Valentines for my Valentines

Posted on February 17, 2025 by lexicolton

Hello dear friends! Trying to get a blog post in. Despite having to work some of the weekend it was a good weekend overall! We started off with some Valentine’s day dinner! This year we opted for crepes! The crepe filling I made was incredibly easy. I sautéed mushrooms and onions then added in baby spinach until it wilted and finally melted cream cheese in it. It was amazing. I usually make something similar using béchamel sauce, but this was way faster since I didn’t have to measure anything for béchamel. We had both savory and dessert crepes and the kids seemed to like both. (Though Patricia ate most of hers with just cheese inside and Julius ate most of his savory crepes plain with cheese on the side.)

Because I had to work we decided not to go skiing in Maine. Julius was absolutely heartbroken. To make it up to him I decided to plan some Valentine’s events the rest of the weekend. We had a Valentine’s tea party for a late lunch on Saturday. I have a LOT of heart cookie cutters, so I really put those to good use. For tea sandwiches we made cream cheese & cucumber (classic) and chickpea curry (I think it doesn’t taste great on bread though). Julius helped me fold napkins into hearts and did a really good job. Oh! And the kids made us Valentine’s cookies for the tea party. I gave them homemade sugar cookie dough and cookie cutters for Valentine’s day. Of course they also wanted to get out other cookie cutters so Julius also made a boat and Patricia made a dolphin. They were quite pleased with them and they tasted excellent with tea.

I also caught up on laundry this weekend! For the first time in like 8 weeks the dirty laundry baskets are empty! (Well they were empty until the kids put today’s clothes in them. And the clean laundry baskets are full, but I’ll take what I can get!) I have to focus on the little things given all the craziness these days. Oh and I should report back that the truffles were some of the best we’ve made! The lavender were amazing (I will need to remember to make a double batch next year), and most of the chocolate was perfectly tempered. The peanut butter ones were delicious and I don’t think I got to try a chocolate one but Julius told me the inside was “really good”. As part of their gift I made the kids little Valentine heart boxes on my Cricut that perfectly fit one of each truffle inside. I actually made the pattern last year but it seems I never posted it! I will tell you that it came out better this year. Last year I used tape glue to adhere everything and they fell apart instantly. This year I tried a hot glue gun and it worked so much better!

Small Heart Truffle Boxes

What you’ll need:

1. Follow the instructions on your cricut to cut your box (make sure to select cardstock). You will want this to be right side DOWN so that it can score properly and so it can trace out a heart guideline.

2. Punch out your pieces.

3. Fold the side pieces on the tabs under.

4. Make your top piece by hot gluing the side pieces on starting at the top center of the heart. Line up the edge of the tabs with the outside of the black line drawn with your cricut.

Note: use a glue gun, trust me. Also this was me testing, but you’ll want the tabs lines up with the OUTSIDE of the heart, not the inside.

5. When you reach the end (back at the beginning of where you started gluing) trim to 1/4″ and fold. Glue this tab to where you started.

Again, just a glue gun.

6. Using the small heart, trace a heart on the right side of your box bottom in the center. This will be your guide.

7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 using the small heart tracing as the guide.

8. Place the small heart guide inside the bottom of the box.

9. At this point you can add in 3 small mini muffin cups to the box, and your candy!

Posted in Crafts & Sewing, Culinary Delights, Parties | Leave a comment

Everyday I’m Truffling

Posted on February 13, 2025 by lexicolton

Hi Everyone! I am still alive! I know this is my longest hiatus between posting in…well…a long time. I’ve gotten some concerned texts so I just wanted to assure everyone I am okay and just severely busy at work. I have been so busy I have barely had time to craft in several weeks. I only barely finished my mom’s birthday present (which was to fix the pleather on one of her bags) because I stayed up late every night the week before her birthday.

In other news I will tell you that I love Valentine’s Day with our kiddos. We took out the Valentine mailboxes and the kids have been making Valentine’s for each other. It warms my heart both because they are crafting but also because they are an adorable brother & sister combo. I hosted my yearly truffle making Ladies’ night again this week and I was very excited. I’ve been so busy as of late that I haven’t seen everyone in ages. It was fun to get together! I’m hoping I can do more events in the winter doldrums.

I was a wee bit worried I wouldn’t get everything prepped in time since last night I shopped for groceries, cleaned the house, made dinner for tonight and made chocolate fillings. I ended cutting one of the 4 fillings since it got so late and had to switch to a frozen loaf of bread instead of fresh but otherwise I got everything done!

