tracing may have affected the timing here)

I still haven't managed to cut any fabric.

But, through all of this I have definitely learned something: pdf clothing patterns are definitely NOT for me. Next time I shall go ahead and spend the extra couple of dollars (well worth it!) and wait for the printed pattern.

Volcano Party!

Last weekend was the big event: Big Bear's 6th birthday party!!! He had a great time with family and friends.

The hit of the party was the lava rock toss into the paper mache volcano we created:

Seeing Little Bear attempting to get his lava rock out of the volcano kind of gives you a sense of scale. It was a fair-sized mountain!

I made some special bean bag "lava rocks" to toss. I just used some rock and lava-looking fabrics from my stash. Some were traditional square shapes, others were more irregular (rock-like!). They are filled with a mix of poly-fil and dry red beans.

For prizes/favors, I ordered some custom-created cotton candy through etsy seller, Sweetopia. She was even able to color it grey-- to mimic volcanic ash! It was awesome!

And of course, there was a volcano cake. I took inspiration from a tutorial I found for making an erupting volcano cake and used a bundt pan and a bowl to create the cake stack. Since I knew we wanted it to be sturdy (as opposed to spongy), I used a recipe for Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake that was nice and dense (though it was also a little on the dry side; still tasty though!). We used a glass to cut out the center of the bowl cake and then stuck it down the hole through both layers, just as in the tutorial. Then we used some dry ice to create a foggy/eruption-effect. It was actually pretty darn cool in person. Big Bear loved it!!!

Happy Birthday, Big Bear!!!