Craft Evangelist

Bad Piggies Birthday

2013-07-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

Ugh. I'm like the worst blogger ever.

So my son had a birthday... nearly a month ago. And now y'all get to hear about it. Hopefully you're one of the lucky ones and saw this on Facebook... or not and you don't really care if you see my son's spectacular birthday cupcakes in a timely matter. Either way, you get what you get. But without any further ado...

Now I can't remember if I shared last year's birthday cake, but the theme last year was Angry Birds. Here is a look at last year's cake in case I didn't post it.

We have graduated this year to Bad Piggies. Something of an obsession, I guess. He really doesn't play that much of either, but he likes the characters enough, I suppose. Bad Piggies was an incredibly fun birthday theme. You get to build these wonderful vehicle contraptions to complete the brief obstacle course. And there are all these crazy piggies.

For the game, we picked up a bunch of red helium balloons and some dollar store paper treat boxes. We put a Bad Piggy (from our Angry Birds set) inside the box, tied a couple balloons to the box and swatted it around the main floor. When they got to the end, the kids got a yellow card-stock card filled with candy & a balloon.

I was up very late the night before his party making the piggies, which were lots of fun to make. When my husband got home from being out (pretty late himself), he said, "You're still up???" to which I replied, "Don't tell me what time it is. I don't know and I feel fine and I still have more work to do." It was past 3 AM before I got to bed. Unfortunately I was a little on the grumpy side for the party, but thankfully the kids didn't require a lot of my attention. The whole thing made me want to re-think the way we do birthday parties, though.

But not the cake.

Birthday-Zilla and the Birthday Cake

2013-03-25T14:50:00.001-06:00

So, my daughter turned 8 the other weekend. Crazy, but our friends have a 9-year-old, so I sort of feel prepared for it. Y'know, their kid turns 8 and then I have a full 14 months to get used to the fact that our kid is going to be 8. Helps soften the blow.

And maybe I'm a bit biased, but she's the sweetest eight-year-old I know. Normally, she's a very accommodating child. She's our first-born and she has always loved people so much. So much so that I used to wonder why they even had toys for babies, because she was never very interested in toys, other than to chew on them. She was much more entertained by people. When her brother came along, there wasn't a moment of jealousy. It was almost bizarre: she just loved him so much and was so glad to have another person along with her all the time. Zoe's definition of a brother: permanent friend.

Zoe at 2 1/2 with her new baby brother

She's usually pretty quick to offer solutions when there are disagreements over things and many times it's: "You can have that, Simon, I'll just use this." It's not that she's never selfish, demanding or stubborn, but her usual way is pretty accommodating.

But I don't know who told her the rules all changed for her birthday, but this year wasn't the first year that she turned into something of a "Birthday-Zilla," demanding that everything had to be her way. She had to have the biggest balloon "because it's MY birthday." SHE was going to help make lunch because it was HER birthday. Fun. Still, all in all, it turned out to be a good day.

There's a lot of birthday party talk for a few months before the event around our house. It starts in earnest after Christmas. I remember the birthday party being quite the commodity as a child of Zoe's age. I guess it's one of the few things that a child really has much control or say over, so whom they invite and what they do and what the cake looks like is all a pretty big deal. Zoe described her cake and then she drew a picture of what she wanted it to look like. I wish I could find that picture; it was great. The kids helped with the flowers. I found some great fondant punches at J. Wilton Distributors which is a great little cake supply place not too far from my work. I make my own marshmallow fondant, which is easy and yummy (if you like super sweet marshmallows) and makes a lovely soft workable fondant.

Cha cha cha changes!

2013-03-11T09:00:00.000-06:00

Hey, did anyone notice some changes to my website?

Now that I finally bought my domain and directed my blog to it and added pages for my cupcake & cake flavours, prices and contact form, it's starting to look like a real (amateur) website! But this week I created my own little logo, just with my craft evangelist name.

So there's my cute little by-me designed logo. My business isn't quite lucrative enough just yet to afford a fancy designer and all that... and why won't they work for cupcakes?! Sheesh! (To be fair, I didn't ask anyone to work for cupcakes, so if you're a designer with some vision and want to work for cupcakes or crafts, contact me!)

I also figured out (through A LOT of work in PicMonkey) how to make my own watermark for my photos. I think this is super cool. Maybe it's not that cool, but I did spend a few hours on it, so please don't tell me if it's not cool, ok?

Also, a little sad update on my PAYD device... tried it Friday morning with a client and it DIDN'T WORK! The swiper didn't work! The credit card didn't look that old and the magnetic strip looked in tact. We even tried the old grocery store trick by putting in a plastic bag (why does that work? weird)! I can't wait until they get a chip reader! I suppose I could have tried punching in the numbers and run the transaction that way, but they add an extra fee for that, so BOOOOOO... I'll be trying to get that resolved and figure out what the problem is over the next little while. (sigh). It does have a nice feature in which you can record cash transactions, too, which is great because then I can get reports and keep track of all transactions for my business in one place. So, that's nice, but so far, for processing credit cards... not so great. :(

Occasions for Cupcakes

2013-03-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

I know some of you are thinking, "I really want to try some of those cupcakes, but there are no birthdays coming up soon, so what kind of occasion is good for cupcakes?" You're not alone. People ask these things all the time. There was a study.