I think this was our best batch of truffles yet! Amy and Karoline and I rolled the truffles when they first arrived and put them in the freezer. Then we ate dinner when Kathy and Mary arrived. For dinner we had salad with spinach, red onion, pecans and apples; lentil shepherd’s pie and sourdough bread. The bread (frozen and thawed) was awful! It somehow got stale thawing overnight? I’ve never had that happen though usually I eat the defrosted bread a couple hours after I take it out of the freezer. Maybe that was the problem? Everything else was great though!

After dinner we tempered the chocolate and then dipped all the balls that by this point were frozen! I tempered the chocolate in the center of the island on a portable induction cooktop and it worked really well. I think these chocolates came out the best ever! We made peanut butter from this recipe, then the usual chocolate truffles and lavender truffles. Everyone thought the peanut butter filling this year was great so I’ll have to note that for next year. Also I don’t know how I forgot to take a picture of the table (and Amy who had to leave a bit early). Happy Galentine’s Day!

Posted in Culinary Delights, Parties | 3 Comments

Adventure is Out There

Posted on January 21, 2025 by lexicolton

I finally finished two projects that have been cluttering my back room for over a year. The first project is this little roll top desk that Julius has been asking me for ages to fix. I don’t know where it came from but the bottom of the drawers said “Ralph”. My grandpa’s name was Rolf but some people called him Ralph so maybe it was his? Or maybe it’s just from a yard sale! Nobody knows. It was in okay shape but the roll top part was awful. You could not roll it back. One day a few months ago I finally got annoyed enough to take the thing apart. The roll top part had been repaired but very poorly with this awful pleather material that was falling apart, was very bulky and was not very smooth to slide. I started ripping the thing apart slat by slat… And that’s when I realized I couldn’t go back… It was time to actually fix it.

First though I painted it. I asked Julius if he wanted it white or to leave it the color it was. He wanted it white. I have been dying to try milk paint for a while so I started covering it up with that but it all flaked off after drying. My mistake, I was really hoping it hadn’t been sealed. I sanded it all off then changed over to latex paint but the only white latex paint I had in the house was flat paint. So after I had it beautifully white I painted over it with a water based polyurethane…. And completely ruined it. The wood stain from below started leaking through! I decided to leave it because I was just fed up. Not my best work (honestly I think it looks worse than the original, but I really blame that on the paint) though the roll top is at least finally totally functional! If nothing else, it’s in Julius’ room and out of my basement…

But this other project is the one I’m itching to tell you about. I got this box off the free site and let me tell you the original box looks really cute in pictures but it was a MESS. I was the 10th person to say I was interested and I guess I should have been suspicious when it made it all the way to me. The box is huge! The hardware was hideous (and they’d carved out chunks from the top of the box to fit the ugly hinges). It was also covered in wax and something sticky on the top that I could never really get off. The wood was really dinged up, the bottom particle board was warping from dampness and the bottom was held up by these gross 2x4s which were wasting 3 inches of box depth. It was also on casters which I didn’t put back on but could have.

This is the bottom and back of the box with the casters removed and the bottom removed – it’s on the right – yuck.
From afar it’s not bad! It’s actually really cute! But look at it zoomed in. Not ideal. I would have had to refinish the stain.
I got rid of that string holding the box cover opened as well as those hinges…
Here you can see part of the ugly rope peeking thru.

I first tried to clean it and succeeded somewhat but that lead me to notice all the random gouge marks and paint splatters covering the surface (especially on the lid). So then I removed the bottom of the box and refitted it with a new bottom (made with some 3/4” plywood leftover from the pull out cabinets I made a few years back).

See the new bottom I put on?

Then I decided to whitewash it because I wanted it to match the costume chest I made for the kids a couple xmases ago. This time I sanded it all down lightly and used the milk paint to do the whitewashing. The box took the milk paint better than the desk but I wish I’d done a second coat. When I finished white washing everything I realized how horrible the top looked white washed because of all the blemishes I mentioned previously. I started brainstorming another solution.

That’s when I saw the foam that’s been sitting in my basement for years from the climbing wall I put up in the garage ages ago. I’ve been itching to do a button tufted something so this seemed the a good opportunity. The problem was my foam is a little bit… Tall. So I didn’t want to put any additional batting in top for extra loft. It still worked but I think it would have looked better if I just went for it and added the batting to make it look less square. The button tufting wasn’t too hard! It makes me want to do way more! After sending the inside of the box lid, I cut my foam to size using an old broken serrated cake knife. Then I cut out 1” deep strips of the foam where the slats were on top. Then I cut a rectangle of fabric to fit over the top of the container. I then marked my button locations and used a large tapestry needle to stitch both ends of a piece of kitchen twine thru my fabric and the foam cushion in the place marked. I threaded the other end thru another button, pulled it very tight then tied it off.

