Valentine Mail Boxes

I totally stumbled into an idea today! Target had these adorable little tin mailboxes complete with flags, and I bought enough for my nephews. I was going to just buy some stickers and let my 4 year old go wild with them. But when we were getting ready to work, he says, what about Star Wars stickers, that's what we should put on them. Well we didn't have them, but I HAD seen Star Wars valentines, and thought with a little decopage, I could make a cute little box!

Supply List:
Extra paper valentines
Tin maiilbox
decopage
foam brush

I worked in small areas, put a little decopage down, laid on a valentine, and held it in place a couple minutes. I cut a few of the valentines so there was a collage effect to it, and I also had to work around where the flag was fastened, but this was a very simple project. Probably only 15-20 minutes a box. After I got the box covered, I put on another layer of decopage and let dry. I'm stuffing them with little goody bags. I'm THRILLED with how they turned out!!! I only hope I'll be able to find these little tins again someday, but I also thought a dollar store tissue box cover would turn out well.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Mini King Cakes

Thankful for something to do, I was excited about a baking order this week for a friend. She wanted something Mardi Gras themed, so I thought it would be fun to make mini king cakes in cupcake tins. They weren't too tough, and I experimented with coloring as much as I could. I'm pretty happy with the results!

Mini King Cakes

I remember king cake vaguely from my childhood, someone my dad worked with had a wife that baked them every year. I really only remember them to be sugary goodness. So I set out recipe searching and saw Emeril has a recipe on the Food Network. Emeril IS New Orleans, so I figured his would be as good as any. I followed his recipe pretty closely. I omitted the citron in the dough, I don't keep that on hand. Check out his recipe and come back to me after your first dough rise:)

I wanted to make these colorful, so once I passed the first rise, I rolled out the dough into a log and cut it in thirds. I set one aside to leave as is, and put food coloring on the other two (green and purple). For the green, I only had liquid dye and it worked fine. For the purple, I had gel, which typically I prefer, but for this recipe, stick to liquid. The gel didn't spread well and made the dough sticky again. Truthfully, neither had the effect I was looking for, I really wanted the dough to be solid colors.

Once I had the color in as good as it was going to get. I separated each into 12 balls, maybe golf ball sized. This almost perfectly made a dozen. I had a very small taster left over:) Next, I rolled one ball in each color into a snake.

Now braid the three colors together.

And round the ends together into a ring.

You don't need to pinch it together, just put them seem side down in cupcake liners.

I let them do their second rise in the muffin tins and then baked them at 350 for about 15 minutes.

Then for the best part, the glaze and sugar! I put the glaze in a shallow bowl and dipped the top of the cakes in and kept them held upside down until most of the dripping subsided. I sprinkled them liberally with yellow, green, and purple sugar. Done!

The lemon in the glaze is pretty strong, I enjoy lemon desserts, but I didn't remember that in the flavor profile of a king cake. These are yummy, but I'd be interested in knowing if that is traditional or if I happened upon a "bam"ed up version:)

UPDATE: I've researched more and talked to friends and family in New Orleans and this does NOT seem to be a traditional king cake, which I suspected. I'm going to try again this weekend and will post the updated recipe. Really seems like most traditional versions are more of a braided cinnamon roll....and no lemon flavors.

Hello....Is this thing on?

I know, I really should decide if I'm doing a blog or not. I have a couple projects photographed and ready to be shared with the masses, so I'll try to get them out this week. To apologize, today is a two-fer!

Tomorrow is my son's Valentine swap at preschool and we needed 20 valentines and I wanted to make a pinterest project for his teacher. Got BOTH done today, yay productivity!

Crayon and Pencil Vases

Inspired by the adorable pencil vases trending on pinterest lately, I set out to the dollar store to create one for Evan's teacher for Valentine's Day. I got two packs of 16 count pencils and the round vase for $3 from the dollar store. I ran some other errands and thought since it's preschool, wouldn't crayons be cute? So I picked up a 64 count box for $3. I had the square vase at home, it's been circulating around my house forever with no real purpose because it's so narrow.

All you need are the above mentioned supplies and a hot glue gun. Put a stripe of hot glue on one side of your crayon or pencil and put in place on the vase. You only need to hold it for a minute, it will set quickly. It's really that simple! I laid out the crayons first to put them in color order, but now I think, I may have left it more random, it may have looked more young, which is what I was going for. I worked from the bottom, and realized as I worked around I'd be short a few crayons, so I purposely put 32 crayons on the bottom and the remaining 32 on top, leaving a gap all the way down the glass. I put in the pencils to fill the space and I actually love the way it turned out! Since I had the pencils and the square vase laying around, I whipped up that one too and will give them both to his teacher as a set.

A couple crayons came loose immediately, only two or three. I was working with a 4 year old highly curious about the process, so I'm sure that happened due to lack of concentration. No big deal, I just stripped away the dried glue and re-did them. It's holding together perfectly now!

Creature in the sea Valentines

OK, clearly my next project needs to be DIY light boxes so my pictures are clearer. I'll work on it.

Evan needed 20 valentines to share for his party. Yet again, I was inspired by fish valentines that were circulating on pinterest, but I wanted to be a little more homemade about it. So I bought a Wilton sea life candy mold, red and pink melts, and candy sticks. This was my first time with candy molds, though I've free handed on wax paper with melts for cake decorating embellishments. The candy molds seemed even harder, not sure how that is possible. But to get into tiny little spaces in those molds was making me crazy!!! I eventually ended up using a toothpick for most of the details, which worked well, but time consuming. After I got 20 made, I got on the computer and made up my own little valentines that are the size of business cards. The cards say "Happy Valentine's Day! Of all the creatures in the sea, I'm glad we swim in the same school." Cute and not girly:) Evan will sign them all in the morning and I can package them up.

Yet another unemployed holiday saved by pinterest. How did we ever survive without it?!?!