So, first, there's the obvious: birthdays.

Chocolate cupcake topped with vanilla buttercream and marshmallow fondant

And cupcakes aren't just for kid birthday parties, there are plenty of yummy grown up options, too: perfect for your spouse or your co-worker or your boss.

Salted caramel filled chocolate cupcake with whipped buttercream and caramel drizzle

Other obvious occasions are bridal showers and weddings.

Chocolate ganache-filled chocolate cupcakes with whipped buttercream and sugar pearls

Here's where it gets fun, though. There are many unconventional opportunities to celebrate with cupcakes:

Returning home from military service

Caramel-filled chocolate cupcakes with three-toned vanilla buttercream

Becoming Canadian! Canada Day! Valentine's Day!

Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla whipped buttercream & sugar sprinkles

"New job in the oil sands" or "Home from Fort Mac"!

Vanilla oreo cupcakes topped with stabilized whipped cream, oreo cookie & crumbs

Staff parties. Potlucks. Graduations.

Chocolate chip cookie dough-filled chocolate cupcakes topped with whipped buttercream

Christmas parties. Halloween parties.

Gingerbread cupcakes topped with whipped vanilla buttercream & gingerbread boy

Now that we've got the party started with unconventional cupcake occasions, what's your occasion? Who needs a special occasion for this beauty?

Caramel filled chocolate cupcake topped with salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream & Snickers

Beauty

2013-02-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

The following cupcakes were inspired by Beauty & the Beast, made for a bridal shower a few weeks ago. They were chocolate ganache filled chocolate cupcakes topped with a vanilla whipped buttercream and sugar pearls.

In other sort of unrelated news, I can now accept credit card payments in person! I opened up this little beauty that came in the mail today.

It allows me to process credit card payments on my iPhone! So, that will be fun! I'm running a little promotion for the next 30 days... order cupcakes and pay with your MasterCard or Visa and I will fill your cupcakes for free! Free filling! (Bulk orders are excluded from this promotion). That's like $6.00 off for a dozen standard cupcakes. Take a look at my prices page for more detail. Contact me to order.

Merry Christmas from the Taylors

2012-12-27T15:45:00.002-07:00

Merry Christmas in Christmas pyjamas from the Taylors!

Well, hello friends and family (and blog stalkers),

As promised to those of you who have received our Christmas cards already, here is our family newsletter in blog-post/email form. I can hardly believe it's the end of 2012 already. I feel like I barely started writing it down right and soon I'm going to have to switch to 2013!

Swimming at Commonwealth

It has been quite the year. I kicked off the year with another round of P90X, which wasn't so successful when I first started it, so I tried out 10 Minute Trainer. I didn't like that so much, but when Zoe started getting picked up from school by our friends, I was able to work P90X back into the schedule and had a much easier time of it. I didn't see a lot of numbers moving at first, but later when I made a few other changes to my diet, (including adding Oolong tea; try it!) I dropped another 10 lbs almost without effort, so I'm down about 45 lbs from when I started nearly 2 years ago. I also sang in the King's Community Choir and it was fun, but it made life very busy for me: too busy, so I didn't continue with it this fall. The Commonwealth Recreation Centre opened up in March; it's been great to take the kids swimming and to take in a few drop-in classes. It's such a great facility and it's so wonderful to have it so close!

Dan doing an open mic comedy show in Montreal

Dan has continued working on his comedy this year and he's quite good at it! He was in a few different contests and made it through to the semi-final level in most (maybe all; I can't remember) of them. He's even picked up quite a few paying gigs, which has been fun to make a little something for a hobby he enjoys. He's been well received in the "comedy community" in Edmonton, which is a fun opportunity for him to meet other people. We made a few trips for a couple of comedy competitions, one to Lethbridge in April and Calgary in May.

Isaac boxing with my grandpa

We also made a trip to Creston for the May long weekend to celebrate my grandma's 75th birthday (sorry, Grandma, now the Internet knows how old you are) and my uncle's 50th. It was lots of fun to see a good chunk of my family. We drove over the mountain for a day to visit my other grandparents and uncles in Salmo. We took the kids to the Blossom Festival parade, which they really enjoyed; Zoe especially appreciated the candy-throwing.

Simon's first stitches

The kids and I created a "Summer Bucket List" at the start of their summer holidays: a list of all the summery things we wanted to do this summer! I'm happy to say we completed the whole list! We had a great time visiting the U-pick strawberry patch, learning to ride a bike on two wheels, camping in the back yard (thanks to our neighbours who lent us a tent!), visiting the legislature grounds and splashing at the city hall wading pool. I highly recommend this to parents; it solved a lot of problems: it kept me accountable to doing fun summer things while the summer is here and once something was done once, the kids didn't beg to do it again. As an example, we kept waiting for the ice cream truck to come around and catch it; when it came, we could all excitedly go out and choose an ice cream. After we checked it off our bucket list, they never asked to do get ice cream from the ice cream truck again. It made it fun for everyone, mom & dad included! One of our summer bucket list items was to go to an outdoor swimming pool. Shortly after I'd given the 5 minute warning to Simon and Zoe, Simon ran right into a pole at the splash pad and ended up with his first set of stitches.

