Happy Holidays! ...homemade gingerbread playdough

Hi frosted family!! It's been a LONG time since I have said hello! Been focusing on a new chapter in my life and doing fantastic! Trying to make the decision to come back to blogging for 2015 - I definitely miss interacting with all of you! I hope everyone is doing well and the season is bringing cheer and happiness!

 I only made one homemade gift this year, but I love how they turned out so sharing with you guys!  I used a traditional playdough recipe (see below).  Mason jars, snip of fabric, made the labels on the computer, then punched a gingerbread guy out with a paper punch.  Ran the labels through my Xryon machine to make them sticky.  A few embellishments and ta-da! ...ps cooking the playdough made the house smell fantastic!!

GINGERBREAD  PLAYDOUGH

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup salt
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 cup water

Ever happen to you?!....

Has this ever happened to you?! ... last night I worked hard in the middle of the night (baby wasn't sleeping) to make these marshmallow minions to top cupcakes (see below) to take to my first meeting of a mommy and me group I joined...

anyway... I finished them up, wasn't super happy with ALL of them (see my notes on what to do different next time), but all in all I thought it would make a good first impression.

well, Elias was up every 1 to 2 hours! WTH!?! We woke so exhausted and was hoping he would be doing better (group was at 11).. but he just seemed to be fussy (understandable, I was fussy too!) and threw up his breakfast after a bit of a rant.

...so we had to cancel going... now my minions are in the garbage because no way am I allowing myself to eat 25 of them! lol... has this every happened to you? you spend all this time on something and your kid gets sick?!

well, here's how they turned out (p.s. the bottoms aren't very clean but they were going to be pulled off the sticks sit on icing anyway)...

 here's the tutorial I followed (link) ... I didn't have blue fruit roll-ups so I used icing... didn't worry about the bottoms not being smooth, they were going to be sitting on icing.

Tips:
- wish I had made my own black icing, the tube kind I found to be a bit watery and therefore, not that easy to control (aka lots of cursing and mess lol)
- add a little oil to the candy melts... makes it easier to coat

so since we had to miss group... off to the garbage, at least I hadn't done the icing on the cupcakes yet! :o(  ...I can't justify eating all of these lol... especially not post pregger weight! lol




 

Party Tutorials! Ants Go Marching Picnic

Thank you all for your sweet emails about my Ants Go Marching Picnic (here)!  A few of you asked me how to make the leaves and cakes so here are a few tips!


Leaf Drink Toppers

 
The leaves were super simple!
1.  I just used white fondant powder mix and added green gel food coloring and mixed until I got the shade of green I wanted.
2.  I rolled out the fondant and cut with a leaf cookie cutter and used the cookie cutter to press other lines in the leaves
3.  Using the straws I was going to put in, I punched a hole... note: make sure you make the hole slightly bigger, otherwise, when it dries, you won't be able to get the straw in!
4.  To give them some dimension, I wanted the tops to flare up and the bottoms to flare down.  I laid them on a cookie drying rack, let the bottoms droop down and used that same straw to hold the tops up!
5. Let them dry and ta-da! You could do any shape, any size for any party!

Ant Hill Cake

 I thought it would be so silly fun to make an ant hill cake!!!  Did you know you can bake in your metal baking bowls?!

Nothing to it!
1.  Prepare 2 cake mixes (confession: I cheated and used box mix)
2. Prepare icing - any will do, I used a royal icing so that you could still see some of the dark cake coming through
3. Put graham crackers in the food processor and grind very fine
4. Fill a larger and smaller metal mixing bowl with the batter and bake!
5. After it has cooled, you'll notice you have perfect flat spots on the top from the way the bowl is, you can dig this part out just a little to give a ant hill "entry"!
6. Icing the cakes and coat with the graham cracker crumbs!

 I hope I have inspired you to think outside the box!


 

Glitter Nutcracker Tutorial

Wanted to share a tutorial I guest posted last holiday season... hope you enjoy!

 Glitter Nutcracker Guys

Materials:
Hideous Dollar Store Nutcracker guys
Spray Adhesive
Glitter
Box
Paper (anything large will do)
Wine (optional, but recommended)

Step 1:  Rip hair off of ugly nutcracker guy - recommended to do in private as to not scare the children

Step 2: Place in a box in a well ventilated area (a little stinky) and spray well with adhesive - leave weapons in place

Step 3:  Immediately come in from the cold garage holding him by as little touching as possible, stand him up and start shaking glitter.  Keep repeating steps 2 and 3 until fully covered - make sure to pour while he is right side up and upside down to help coat all spaces.

special note - crease your paper before doing the glitter, this will help when you pour the glitter back into the jar

extra special note - you WILL get glitter everywhere no matter how hard you try - I find wet paper towels to be the best cleanup and nail polish remover to help with any adhesive on your hands...and then assure everyone that sees glitter in your hair the next day that you have NOT been dancing on a pole all weekend ;o)  

Step 4:  You can add a clear final coat - but I found that it dulled the glitter shine a bit... so I just say stop here and enjoy! Simple and VERY inexpensive!

Tips & Tricks Tuesday - Keychains!

