Pinspiration

The past year has brought about a new love in my life: Pinterest. Every crafter/bakers dream, every dieters nightmare.
(You can follow me HERE )
Recently I've actually started making things that I find on there! My friend Amy over at Suburban Blender and I decided to do a Halloween swap and I knew immediately what I wanted to make for her. I had seen this Halloween wreath and fell in love with it, and I decided to recreate it! The whole project took me less than 10 minutes and I LOVE it so much! I couldn't be more happy with how my creepy cute wreath turned out.

Hopefully Amy loves it too!

Luau Cake

Last week my second oldest niece turned 16. Holy cow! That means I'm.....getting old. For her birthday, she requested that she not be a part of the party planning, so her parents decided to throw her a surprise luau party and I offered to make the cake (and to be the distraction! Pretending to be lost and/or crazy for 40 minutes was not easy lol)
Remember two years ago when I said that I would never make another two tiered cake? I lied. I wanted this to be really big and really special. I was slightly less stressed about this one than I was about the last because it was for family and it wasn't my first two tiered cake. That's not saying I wasn't stressed, because boy howdy I was. I become a freak when I'm baking for other people. No one can be in my kitchen. Not even my husband who lives here too. Poor guy.
Anyways, it took approximately 12 hours, but I really loved how the cake turned out. I'd hoped for better things with the palm tree topper, but oh well, it was still cute! Everything, including the shell candies on the bottom I made from scratch.The leaves of the small palms were made from Royal icing, and the "sand" is just brown sugar.
The bottom layer was dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and chocolate buttercream, and the top was pineapple with pineapple filling and pineapple buttercream. Both cakes were super rich and turned out pretty darn tasty if I do say so myself! I only wish I'd taken better pictures!

Homemade Bath Bombs

Whaaaat a craft post, from me? I bet you didn't see that coming! :)

I've recently become Obsessed (<-see that capitol O? That's for extra emphasis!) with Lush products. If you don't know what Lush is, it's a sort of hippieish cosmetic/bath products store. All of their products are handmade with no preservatives or any junk, and almost everything is amazing.

Herein lies my dilemma. I do not live anywhere near a Lush, and not only are their products pricey (though well worth it!) so is shipping. I loathe paying for shipping.

So I decided that I would make my own! I spent a few weeks gathering supplies, some I had to order online, then spent last night making my lushlike creations. They were so easy, and so worth the effort! The fresher these bad boys are the more they fizz, so mine are super fizzy and fabulous. The fragrance I chose is called Monkey Farts, and while a little crass it's a lovely blend of banana, strawberry, kiwi tropicalness. Yum!

Here is the simple recipe, though making these is more of a process than a recipe:

1/2 cup citric acid
1/2 cup Epson Salt
1 cup baking soda
tap water in a spray bottle
mold of some sort (I used round Christmas ornament halves!)
Gel food coloring

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, make sure there are no clumps! add in your fragrance and color to your liking. Mix well. Spritz on two to three sprays of water and mix in well. The grab some in your fist and drop into the bowl. If it lands in the bowl with out breaking, you're ready to mold. If it breaks, repeat the spritzing.
Once you get it to drop without breaking, fill both of your mold haves tightly, then add extra mixture between and press together as hard as you can. Don't twist! The hardened ball should easily pop out of the mold.

Allow to dry for at least 24 hours (though you can use these right away!) before packaging.

I suggest watching some video on bath bomb making on YouTube before you dive in. You'll get a feel of the mixing technique and how the mixture should look before you mold. Have fun!