Zoe on her bunk at camp

I took Zoe down to Mill Creek Camp, near Pincher Creek, where my sister Alison directs the camp, for her first sleep away camp. We went down early and hung out with my sister and newest nephew, Caedmon. Then I took the boys to visit my parents in Lethbridge for a couple days, since Zoe's camp was so short, I didn't want to drive back to Edmonton to turn around a couple of days later. We picked Zoe up from camp and then we all camped with my parents at Beauvais Lake Provincial Park for a couple days. We had a great time breaking in mom & dad's new 5th wheel! Zoe had such a good time at camp; she said how sad she was to leave and how much she missed her new friends as we were driving home. She's so excited to go again next year.

Camping with Gramma and Grampy

Though hail damaged, I
grew a zucchini the size of
my leg!

I planted my first real garden this year. I've been container gardening for a few years, but I built one raised bed at the end of last summer and two more this spring: three 4x8 raised beds. I planted strawberries, tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce, herbs, zucchini, cucumbers, stevia, leeks, and a whole bed of carrots! It was a great year for gardening, with lots of sunshine during the day and rain at night, until the awful hail storm that ravaged the garden on my way home from the grocery store. Despite the hail, I still ended up with some edible vegetables and the desire to have a go at it again next year.

Unfortunately, the entire time I was on holidays from work, taking the kids here and there, camping and visiting and driving, I had the worst cold of my life, which, as it turned out, was actually pneumonia (or turned into pneumonia... I'm not really sure how these things work). It was an acute case of pneumonia, apparently, but still, it sounds pretty dramatic. I ended up taking another week off work in sick time. When I was still not getting much better, they ordered some blood work and diagnosed me with mono as well. To top that off, a few weeks later, I also tested positive for strep. So, that was my summer! I was so grateful for some fantastic neighbours who looked out for our kids so much as they played with their kids while I tried to get some rest in the afternoons. Our block is fantastic!

Back to school for Zoe & Simon

Isaac showing us how old he is

The older two children started back to school in the middle of August, which is a little earlier than most kids, but their school follows a year-round schedule, meaning they get an extra week break at Thanksgiving and Easter. Our kids are still keen to get back to school, so it's a schedule that works well for us. Simon started Kindergarten and Zoe started grade two. We had our first report cards and demonstration of learning this fall: Simon is right on track with where he should be and Zoe's report card was absolutely glowing. Her teacher couldn't say enough positive things about her, how pleasant she is to have in class. We are very proud parents! Simon has been secretly learning how to read; he sometimes pretends he doesn't know how, but then he'll just read something to us, out of the blue! What a kid! Isaac turned 2 this fall and is well into the terrific twos... or at least that's what we'll call them. He's sweet and hilarious one moment and an absolute terror the next. It's a good thing he's so cute or I'm afraid he wouldn't have made it this long; one can only handle being yelled at by a toddler for so long. He's been the slowest to talk of the three children, which makes for a lot of being yelled at because even though he doesn't talk much, it doesn't mean he's without an opinion! More recently he's been taking bigger strides with adding words to his vocabulary. He can recognize and say most of his letters and numbers, which is kind of fun, but I wish he'd focus more on saying the things he wants and use those words instead of the yelling and grunting.

The two of us at a vineyard in Quebec

Dan and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in July and October, not because we have two anniversaries, but because our anniversary is actually in July and we took a celebratory trip in October. In July, we went out to Taste of Edmonton (a festival with sampling of foods from all over the city) and discovered that Edmonton tastes delicious! Then we took a trip in October to Montreal! Dan's parents came out to watch the kids for us, while we flew to Montreal and took in the city for a few days around Thanksgiving. We visited with some friends in the Eastern townships, toured a winery, purchased a piece of functional art, ate some fantastic food and just spent a lot of time together. It's amazing how much you can do in a day with just 2 adults! Everything takes so much longer with kids.

Salted Caramel Cupcake

This fall, I kick started my business by marketing a little more, mostly at my workplace, since I'm pretty confident that my best marketing is going to be word of mouth and just getting people to try my cupcakes. It's gone pretty well. I donated some cupcakes to King's annual banquet dessert auction and they were auctioned off for a very good price! So, I've been baking and decorating a lot of cupcakes this fall. It's been fun doing something I enjoy, something I can do from home while the kids sleep and Dan works and tells jokes. I baked a lot of cupcakes for the King's Guild Craft sale, which was a good learning experience. I learned that next time, I don't have to make nearly so many cupcakes! All in all, not so bad, though. I got my first non-word-of-mouth order through Facebook this last week, so my little marketing campaign through Facebook was at least a little bit successful.

Simon caught me working out.
I'll be back at it full force in 2013!

I'm gearing up for another round of P90X in the new year; I've let myself get a little soft, so it's time to whip this body back into shape again. Sometimes I wish I could keep it going strong all year long, but this cycle to life isn't so bad either. It's going to be quite the test of will to be able to run a cupcake business and not eat any leftovers! I'm thinking of taking my business on a bit of a New Year's resolution with me: experimenting with healthier recipes and natural sweeteners, but not compromising on taste and beauty.

We worked on a little project in preparation for Christmas this year: a recipe collection of our kids' favorite recipes! We printed up copies for some of our loved ones, but we also ordered this pdf version for you to enjoy! Click here to view our favorite recipes collection for 2012!

pdf version of our recipe collection!

Advent Day 8: Go sledding!

2012-12-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind on posting about our Advent activities. This post is about Saturday's activity.