Here’s me marking out all the button locations.
Here I am removing the strips for the top of the box to fit inside.
Here I’ve fed thru all the buttons but haven’t pulled them tight.
Here I am tieing off the buttons on the back.
This is after I’ve stapled the fabric on the cover.
This is the outside whitewashed with the fabric on top.

When all the buttons were complete, I stapled the fabric onto the underside of the lid. To cover up the ugly staples and unfinished fabric I more discretely stapled woven trim on top of the unfinished fabric along the border.

Next I changed out the hinges and added a mechanism for holding the box opened (the previous owner was horrified I was going to use it as a kid’s toy chest as they got lots of bruises from the lid hitting them in the head… Apparently the lid holder is called a lid stay. The hinges I used were 3″ door hinges.

Then I took all the hardware off and painted the box. This part took me by far the longest. I found some cute images on the internet as inspiration (here, here, and here) and then hand sketched my own versions of each. Then I traced my hand sketchings onto the box. Finally I painted them. It took forever, but I kind of love it.

Here’s the shark (side 2)
Here I am painting tentacles
This is me repainting the words because I didn’t like the color (it didn’t show up!)

Finally I coated it in 3 coats of water based poly, re-fastened the hinges and lid stays and then had to decide on the handles. The previous owners had these really ugly ropes for handles and they’d cut these huge holes in the side of the box that were both different distances apart from each other. I wanted to cover the holes up so I made some leather straps from some scrap leather I had, and some old bolts I had lying around. This is my least favorite part of the box. I’ll probably change them out eventually, but for now it works.

Coating the box in water based poly
Cutting out scrap leather for the handles.

Overall I’m pretty happy with it, and even more happy it’s out of my back room and holding the kids’ costumes! I had all the things in my stash (yeah I know I am a horder) except the hinges. Which cost me about $6. If you consider that as the cost, I think it’s pretty good!

Posted in Crafts & Sewing, Home Improvement | 6 Comments

Horns a plenty

Posted on January 14, 2025 by lexicolton

Happy Monday Tuesday dear friends! It’s only January and I’m once again thinking there are just not enough hours in the day! I’ve been trying to finish up a couple projects that have been sitting in my back room for AGES and I’m making some progress! I hope to finish both this weekend because now they are not just taking up my back room but also taking up the main area of my basement! One of my new year’s resolutions should be to clean out and organize the back room. It sort of unofficially is… You remember the advent calendar that took me a decade to finish? That was one of the items in the back room! One box – cleared! Unfortunately right after I cleared that box off the shelf I inherited 2 more boxes from the cub scouts and I have literally no idea where to store them. I already can’t fit my own stuff!

Speaking of fitting stuff…(I just re-read this and still decided not to cut it) from Julius’ birthday alone I added another box of “science equipment” to my shelves. The good news is he wants a cooking birthday next year (at least he says that now) so most of the stuff I bought was actually measuring cups and spoons which I can use again next year! Bonus!

I am shocked that I haven’t finished all the birthday posts yet. I’ll add this one about the unicorn headbands I made and then I just have one more I think. Maybe two. I will be honest, the unicorn bands came out adorable! But they fell apart! I almost never use hot glue if I can avoid it, and this is the exact reason. It never holds things on properly. Next time I would completely cover the headband with fabric like I did for the disney ears. I think even if I still used hot glue it would be a better base for the horn to stick to. Despite that they looked cute for the party so that’s half the battle.

Unicorn Headbands

What you’ll need:

  • blank headbands (I would recommend ones pre-covered in fabric)
  • gold fabric
  • recycled polyfil stuffing
  • silver elastic band
  • White felt
  • assorted plastic flowers
  • Pattern for horn and ears here

1. Start by cutting out your gold fabric, folding in half and sewing along the unfinished edge to form a cone.

2. Turn right side out then take a 14″ piece of silver elastic and knot one end. Insert inside the horn and pull thru the top.

3. Stuff the horn with stuffing and then take the silver elastic and wind it around the horn. (You should strategically glue it in spots down the way.) Tie it at the base of the horn.

4. Glue the horn right onto the center of the headband.

5. Cut out 2 unicorn ears from template. Glue ears on either side of the horn about 1-1.5″ inches to either side. Do this by putting a stripe of glue in the center of the ear, attaching it to the headband, folding the ears up then gluing them together.

