Haute Couture card

The Stampin Up stamp set Haute Couture was always a favorite of mine but I rarely use it. Yesterday I put together the following card:

I colored the dress and the brim of the hat with copic markers (R81).  I went darker on the edges and bottom of the dress to give a more dimensional look.   The card was for me friend and she really love it.

Let me know if you have questions, Delia

Sofia's Birthday Cake - Ga Ga Gourmet

It's been a while since I blogged.  I haven't done many scrapbook pages but I have made a number of cards.  When I can find the time, I will have to upload the images.

A few weeks ago we celebrated Sofia's 7th Birthday.  This year Sofia asked for a shopkins cake.  I asked her to pick out her favorite shopkin, she chose baby, Ga Ga Gourmet.  She also decided on Vanilla, Red Velvet and Chocolate.  So this cake had two vanilla layers, two red velvet layers and the top was chocolate.  I fulfilled all her wishes.

Here is the cake.

 This cake was so cute and not very difficult to make.  She loved it and all enjoyed.  A big thanks to our friends who came out to join us in celebrating.

Hugs Dee

Making of the Cinderella Carriage

The making of the Cinderella Carriage was just a crazy idea I had to entertain the kids because we all knew that a snow storm was headed our way.  I decided to make something that could be used at Sofia's upcoming Princess party and I thought, wow it would be so nice to have a carriage for all the little princesses.  

We did a family trip to JoAnns with a coupon of course and I bought a sturdy piece of fabric, acrylic paints, fabric medium and brushes.  We came home and I found a picture online that I wanted to try and make.  I drew out the carriage in pencil.  Not an easy thing to do, there was more eraser on the cloth than pencil. 

The snow day was as expected, schools were closed and I don't drive in snow, so I was home. This became a family affair, everyone in the house came over and painted at one point or another.  Sofia was my right hand, she wanted to do it all.  She loved every minute of it.  See the photos below:

 In the end, I cut out the center, put up a blue silky cloth and used the carriage for photos. Sofia here decided to be a royal princess and wave to the crowd.  All the girls were photographed and a copy of their photo went into their thank you cards.

Thanks for visiting.  Delia

Princess Sofia's 5th Birthday!!!

Sofia turned five this year and I wanted her to have a special birthday party since she hasn't (as she told me) had a birthday party "in her whole life". So she decided on a princess party which my friend Michelle had mentioned a few times.  LOL she had all the princess decorations and tea set for the table.  We got together on New Year's Eve and discussed the venue, games, decorations etc.

I made the invitation and sent it out.  Here it is:

The address of the place and my phone number was removed.  I loved how it came out.  My cricut was not happy cutting glitter paper, I needed to change the blade several times.  Next time, I will have a few tricks up my sleeve for this type of cutting.  

My focus then became the cake and cake table.  With the princess theme, Sofia decided on a castle cake.  I searched out all the castle cakes I could find.  Looking at different turrets on the castles I knew what didn't want.  Nothing that would easily lean (so many of those in my search) and nothing with paper towel tubes.  Trust me I am no expert, I don't get sharp corners but the kids love it when they see a cake that is out of the ordinary.  I like the "wow" from the kids, it totally makes the hours of work worth it.  I like to have a totally edible cake, so I decided on making the turrets out of Rice Krispies (RK).  I was going to use a PVC pipe as a mold but being that it is not food safe, I canned that idea.  Instead, I decided to use ICE drink bottles and Pringles cans.  I sprayed the inside with Pam spray and compacted warm RK and added a skewer to the middle.  When they were almost cool, I  pulled out the RK and let them cool completely.  The next step was to cover the RK with white chocolate and let cool.  I was then able to smooth the chocolate out with my warm hands.

The cake took a while to put together and I had some great help.  Besides Sofia wanting to help out every step of the way, I had my niece Denise and my friend Mel stay up with me until 3AM and only stopped because I stated I was going to bed.  My sister Helena stepped in at about 1AM with her "helpful advise" and when I kiddingly told her to stop "criticizing", she said "I am not criticizing, I am just telling you what to do".  Well we couldn't stop laughing.  Helena always has the best intentions and she really knows how to jazz anything up, I love her dearly, thanks Helena for your thoughtful ideas LOL. 
 
I made the layers of vanilla cake a week before and froze them.  I covered them in buttercream frosting and let it harden in the refrigerator overnight.  I took out the cake and made the cut outs for the turret and again covered the whole cake with buttercream. 

Sofia and Mel kneaded and rolled out fondant and we covered the whole cake and the RK turrets.
 
I didn't finish everything I wanted, the top of the cake was suppose to have another tower/turret, just a small one to finish the look but I was too tired and I didn't have enough time, so I used a glass carriage that Michelle had for the top of the cake.  I think it looked great when it was finished.  Sofia LOVED it and that is all that counts in my book.  The kids at the party also love the cake and there were a lot of excitement over it. 


This was the table set up with all the princess decorations, seat covers and all the sandwiches were cut using a crown shaped cookie cutter.  We had pink lemonade in the tea pots and served it to all the girls their own tea cups.

The carriage in the background was painted by Sofia and I on a snow day.  I went down to the fabric store and obtained all I needed.  My idea was to have all the little girls peek their heads in for a photo. I am including a photo of each girls in their "thank you" cards.