It was a great idea to go sledding as part of our Advent Activities! We arranged with some friends who we don't see often enough, all spur-of-the-moment-like, for them to join us in our sledding activity. They planned to come over after nap time and we would all go to the little hill at the park near our house. Then we would follow it up with hot chocolate and a casual dinner at our our house.

We all have little kids, so we knew we wouldn't be out for long, but even I was surprised that our trip took us only about 25 minutes. It was pretty cold out there, especially for little ones, particularly when we got to the top of the hill. Isaac woke up from his nap kinda grumpy and hey, he's two, so you're never really sure what he's going to do. I carried him to the hill (which is quite the work-out since he's nearly 40 lbs!) and when we were nearly there, he just randomly started having a little temper tantrum. Who knows what's going on in his little uncommunicative brain?! Sure makes for fun outings (why is there no sarcasm font, yet?).

It's a good thing he's so cute or these twos would be unbearable!

One of the few trips down the hill on a cold day.

We were breaking in the snow, too, so it wasn't very fast moving.

Everyone was much happier after we got back home and comfortable with our hot chocolate and mulled wine. We had a yummy supper of fresh bread, cheeses and meats from our local Italian Centre Shop. It was so great to visit again with our friends we haven't seen in a while.

Advent Days 6 & 7

2012-12-07T20:43:00.003-07:00

I'm so pleased with how this first week of our Advent Activities has gone! It's been lots of fun; I've been on top of things and for the most part we're having fun and not losing our (my) sh*t. :)

Yesterday we decorated the gingerbread houses that I assembled the day before. I sorted all the candies I bought into egg cartons so that everyone had their own set of candies to use and there was no fighting over a popular candy (you can never know what that will be, either).

Simon begins.

Zoe topping her house with peppermints

Three extra hard cookies were included in the kit to decorate and I allowed the children to eat them. (I took a bite of one and decided it wasn't worth the calories it contained, so I pitched the rest.)

So much candy

Snack break

All decorated. And flying high on sugar!

Tonight's activity was a welcome change: sleep under the Christmas tree! This activity is new this year; I can't remember where I found the idea or if I came up with it myself, but it went very well. Isaac did not participate in this activity, either: too little. We brought up the sleeping bags and moved some of the furniture around to accommodate the little sleepover. They chose to turn off the Christmas tree lights when they were done reading a few Christmas books and are already fast asleep. Such good sleepers. We'll see how it goes in the morning when they wake up and break into the gingerbread houses...

I still think I have some work to do capturing both people, low light and Christmas trees...

This is a fun shot, even though the light is a little off.

Advent Activities: Days 3, 4 & 5

2012-12-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Continuing on with Advent today, our last three activities were fun for both the kids and me. It's a little work to put these things together, but the kids enjoy them so much and I love making opportunities for them to enjoy all the fun of the season instead of it all just being about gifts.

As I mentioned last time, Monday's activity was to make cinnamon dough ornaments. They turned out great, though I think I baked them too long so they aren't smelling as cinnamon-y as I'd hoped.

Cinnamon dough ornament making

Ornaments baked and ready to hang

Tuesday's activity was writing letters to Santa. I printed special stationery for the kids to compose their letters and we even got them in the mail yesterday morning on the way to school. You have no idea how much that makes me feel like a supermom.

Last night's activity was making paper snowflakes, which I mostly let the older two children work on while I put Isaac to bed. When I finished that up, I joined them to make a couple myself. I bought double-sided tape at the dollar store the other day, which was the perfect adhesive for hanging our snowflakes on our patio doors.

This afternoon's activity is to decorate gingerbread houses, which made yesterday afternoon's activity for me making royal icing and assembling the gingerbread houses so they are all ready to go after lunch tomorrow. I bought these little houses at Bulk Barn. They were very basic: just the houses and cheap piping bags that had holes in them (well, the only one I tried to use had a hole in it and since I have plenty of my own piping bags, I abandoned the kit bags). I always think the kits come with too little decorating candy and too little icing, so I chose my own candy from the vast selection at Bulk Barn and I have a much better assortment than the kit houses! Fun fun fun!

I have also been playing with my camera a little more this week. I am proud to say after reading through a few helpful blog posts and watching a couple YouTube videos, my camera is currently in manual mode! Even with the tough evening indoor lighting, I am taking pictures without a flash and managing to balance exposure okay. Before I would shoot in auto - no flash mode with my fixed 50mm lens, which for the most part worked okay, but I think my pictures are looking just a bit better than they were a couple weeks ago! Yay. Took me long enough.

Advent Begins!

2012-12-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

So, we're off to a good start with Advent this year. Although it was a busy weekend making this cake on Friday:

and celebrating mister evangelist's birthday Friday night by going out for fantastic mexican food and then to Meghan Smith's concert, I managed to get the house tidied on Saturday in time for Saturday afternoon nap time when Isaac took a nap and Zoe helped me decorate the tree (Simon happily played on the computer uninterrupted). Decorating the tree was Advent Activity #1.

Advent Activity #2 was Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn. We chose two movies: "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Two of my favorites.

Today's activity is making cinnamon dough ornaments. I used this recipe here, except I forgot to check it ahead of time and used pumpkin puree instead of applesauce because I'm out of applesauce. The dough is all made and ready for when the kids get home from school. My hands smell like cinnamon and soon our tree will, too!