6. Glue flowers around the horn in a cluster, covering up the ugly glued on part of the horn.

That’s it! Wear your horn with pride!

Look at all these unicorns!
Posted in Crafts & Sewing | 2 Comments

There are different kinds of darkness

Posted on January 6, 2025 by lexicolton

Well it’s back to the old grind today for me. Last night I slept like I was in the back of a cement mixer. (So basically I woke up like 8 or 9 times.) Honestly I might be the kind of person to be able to sleep in the back of a cement mixer so maybe this is a bad comparison. I guess it was all the dread of going back to work. Though the holidays and their associated craziness are still a form of work, it’s different when it’s all for fun. Plus my mom took on the brunt of hosting during Chistmas. Despite not making any presents for the kids for Christmas we had a lot of gatherings that require prep work! And one silly tradition we’ve started that you may have noticed on our cards this year. But before I talk about that, I just want to comment about how we are so lucky we ended up with two great kiddos instead of just the one.

Julius and Patricia are so cute to watch together. They played together all break and really (except for a very light amount of teasing) they didn’t get tired or frustrated with each other. Right before break there was a Cub scout pot luck and I had the kids make cards for someone they loved. Patricia made one for Julius and Julius made one for Patricia. It was the sweetest thing ever. Yesterday they insisted they were going to sleep in the bed they had made in the hallway and were incensed when we told them they couldn’t sleep in the same bed. They settled on sleeping in different beds in Julius’ bunks.

Another sweet moment was witnessing this conversation:

Patricia (to Will): Daddy I want to go outside in the snow.

Will: Ask if Julius wants to go with you.

Patricia runs upstairs

Patricia: Hey Julius, after you get your clothes on do you want to go outside and sled me around in the sled?

Julius: Yes I’d love to do that.

Patricia (shouting down to Will): He said he’ll go outside with me!

So the new tradition we have started is celebrating the winter solstice. Not just one of the solstice based holidays but the actual shortest day of the year. (I know I’ll have to celebrate summer solstice too, but one pagan thing at a time people or Will will catch on.) So last year we celebrated by leaving the lights off when the sun went down and lighting candles and a fire in the fireplace for light. We then had dinner by candlelight and had a yule log cake for dessert. After dinner we celebrated by looking at the stars and the moon through a telescope (first time my kids had looked in one) and then reading books by the fire before bed. It was a blast! And super cozy. Julius talked about the yule log cake for the entire next year. So… we did it all again this year!

Candlelight solstice dinner (ignore the reflection on my face)

Patricia and I were home by ourselves for the beginning of solstice so we built the fire and threw some rosemary on the fire for a nice spiritual cleansing. (I told Patricia because Julius and Will were going to be at a birthday party we would do witchy things by ourselves at home. She shouted “go away bad witch” when she threw her bundle of rosemary into the fire. Not sure if she thinks all witches are bad or just some but I guess sending bad witches away is always a good thing.) Patricia and I also made a delicious vegetarian cassoulet (aka just a big old pot of white beans) with bread crumb topping. I’ve made vegetarian white bean cassoulet a few times, and this recipe is definitely the best we’ve tried. Will had thirds and that’s saying something. My only substitutions were to use a couple sprigs of rosemary in place of the thyme (I still, despite my best efforts, despise thyme).

Not super attractive by candlelight I promise it was delicious!
Of course we also had crusty sourdough and a winter spinach salad.

My yule cake also came out amazing this year! Julius helped me decorate by adding some bark patterns on the ganache. I think the key was not overcooking the cake and rolling it up immediately out of the oven. Mine didn’t crack at all! I used this recipe for all the parts of the cake and I highly recommend it!

Wow. That really looks like a log!
I’m all about that buche

For fireside reading I gave each of the kids a book I thrifted and Will read to them by the fire while I tried to finish the actual text based normal book (read: not audio based) that I’ve been reading. It was nice to catch up on some reading in such a cozy spot. The 21st was a Saturday this year so it was the perfect start to the holiday week.

If you made it this far I have to relay another cute Patricia quote. For context we were watching descendants, which has a bad guy named the boogie man who causes bad dreams.

Patricia (indignant): He didn’t make my bad dreams!  I did!

She wasn’t mad the boogie man was giving people bad dreams, she was mad he was taking credit for the bad dreams she had created. Touche!

