Love Day Cake Pops!

Couldnt resist sharing these! They were so fun and the heart shaped cookie cutter is so easy to use with the cake pops! Im going to be buying more crazy shapes ASAP!

For the neighbor boys

I couldnt resist laying them all out

My Cake Hearts Army

Super Bowl Football Pops!

Ok totally just winged these. Or maybe I should say punted them. Ha. Ha. So funny I am. I just saw a picture of these, by Bakerella in her Cake Pop book, but it was a blurb on using different ingredients to make your pops, not the instructions for the football pops. So, this is how I went with it, guessed, and they turned out pretty ok! They will definitely go good with our baked wings! Go Giants! Bring on the commercials!



I basically followed along with the cake balls recipe in the book. Ive previously only made cake pops on a stick before and although that sounds harder, I found it to be easier. However that is probably due to the shape of the footballs. If they were round like an average cake ball, it probably would be much easier. I used Sugar Free cake mix this time, woo hoo, Im healthy. Not really because I used triple chocolate fudge frosting. Oops! I was also super excited to use my new cool green mixing spinner thing that I am sure had a technical name. Whisp! Thats it. Thank you Mommy.

So I did my best to mold them into football shapes by hand. That wasnt too very difficult, I did fail to make them all uniform in size though. I usually use an ice cream scoop for that purpose and I did start to do that here too, but decided to vary the sizes to see what size worked best for dipping the footballs. Yeah, it didnt matter. So now I have big ones and some lil ones. It works.

Basically all I did after that was dip them in the chocolate candy coating. I just sat them all the way down in the chocolate, spun them till they were all covered them picked them up with a large fork so the extra chocolate could run off. I used a large spoon to hold it stable while I kinda tilted it sideways to help with the run off. After I placed them on the wax paper I took a toothpick and traced along the bottom of the football to stop any run off from solidifying to the paper. It worked pretty good! I then used frosting to make the laces. I will not do this next time. I will use white candy coating. It ran too much, it was a pain. But easily wiped off and redrawn so there is that. Either way, I am happy with em! They're definitely not a perfect touchdown, but a solid field goal for the win! Im corney.

Christmas Decor!

I love to decorate for Christmas. Its just about the only holiday that I go decor crazy over and try to transform everything in my house. This year is looking pretty good, I even managed to wrap some of the pictures on my wall to look like hanging presents. My husband looked at me while I was crazy and my son asked me who's present that was hanging on the wall. I eventually forced them both to admit they thought it looked pretty darn good. Whether they really thought that with their boy minds or not. Im off on a tangent here. What I am trying to tell you is I picked up some new very easy, very cute ideas from pinterest this year that you can totally pull off too!

Fancy up your windows with some candy cane! Doesnt take much, just loop some Christmas colored ribbon around those yummy treats and tie em up onto your curtain rod in a bow. Or you can always throw some garland up there too!

Same idea found here on Fresh Poppy Design, but with beautiful ornaments. Thought of staggering them myself, mixing it up with both ornaments and candy canes!





This is such an easy great idea I found here on pinterest. You can get these vases practically anywhere, although I am partial to TJ Max. They have tons and I usually pick them up for $5-$10. Grab some ornaments and some floating candles, a lil H2O and voila!

Ever seen those ugly faux plastic pears? Ever dream they could look like this!? All it takes is a lil silver, or any color you like, glittery spray paint and you have some seriously bling Christmas decor!

You, yes you, can make your own rediculous easy window valance

Ok if your me, you can't sew. Not even remotely. In fact I guarantee you can sew exponentialy better than I can and that's if you can repair a button. I'm useless. That why, when I ran across this on Pinterest I immediatly had to check it out. The writer of 'inmyownstyle.com' is a genius with these valances. Is a no sew, easy application. Do I think it will last forever? No. Will it last long enough till I would have got the itch to make a new one with a new pattern anyway? Yes. I believe my Mom and I will be following her instruction and trying this this weekend, I'll let you know how it turns out! Click the link below to try it yourself and definitely let me know how awesome it looks!

How to make a No Sew Window Treatment | In My Own Style.com

Your Love is Famous....

...Well it is to you. I found the cutest thing on Pinterest the other day. It is my inspiration in so many things from decor to food. This I just couldnt pass up and it was so easy. You can totally do this at home with something as easy as Microsoft Publisher. The hard part was choosing my celebrity and fictional loves! I spent forever trying to come up with the perfect ones. I could have just copied exactly the famous lovers you see here in the picture of my inspiration, but I wanted it to be more personalized to me. The people I think of when I think of famous loves and for me Lennon and Ono just aren't it. And Im pretty sure Hansel and Gretel were brother and sister. Thats weird.




