The Phantom Moon

Fireflies

Ever since I stumbled upon Corinne's blog So September, I've been in awe of her superb embroidery.  Her stitches are to die for and she has a section of free patterns that I've wanted to try out for so long.  A few weekends ago I got my wish and hunkered down with my embroidery hoop and made her lovely Firefly embroidery.

 

It's a wonderful pattern and while I think I definitely need to practice more and brush up on my stitching skills, I think it came out wonderfully.  I made it for BB but since we're still settling in to our new digs it's temporary resting place is one top of the entertainment system with Max & Ruby for company (since they're bunnies they may just stay up until Easter!).

And I'm not the only one who's been playing around with my craft supplies!  My mother decided to unearth her jewelry making supplies and has been making matching necklaces and bracelets for the holidays.

BB also played around with some craft sticks I picked up before we got sick last month and loves organizing them by color, in lines or any other way she sees fit that day.  This child definitely knows what she wants and likes and there is no persuading her otherwise.

I can't wait to try out another one of Corrine's patterns and hopefully my embroidery skills will improve by leaps and bounds with each piece.  Now the only problem is choosing which one to pick next!

Baaaah

Are these the sweetest pillows or what?

photo credit: the purl bee 

The folks at the purl bee have done it again and created these lovely Lamb pillows.  They're perfect for Easter and Spring and would make a great accent to any house.  I'd love to make these for BB and someone else special that I have in mind.  Now if only I could score some of that yummy Wool ...

Double Digits

My sweet niece turned 10 a few weeks ago which means she's officially my second niece in the double digits.  It's the end of an era, my friends and officially means the children are growing up at an alarming rate and I am getting old.  Woe is me! 

picture lovingly pilfered from my sister's blog

Just kidding!  Seriously though, it's beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.  A few weeks before her birthday, my loving niece approached my sister and I and said she wanted us to make her a cake that looks like a Nintendo DS.  It's been a while since my sister and I broke out our cake making supplies but we pulled it together and worked all day to make her a sweet cake.

Unfortunately I don't have a finished picture of the cake (we were pretty exhausted by the end of the day and I had to make a beeline back home to take care of BB) but you can get an idea of what we made from these pics.

We made two cakes, a mini sheet and a full sheet cake.  We covered the DS in pink fondant and hand sculpted the extras like the keypad buttons and side buttons.

This part took us the longest and my sister and I traded off, making different pieces and combing our handiwork.  We used my sister's pink DS as a basis for the design (my niece has the same one).

 

We covered the bottom cake with buttercream handpiped stars which again took forever but was totally worth it.  In the end we worked from sun up to sun down but we had a great time and the birthday girl loved it!  We left the finishing touches for her ... we gave her some colored fondant, some edible pens and she went to town with the cake.  When she was done decorating the DS, it was placed on top of the full sheet cake to seal the deal.  Even though we don't have finished pictures (we had too much fun at her party & totally forgot) I know she loved it and that's all that matters.

And who else helped, do you ask?  Why my wonderful brother in law!

What would we do without you, Frank?  He kept Sara and I sane during the day and provided us with plenty of food, drink and humor just when we needed it. 

Thankfully this was one of the smaller cakes we've made which kept the baking & decorating to a one day time frame.  Though I think our big 2 day cake decorating days are at a standstill for the time being (they really are sooo time consuming and we are slowly loosing that "extra" time it takes to make some of these bigger puppies) I'm glad we've been able to give our nieces, family members and strangers special cakes for their big day.  Now it's time for Termini Bros to take over the baking here and there when we need a break, lol.