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Nine in the Crafternoon

Posted on December 31, 2024 by lexicolton

Hello friends! I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying some winter solstice based celebrations. And further I hope when you read this (most likely in the new year) you are having a happy start to 2025! Happy New Year! The kids and I did a bunch of New Year’s Eve themed crafts today a la Pinterest. I wanted to do the typical New Year’s Eve count down at 12pm (aka Noon Year’s Eve) but for yet another year I couldn’t get my act together in time. Instead we decided to prep everything for post dinner celebrations. We called it “crafternoon” and got down to business after lunch doing some gluing, painting, cutting, taping and stickering. Then the kids decided they wanted fondue for New Year’s Eve dinner so we whipped up some of that. Side note, fondue is incredibly fast to make! Like, you can make it on a week-night fast! I’m going to have to log that away for later. I’ll post the recipes I used below.

Sigh, while Halloween is my favorite holiday, the winter celebrations are a very close second! The New Year always triggers an end to those joyful celebrations. My siblings all went home yesterday which always makes me sad! Will is extra sad, I’m sure, because that also signals the end of more eager board gamers living with him. I am just not as eager, I fear. I’m more of a do all the crafts type person. Luckily Will is out having some game night fun tonight with friends to continue his streak.

Speaking of do-all-the-crafts I think this is the first time in several years that I haven’t made anything for the kids for Christmas. It made me feel like a total failure! I had so many ideas and I accomplished none of them. On the bright side I did use the furoshiki wraps that I finished after last Christmas for all the Christmas presents and I had WAY MORE than I even needed including using them to wrap presents from others that had been shipped to us! We saved SO MUCH PAPER! What a great feeling. We hope we didn’t counteracted it with all the deliveries to our house. I can’t even fathom how bad that is. I’ll have to make an effort to buy more things local next year, though it really is very difficult to find things in stores these days. Especially when the only brick and mortar toy store is 45 minutes away from us. Target has a great toy section but it doesn’t cover all the things the kids asked for this year for Christmas. Though really no toy store would.

Patricia and Julius really don’t like to write Santa letters. Last year and this year we asked over and over again to have them write Santa a letter. They refused, on the reasoning that they asked Santa what they wanted in person. We went to see Santa at the beginning of December and they each asked for one thing. Patricia asked for “100 dolls in boxes” (we did have a chat about greed but it bounced right off her) and Julius asked for “a cheesecake”. Huh. Patricia ended up getting one American Girl Welly Wishers doll (and accessories) from Santa and shortly after opening it cut off half its hair. I had a near heart attack when I found the clump of hair in the bathroom. It should be noted that she did not choose to do this to the offbrand 14.5 inch doll that Mama and Dada got at Target for 1/4 the price, she targeted the Welly Wisher. Sometimes I wish I could bottle her curiosity for cause and effect.

Julius found a note under the tree on Christmas morning telling him to check the fridge. It appeared some jolly elf had left a brown pastry box in the fridge that had a sticker from “Mrs. C” on it. It had a block of cheese inside… that it seemed was actually a cake. A cheesecake to be exact. Mrs. Claus must be a bit of a prankster sending him a cheese-cheesecake. I bet she had fun making that. Julius said it was awesome, but not quite as good as the jelly cake.

New Year’s Afternoon Soiree with Kiddos*

*can I count this as a party? I don’t know but I’m going to, I don’t get out much anymore.

Lots of Crafts

We made:

Disco Balls from paper plates and aluminum foil (I’ll be honest we didn’t follow the tutorial just looked at the main picture)

Pom Pom Launchers (same deal as above)

Parchment Paper Kazoo (yay science)

New Years Eve Noisemakers (I’d just gotten a bunch of bells from Michaels on Xmas Clearance. This is what I was doing yesterday instead of writing this blog post).

Recycled Party Poppers (instructions below)

Food

We made a half recipe of this awesome cheese fondue. The only difference I made was to omit the Worcestershire sauce (it’s not vegetarian), added 2 Tbsp of corn starch with a tablespoon of water and I brought it back up to medium to come to a simmer while stirring with a rubber spatula the entire time. It almost instantly became the right consistency when it started to simmer and I didn’t have to wait 5-8 minutes. Will even liked this recipe because it was made with cheddar. Will is not a fan of the swiss cheese varieties, even though Julius and I think they are great. For dippers we served with cubed homemade sourdough (obviously), raw carrots, broccoli, pepper and celery, apples and cherry tomatoes. I didn’t bother serving with a salad because the kids ate more than their share of veggies this way with no prompting.

For dessert we happened to have all the ingredients for chocolate fondue on hand including marshmallows, strawberries and some unfrosted sugar cookies I had made for xmas that I chopped up for dipping. I used this recipe (again halved) and melted the chocolate on low and it was perfect.

