I Want Candy!

For the baby shower I mentioned just a bit ago I made some candy favors to giveaway.  I made White Chocolate Pretzels that have a good balance of sweet and salty.  I used to make these back home in Hawaii once in a great while and before I became a SAHM here in Oregon I used to make these as Christmas treats for my co-workers.  Since I hadn't made these in a while I figure what better time than now.  They are really easy to make and inexpensive too.  I used to eyeball the amount of ingredients but found a much better recipe from one of my local Hawaii cookbooks "Local Style: Cooking With A Mainland Flair" that was a Project Graduation 2006 for Moanalua High School.  Here's the recipe and a few pictures of the making process. Enjoy!

WHITE CHOCOLATE PRETZELS
Ingredients:
1 lb. white chocolate (I use 2-12 oz. packages of chocolate since 1 lb. seems a little dry)
10-ounce low salt, buttered pretzel sticks
2 cups Rice Krispies

Directions:
Melt chocolate in microwave bowl 6-8 minutes on defrost setting (be careful not to burn; chocolate will still look solid).

Break apart pretzels and mix with Rice Krispies.  Pour melted chocolate over pretzel-cereal mixture.  Mix well, making sure treats are covered well.  Scoop mixture, while chocolate is still hot, into baking (cupcake) cups.  Treats will harden in 10-15 minutes.

Recipe says it makes 2 dozen cups.  This last batch I made was 30 cups, it all depends how much you put into the cupcake cups.  After putting them into the cups I like to add colored sprinkles, it's all up to you what kind you put depending on the occasion that you are giving them for.

2 pkgs. white chocolate



2 cups Rice Krispies



10-ounce Pretzels broken up

White chocolate already heated in the micro...see how it still keeps it shape? Don't worry it's fine, the chips underneath are the ones that were really melted in the process.  When adding them to the cereal and pretzel mixture the rest will melt.

Everything all mixed up.



Ready for consumption.



It's A Baby Shower!

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of throwing a friend's baby shower.  They already have two adorable boys and baby #3 was going to be a SURPRISE!  I've been used to knowing what gender I'm working with when I create baby shower gifts so it makes the process simpler with the specific pink for girls and blue for boys.  Not this time since I had to work with gender neutral colors and I found it to be a little more challenging to keep the color and print selection in the middle.  Nonetheless I like the challenge since it allows me to think more openly and I got to peruse more of the fabric section at Joann's, which by the way made my eyes go O_O in delight LOL.

Since I've been making alot of the onesie cupcakes and washcloth lollipops for recent gifts, I wanted to make another diaper wreath in addition try my hand in making fabric panelled burp cloths, a diaper pouch, and a blanket.  I can't remember where exactly I found the site where I learned how to construct a diaper wreath, all I did was Google "How to make a diaper wreath?" and a plethora of information came up.  I learned how to create the simple to do diaper burp cloths from the blog Chickpea Sewing Studio and she has other great tutorials as well.  Here's the tutorial link.

I also tried my hand in making a diaper clutch and I found a great tutorial on the blog site Diary of a Quilter.  I followed her tutorial exactly with the exception that I added a small handle on the side to attach a clip if wanted.  Here's the tutorial link.

As for the blanket, all I did was get 1-yard of printed flannel, 1-yard of super plush material, and enough satin binding and sewed the two 1-yard pieces with the binding on the edges.  Here are the results of my baby gifts to Baby Boy or Girl that we can't wait to meet.  Oh, also mommy was very happy to receive these very special gifts and the color of the material was perfect since she likes the color brown ^_^

Diaper Clutch

Diaper Burp Cloths

Baby Blanket

Diaper Wreath



Becoming a Bridal Shower "Cake"...

I've only made one bridal shower "cake" before and that was three years ago for my friend Suelynne.  It was simply decorated with ribbon and fake flower hydrangeas.  The cake which was made out of two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths turned out really pretty, so pretty that till this day Suelynne has never taken it apart.  In fact it's still on the poster board with the crinkled stuffing at the bottom tier same as the day I presented it to her.  Here is what that towel cake looked like.

Fast forward nearly three years later and I have another opportunity to make a bridal shower towel cake.  Only this time I wanted to do something a little different and try my hand in making homemade fabric flowers.  Our friends Jenna and Wilson are getting married in Oahu next February so it only made sense for me to decorate the towel cake with plumeria flours. 

My friend MJ and I had a conversation one day about fabric flowers and asked if I knew how to make them.  I told her I didn't so I went to the world of Google and found an easy tutorial that can be found on the blog Polka Dot Pineapple. With the bridal shower coming up I bought all the supplies I needed to create these flowers especially in Jenna and Wilson's wedding color scheme which are espresso, coral, and ivory (which was hard to find but I totally lucked out). 

I had to individually make each petal and five petals made one plumeria.  I ended up making about 30 plumerias total so you do the math on how many petals I created.  It was time consuming but really easy to make.  This is a great way to use up scraps of material that you may have been hoarding.  Here are a few pictures of the flower making (sorry I don't have pics of each step) and the end result of Jenna and Wilson's shower cake.

The beginning of 150 petals...



Full concentration to get glue and a very thin piece of wire.

I have a yard of material to make a really BIG field of plumerias.

Completed plumerias.

Added some bling to girlyfy them.

 The complete bridal shower towel cake.

My favorite pic of the top tier and I was only playing around with the camera.

My First Onesie Cupcakes...

A long while ago I was Internet researching on different baby gift items to create on your own.  One of the cute and easy gifts I found were onesie cupcakes.  They were just plain colored baby onesies rolled up decorated with little embellishments and stuck into a muffin paper cup thing.  They looked simple enough to make and I figured I could do that myself. 

Since I had a baby shower coming up, the mother and father had a very special and specific request on what color clothing they preferred for their baby.  They had a "Nightmare Before Christmas" theme and that was out of the normal baby theme.  I found it as a challenge with open arms to create something as close to that theme as possible. 

Thus this was created and an evolution of onesie cupcake gifts were created.  I dyed some onesies and added cute iron on appliques to each of them, turned them into "cupcakes", and added little embellishments.

"That's How I Roll" & "eat, sleep, poop, cry"

"My Dad Rocks" & "My Mom Rocks"

"So Fresh & So Clean", "Born to Rock", & "AB/CD"

Cupcake Creation

All Packaged & Ready to go