 So of course, I made my own. I got everyone from Bacall & Bogart to Johnny & Baby to Ron & Hermoine. Yes, I put a Harry Potter charachter on my Love Picture. And you can choose your own favorite couples to put on yours and make one too! Or I can make one for you. If you want to do it, I recomend using Microsoft Publisher, its a better choice than Word. Choose the colors you want to use, and create each couples names in a Word Art. Make some larger than others, which will naturally happen on shorter names. You dont have to change the size usually for the longer names, it will do that for you. Then just make yours in the middle, slightly larger and the others and in your chosen color. Print it up and chose a nice frame and voila! It comes out looking great! Ive never seen one of these in someone elses house, so if you take the time to make one, you will have something truley unique.

So of course after I did this, I wanted to do more. I started thinking, I want to include this on my family pictures wall I have in the works. So I need the whole family included. Ava and Chase should definitely be included in the company of the coolest siblings ever! So I made one for them too. This one was a lot more difficult. It is dang hard to come up with a bunch of famous siblings, real or fictional. And Im not including a Kardashian! Or a Brady! Chase actually helped on some, he thought it was really cool and insisted on having brother and sister Carley and Spencer Shay included from his favorite show iCarley. I cant wait to print these up and get them framed. I havent dont it yet because as I said I want to put them on my family picture wall I'm planning and I dont have it all ready and planned out yet. But they will definitely be gracing my living room walls and I cant wait to make some more for my lovely friends and family members!

Super Easy 3D Wall Butterflies!

When I found out my second child was going to be a girl, I literally almost peed in excitement. That happens when your pregnant, it is no longer just a figure of speech. I wont even get into sneezing. Anyway, I could not wait to decorate her room. I absolutely love decorating, especially making awesome diy beauties.

A commercial that was on quite often at this time was the ad below from LegalZoom. There is a room featured in the ad that is all purple with amazing butterflies on the wall. As soon as I saw it I knew, that is my babies room. I scowered the internet and stores looking for butterflies like these only to no avail. I could find metal ones and intricate wire and mesh ones. No, I wanted the LegalZoom butterflies! Finally after watching the commercial on youtube again for the umpteenth time (yes, Im crazy), I realized "well hell, I can make those on my own"! And I did. And they turned out fabulous.

To start out all you need is to choose a butterfly outline, some cardstock paper, scissors, and some Command Poster Strips. All you have to do to choose the butterfly outline you like is search google images for 'butterfly outline'. You will get a ton of results and I am sure one that will suit your taste and needs. You can choose any ouline you like, however I do recommend one that is not too over complicated looking, something simple like this one. After you print one butterfly outline you can cut it out. Use that as a template with your cardstock. Outline the shape onto a piece of cardstock and do this for as many butterflies as you need. I recomend printing the butterfly in different sizes to really add dimension and a good look to it. I printed 3 sizes and only used the biggest one once, then mostly medium and small ones. After you have cut out your butterflys you'll want to bend out their wings ever so slightly so you get a 3D effect on the wall, otherwise you will just have flat paper butterflies on the wall. Not as cute. They will bend easily and you dont have to bend too much, thats the great thing about cardstock. After you have bent your butterflies wings I would work out exactly where you want to place them on the wall before you move on to the Command Strips. Once you have a visual of where you want them to go, your ready to go. These adhesive strips are awesome. They wont mess up your walls, are removable when needed and they are so easy to use. You can get them most anywhere, WalMart, Target, etc. I personally cut mine in half before using them on the butterflies because they were wider than my lil butterflies bodies and I didnt want it showing on the sides. Once you have them placed on the backs of your butterflies body, just stick em right on up wherever you have planned out and waila! You have awesome beautiful 3D butterflies.

 This is one of the things I get the most compliments on in my daughters room and people are always surprised to realize they are made from cardstock on my own. They look awesome!



Halloween Cake Pops!

I discovered these little balls of fun on pinterest, my guilty obsession website, and I just HAD to make them mine. Have your ever seen anything so damn cute in your life? Other than LOL cats and fat babies?

Upon finding these things I automatically searched them on Amazon (its like my shopping wikipedia). I immediatly purchased this amazing book from Bakerella, the Queen of Cake Pops. So this isnt my first time making them. I started on them earlier this summer and this pic is my first batch I ever made. Only a small batch, which I recomend for your 1st time. Dont want to go too far on your first time and end up with more than you can chew! Actually you probably would end up chewing up a lot of them that fell off the stick and be perfectly happy with it. So yeah, Ive made em a few times.


Ironically this time I had both the most trouble and the most success. Doesnt that just make sense and figure out. So dont be discouraged by my first run of luck. The first batch I made were "Monster Pops". Cute little purple monster blobs with multiple sets of monster eyes, including a super cyclops.