At 7:30pm we did a count down and watched a recording of a past NYE ball drop. The kids played their kazoos and shook their noisemakers when we got to 0. Then the kids said they wanted to do their own ball drop with the disco balls we made. So they counted down to 10 and dropped them off the balcony. And finally they launched pom poms at me (then cleaned them up) before they headed up to bed.

Recycled Party Poppers

What you’ll need (for each):

  • 1 toilet paper tube
  • 1 toilet paper wrapper (or tissue paper)
  • Additional scraps of tissue paper or TP wrappers
  • string or ribbon to tie the ends
  • Tape
  • Paper for jokes
  • a fun little trinket (ours were some little boba tea lip glosses)

1. Cut your TP roll in half. (Honestly having done this several times now I’m not sure they ever break along the center line, so this step is probably unnecessary.)

2. With the scrap TP roll wrapper/tissue paper cut up little 1/2″x1/2″ size squares of confetti.

3. Cut a roughly 1′ x 8″ rectangle of TP roll wrapper/tissue paper then place your cut TP tube in the center on one of the longer ends.

4. Tape on each side of the tube.

5. Slowly roll up the tube in the wrapper until it overlaps. Then again tape each side of the tube.

6. Pinch one end closed and tie ribbon or string around it.

7. Fill with confetti and a joke (the kids wanted to write their own jokes). Then have the kids close their eyes while you put a little prize inside and add more confetti on top.

8. Pinch other end closed and tie off with ribbon or string

9. Decorate with stickers or as desired.

To open – pull!

Posted in Crafts & Sewing, Culinary Delights, Parties | 4 Comments

Happy Holidays

Posted on December 25, 2024 by lexicolton

Happy holidays to you and yours!

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For Science

Posted on December 19, 2024 by lexicolton

Well… Another great weekend… until it ended with lice! Not something you want to hear, I know. A few months ago we found a few on Patricia and it turned out Julius also had a few. This time we found them on Julius and it turned out I had a few… Last time it put me in a state of panic for 2 weeks afterwards as we washed and dried and vacuumed everything in our house. I probably did 20 loads of laundry. I’m not going to lie it took a toll on me mentally. This time Will and I both took a mental health day to go to the lice clinic, do laundry and clean and vacuum the house and furniture. We didn’t even finish all the laundry that day but we made a huge dent and it was so much better than trying to do over 2 weeks all while working. And of course this weekend our guests come stay… We wanted to make sure we don’t scare our family away. Side note the lice clinic we found is awesome. They guarantee no lice after treatment (which consists of this hot dry air blowdryer thing followed by dimethicone). This is kind of unheard of, and is a very recent scientific lice treatment break thru! Thank goodness for science.

Before finding out about lice we had a great weekend (in retrospect thank goodness we were outdoors and wearing hats nearly the whole time)! We went to NYC, had some bagels, saw my friend Cathy, went to Rockefeller plaza to see the giant tree (from MA this year!) and FAO Schwartz, went to Times Square to write our wishes for the new year on confetti they drop with the ball, saw a bunch of cool window displays then went to Bryant Park for some dinner and dessert at the winter market. It was a great quick trip!

Speaking of quick these cupcakes for Julius’ party were pretty quick to make and it was great I could make the fondant for them several days in advance which makes decorating them easy! That said they wilted a bit because I put the fondant on then covered them overnight. Next time I’ll wait until the day of to add the fondant (or I’ll have to use something that won’t wilt like gum paste). Luckily this was a lesson learned for Patricia’s party so she didn’t have floppy unicorn horns. When I asked Julius if he knew what my fondant decorations were he said “yeah! They’re science cups.” Which I thought was adorable…

Science Beaker Cupcakes

What you’ll need:

  • fondant (I make my own from this recipe I got in a class at Amanda Oakleaf Cakes)
  • food coloring for the fondant (gel is usually more vibrant)
  • Black food safe marker
  • 1 batch of Chocolate Cupcakes (I use this one)
  • 1 batch of Chocolate Frosting (I use this one)
  • A knife and a steady hand or make your own cookie cutters
  • sugar pearls

1. A week before you want to serve the supcakes you’ll want to form your fondant beakers. I first made some teeny cookie cutters. This kit I got off Amazon has really come in handy. I have made like 7 different weird shaped cookie cutters from it since I bought it 5 years ago.

2. First mix in food coloring to your white to form colored liquid. You don’t need very much for this. I made purple, green and orange. Take one of your colors and form it into a roll. Take an equal sized ball of white and form it into an equal sized roll.