Tomorrow is letters to Santa. I found some cute printable stationery to use that other bloggers have graciously provided. Here's the link. If you use Google image search you can find more Letter to Santa print-ables.

Experience Advent

2012-11-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

Last year we began a tradition for Advent, where instead of unwrapping bits of sub-par chocolate to countdown to Christmas, we DID things instead... seasonal things, Christmas-sy things, religious things, special things, crafty things, things we'd do anyway to anticipate the celebration of the birth of Jesus. It was sooo fun! It wasn't perfect. We got sick and had to skip some things or alter them. Sometimes one parent took the older two kids to do things while the other stayed home with the sleeping 1 year-old. But it went well enough to do it again. It really helped me celebrate and make memories with my kids instead of getting paralyzed by how much there was to do.

I'm pleased with myself that I've got this year's activities all ready to go for December first!

Wordless Wednesday

2012-10-17T21:03:00.001-06:00

Mommy getting in the picture

Cupcakes!

2012-10-14T21:16:00.001-06:00

So, I suppose I just let the last year and a half slip by without doing anything over here, huh? Sorry about that. Forgive me? I'd like to do a better job of working up my side business, so I should probably plug in on the old blog and figure out what happened to my Artfire link. I deleted the sidebar link today, but it hadn't been working for a while and I never took the time to look into what had gone wrong. I feel like I've squandered a bit of time and money with my ArtFire subscription, since I haven't been taking full advantage of it.

Why not put a cupcake picture in the middle of a post?

I've been thinking a fair bit about why I haven't gotten more stuff done in the last couple years,** since I feel pretty incredibly lazy knowing all the things I should get done and then I add my Pinterest obsession to the mix and there's a million more things that I want to do and be and, well, it can leave a person feeling kind of down about themselves. I'm not usually a down about myself kind of person, but I certainly feel like I've been lacking motivation and follow through and I want to get to the bottom of it so I can find the ladder and climb out of whatever pit of procrastination I've fallen into. I've traced it to a few things: two years ago we moved from a 3 bedroom, 1050 sq ft condo into a 5 bedroom, 1600 sq ft 80 year old house which needs a fair bit of work, with very little know-how and very little extra money. Two years ago, I gave birth to our third child: a wonderful lot of laughter and a bit of chaos. And it all seems to come down to one word: overwhelmed. And it's debilitating. And paralyzing.

** I know many of you think that I'm some kind of superwoman who gets loads of shit done and has it all together. And to be fair to myself, in the last two years we moved, had a new baby, raised that baby to be a happy and healthy two year old (on top of parenting the five year old and the seven year old), replaced our kitchen ceiling, painted all but a few rooms of the house, put in a raised vegetable garden. I also did P90X twice and lost 42 lbs, which means I'm down to pre-wedding weight. But there are also many afternoons and nights where I think I should be doing something... getting my basement organized, painting and organizing the craft room, decorating my house properly, organizing the rest of my house properly (I still feel like I haven't fully moved in on some days!) and I just sit there with no get up and go.

And sometimes I think that perhaps I'm afraid of failure so I don't push myself to succeed. I'm afraid that my results will never look like the cute pictures on Pinterest and I'll be disappointed in all the effort that I expended to get to the failed result. And when I face the reality of these fears, I'm saddened at myself because it's kind of new to me to be so afraid to fail, or at least to be aware of the fear and for it to paralyze me like this. But the overwhelmed feeling is contributing to the fear because I feel like there's so much to do that I can't possibly get it all done, so why even start?

So I need to do something. I'm not sure if this is the right place to start, but waiting for myself to get the motivation and energy to get the craft room to a beautiful and work-able place hasn't happened either, so maybe I have to work backwards. So I agreed to make some cupcakes for the dessert auction portion of the annual banquet at the university I work at: The King's University College. And I took it on as a little bit of a promotion challenge. I knew deep down that not many people would take my business cards and it probably wouldn't result in much new business. But my cupcakes went for $105! For one dozen Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes (oh! they were sooooo delicious!). And one person liked my Facebook page. That was enough encouragement for me to get going on doing a better job of this business.

I decided to work on my business whenever my husband is out doing comedy (more on that later, perhaps), so that'll give me at least once or twice a week, which is more than I was doing before! Bit by bit.

Beef & Barley Soup

2011-05-25T22:51:00.000-06:00

A friend asked me for this recipe and I thought I had put it on the blog, but I searched and could only find the intention of putting it on the blog. So, here it is. Super easy. Super yummy. I think I now have it memorized.

Beef & Barley Soup
1 lb lean or extra lean ground beef
1 finely chopped onion
3 cups boiling water
2 Beef Oxo packets (I use 2 tsp Better than Bouillon)
28 oz can diced tomatoes
2 diced potatoes
2 shredded carrots
1/2 cup pearl barley
salt & pepper

Brown ground beef. Drain excess fat. Add onion and saute 3-4 minutes until onion is translucent. Season with a little salt & pepper. Add everything else. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20-30 minutes until potatoes are tender and barley is cooked.

Serve with crusty rolls.

