Where the Heck....

Have I been?

Geez, I haven't posted anything in here since May!  It's been a ghost town on my blog since then.  Well I'm alive and well and a whole lot has happened since I last posted.  I've been meaning to share some news that is quite exciting for us but haven't had the time to post it. 

The BIG announcement is that Ancheta & Co. is EXPANDING!!  Baby #2 is on his/her way this coming February 2012.  I'm so far 17 weeks along and we get to find out the baby's sex in about three weeks.  The Lil Booger is excited that he gets to be a big brother and can't wait to help out with the new baby. 



Finding out that we're expecting Baby #2 happened a day before our 4-year wedding anniversary and it was a great present to the both of us.  Now I can't wait to have enough energy and time to start making some baby craft items.  We're home in Hawaii right now so I've already gotten some really nice Hawaiian print material and before we left Oregon I scored some cheap diaper cloths. 

Our summer has been pretty busy with the Lil Booger in some sports camps offered through our city and parks recreation.  Adding with me feeling completely exhausted and finally experiencing "any time of the day" sickness during my first trimester.  We've had a fun filled summer I must say though with camping, sports, days at the park, and now to end it with a trip home to Hawaii.

That's pretty much why I've been M.I.A on my blog.  Now that I've gotten most of my energy back and not taking 4-hour naps in the afternoons anymore, I should be able to blog a little more now. LOL! 

So I'll see you all soon.  Here's a pic to end the blog with that I took the other day.  I was telling my hubby that I took a similar pic like this when the Lil Booger was six months old on our first trip home with him.  Just to think in a year we could have Baby #2 doing the same post ^_^.



I'm Getting Fancier...

I made a batch of red velvet cake balls for hubby's bosses at work and with this batch I wanted to play around with a little decorating.  Nothing totally fancy but just with some candy drizzling. 

I first tried doing the drizzling with a melting squeeze bottle but I think I got a little impatient with the candy melting that I clogged the tip.  Since I didn't have a small enough cake decorator tip I sort of went the poor man's route and used a Ziploc bag.  I just filled it up with chocolate, sealed it up, and snipped a tiny whole in the corner of the bag.  Heh, it worked for the purpose and the cake balls turned out alright.  I just need to make a mental note to find a new decorator tip for this kind of decorating purposes.

Guess their looks didn't matter since I was told they tasted so good anyway ^_^.  Here's how they looked.

Special Order

Colored Balls...

So with this whole phenom of Bakerella's Cake Balls I jumped on the wagon in making these now. 

The thing I didn't mention in my previous post when I first made them is that I found a WAY cheaper way to get candy melts.  Rather than using pre-packaged Wilton brand candy melts that you can find already colored, I actually found chocolate and vanilla candy melts in the bulk foods section of my local grocery store at Winco.  The Wilton candy melts come in bags of 14 oz. at around $2.99 regular price.  Whereas, in the bulk bins I got my candy melts for $2.38/lb! Even though I would have to use oil based dye to color the white melts it still cheaper than buying the melts pre-packaged and I can deal with the coloring part. 

If you have a bulk foods section in your local grocery store go and look if you can find the candy melts.  I've been shopping at the grocery store for the past 10 years and have only really discovered it in the recent months.  I don't know why I never thought of buying most of my grocery items in that section, it would have helped me save some money in the past.

With that said this past Easter I made some Devil's Food cake balls just to play around with flavor.  With this batch I ended up using vanilla flavored candy melts and used oil based dye to color them baby blue and lavender. 


I had to play around with the dyes a bit to get the color I wanted.  I first started out with the blue coloring and used a toothpick dipped into the dye and let it drip into the melted chocolate.  After a few tries I got the color I desired.  With this batch of cake balls I think I made about 80, so I colored half of it blue and the other half lavendar.  When the first batch was done I still had some blue coating left, so I just added more candy melts and added red dye till I reached the lavendar shade I wanted.

After this batch was done and taste test commenced.  I got a thumbs up from my Lil Booger and friends!  Although they still preferred the red velvet cake instead LOL.  It was good experimentation for me and try to get the cake balls coated nicer. 

Here's how they turned out and a few pics of my supplies.

Vanilla Candy Melts



Oil Based Candy Colors

Vanilla Melts Colored Lavender

Light Blue Colored Cake Balls



Lavender Colored Cake Balls



Spring Cleaning...

Is it still technically Spring?  I can't really tell while living in the Great Northwest since it's still raining LOL. 