3. Put some powdered sugar down to prevent sticking then roll out the two together to form a very thin (2-3mm thick) dual color strip.

4. Using your cookie cutter (or a knife and a template) cut out a bunch of beakers. Make sure the colored part is the bottom of the beaker to look like liquid.

5. Repeat above steps 2-4 for other colors of “liquid” and beaker shapes.

6. Let the above beakers dry for a couple days. When dry use a black food safe marker to form tick marks for measurements.

7. Frost your cupcakes. I used a large cupcake star tip starting in the center and then continuing outwards to form ring of frosting around the edges. Then I placed the fondant beaker directly on top.

This is the best picture I have, you can see some of the cupcakes on the right hand side that don’t have beakers on top.

8. Add some sugar pearls around the top of the beaker to look like bubbles.

Note: You’ll want to serve a few hours after you put the fondant on top or it might become moist.

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Ad-venting

Posted on December 12, 2024 by lexicolton

Wow. I’m late. Again. I haven’t started making any gifts for my children or Will despite the list of ideas I have again. I did finish multiple sets of cousin calendars I make (with the help of my brother and SILs) and almost finished addressing holiday cards so I consider myself ahead of the curve! And oh boy just wait for this year’s holiday cards…

So as I was thinking about what to write for this incredibly long in the making project I was trying to actually remember WHEN I started it. It couldn’t have actually been 10 years ago… we only had just adopted Dany. My guess is it was 8 years ago. (So close it was 9 years ago.) I’m pretty sure I started it before Whimsical Brims. Because that was several laptops and pre Google photos I probably don’t have some pictures from the beginning of the project. On top of that I switched to an easier method because I got lazy after realizing the original plan was going to take me the rest of my life (I’m not exaggerating). Honestly it seemed a sisyphean task every year when I’d take out the box, work on it a bit and then put it back. That was until last year when I realized that I actually might be getting close to done. Then this year I was able to buckle down and in the course of just two half days I finished it!

“What is this epic project you keep waxing on about?!” you ask. Well it is a somewhat quilted looking advent calendar. The idea was to quilt an advent calendar with pockets. I feel the need to add like 7 more caveats. When I first started this project I had just gotten an embroidery machine and had no idea how to do applique. I also had no idea what quilting was. I also really didn’t know how to hoop stuff properly. I also hadn’t thought about the fact that quilting or embroidering on top of things would mean any pockets installed at the beginning would get sewn over. I also didn’t realize how LONG it would take me to embroider over 48 shapes. So instead I changed the project to use fusible fabric bond (heat n’ bond ultra). I surprisingly only used one package of this for the myriad of shapes I put on there.

Year 1 (2016):

Cut out a 4’x4′ piece of quilted backing, cotton fabric for the front and cotton backing for the back. Using a walking foot stitch through entire 3 pieces in a wavy pattern and realize you really have no idea how quilting works.

Cut out your Dany cartoon corgi with Santa hat. Attempt to attach it together by using the sewing machine to embroider. Decide you don’t like the look and give up for now.

Design and cut out Christmas boxes and bows.

Most of my boxes are 4×5. Some are longer. Also cut out strips for “ribbons” mine were the length of my boxes x 2″ wide.

Add “ribbons” to boxes by cutting boxes in half then stitching “ribbons” using .5″ seam allowance. Press boxes flat.

Fold under 1/2″ at the top of the box and stitch.

Sew a bunch of pockets. (You’ll need 24 total) I made these pockets 4×4 with an extra inch at the top on one side. (You’ll see why).

Lay out to see how it looks then give up for next year.

Year 2 (2017):

Have a baby, don’t do anything except make baby stuff.

Year 3 (2018):

Screw it, don’t do anything this year either.

Year 4 (2019):

Second wind! Give up on embroidering everything! Buy heat n’ bond ultra. Decide these boxes don’t take up enough room, cut out a giant Christmas tree then using heat n’ bond attach it to the quilt.

Start attaching boxes to the quilt. First cut a 3.5″ slit just below the lip of where the box will go. Then using one of the pockets you created 3 years ago stitch just above the slit into the extra 1″ of fabric you left above the pocket. Hand sew the other side of the pocket to the unfinished part below the pocket.

Using heat and bond, attach to pocket, making sure to leave a .5″ overhang that has no heat and bond above the slit you made to conceal the pocket.

Do the box/pocket thing until you get bored.

Year 5 (2020):

Have another baby. Think about the project but only in terms of “oh crap am I going to need to make 2 of these by the end?”