Why I Choose Artfire

2011-05-19T13:53:00.000-06:00

There are a few places to sell your crafty wares on the Internet, but I chose Artfire to set up my shop. Here's why:

No listing fees. No closing fees. No extra fees. I can list as much as I want for a low monthly fee. If I want to sell lots, Artfire is the place to do it! There are lots of perks in going Pro, too. I love having access to all the extra features.
You can list for free! You can set up a basic studio and list your items for free! It's a great way to feel out the market if you're just getting started.
Artfire has the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which means that when people go searching for "Reusable Facial Pads," my humble studio shows up on the front page. Tell me, how often do you click through to the second page of search engine results? This is super important. I get most of my business and traffic through people searching and finding my studio on Artfire.
My buyers don't need to set up an Artfire profile to purchase from me. It's just one more step removed, another possible barrier.
Facebook kiosk! My friends and fans can shop right from Facebook! No need to leave Facebook, you can do it all from there!

You can set up your own studio on Artfire and get access to all these great features, too. Just click this to go sign up. Bonus: if you sign up for a Pro account through my link, I get a free month & you get a free month (your third month is free).

Baking with Bokeh + a little rant

2011-05-11T09:30:00.001-06:00

You know, all you need to do to make your baking look yummier is grab some natural light and a low F-stop and you get that nice blur in the background that means you can't tell when it was I last gave my counter tops a good scrub (usually daily, but you never know). These banana oatmeal muffins were pretty good, except the big ones stuck to the cupcake paper like nobody's business.

(Here begins the rant; if you're not one for rants, just skip this part, enjoy the picture. We ate muffins; have a nice day.)

I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com. By itself it would be a fine muffin recipe. I probably should have followed the recipe as written just to have actually made it. But I read the reviews. This is my biggest beef with Allrecipes.com and it really has little to do with the site itself, but much more to do with the users of the site and how they incorrectly use the star system and the reviews. Seriously, no matter how many stars the recipe has, you still need to read through at least 10 reviews to figure out whether you should even bother making the recipe or not and what changes you should make to the recipe should you decide to make it. I mean, it's one thing to make the recipe once, decide it needed a little more *whatever* and write a review saying as much and still rate it well. It's another thing to change 3-5 things about the recipe, declare it fabulous and give it 5 stars. It's like going to Home Depot, going through the self checkout, going home and doing the online survey and saying you got fabulous service at the checkout. "I rock at scanning things and swiping my debit card." I have occasionally seen comments by other users who get upset with previous reviewers who rate a recipe poorly based on the changes they made to the recipe. That makes sense, but it is equally unhelpful to have to read through countless reviews in order to determine what recipe is 4.5 stars. I don't know why someone just doesn't write up their own recipe with the changes they made and then everyone can rate that recipe with 5 stars as written.

This recipe for Banana Oat Muffins has the same issue, of course. These muffins were pretty good made with the changes that most people suggested. They weren't complicated changes, apple sauce for oil, brown sugar for white, add some chocolate chips, whatever. No big deal. I would probably make them again, but follow the recipe as written. 1/3 cup of oil isn't that bad for a batch of muffins and maybe then they wouldn't stick to the cupcake paper so badly.

So that's my rant. I don't know why I don't just use some other site, other than it's just as unpredictable if it's a good recipe or not. I implore you, Allrecipes users, write your own recipe or rate the recipe as written.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-05-04T00:00:00.001-06:00

Helping with the Easter Baking

Home Improvements

2011-05-03T08:30:00.006-06:00

So, in between Halloween and Christmas, a whole bunch of home renos/updates happened, so there are not a lot of other crafty creations in between as a result. So "we" (not really me: my job was taking care of my kids and our handy friend's kids and feeding people) ripped out our kitchen ceiling. I wasn't aware how much of the ceiling was getting ripped out, or I would have done some more covering up of stuff. We thought there was drywall on the ceiling (there was), but there was also lath & plaster, so they had to rip all that down, too.

It was a huge mess, as you can see, but the men had it mostly cleaned up the same night, which was pretty impressive. They bagged it up in heavy duty garbage bags and the garbage men picked it up! We thought we might have to borrow a truck and haul it down to the dump, but it totally work out!

The ceiling looked like this. The lath & plaster took up so much space that there was 2-3 inches of extra ceiling height that we got out of the reno.

They needed to get at the plumbing of the bathroom above the kitchen to take care of a leak. We couldn't exactly solve the problem entirely, but the new non-slumpy, bubbly ceiling is fantastic!

Our super handy friend was super awesome and worked soooo hard for us over the next couple of weeks, taping and mudding and making the ceiling all nice and beautiful. Then his wife came and helped me paint it. Not only that, she helped me paint the sitting room, the kitchen walls & then the front entrance, hallways, and stairwell. I guess I haven't taken any photos of the kitchen painted...

These are the colours we chose for the kitchen (middle brown on left), sitting room (red) and house colour (grey triangle in the middle).

Painting the sitting room. I think this is after the second coat. We did three total. It was done in time for Christmas, hosting the in-laws!

Our handy friend also installed this sweet mantle that my husband scored at an awesome deal on Kijiji. It really put the finishing touch on the room.

The mudroom.

The mudroom again. We're looking at the closet door, which has since been painted and had hardware put on properly (can you tell what's wrong?) and the kids' sock sorter. I used to have this little organizing rack in our bedroom because there was no room for my night table beside our bed, so I could keep my books and whatnot in it.

