Rainbow Art Party

In an earlier post I mentioned a Rainbow Art Party that my friend let me help with for her daughter's 9th birthday... Yay!  Not that I don't love boys and zombies but sometimes I need girl time and rainbows.

Let's start out with where you can get cool supplies... the dollar store.  I LOVE DOLLAR STORES.  I live in a small town that is two hours in any direction for shopping.  When I go out of town there are usually a lot of things to do... appointments for the dentist, eye doctor, hair cuts etc.  You have to make it count.  My first stop is always the dollar store.  My son has said to me more than once, "You should not spend more than $100 at the dollar store."  I disagree.   You can get so much stuff there.  Cool crafty stuff.  Cool holiday theme stuff.  Dollar stores are amazing.

I knew right away what I wanted.  Canvases, paint and brushes to start.  I was searching the craft aisle and I found canvases with easels.  Awesome.  They also had lots of wooden things to paint.  I chose little tiny birdhouses.  They even had paint palates.  Did I mention that I love dollar stores?  Crafts taken care of.

Cake - Rainbow cake.  We made lots of cake.  LOTS.  I just used a regular white cake mix and added Wilton Gel color to achieve the desired shade.  I used 5 cake mixes and made one each color. This was just made in a round 9 inch pan.  I started with red and ended with purple.  I poured the cake mix into the pan from a measuring cup so I had a teeny bit more control.  Every color uses a little less cake mix.  Bake according to cake mix directions.

 We also made take home rainbow party favors by baking rainbow cake-in-a-jar.  Very easy.  I had a lot of cake mix to use up.  You just layer the cake colors in a clean mason jar and bake in the oven.  It helps to put the jars on a cookie sheet in the oven. DO NOT GREASE THE JARS.  This results in the jar getting a brown baked film on it and it is hard to see the colors.  DO NOT OVERFILL THE JARS.  Seriously.  Put way less than you think you will need.  Less than half the jar.  Otherwise you have to scrub and scrub cake residue off the outside so you can see the pretty colors.  Mine are TOO FULL in this picture.

Now what else can we make into rainbows?  On Pinterest I found really cute paintbrushes made from Rice Krispie Squares.  They were made by cutting adding a colored popsicle stick to the Rice Krispie square and then putting on some icing.  They turned out so cute.  Definitely a hit with the girls.  I got the colored craft sticks at the dollar store.

We had extra sticks so we decided to dip bananas in melted chocolate and then add colored sprinkles.  We could pretend we were being healthy because they were fruit.

We needed to have something to drink.  Ice cubes made out of KoolAid.  Add ice cubes to Sprite, maybe an umbrella too and you have a colorful fancy drink.

Now the finale... the cake.  The girl of the day likes Littlest Pet Shop so we had to put those on top of the cake.  We needed some more chocolate (who doesn't?) and some more rainbows.  KitKat Skittle cake!

We just used the one layer round cake because we wanted to put the Pet Shop characters on top.  We iced it with normal white icing and then put KitKat bars around the outside.  It took 12 regular KitKat bars.  We placed them on the iced cake and then put a ribbon around it for stability.   Pour a few (ok 6) bags of different skittles on top and you have a cake that would impress any kid.  The cool part was the kids did not know about the rainbow INSIDE...

The kids did amazing art as well... I love girl time!

Father's Day - Part One

Two posts in one day?  That probably will not happen very often.  As mentioned I have 3 crazy busy male children who keep me insanely busy.  I also have a full time job where I work 9-5:30 during the week.  I have a part time job at the local Rec Centre so I can teach the Babysitting Course and run Girls Night and other kid friendly programs. As well occasionally I drive a zamboni.  OK - just for the record we call it an Olympia here in Lillooet.  However, it is still cool... and also terrifying if there are a lot of people in the stands staring at you.  Stories for another time.  Just adds up to being super busy.  The crafts and things I will be talking about are ones that real people do.  I am not Martha Stewart.  I don't have time to spend 30 minutes decorating ONE cookie.  It has to be real.

Today is Father's Day.  Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there... and to all those who do the job of Dad.

I wanted to do some crafts for Father's Day.  So of course I went on Pinterest.  I know you all did too.  Admit it.  It is ok.  It is crack for women.  They said so on the News so you know it is true!

I created an entire board.  Seriously.  Now what to make?  What will BOYS want to make... hmm.  What does he like?  Well... ZOMBIES.  Duh.  OK, what do I want to make?

First - cake.  Well in MY family we can rule that out.  What looks like a cake but is something that will not go in the garbage after the pictures are taken?  My twin friends Jo and Sue have a blog and for their birthday they made each other a pop can cake.  Jo likes Diet Coke and Sue likes Coke.  They are awesome so I thought I would borrow their idea. Check out their blog joandsue.blogspot.ca

To the store I went.  I of course did not read the directions first and figure out how much pop I would need... 3 cases should be lots.  Nope.  It was not.  READ THE DIRECTIONS FIRST.  My tip of the day.

The bottom layer has 30 cans.  The middle layer has 12.  The top has 2.  If you are using one kind of pop then it is probably easier.  My family likes orange and cream soda.  I made a sqaure cake because I wanted to change it up a little.  I thought they would stack better this way too (which is very true).  If you do a square cake vs round it does not require cardboard in between layers so that they do not fall over.  Maybe if you lived in a house where it was calm and there were not wrestling matches happening every 5 seconds your cake would be safe.  Not here.

Do not attempt to move this once built.  It is heavy!!!  We built it on the table were it was going to be displayed.  Much easier.  You can just use a tiny dab of hot glue to attach the ribbons - one dab on each side of the cake is lots.  It peels off easily too so you can still drink the pop.

If you live in a house where the adult males drink beer - beer can cake would be also cool.  We are boring. Pop it is.

More later... 

Day One

Let's be serious now... zombies and cupcakes?

What do they have in common you ask?  Well... ME. 

 My name is Kerry and I am the only girl in a zombie filled house.  I like making cupcakes, edible crafts, and taking photos.  The rest of my family likes zombies, battles of every kind, video games and scary movies.  I prefer the Disney Princesses.  I can't watch a scary movie during the day without being creeped out.  My kids hear Princesses and run screaming in the other direction.  I like making cakes and cupcakes and being in the kitchen.  My child actually asked me NOT to make him a cake for his birthdays. " I don't like cake.  Why do you keep trying to make me a cake? Can't I have a birthday pizza instead?"  OMG.  I know, right.  I seriously wonder if they were all switched at birth.

These are my 3 boys: K, S, and B.  They are wonderful children - full of life and love - and enough energy to power several small cities if we could harness it in a constructive way.

My life is filled with sports and zombie tag and Mantracker.  No Barbie or My Little Pony for me. Don't feel sorry for me.  I am almost at peace with it. I did make them get pictures taken at Disneyland with the Princesses - I am sorry kids, this is about ME.  You may not like it, you do not have to smile, but you will stand there for 30 seconds.  As a reward we will go to Star Tours so you can fight the evil Darth Maul and Darth Vader.  It is a give and take life.  

I need an outlet so voila - zombiesvscupcakes.blogspot was born.

See you soon!