Frozen Dress

I don't know what I was thinking but I asked my 4 year old niece what kind of dress she wanted for christmas. Naturally, she wanted a Frozen dress. Since she's blonde, I was expecting Elsa (and had actually purchased sparkly blue vinyl in anticipation) but instead she asked for an Anna dress. So instead of a few snowflakes here and there, Anna's dress is chalk full of detailed embroidery. I made a dress out of solid blue fabric using the below pattern which is more of a long top than a full length dress. The fabric wasn't the most comfortable so I lined it with white muslin (first mistake, I should have used a darker lining).

I wanted to make it look like Anna but not to the point where it was a costume. There was some kind soul on the internet that posted detailed files of the embroidery. At first I used vinyl to cut out the stencil on my Cameo but as it turns out, vinyl doesn't stick to fabric. So I did it all over in freezer paper. There was some bleeding but even still, it turned out way better than what I could have done by hand. I left the back of the dress plain but I did a hack job at the hemming and the fabric was fraying so I used some special glue to stop the fraying, you know, something quick so I could just wrap it and be done. Fast forward 20 minutes later where the glue bled through and discolored the fabric. Ughhhhh. I did some quick hand painting to cover the discoloration and I was finally done. So, to the designers at Disney, your overly detailed Anna dress nearly made me crazy but I made it out on the other side so the joke is on you. Better luck next time.

http://shwinandshwin.com/2014/09/modern-baby-doll-top.html

Birthday Cakes!

Long story short, I was going through my 'baked goods' folder on flickr and fell in love again with some of the cakes I've done. Consider this a "best of" list. Post for wedding cakes to follow.

The inside

The outside. Seriously probably one of the coolest cakes I've done. I think I might do it again for the baby's birthday.

This is marshmallow fondant and the black was hand painted with watered down coloring gel.

Seeing how it's for my sister, I'm 99.8% sure this cake was lemon.

One of my husbands coworkers asked if I could make this cake. Apparently his wife had tried twice and failed miserably both times. I'm not positive of the cake flavor but it's covered in chocolate ganache and the mouth and eyes are marshmallow fondant.

This really isn't a birthday cake, it was a just for fun cake. Every year my sister does a christmas wrapping party where you just sit around, gab and wrap your christmas presents. I'm fairly sure the cake was chocolate. I do remember it being way too much cake.

I made this for someones 60th birthday, I believe. The cake was lemon and there was a smaller one that was stacked on top. It's hard to tell in the photo but it's a subtle ombre effect in the color, maybe a little too subtle.

For her 4th birthday my niece asked me to make her a Frozen cake. Specifically an Anna cake. I remember my mom making us barbie birthday cakes growing up and we LOVED them. Unfortunately, someone in our family had some pretty serious medical issues around the same time as the party so I didn't get to dedicate as much time as I wanted to in decorating it. The cake was vanilla, vanilla frosting with some strawberry preserves in the layers. The cake itself was dyed BRIGHT PINK (upon request, of course). Funny story, at her party we had to go around cake eating time and the birthday girl asked if she could give my baby a kiss before we left. So sweet, right? So I held the baby down to her level and right as she planted the sweetest kiss on his cheek, he grabbed a fist full of her pink cake right off of her plate. 

Macaron disaster of 2014

Ok, so the title might be a little dramatic. For thanksgiving I decided to make some lemon macarons because my sister loves all things lemon and it was super easy. I put a little lemon zest in the actual macarons and the filling was lemon curd with a circle of white chocolate to keep it from gushing out. They were quite tasty and successful. I bake each year for christmas gifts for the husband to hand out at work. Usually it's easy; caramel corn, quick breads, candied nuts, etc. Since the macarons were so easy to the first time and people are generally impressed by them, I decided to make them for this years gift. Since they were most likely going to sit on peoples desks and not be refrigerated, I decided on chocolate macaron with ganache filling and a gingerbread macaron with a caramel filling. The first batch of chocolate macarons went fine, they were beautiful. I made some caramel with sweetened condensed milk in the oven and it was beautiful. It all started to go downhill with the first batch of gingerbread. The tops cracked and the feet weren't too big so I scrapped them and decided to start again. The day before the husband wanted to hand them out. Ugh. The second batch turned out worse, cracks everywhere and virtually no feet. I moved ahead and made a second batch of chocolate since the yield on the first wasn't enough. I don't even know what happened but they were flat, full of bubbles, just all around terrible. At this point I lost my composure. I wanted to scrap the entire idea but I had spent days on this already. I stepped away, went to the store to get more almonds and came back and tried to be very precise in making the 3rd batch of chocolate. Again, more cracks and minimal feet. I was over it so I assembled and packaged all the macarons and decided to call them "meringue cookies" because it was just downright embarrassing to call them macarons. Lesson learned about being cocky in the kitchen. Also, making sandwich cookies for 15 people means you'll be making too many cookies.

Happy Birthday Cousin!

Today is my nieces 1st birthday. Having an older sister, I knew that she didn't really need anything so I went the crafty route. I decided to make a quiet book. Mostly used to keep kids quiet in church, but I thought it would also be helpful for appointments and such when little ones seems especially squirmy. Don't let the simplicity fool you, these things take time! I doubled up and made each page twice, one for cousin and another for baby E since his birthday isn't too far off. Sewing 18 cupcake cups, 18 pieces of velcro to the tops of the cupcakes and the corresponding piece onto the page...it was a lot. There were little pieces of felt everywhere and the husband was quite happy when I finished. I actually planned on 2 more pages but my patience ran out and we can always add to them down the line. Some of the pages have pieces that are a little small for a 1 year old to play with but I figured that her 4 year old sister could enjoy them and pages can easily be removed and stashed away. I think my favorite page is the apples.

Under each shape is a foam animal sticker.

The water is divided into pockets so you can stuff the fish in. The ribbon to the side of the hair is for hair clips and whatnot.

I also made her a flying squirrel using the below pattern. I made a tester one for baby E which he didn't really care for but I know that cousin is way more into squishy things. And by "is way more into" I mean that she likes to bite and suck and anything squishy.
http://wildolive.blogspot.com/2014/09/guest-project-abby-glassenbergs-flying.html?spref=pi