The Phantom Moon

Pig Invasion

On Sunday, we had a Pig Invasion Party for my BB's 6th birthday party.  My daughter is obsessed with these little Green Piggies (a la Angry Birds) and now has a total of 14 green stuffed pigs.  She's given them all special names, each has a special place in her room and they are her "brothers and sisters" (she's a crack up). 

For her Pig Invasion cake, I made a yellow cake with creamy buttercream icing that was covered in fondant and pigs galore.  Everything (with the exception of the cake boards) was completely edible, from the giant moon rock craters to the wood, ice / glass and stone planks.  All of the figurines were painstakingly made in fondant and had to meet my boss's (aka the birthday girl) approval.

The cake design is loosely based on some of the levels from Angry Birds Space which was both fun and a challenge to bring to life in cake.  I incorporated her 11 Green Pigs, 1 BB Pig (to her specifications since it's her of course) and 4 random pigs.

This is BB Pig (above) with "King Pickles", her favorite of the bunch.  And what kind of party would it be without a birthday cake, presents and desserts galore?  In total she had 5 presents, birthday cake with 6 candles, donuts, ice cream, cookies, eclairs, lollipops and soft pretzels.

I have to say, this set up was my hubby's idea and I wish I had gotten a better shot of it.  He placed the pigs on a riser of sorts made out of the mini wooden planks I'd made out of fondant.  And of course, more yummy desserts were sprinkled around them!  I'm surprised those pigs didn't eat any of the sweets before the party started but I'm sure it had to do with the fact that everyone was eyeballin' them during the party. 

The TNT boxes were some of my favorites!  Unlike the planks, these aren't solid and were built piece by piece which I think gives them a bit more charm.  Boom baby!  And since I couldn't find any mini letter cutters that would work I had to individually cut each out with my trusty exacto blade and I'm so thankfully none of the letters were curved or I would have been toast.

If you look closely, you'll see some of the mini edible glitter stars that I found online and stuck to the cake.  I had to add each one by one and I swear, by the time I was adding the stars it was at least 3am (the night before the party) and I was going cross eye'd, but at least they came out well!

And look, mint chocolate chip ice cream in a waffle cone!  Not my baby's favorite flavor but since I was doing the work I figured I had earned the right to add something I liked, ya know?

Here she is in all her cakey spacey piggy glory.  I absolutely loved how it came out and BB was so happy as well which makes all of those late nights working on mini fondant pigs, planks and sweeties worth it.  Happy 6th Birthday, love!

Shelby Drink Your Juice!

My dear friends, I had an anxiety attack yesterday.  It happened at the dining room table just as my Grandmother was entering the front door.  My mother, worried I would fall out of my chair told me to lay down for a minute on the living room couch and instructed my Grandmother to give me a cookie to get my blood sugar back up.  Then they started talking about me and what caused said anxiety attack.  Yes, dears, I had a Shelby moment.

What could have caused me to begin hyperventilating enough to bring on such an attack?  I, my friends, was making a quilt.  Not just any quilt though.  It was a quilt I had been working on for BB since October of last year.  This stinking quilt was riddled from problems since day one and had plagued me for the last week as I attempted to finish it.  First I measured half of my quilt blocks incorrectly and had to re-cut and size all of my 280'ish squares.  Then I started sewing them together into nice little neat rows.  Or so I thought.  When I began sewing the rows together it was pretty clear I either didn't re-cut all of the blocks properly or I just suck at sewing those buggers together properly. 

I was determined though!  I'd continue on and it would just be a little wonky which totally gave it the handmade look I was going for (that's one of the lies I told myself to get through this process).  Then I cut the darn backing too small and had to improvise.  Again I was determined to continue on.

I pinned the quilt top, batting and backing together with the help (not!) of BB and my Mom (God bless this woman) and began sewing the quilt closed.  After sewing one side together I realized the quilt had shifted which meant I needed to use the seam ripper and undo the entire row.  After undoing my mess, I re-sewed it closed and began the quilting which resulted in more frustration since the darn thing shifted *again* and I had extra fabric that had to be semi-hidden with my Mom's help at the edge of the quilt.

By the time I was able to begin sewing the binding on the quilt, 3 days had passed.  3 days filled with frustration and migraines.  After I sewed on one side of the binding ... I realized I had done it wrong.  That's when I started to hyperventilate, tears filled my eyes and I felt light headed as everything around me started getting brighter and brighter.  And that my friends, is when my I turned into Shelby and my Mother & Grandmother came to my rescue and helped me finish BB's quilt.  My friends, without my little heroes I would probably be in a deep quilt depression right now, hiding in the corner with a mug of hot tea and muttering about binding and quilting blocks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a pretty tough cookie most times and can usually take things like this pretty calmly.  But this quilt ... it broke me.  I'm so thrilled that it's done and despite it's wonkiness, I love it and BB loves it too.  But I can guarantee you that I will not be quilting anytime soon again.  At least not until I can think about quilting without getting a knot in my stomach.  Ugh, time for another cookie.

Half A Dozen Is Better Then Nuttin'

As I was photographing some mittens I made for BB (more on that in just a second), I realized that I never shared the rest of the donuts that I "baked" up for BB.  I know I promised her a dozen but I decided to stop at half a dozen because really, what 2 year old needs a dozen donuts?  Plus, I wanted to craft up some other goodies and darn it if these babies didn't take up more time than I thought!

 

They came out pretty good, didn't they?  So in the end BB has the following donuts ... sugar sprinkles, raspberry glazed with strawberry sprinkles, boston creme, chocolate glazed with ?? sprinkles, vanilla glazed and strawberry glazed with chocolate sprinkles! 

When I first made them for her she would take them with her where ever we went which included restaurants.  We ate at Pei Wei once and the manager actually came out to see what BB was playing with ... between the donuts and our little parrot, we came away with extra fortune cookies and coupons for some free food, yay!

As for the mittens I mentioned earlier ... well, our darling little girl wants nothing to do with mittens this year.  Which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that our highest temperature in the last week or so has only been 40 or 50 degrees, so mittens are a must.  But trying to get mittens on this girl is as easy as getting a cat into a tub of water ... dangerous and headache inducing.

Since BB has been obsessed with pumpkins I decided to make her felt mittens with cute little pumpkin buttons on top (bonus, the buttons were on sale at JoAnn's).

She'll have to wear them willingly at this point, right?  Nope, she still wants nothing to do with them on her hand but playing with them is a-ok in her book.  Ah well, I'll keep trying and eventually wear this kid down.  Something tells me she'll win this one in the end ... Lord give me strength.