These went pretty well, however it did seem more difficult than usual and I had a couple fall of the stick which I hadnt had happened before. I chalked it up to a random fluke and most of em turned out great! I used Wiltons Edible Markers to draw on the blue cyclops eyes and chocolate jimmies for the rest!

On to my ambitious "Pumpkin Pops". I was so excited about these because I had been dying to use an edible ink pen ever since I saw them in Bakerellas book. Yes, I get excited about something like that, leave me alone. That excitement wasnt long lived anyway. As soon as I started dipping the little balls of orange they quickly turned to balls of frustration. They all kept falling off the stick, there was no keeping them on. I was somewhere between crying and stabbing the first thing I saw with a lollipop stick.

I salvaged 12 of the things and then wouldnt you know it, they had bloom on em and I couldnt draw the faces on there. Bloom is something that happens from time to time to the candy coating, it gets this film on it which makes it pretty impossible to write on them. It just coats on the end of the marker. I only managed to draw 2 faces. This is when I got out the wine. I felt a little better.


The next day I was determined not to let these things take me down. Theyre little orange balls, I can take em down. I was also determined to make my next batch of "Mummy Pops" peferctly. I watched a few youtube videos and checked out some others Cake Pop experiences. I went to the store for more cake with super good tips and new resolve. I also found cool candy monster eyes while I was there, so there was that too. I bought decorating gel in black to draw on the pumpkin faces. Not as good as edible ink pen faces, but better than leaving them looking like mishapen discards from a closed down pumpkin patch.

First thing I did was make my funfetti cake and crumble it up after I had let it cool down. Then I busted out the chocolate frosting. This is where I had screwed up last time. If you havent noticed, and unless you neurotically read every cake box recipe as you walk by you probably havent, every store bought cake mix I could find was 'Super Moist'. Probably a good thing usually, but not when your mixing in 3/4 of the frosting can and wanting those little balls to stay firm and together. This is the evilness that overtook my pumpkin pops and turned them to mush pops. I now know better. I mixed up the cake crumbs with only somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of the frosting and no more. I wasnt sure it was going to be enough as I was stirring it up, but it turned out to be.

Another tip I picked up online from some of my fellow genius bloggers, is to use an ice cream scoop to scoop out even amounts of mix for each ball. Hello, I am stupid, why didnt I think of that before. Worked fantastic and it was SO much less messy on the hands with less frosting mixed in. I am now feeling good. Cue the LMFAO music. Im shuffelin cake pops.

I then stuck them in the freezer (after rearranging a bunch of food I didnt even know I had for room). The book says 15 min. Im hardcore today, I did 30-40. I then took em out and stuck em in the fridge (again with the major rearranging to make room). While they were in there I got out my candy coating and melted just a lil bit of it in the microwave. I didnt melt it all, just about 7 or 8 pieces. Ill tell ya why. Another tip I found online. I took the first plate of balls out of the fridge and dipped the tip of my stick, about a 1/2in, into the coating and inserted it into the top of a ball. I did this with all of the balls and placed them back into the fridge. Now Bakerella doesnt do this. Because she is Bakerella, Master of All Cake Pops, and I am Winerella, both whining when I screw it up and drinking it directly after. She's just better than me. But all joking aside, this worked so fabulously I will always be doing it and recomend it.

I left them in there awhile, read Harry Potter5 (Im 'Siriusly' dreading reading him the end of this one!) to my son,sent him off to bed
and put down my 15mo old daughter. Who protested. After all the wrangling, I sat down to Law & Order SVU and to dip my newly awesome cake pops. I melted the rest of the candy coating and added some vegetable oil. I use Wilton Candy Melts and I always add a lil veggie oil as it tends to be a lil too thick usually to dip all that well and smoothly. A lil vegetable oil (or shortening) goes a long way to helping that.

I gotta tell you these things dipped like a dream. Totally different experience from before. I was literally exclaiming to myself in my kitchen "these things are awesome", "I am in love", "Thank you for not falling apart", etc etc. I poped the eyes on after each dip and had the most perfect foundation for my "Mummy Pops"!

The next morning I tackled the 'mummy wrapping' icing. I could have easily done this the night before right after dipping all the pops, but I was too dang tired. So dont feel you have to wait to do that. I piped on the icing with a squirt bottle. They have candy writers at Michaels that I think I will try next time but this was fine, although messy. Oh well, they turned out great! I was super happy in the end, especially the way they looked in the cups I made for em!

I def recomend trying your own hand in cake pops, they taste so good and look even better. Bakerella's Cake Pop book has so many amazing character ideas, its amazing. You can also see her youtube video here on her methods. But I really do recomend adding the additional steps and tips I did in this blog. It made it so much more successfull and encouraging. Im now going to hand em out to my neighbors. Then come home and pout because they're all gone and probably being digested as I type.