Nonetheless, I've gotten the sudden urge to do some spring cleaning and try to re-organize our house.  The first plan off attack was our kitchen pantry.  I usually end up cleaning it up and in no time it looks like a bomb went off in there.  I figured maybe getting pantry stackable shelves will help out the problem with the canned goods piling on each other and getting bigger baskets or containers for our snacks and such.

So the first place I had to check out was IKEA for some organizers on the cheap.  I so LOVE Ikea and wish I could furnish our whole house with their stuff.  I knew they would have what I needed which where the stackable shelves.  I had already checked Target for those but they were a little more rinky dink than I imagined and costing $7 or more each item.  So when I seen the Rationell Variera shelf insert for $5.99, that had me sold. 

We took a quick trip to Ikea yesterday and I was on a mission to JUST get the shelves and that's it.  Yeah, that sort of didn't happen, I got two glass vases for under $2/each and 3 rubber spatulas for $0.29 in addition to the shelves. I was though in Ikea for under an hour on a Saturday afternoon, you have to give me that LOL.

Then on Sunday I hit up Home Depot and Target to search for storage bins/containers to better contain other things that are thrown into the pantry.  When I finally got home I spent the last three hours or so purging out old food and what nots in there that I had used 3/10 gallon sized garbage bags that were filled to the opening of the bags.

After all that work, I must say I'm quite satisfied how it turned out.  The only thing I forgot to do was clean out the very top shelf which is pretty minor.  Now that this part of spring cleaning is over, on to other parts of the house.  Here's my BEFORE/AFTER pics of my cleaning escapade.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

 

Pretty Cherry Blossoms & Sunshine...

Today was such a nice and sunny day that all the Cherry Blossom trees I seen while driving around looked so pretty.  I like this time of season when all the spring flowers start to bloom.  My flower bed in the backyard of daffodils and tulips are blossoming. 

I keep bugging my hubby to plant a cherry blossom tree but he doesn't want to since the flowers make a big mess when they fall.  Makes a good point there since I don't want to be the one that cleans it up LOL.  It's SO pretty though.  I guess I'll settle for admiring cherry blossoms from afar like I did today.  I took a picture of a tree today but it's not the greatest since it was taken from my phone.  Hopefully we get another sunny day to take some real pics, but here's the beauty I saw today :o).



I WON!!

I totally forgot I had entered a giveaway at the blog site Rad Linc Crafts nearly a month ago since March was National Craft Month.  The giveaway was for a book on how to create nylon flowers and a small kit to get me started. 

I absolutely forgot that I even entered this giveaway and only remembered when I had seen a comment posted on my DIY Nail Polish post made be Fe at Rad Linc Crafts telling me that I won.  Again, sorry Fe that I didn't get in touch with you any sooner.

I am so excited that I won since I've been wanting to try my hand in making nylon flowers since I've already made fabric ones already.  I don't have a picture sample of my own to show you how a nylon flower looks like but you can check out one of Rad Linc Crafts' tutorials on "Making Nylon Flowers, Part 3: Making Plumerias" to get an idea.

In addition to checking out that tutorial, check out her entire blog.  She's got other great craft tutorials and recipes as well.

I can't wait to receive my giveaway prize and start making some nylon flowers.  I'll of course be sure to write up a blog when I do ;o).

It's T-Shirt Time! Criss Cross Technique...

After doing the weaving technique I wanted to try out other ideas, so I went back to YouTube to find other cool t-shirt cutting techniques.

The one idea that caught my eye was by Salinabear and she has several other tutorial vids that are just as cool.  She did this really cool criss cross technique that intrigued me and I had never seen before.  It looked a little complicated so I had to use an old t-shirt of my hubby's as a guinea pig before I even started on the actual shirt that I was interested in cutting up. 

This technique requires you to cut tiny holes into the shirt for weaving the strips into.  I ran into a little problem with that since I had a hard time finding where I actually cut the holes.  I should actually clarify that the video tutorial says to cut tiny holes but I ended up just poking holes with my scissors instead since I wanted to make sure that when I weaved the strips through they would stay put and not fall out.

Anyway if you follow my technique of making holes, I HIGHLY recommend that you mark your holes with tailor's chalk on dark material or disappearing water soluble pen on light material.  I ended up missing a hole when I practiced on my guinea pig shirt.

Here are some pics of my cutting process along with the actual tutorial vid.

Cut back into strips and stretch out.



Separate your strips to be tied in 4 different sections.

The final project.





I followed just the criss cross cutting technique and adjusted the shirt to fit me better since it's one of my hubby's old XL t-shirts.  Here is the video tutorial by Salinabear and be sure to check out her other tutorials as well. 

Happy Cutting!