Year One Cake

Although I have many hobbies- baking and cake decorating are not among them. 

But when duty calls as a mom, I try my best to live up to the challenge. 

Today that meant making my daughter's first birthday cake. 

These days with all the blogs, Pintrest, and social networking- I see a lot of really cute cakes, parties, and all the trimmings that go along with birthdays, but sometimes even when I see cute ideas it doesn't necessarily mean I can recreate them or even afford them for that matter. 

So for my daughter's birthday we just kept things simple. It was her first birthday so she definitely had no expectations! ;)

I wanted to keep with the Red, Yellow, and Blue color theme to match her birthday shirt. Pretty much the only decorations were the cake and some balloons. That meant that the birthday girl was the star attraction- which is how it should be. Right? :)

For her cake I used the Wilton Big Cupcake Pan which made the job a lot easier.

 Cake mix from a box.

Some store bought frosting.

Yellow food coloring.

Yellow sugar sprinkles.

Candy pearl sprinkles.

Leftover fabric for the bunting banner.

And skewer sticks to hold the banner up.

And then topped it off with a candle to finish it.

As for the cake stand, I tipped a baking dish upside down and used that to display the cake. Sometimes you just gotta work with what you have when you are on budget. :)

That's it! Pretty much the simplest cake you can make in my judgement.

Linked here.

1st Birthday Shirt

My little girl turns one this week. Wow... times goes by way too quickly!!

I couldn't find a birthday shirt that I liked for her to wear on her birthday so I decided that I would make her one. 

For her party I decided to do something different than pink. I know... I am probably breaking the #1 rule of thumb with a little girl's first birthday party, but I did pink for my oldest girl's 1st birthday party and I wanted to mix it up a little the next time around. 

So I choose primary colors!

Red, Yellow, & Blue.

 As I was walking through Walmart the other day my eye catch this darling yellow and white polka dot onsie. As I got closer I realized just how cute it was... It has tulip sleeves. DARLING. Plus it was $3.88. I mean- how can you go wrong there! So I bought one.

Once I got home I came up with this idea... Not quite sure how I wanted to do it, but I got brainstorming and last night after the kiddos went to sleep I came up with this.

To make it I used scraps of fabric leftover from previous projects and I ironed them to fusible interfacing (light/medium). Then I cut out a triangle pattern for the pendants of the banner and I got cutting. Once I had enough I decided that it would be a fun touch to have the #1 on the shirt so it looked more like a birthday shirt. So I got on the computer and found a font that I liked and typed the #1 and had it sized to be about 5x7 inches. Then I cut out some freezer paper (you can find it by the wax paper in the grocery store) to fit in my printer and printed the #1 on the freezer paper. 

*Freezer paper is thicker than wax paper and has wax on one side of it and the other side just feels like paper. So make sure when you are printing  that you feed the freezer paper in the right way so that it will be printing on the paper side- not the waxy side. *

Once it was printed I cut it out and ironed it (wax side down) to the fabric (with interfacing on it). Once the paper was fused to the fabric I carefully cut around the #1. After it was all cut out, I pulled the wax paper off.

After you have all your fabric pieces cut out, you can arrange them onto your shirt and then start sewing them on. Easy Peasy!

I love this Bunting Birthday Onsie! It's a one of a kind shirt for my one of a kind birthday girl!! :)

Linked here.

a is for apple dress

This was my first attempt to make a dress that was fitted to my exact measurements and didn't rely on gathers to fit. It went pretty good all things considered. 

It started out as a shirt from Downeast Basics. I cut the bottom of the shirt off and used it to make ruffles along the neckline of the dress. Used some awesome elastic I found on Etsy- some sweet fabric from Joann's- and some buttons I found on clearance at Joann's as well.

It's kind of a combination of the Anthro Inspired Ruffle Shirt and the Polka Dot Dress, except I tried to mix things up by adding buttons to each side of the ruffle and made the skirt more fitted. 

I loved this apple fabric so much because of the feel of it- it's a knit, but its kinda nubby in texture and I thought it looked vintagey- like something my grandma would have used to sew with. 

But then I looked at the price tag and it was 12.99 per yard. Ouch! So I put it on my wish list and watched for it to go on sale for a few months. One day as I was browsing Joann's, I walked past this fabric and it was 60% off but there was barely any left of it. (Guess everyone loved it like I do too) So I snatched up the bolt and ran to the cutting counter to see if there was a full yard left. Luckily there was exactly a yard and so I took it!!!! Combined with my extra 20% coupon it cost roughly less than $4 per yard. Steal!

Linked here.

Mustard Yellow Goodness

In addition to my love of navy blue, I also love Mustard Yellow. It's just one of those colors that looks great in decor plus it's wearable- It's just a classic.

This weekend I saw some pillows that I added to my Pintrest that I have plans of sewing to go on my couch. Once I saw them, they also gave me the idea to make a little zipper pouch version.

This is how it turned out....

The outside is mustard yellow linen, and the lining is gray and white polka dot fabric. You can never go wrong with polka dots mixed with yellow and gray!

Here is a great tutorial to learn how to make a zipper pouch.

This Mustard Yellow Goodness is up for grabs for my Giveaway #2!

Linked up here.