My first order of business was to organize Ashlyn’s craft stuff better.  I had it all in 2 plastic totes on top of our pantry and it wasn’t working at all: things didn’t fit, the boxes were heavy and hard for me to get down, and everything got lost inside.  I had a storage unit that I used to use for scrapbooking that was free, so I brought it into the kitchen.

All of the things I don’t want her to have free reign over are in the box (paints and play dough, mostly) and everything else is sorted by drawer: crayons, stickers, colouring books (2 drawers), paper (2 drawers), paint with water books, random craft stuff like pompoms and googly eyes, her beads (we like to sort them by colour in mini-muffin tins, or string them on pipe cleaners to make headbands or necklaces), and then her smock and paint trays (re-purposed dollar store ice cube trays).

A far bigger project has been my scrapbook desk in the basement!  Jordan picked up the storage cubes (there are 6 of them) at Michaels, then built a desktop over them.  The bookcase is Ikea, we have at least 4 of them in various places in our home!

I cannot wait to get scrapping and use my brand new Cricut!  I have all of my papers sorted and I even went through all of my scraps to sort them – that was interesting.  Not sure what I was thinking keeping some of those teeny pieces of paper.

I feel so much better having a better organized kitchen and craft area.  My next project will be tackling that mess of a bookcase on the right!

I decided to get a teeny bit crafty and use some scrapbook papers to change up a simple frame that I found at Michaels (on sale, of course).  The frame is 8×10 so I can use it with 4×6 or 5×7 pictures and still have some of the paper showing.  For their Santa picture, I picked out some die-cut snowflake paper.

While I had intended to use the snowflake frame for the rest of the winter, when I saw this damask paper I had to take it home!  It’s actually a transparency, not die-cut.

(picture in the frame taken by Elizabeth Fulton Photography – I apologize for the colouring on my picture but I was having a heck of a time getting the white balance right and the flash was making the pattern look crazy so this was the best I could do)

I’ve started a file to keep the papers that aren’t being used in; this way I can keep them to reuse whenever I get the whim.  I may even try adding coloured paper behind the die-cuts or transparencies to mix things up a bit.  Cheap, easy, and immediately gratifying – just how I like my crafts!

This is Ashlyn’s ornament:

Basically, you cover the child’s hand in white paint and have them (carefully) grab the ornament.  Let it dry and use markers or paint to draw faces on the ‘snowmen’ and decorate as you like.

And this is Rowan’s:

This is even easier – just flatten some clay (or in my case, Crayola Model Magic), press baby’s hand into it to get a lovely handprint, cut out using a cookie cutter, punch a small hole at the top for the ribbon - I used the end of a paintbrush - and let dry.  If the handprint doesn’t work out the first time, just re-roll the clay and start again.  I painted Rowan’s handprint with a bit of sparkly paint to give it a bit of dimension.

These also make great presents for grandparents and are easy enough to do in the days leading up to Christmas!

Last year I was pregnant so I was able to have a much enjoyed break; this year I packed up all of my scrapbooking essentials, plus my clothes AND Rowan’s clothes and snacks and toys and diapers into one very large, VERY heavy bag and flew off for a girl’s weekend away with the baby in tow.  Luckily, Rowan was a really good traveller overall and was very cooperative while we were there, so I actually got 8 pages done – that’s more than last year! – and had a wonderful visit with friends that I had been missing.

As we were leaving, one friend asked if I was going to blog about them.  I said I would, then realized I had taken 1 picture the entire weekend – of Rowan on her first flight.  I really should have taken a picture of all of the food, not to mention all of us hard at work!  Oops.  Instead, here are the layouts that I finished:

Now that I’ve gotten back into scrapping, and I got to play with lots of fun new things, I’m inspired to get my craft area in the basement all set up and to find a great store (or two!) in the Ottawa area that specialized in scrapbooking.  If you know of one, or of a great online store, leave me a comment!

Once the cake had cooled I put it in the fridge overnight.  I made cream cheese icing, then put about 1/2 cup aside to use for the eyes and beak; the rest I coloured yellow using food dye.  The next day I cut it as best I could into a duck shape and did a crumb coat with the yellow cream cheese icing. 

It went back into the fridge for a few hours, then I did the final icing and added chocolate chips to the eyes. 

The rest of the cake batter was made into cupcakes to share with her little friends the next day at her birthday playdate.  I found little rubber duckies to put on top, which I thought was a fun touch.

I thought it turned out pretty cute and I was excited to show it to Ashlyn on her birthday!  She loved it when it was on the counter but as I got closer with it, she started to get more upset.  Check out the look on her face here!

As a little back-story, last week we were watching a Food Network Challenge that involved Dora.  One baker made a giant Dora (I think it was about 4 feet tall) and to the horror of Ashlyn (and I’m sure other children), the head fell off.  For a week now, we’ve randomly been hearing “Dora. Head. BROKEN!”.  Once she figured out that she was supposed to eather beloved rubber duckie, it was over.  She could not get out of her seat and away from that cake fast enough!  Now we also randomly hear “Daddy eat duckie HEAD!  Ashlyn no eat cake!”

Cake fail.  Next year, I’m sticking to a rectangle with a three on it!

The set comes with 4 cookie cutters of 4 characters (from left): Boba Fett, Yoda, Storm Trooper and Darth Vader. There’s also easy to follow sugar cookie and icing recipes included, which I used. Here are the cookies ready for the oven and then cooling afterwards. They’re pretty good as is, but I just had to try to decorate them.

Turns out, icing these cookies is WAY harder than I thought! It easily took me twice as long as I had planned for. Once again, just because I watch a lot of Food Network does not mean I’m a pro. Oops. In my defence, I was working with good old sandwhich bags with the tip cut off instead of actual icing bags and tips. A finer tip would have been really helpful for the detail work!

The colours are off (for example, Yoda is not usually this shade of Kermit green, but I was using what food dyes I had) but I think they turned out pretty well in the end, they taste great and my husband loved them. The first thing he said when he saw the cookie cutters was “Ashlyn and Daddy can make Star Wars cookies!” – one of the many reasons why I love him

These cookie cutters won’t get used a ton, but there was no way I was going to pass them up. For anyone who gets baking from me this Christmas, watch for Darth Vader shortbreads!

I made the cake the way I usually do, then poured most of the batter into a greased glass bowl. I figured the shell would be a lot easier if it was already round instead of having to carve it down! The rest of the batter went into 3 smaller glass bowls, to be used for the head and flippers. I baked them forever! The big bowl took a lot longer than I thought and I was getting nervous that it was going to burn, but it worked out. After letting the cakes cool until the bowls weren’t hot any more, I pried them out of the bowls and left them on the rack to finish cooling. They went in the fridge overnight.

The next day was putting on the cream cheese icing. I did a crumb coat first, which is something I just learned about. Basically, it’s a thin layer of icing that you do first to catch all of the crumbs. Pop the cakes back in the fridge for about 15 minutes to chill the icing, then do the “good” coat. This went back in the fridge overnight.

I did the detail work the morning of the party. First I sprinkled a bit of cocoa powder on the shell to give it a bit of detail. I piped some darker cream cheese icing to create the “shell” pattern, and to give the turtle a smile. Add two chocolate chips for eyes and you’ve got a sweet cake for a sweet girl!