If you don't follow our wedding planning journey, then you probably missed the wooden key chains I made for our Save-the-date item... I finally posted a tutorial!  Custom key chains would be great to remember any event!


Click HERE to see tutorial....

Tips & Tricks Tuesday! - Mother's Day Tea Bag Cookies!

Not sure if you recognize these original creations I made last year for my boss, but I put a tutorial in the online magazine this year for a Mother's Day Tea (in case you missed it ;o)!

So click here for the magazine and turn to pages 54 & 55 for a tutorial - I made a tea bag template and tags for you to download, too! (see last few pages of the magazine).

What are you doing for Mother's Day?!

Tips & Tricks Tuesday! Fondant Flowers - you CAN do it!

I hope once the magazine is launched, I can get these done in during daylight hours and get better photos! lol.... I promise I won't do ALL food tutorial heehee...

I hope this tutorial helps inspire those that are scared of fondant! Fondant flowers that you can use to top sugar cubes, add to cake pops or any dessert!

Materials:
Fondant - store bought is OK!
Icing - again.. cheat!
Icing tip/coupler
Cookie cutters (flower set here)
Any rolling pin (mine is this one)
Sheet of wax paper
Optional:
Luster dust (cause I am an addict!)
Clean paint brush (for luster dust)
Flower drying tray

Roll out your fondant on a sheet of wax paper and cut out flower shapes....

I think I am addicted to luster dust...I think makes such a difference!

"Paint" on the dust with a clean, unused paint brush (optional)

Insert your tip inside the coupler & attach to the icing tube (or inside your pastry bag with fresh icing you show off! heehee).

Pipe a heavy dot and push down & then pull up quickly to achieve the centers...

Lay on flower tray if you want them to have a little "lift" in the leaves (or just leave them flat!)

I'll try to take a new pic in the morning...

but ta-da! SUPER simple - you CAN do it!!!









shhhhh.... secrets....

- To get your flowers out of small cutters, push lightly with the back of your paintbrush!

- Fondant too hard to roll out? put in the microwave 10-20 seconds (10 sec at a time) to help it be a bit more pliable...

- Cut a toilet paper or paper towel roll in half to use instead of the flower tray

- "glue" on flowers using royal icing (sometimes icing gel works too, but royal icing is much stronger)

Tips & Tricks Tuesday!

A co-worker asked me to bake a friend my favorite carrot cake for her bday (recipe here).  I wanted to do something a little special so...

(forgive my photos... it's almost 10pm here and dark!) I hate cakelet pans - I can't ever make the cake look good... so I have turned to using them with chocolate ;o)

Materials:

Cakelete pan/mold
Chocolate melts
Paintbrushes
Gel coloring (optional)
Luster dust (optional)

Ok... I have peanut butter no jelly... kool-aid no sugar kind of household lol... so yellow + red = orange! make sure you get GEL food coloring - water based coloring will ruin your chocolate!

After coloring, melt your chocolate in the microwave or double boiler

Using one of the paint brushes, "paint" the green leaves (or whatever small details on your pan) and put into the freezer to harden.

Melt your next color...

Fill in with your main color.  Tip: tap slightly on the counter to bring up any air bubbles and flatten out the top... and then back to the freezer!

Take the tray out of the freezer, turn upside down and tap until they pop out!

Use coordinating luster dust to add depth to your chocolates - you will be amazed at how much it ads in person!

Ugh - so hard to tell in this bad lighting... but they really do come out cute!

Tutorial Tuesdays! - Saving goodies...

Blog surfing leads to TONS of great ideas, right?!? And if you are like me, you want to save these for later so that you can remember.  I thought the first of the new series "Tutorial Tuesdays" could be showing you how I store all the tasty finds I collect along the way... obviously there is a lot more this program can do, but here's a start!

There are tons of way to approach the same thing... but Google Picasa is free and easy to use - and that's what I fell into... obviously this is just a quick tutorial - click here for a Picasa internet tutorial

 

 Step1:  Download here free program (it saves pics, you can edit them, make movies & collages too!)

Step 2: Open the program after installing - it will automatically look at your whole computer for pictures you already have! (family, vacations, etc) (full web tutorial here)

Step 3:  While Picasa is still open... Go to Party Frosting and find a picture you want to save - put your cursor over the picture and right click your mouse - you'll get this tool menu above.  Click "Save Image As..."

Step 4:  Your file folder box will pop up and you can save the picture in whatever folder you would like - or in my case, where I can actually find it later lol...

Step 5: As soon as you save the picture and Picasa realizes it (a second or two) you'll see the box slide across the bottom right of your screen - if you click it before it goes away, it will take you to Picasa right where your pic is (if you miss it, you have to go to Picasa and find your image in the folders - again, more info on Picasa here)

Step 6:  This is when I feel it gets helpful.... under the "caption" line I like to paste the URL I found the image, this makes for quick reference later

Step 7:  I LOVE using the "tags".  These are labels that you can search on later.  I write theme names like "sewing", "crafting", "pink", etc...and "tutorial", "recipe", etc for a reminder that those are on the link as well.


I hope this helps a little! Next week I'll start showing tutorials on creating things that you can use at your next event!