Sofia walking in with Logan took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes, she was so happy and she is getting so big.  Logan didn't want to do it, but for $25, he was willing to escort his sister down the red carpet and walk back to escort each girl down the red carpet.     

I realized once the cake was on the table that I  forgot to bring photos to cover up the photos on the wall.  No one noticed but me but in everything I do, there is always something I forget no matter how organized I am.  

We had several games throughout the party and after each game each girl received a royal prize.  We had a total of 18 girls and my beautiful little girl was so happy and the smile on her face all day really was worth all the time it took to pull this party together.

The cake!! I was worried about it traveling.  I have never traveled with a cake before and this cake had to go 6 miles away, up a hill.  I was sure it was going to fall apart but it stayed together.  The two skewers into the RK horizontally and vertically through the turrets helped it all to stay together. 

 

Thanks for reading all about this great day.  Have a great day.  Hugs to all.  Dee 

 

 

Happy Birthday Melanie

Today I made a card for my friend Melanie's Birthday!!!  Believe it or not Melanie has every birthday card I have ever made...she doesn't let me forget it either LOL.  Every year I make a special effort to make her a card in her favorite color which is Orange.  Her favorite team is the Mets.  Therefore, all her cards are orange, blue and white.  This year I realized, I had no card ready, so I got up at 5:30am and made Melanie a card.  Here is what I came up with.

 

I love these Stampin Up butterflies, they are so versatile and easy to use.  I realized today I need the small butterfly punch so I don't have to cut out the butterflies.  Thanks Melanie, you made me enable myself.  I hope you have a great day.  Happy Birthday Melanie!!!

 

Hugs Delia

Happy Birthday Sofia



This past Tuesday was Sofia's Birthday and since she isn't have a party, I wanted to give her whatever cake she wanted.  So I asked her what she wanted for a birthday cake and she stated, a vanilla cake with Barbie.  A Barbie cake and it needed to come together overnight.  So Sofia went upstairs and got her favorite Barbie (thanks Virgina) and Sofia and I started baking a cake.  She had a blast pouring the ingredients into the bowl.  When we added the flour and milk some of the flour and milk in her words "poofed" back at us.  I turned to her and asked why did it "poof" and she said because we gave it too much love.  There you have it, the cake we were making had a lot of love and it was going to be delicious.  She had a blast, laughing and screaming every time any liquid or flour came out of the bowl. Daddy had to stop what he was doing to check out what was happening in the kitchen with all the laughter and screaming.  We winded up over mixing the batter but I didn't care, we had a great time together and she was so proud to have made "her birthday cake". 

Once the cake was baked I realized I needed another two layers but it was too late to get started.  I took the kids to bed, I got up at midnight to take all the ingredients out for a second cake and at 4AM I came down and made the last two layers.  By the time I had to go to work, the cake was cool enough for me to layer, shape and crumb coat it.  Here is where I started taking pictures. (Sorry Sofia, I should have taken photos of you baking with me).

Yes, I gave Barbie a plastic shower cap so her hair would not get frosting in it.  This is one of Sofia's favorite Barbie's you know  LOL.  When I came home from work, I rechecked with Sofia on the colors to make sure she hadn't changed her mind from the night before and she said she wanted a pink, white and yellow frosting. I made the frosting and Sofia watched over me as I frosted the cake.  Thanks to this great tutorial on decorating a Barbie cake, I made a cake that was nice to look at and  wasn't embarrassing to put in from of neighbors.  If you are interested you should really check out Liz's Barbie cake on you tube, it's beautiful. 

Since it was my first time decorating a cake this way, I was a little nervous but I knew my daughter would have loved it no matter what.  How do I know?  She thought the cake was done with the crumb coating above and told me I did a beautiful job.  She is too precious!  Well the cake came out better than I could have hoped.  One of these days I have to take a cake decorating class to get all the piping even but then again I might be a tad bit to impatient for it.

 

 

Here is a picture of the "happy" birthday girl!!  I forgot to mention earlier that Sofia was so excited for her birthday, she told me she was so happy and proceeded to screaming, jump up and down, clap her hands and laugh all at the same time because it was her birthday.  She was SOOO excited and had us all smiling and laughing with her.

 

 

 I am so happy our neighbors could come over and help celebrate Sofia's birthday on Tuesday night.  She was thrilled to have both Isabella and Lauren over and everyone had a great time. 

 

 

I love you Sofia, I hope one day you can read this post and remember what a great time we had celebrating your 4th birthday.  Happy Birthday baby!!  Love you with all my heart, Mom

 

 

Dragon Birthday Card PWC 119

Paper Pretties challenge for this week was to use pearls, rhinestones or Glitter Dots. Easy challenge since I love all those items. Logan and I decided to make a card for his friend Sean who was having a birthday. Logan chose Paper Pretties Imagine and we colored it together. Here is the card.

I used Paper Pretties Imagine, Copic markers, SU cardstock and Paper Pretties Glitter dots. If you want to play along go to the Paper Pretties blog. They are giving away, a Paper Pretties set "Made With Love" to one random participant. Thanks for dropping by. Have a great day!!