DIY Tutu

Halloween is upon us and one of my favorite holidays. My girl's are dressing up as Dorothy and the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz. I plan to portray the Wicked Witch as not so wicked for my two year old, Charlotte and for that we need a TUTU! Since the Witch is primarily green and black I chose black and green glitter tool from Hobby Lobby. Make sure you don't try to craft on Sundays because they are closed.

The easiest way to start is by measuring your kiddos waist and subtract 4 inches to cut the elastic. You can then hot glue the elastic together for the "no-sew" option. Then you measure the length you want the tutu to be and cut a piece of cardboard this length. Next, you wrap the tool around the cardboard and cut where you started to make your strips but the main point is that the strips need to be twice as long as you need the tutu to be in length.

Next, you can layer two or three pieces and tie a knot around the elastic. 

Perfect for the Wicked Witch!

Sesame Street Cupcake Making

These Sesame Street themed birthday party is giving this mamma a run for her crafting! My next ambitious ordeal is making the famous Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch in delicious cupcake form. For this project I needed two boxes and cake mix, ingredients for the cake mix, a ginormous container of ready made frosting, frosting coloring gels, pastry bags and tips, and ingredients for the faces of the characters.

First came Elmo, the most famous of all that my kiddos are obsessed with. He consisted of lemon cake, red furry monster frosting, an oreo cookie mouth, M&M nose, and two candy eyeballs. He was delicious!

Big Bird was used with a petal frosting tip to look like a big old yellow bird, and his beak was candy corn (thank goodness for Halloween candy) and more candy eyeballs. 

Oscar, the Grouchy little fellow was messy green frosting, devils food cake, an Oreo cookie mouth (sticking out his tongue) candy eyes with his famous brown bushy eyebrows. 

  By the time I got to Cookie Monster I was fresh out of eyeballs and thanks to Halloween season, every grocery store in a 10 mile radius was also out of them. After an epic meltdown and a run to McDonald's drive thru, I ran over to Michael's Craft store and luckily they had one box left! This blue cookie fiend was devils food chocolate cake, blue furry monster frosting, chips ahoy cookie, and those hard to find candy eyeballs. These were a big hit at the party! Check back to see how I crafted some decorations for the party.

Sesame Street Cookie Making

The month of October is a special month for my family, it is my twin girls Birthday month! This year they turn two and since they are living, dreaming, and breathing Sesame Street what better theme for their party could there be? As usual, I am too excited, ambitious, and creative so I decide to make homemade Sesame Street cookies. I ordered the cookies cutters on Etsy  and after a semi-successful trial run in September, I am ready for the real thing. I take two days off work and run to every craft store in town to get frosting coloring, pastry bags, and everything and anything needed for cookie making. So then I begin by making the dough and cutting the cookies.

There is Elmo, Cookie Monster, Street signs, and number 2’s. Next step is making the royal icing frosting to use the technique called Cookie flooding. Starting with the outlines first then filling in with color.

Eight long hours later, filled with blood, sweat, and tears, we have awesome Sesame Street cookies ready for my two year old twin girls birthday! Stay tuned for the cupcake blog...