Looking at the mudroom from the hallway. There are little organizational containers in the cubbies of that bench, one for each member of the family. We still need to put up new trim throughout the house, which is a pretty big project that we'll just have to plug away at bit by bit.

My friend is going to help me again next week paint the rest of the kitchen (we left one wall because it's getting painted a different colour) and the tv room & dining room at the back of the house. After that is done, there will be just the bathrooms and the sewing room to paint!

Christmas Nightgown

2011-05-02T08:30:00.002-06:00

So, I guess I made it back to Christmas now.

There is a tradition in my husband's family of opening a gift on Christmas eve. The gift is always pajamas. It is a sensible gift: that way children look cute in pictures on Christmas morning and they can always use new pajamas. I like to think I'm pretty easy going about Christmas traditions, so we have done this since we have been married and the kids have received new pajamas on Christmas eve their whole lives.

Zoe loves dresses and nightgowns though she has very few nightgowns, so this year I wanted to make a very traditional style nightgown that she would love. She was pretty happy when she opened it on Christmas eve:

She still loves it as much as the day she received it. She loves dresses. She would wear dresses everyday if you let her (which I would since she's in kindergarten and it's not that much longer that she's going to want to wear dresses everyday).

Opening her stocking Christmas morning, wearing her very pink and frilly nightgown.

The two oldest children in their Christmas pajamas.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-04-27T00:00:00.002-06:00

Easter bow ties

More Cakes

2011-04-23T13:45:00.000-06:00

So there were some more birthdays and other cake-worthy events in the last 10 months, too. I guess I didn't make cakes for all of them, but I made some cakes. I may have said this before, but I make cakes for the kids of our good friends and co-church planters. This Star Wars Lego cake was requested for the January birthday. (Star Wars Lego cake? Nothin' like a simple cake, eh? Boys....)

The techniques used here: buttercream transfer (YouTube how to) and painting on buttercream and of course, basic piping. I printed out a coloring page that the birthday boy and my husband found on the internet. I filled in only the grey shape of the Imperial Walker for the buttercream transfer. Then I painted on the buttercream transfer using a mixture of real vanilla & black icing paste for the detail.

For the sides, I just piped flat monochromatic lego-sized stripes and piped dots on the top of them for the Lego look. I saw this idea here. From what I can remember, it was a hit. I was in my first couple weeks of our diet & exercise program, so I passed on the cake and ate a protein bar instead. I was told it tasted good.

The sister of a friend of mine commissioned me to make this monkey cake for her son's first birthday. It turned out okay. She looked through my Facebook cakes album and found the picture of Zoe's 2nd birthday cake, which I didn't think was one of my better cakes, but oh well, that's what she picked.

I'm always so nervous doing commissioned cakes. People tell me my cakes look professional, but I'm not so sure. I can tell the difference when I look through professional cake albums vs. my own. I'm not down in the dumps about this or searching for compliments, I'm just telling it like it is. I make nice cakes. Some are better than others. Most are better than these and I never make spelling mistakes, though occasionally I make a blunder and end up with a cake that unintentionally looks like boobs.

(It's supposed to be a purse, but it is kinda pathetic, even if it didn't look like boobs.)

Then there was a wedding. I wasn't really supposed to make a cake for this wedding. I'd thought of offering in advance, but the wedding date was only a few weeks after my due date, so I wasn't sure I would be feeling up to making a cake. But then we were visiting with the couple and while I know they're not big cake people (she's celiac & he doesn't really really care for cake), one of the reasons they opted for no cake was because it was expensive for something they didn't really care for. But everyone's grandma wants them to have a cake, if only for the opportunity to take pictures of them cutting it.

So, this was my first attempt at a gluten-free cake. I used this recipe and the bride told me it was delicious. I'll have to try it sometime. I didn't have leftover cake for me to try, so I was really hoping it was yummy.

For the roses, I made them out of fondant using this technique found on YouTube. Seriously people, I don't know how to do anything. I just Google it and figure it out. The beauty of the Internet is that everyone wants to be an expert so there are free instructions out there for just about everything. LOVE! I was pretty happy with this cake, though the seams were kind of obvious, but not if you take pictures from the right side!

Now, the final cake I haven't shared yet. Simon turned three the day after I began my 10 month blog hiatus. This was his cake. He loves basketball.

I was pretty pleased with the basketball colour I achieved for the fondant. Not always easy to get exactly what you're looking for. I used a bowl to make the shape and then used a lot of icing to make it more ball shaped and less bowl shaped underneath the fondant. It's round enough.

If you had a birthday in the last 10 months, Happy Birthday. If you have one coming up in the next 10 months and need a cake, let me know and we'll work something out.

Crafty Birthday

2011-04-22T09:31:00.002-06:00

In March, we had a birthday. Two actually. Mine and my daughter's. Mine totally gets overshadowed by the child's. I am totally okay with this. I made cupcakes to send to school on her actual birthday. They were strawberry cupcakes made with this Martha Stewart recipe. Honestly, I've been a bit underwhelmed by Martha's cake recipes. I made a perfect white cake (or something like that) from her site, too. And it was kind of dry. I really like that the ingredients called for in both the cake and the icing were simple, real ingredients, so that's nice. No food coloring and no artificial flavours.

