Jack's 1st Easter

 We celebrated Easter with baby Jack's Nana Linda (Cam's mom) this weekend. We visited a garden center event where Jack got to meet the Easter Bunny and participate in his first Easter Egg Hunt (with daddy's help of course). Here are some of the photos:

Hunting for eggs

Found one!

 

 

Royal Icing Flowers

I recently whipped up some cupcakes for a potluck event and wanted to make them interesting. I didn't have much time to spend experimenting - I have a new baby after all - so I tried something quick and simple.  Flower decorations made of royal icing!

Specifically, Swirl Drop Flowers:

1. Using my royal icing recipe (tutorial here) I created a stiff consistency and coloured it blue. I prepped my piping bag with icing tip 2D and spread out a sheet of parchment paper to work on. 

2. Holding the bag upright (90 degrees) I held the tip just slightly above the paper and turned my hand 1/4 turn while squeezing out the icing. Getting the flowers right took some practice, so I only kept the best looking ones. 

3. I placed an edible pearl in the center of each flower and let them dry overnight. 

4. Once they dried I stored them in a plastic container until I was ready to decorate my cupcakes. 

I loved that I could make these in advance. I could see myself making a few different types of flowers in a variety of colours and storing them so I always had something on hand to decorate my cupcakes or cakes with if I wanted to do some last minute baking. 

And voila, I think these flowers add a little something to otherwise simple cupcakes: 

Tutorial: Valentine's Day Man Bouquet

Have you ever heard of a "Man Bouquet"? I hadn't.. until Pinterest. I searched for Valentine's Day husband gifts and all sorts of fun Man Bouquets popped up. Most involved mini-liquor bottles and cigars in a pot or mug. As usual, Pinterest inspired me to try my own DIY.

The result, is this Man Bouquet of Cam's favorite things:

My finished Man Bouquet

To make this, I used supplies I already had at home but that would be easy and inexpensive to find. You'll need:
- A container - mine is an Ikea plant pot. I've also seen mugs, glasses and tin pots.
- Foam brick or styrofoam
- Lollipop sticks
- A glue gun
- Ribbon or other things for decor
- A bunch of relatively light items for the bouquet content 

In my bouquet, I included:
- Beef Jerky
- Candy (Fuzzy Peaches, Nerds, Jelly Bellys)
- An iTunes gift card
- A Starbucks gift card
- Scotch (200ml)
- Jack Daniels (200ml)

Step 1: Make the Base
Cut your styrofoam down to size so it fits nicely in your container. It should be high enough to support the candy sticks without being so high it's easily seen.

Step 2: Glue Lollipop Sticks to Items
Use a glue gun to glue candy sticks to each of the items. I used two on the bigger candy boxes.

Step 3: Assemble Bouquet and Decorate
Experiment by inserting the candy sticks so the items are at different heights and fill the container nicely. I added the wide red ribbon to the pot and used curled gift ribbon pieces to hide the foam block.

With a little creativity and 20 minutes with a glue gun, I had myself a nice personal gift for my husband. Which he tore apart in about 20 seconds. :D 

Valentines Day Cookies

Once again I've created holiday-themed sugar cookies with royal icing. Here are my Valentine Hearts.

Baby Jack!

Baby J - Minutes Old

Jack was born via c-section on December 8th at 5:50am, weighing a healthy 9lbs!

The birth wasn't the natural hypnobirthing experience I had planned, but in the end it really doesn't matter how our baby arrived, just that he arrived safely and in good health. So much for all the breathing and visualization techniques I learned!

Call me a diva, but I insisted on cleaning myself up before our first family photo:

First Family Photo!

In the two months since Baby J was born we've been settling into a routine and starting to go on adventures, which I can't wait to start blogging about again!

Melted Snowmen Cookies

These melted snowmen have to be one of my favorite Christmas Cookies I've made. Just looking at them makes me laugh. I imagine them yelling "Ooooh Noooo!" as they realize their fate.

Being super-pregnant this year I didn't tackle the fondant needed for the heads, so this is a recap post from last year's cookies - which I never did blog specifically about.

As far as an effort to impressiveness ratio goes, these cookies are awesome. People are wow'd by them, and they really are simple to make.

The hardest part is mastering the fondant for the heads. Of course, you can always go to Michael's and buy Wilton's pre-made, ready to use fondant.  I prefer the sweet taste of home made marshmallow fondant (or MMF) and have posted a tutorial here.

First, start with a ball of white fondant:

Colour a small portion orange:

 

And form heads with orange carrot noses:

The eyes and mouths are drawn on with Edible Food Markers.

Once these are ready, flood cookies of pretty much any shape with royal icing (tutorial here) and add the heads and chocolate chip buttons. The arms should be added last, once the white icing has a chance to dry.

Easy right?

And just because I'm so proud of them, I'm posting the photo again:

Introducing ... Finnigan!

This year we adopted an Elf on a Shelf and named him Finnigan! Also known as Finn for short.

Here are just a few of the places Finnigan has shown up so far:

In the tree!

Roasting marshmallows over candles!

I little inebriated... 

Supervising cookie making!

I can't wait to see what other shenanigans our Elf gets up to this month.

Meanwhile, I've been pinning some creative things other elves have been up to on my Elf Shenanigans Pinterest Board.