Year 6 (2021):

Don’t even think about this stupid project. Do 10,000 other projects and continue to increase anxiety about my kids still not being old enough for the covid vaccine.

Year 7 (2022):

Nah

Year 8 (2023):

Really? No wonder it took me 9 years.

Year 9 (2024):

Continue attaching boxes. Make sure not to sew or cut through any of the ones you added prior.

Add a star to the top of the tree and “rays” coming off the star. Add 4 extra pockets to the rays when you realize you don’t have enough boxes. Make more pockets because you don’t have enough. To attach the pockets to the rays, cut a slit directly thru the ray and the quilt (before the ray is attached). Then attach the pocket to the slit as before and heat n’ bond the ray on top, lining up the slit in the ray with the slit in the quilt.

Finish the corgi. Still hate how it looks but decide this is the home stretch now. Add a bit more outlining but overall just glue it together with heat n’ bond.

Attach the bows with heat and bond.

Add a border around the edge of the “quilt” (not sure we can call it that anymore). Add some little loops to the back for hanging.

Make 24 little tags out of some wooden xmas tags you got on sale who knows how many years ago. Paint numbers on each then attach to ribbon and the other end to a metal ring that is heavy enough to hold it in the pocket.

Marvel at how not-completely-horrible it looks but also not at all what you envisioned. Voila!

Posted in Crafts & Sewing | 4 Comments

Unicorny

Posted on December 5, 2024 by lexicolton

Sorry that I’m a few days late again! I was a single parent with one kid earlier this week and it turns out that is a crazy amount of work! How do all the single parents do it?! They are the real heroes. Plus I ended up with the “easy” child… Though honestly Patricia is such a sweetie and really has come out of the terrible twos and threenager years. She’s so much better at controlling her temper these days. And she’s still full of adorable quotes. Here are a few from the last week (when I was actually with her):

Me (talking about the picture above): Is it a hat?Patricia: No it’s a rock with a unicorn horn with a rainbow rock on top.

Patricia (out of the blue, trust me there is 0 context): I don’t want to put Santa on the bad list! He’s the good guy!

Patricia (hands and feet on the ground and butt in the air as I walk by her in Sugar’s lounge room while everyone else is having dinner): I’m a cheese! Eat me!

Some timely quotes there. I know it’s Christmas and I promised to show the 10 year in the making Xmas project (and st this point getting your hopes up for nothing) but wanted to get this unicorn tutorial out there first. It was actually quite easy to decorate Patricia’s cupcakes as unicorns! It’s a combo of a bunch of techniques from all over the place that totally work!

Unicorn Cupcakes

What you’ll need:

  • fondant (I used this marshmallow fondant recipe)
  • American buttercream icing (takes gel color better)
  • Red yellow orange green blue violet black gel food coloring
  • piping tips
  • making sheet
  • parchment paper
  • cupcakes

1. Make ears and horns out of fondant. For the ears I made a leaf shape and then pinched in the bottom.

2. For the horns I dyed some fondant yellow then made 1″ carrot shapes and then used the side of a toothpick to indent a swirl around the edges.

3. Let the horns and ears dry for several days.

4. Frost your cupcakes by making a batch of American Buttercream (I use this one). And prepare a couple baking trays lined with parchment.

5. Fill a piping bag fitted with a large round cupcake tip with 2/3 of the frosting. Pipe a large blob of frosting in the center of each cupcake.

6. Carefully invert the cupcake and slowly press it into the parchment paper. Make sure the cupcake sits evenly an the blob smooths out rather centered.

7. Repeat until you fill the tray of cupcakes then pop in the freeze for 5 minutes while you repeat step 6 with the second half.

8. After 5 minutes in the freezer remove your cupcakes. Gently remove each cupcake from the parchment, peeling it away slowly.

9. Divide the rest of the frosting into 8ths. (It will only be a few tablespoons each.)

10. Using gel food coloring, color the frosting black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Place all the colors but black in individual little rolls of plastic wrap in hot dog like shapes.

11. Place the rolls of frosting in rainbow order next to each other in a circle, then cut the bottom of the plastic wrap tubes to expose the frosting

12. Place the bundle of tubes into a piping bag fitted with a small sized star tip.

13. Pipe a moon of hair at the top of the cupcake followed by a little tuft in the center.

14. Use the black frosting and a fine line tip, pipe little eyelids below the hair.

15. The day of serving (don’t do it earlier or the fondant will wilt) insert ears and horn into frosting. (I frosted them the night before then inserted the fondant the following morning).

Posted in Culinary Delights | Leave a comment