While I have a this great cupcake icing kit from Bake it Pretty, with a number of large, fancy tips, the recipe didn't make enough icing for me to frost them all cupcake-shop fancy. I still need to make some cupcakes with that kit. Personally, I prefer a lot less frosting on my cupcakes and I like the homemade look of just frosting them with a spatula and dipping them in sprinkles.

Last year, I made a 3 shirt for my son's birthday. My husband insisted I put the large 3 on the back of the shirt, since jerseys don't have the numbers on the front. Against my better judgment ("It's not a jersey..."), I complied and my son has insisted on wearing it backward from day one. Funny.

I made a six shirt for Zoe. Pink pink pink. She loves pink. That six is sparkly fabric paint. I used the freezer paper stencil technique to make the six. So easy peasy. I also recently discovered in a different t-shirt embellishment project that using freezer paper as a stabilizer for the jersey knit fabric is super helpful. I could draw on the paper side and then cut the paper and the fabric at the same time instead of fussing with slippery fabric.

So, I sent my birthday girl to her favorite place in the world (school) with 30 cupcakes to share with her classmates and teachers with strict instructions not to return with any leftover cupcakes (remember how I lost 25 lbs this year?). She wasn't feeling great. I knew she wasn't feeling great, but she hadn't vomited and she wanted to go to school. On her birthday. She gets a birthday crown. She hadn't talked about anything else since January. This kid rarely gets sick. And when she does, she can time it to Thursdays (no school) and weekends. She just got her days off (her birthday was on a Wednesday).
By 10 o'clock I'd received a phone call from the school saying she was laying in the infirmary, having thrown up. Of course. So, I picked her up and she spent the rest of the morning laying on the couch at our friend's place while I took her brother to the paediatrician.

She spent the rest of the day at home, napping a little, but mostly being okay and feeling a little sad. We made pizza for supper.

The teacher saved the cupcakes until Friday (3 day old cupcakes...mmmm) and she got to celebrate with her class then.

Then we had her home party on Sunday. It was her request. And it worked out rather well because she invited her grandparents and as it turned out, my mom could make it on Sunday. She requested a Barbie cake. I looked for a picture of barbie that was mostly face, so she could have nice big eyes so she wouldn't look scary and ugly in buttercream, but alas, there were no such pictures to be found in Internet land. When Zoe announced Barbie was beautiful, that's when I knew to stop fussing with her eyes and just let it go. My cake decorating mantra: "You are working in a medium that is meant to be eaten."

She is kind of ugly though.

Hats

2011-04-20T10:13:00.001-06:00

I've been working on some hats for the shop. I love these cute crocheted hats with flowers or other bold designs on them. I am having a hard time photographing in the new house, in the still winter-like light, so I'm not happy enough with the photographs to put these up in the shop yet. It's a lot of work to properly photograph your work to make it look professional! If you're interested in any of these, they are available, just let me know and we can talk.

This one is suuuuuuuper soft. It's like baby angora or something, such a lovely yarn. If you have trouble with sensitivities to wool, try washing it in a lanolin wash (Eucalan) and you just may find that you can wear it. This hat is newborn size. I need to measure it before I list it.

This one is acrylic and a little different with the circles instead of flowers. It has a brim and it looks better on someone than it does just sitting there by itself. Still needs to be measured for size.

This one fits a baby with a head about the size of my baby. But his head is in the 98th percentile or something like that (Benign familial macrosephaly is what the doctor called it. :)), so it could fit your small headed two year old niece for all I know.

The 90 Minute Shirt ... Lesson

2011-04-19T12:43:00.000-06:00

Last week on Facebook, I posted that the baby doesn't have much in the way of t-shirts for the summer. Since the budget is a little tight right now, I thought of this tutorial from Dana of MADE and figured since I have saved a few old t-shirts, I should be able to make some of these shirts for my big-headed little guy for next to nothing.

My first attempt:

To be fair, I didn't have an envelope shirt I was happy about cutting up, so I tried to make the pattern without cutting one up. My failure to follow instructions properly should in no way reflect upon Dana's fabulous tutorial(s). I definitely think this is a pattern failure and if I head back to the drawing board on the pattern, I should be able to fix it up for next time.

So, someone had posted a quote on Facebook this morning saying something about a mistake is only a mistake if you don't learn anything from it, otherwise it's a lesson. So, this is my lesson. Follow the instructions! (sigh) When will I learn this? On the plus side, I didn't spend anything on fabric. I cut up an old t-shirt of Dan's and an old tank top of mine (for the ribbing). The tank top ribbing was a little loosey-goosey so that probably didn't help the situation, but I don't think having a tighter rib would have fixed the pattern issue. I will try one of these again, but I'll have to have a pattern re-do.

I Made This: Spring Bunny

2011-04-18T09:46:00.000-06:00

So, I'm working backwards here. I just finished this painfully cute amigurumi bunny that was featured in CRAFT Magazine a few weeks ago. As I mentioned, we welcomed a new addition to our family last fall. He is also painfully cute.

This will be his first Easter, so I made him this.

I used some leftover, fabulously soft yarn from a shrug I made myself last year (was it just last year? I can't remember... I don't think I blogged about it since I couldn't bear to expose my back fat for a photo of the shrug), so this little guy is super soft on top of being unbearably cute. It's a pretty easy pattern to follow. I really appreciated the part where they show you how to make the nose and where to position the eyes/nose; it makes all the difference in the cuteness factor.