My Homemade Birthday Present Streak Continues...

Curly J was back from her honeymoon just in time to celebrate her 30th birthday this weekend.  Of course I had to attempt to make her present since I made that goal of making all birthday presents this year.  Plus I wrote about that goal on my blog and she reads my blog. 

I kind of took the easy way out and made some earrings.  It's just too hot for any more t-shirt scarves at this time and I was drawing blanks on everything else.  I also gave her a bunch of photos from her wedding shower, bachelorette party and wedding and an album.  I had big plans to make an album but they fell through.  So, earrings it is.

Plus I made her a birthday cake.  It's my go-to chocolate chip poundcake which I have finally mastered over the years.  And by mastered, I mean it actually came all the way out of the pan instead of getting stuck in there and ripping apart.  Yay me!

The evening started with dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant followed by game night at her house.  B and I were victorious at a game of LCR and scored $7 in prize money.  Have you ever played LCR (left, center, right)?  I was pretty skeptical at first but it ended up being pretty fun.

So in conclusion, Mexican food and cake are good, LCR is fun, and I'm still doing ok on my handmade presents. 

HandMade Birthday Presents by Me!

Because I like a good challenge, I decided that this year I would try to make all my friends their birthday presents.  Isn't that what most people want for their 30th birthday (most of my friends are turning 30 this year)??

So we started off with $hanzles back in February.  This was when I had a lot of motivation and decided I could make hard/awesome stuff for everyone.  So I sewed her this little pouch in NC State colors (yay WolfPack!).  It only took me a billion hours to make.  (That might be an exaggeration.   The pattern is pretty simple).  I also made her some earrings.  I thought that I'd promised to make her yellow earrings.  Turns out I was supposed to make her green ones.  Oh well, now she has some yellow ones and still no green ones.  It's the thought that counts, right?

Then it was off to Curly T and Beezus5, the late April, early May birthdays.  This was when I really got into making t-shirt scarves.  I tried really hard on Curly T's and ended up with something pretty decent.  That is me modeling it below.  It looked much better when she wore it.  She put the flower part up around her neck.

Beezus5's was made at the last minute.  Her t-shirt scarf was still shedding a little when I gave it to her.  But she couldn't be mad because I spent most of my time on her graduation present which I gave her the same week as her bday.  Again, thought that counts, right?

So far, I have been able to make all the birthday gifts.  Don't feel bad though if your birthday is later in the year and I end up making you something really terrible or giving you a gift card.  I'm not sure how long this creativity can last.

Do you like handmade gifts?

PS-The t-shirt scarf is actually pretty easy to make if you want to give someone a handmade gift. 

Cake Balls-Part 2: The Successes

And now, the riveting conclusion to Cake Balls-Part 1.............

So the cake ball pops were not a complete failure.  There were just a few bumps a long the way.  We actually ended up with many wonderful and semi-wonderful looking cake pops. 

How we made our cake pops:
2 boxes of cake mix
2 containers of icing
A bunch of Candy Melts from Michael's (we had 5 bags but only used about 3 bags)
Sprinkles
Cake Pop sticks (from Michael's)

1-Bake the cakes according to package (very important)
2-Let the cakes cool
3-Crumble the cake into a bowl and add about 3/4 of a can of icing
4-Mix the icing into the cake to form a dough (add more icing if you need it)
5-Roll the dough into little balls and then refrigerate or freeze them so that they are more firm (makes it easier to dip in the melted chocolate)
6-Melt the Candy Melts (or you can use real chocolate, I think Candy Melts (CM) are easier because they harden faster but real chocolate might taste better)
7-Dip a stick in melted CM then dip the stick in a ball and dip the ball back into the CM until it's coated.  Quickly add sprinkles before the CM hardens.  You can also let it harden and then write on it with more melted CM or draw designs on it with melted CM
8-Stick it in styrofoam to fully dry

T constructed a cake stand for us out of styrofoam and ribbon.  We started with the sprinkles and then B5 did an excellent job of writing letters (and drawing creatures) on some of the balls.  Basically the ones that T and B5 made are much prettier than the ones I made.  I also tended to shriek or yell when my cake balls did not turn out as planned.  It got pretty tense up in there (for me, not for other people).

Our biggest success by far was figuring out how to transport the cake ball pop cake from T's apartment (3rd floor by the way) to the bar later that night.  We sat in contemplation for a few minutes when we realized we would need something to put the cake in, in order to move it.  Then T decided to take action and after searching through her storage closest for a few minutes, T pulled out this drawer which ended up being the perfect thing to transport the cake.  (We cleaned and disinfected it before putting the cake in there by the way.)

So I took the cake to my house and then later was in charge of transporting it to the bar.  I was very freaked out the whole way to the bar and sat in the back seat with the cake to make sure it stayed safe.  I also yelled at B for going over speed bumps.

However, we made it and the cake was a success!

I'm not really sure what she was blowing out here as this cake ball
cake had no candles.  However, M seems to think it's hilarious.



Cake Balls-Part 1: The Failures

How it all started..........
Secret email chain between Me, Curly T, and Beezus5 in regards to Shanzie's Birthday party......
ME: should we make/buy cupakes or a cake or something for saturday night for shanzies bday partay?  what does she like?  will the bar allow that?
T: hey...sorry, for the delay in response...I didn't have to work today.  Yes...I think she would definitely appreciate that....and I would think that the bar would be fine with it since we are bringing like 20 people into their business (but B5 might know the establishment better).
B5:  The Bar would be fine with that. #1 i'm in with the waitresses, #2 i had some cake balls there a few nights ago for another dude's bday.
ME:  ooh maybe we can make cake balls.  i have wanted to try them
T:  my co-worker brought in cake balls for Valentine's day and they were delicious!!!
ME:  yeah i see them on food blogs all the time.  lets do it.  I THINK IT'S PRETTY EASY.  you just bake a box cake and crumble it up and mix it with icing and dip it in something.  we can add some sprinkles to make it birthdayish.  i'll look it up.

Of course I was the one who had to say "i think it's pretty easy."  In my head I should have known it wasn't going to work out as I planned (just like those Martha Stewart glasses).  So after a few more email chains we decided that B5 and I would pre-bake some cakes and take them over to T's house on Saturday morning.  She would get the stuff to decorate them and then we would make something amazingly beautiful, just like these.......

Picture from cakepops.com (much prettier pops than ours)

So anyways, my first big fail happened when I was making the cake.  The directions on the box said to add 1/3 cup of oil.  Apparently I thought it said to add 1 and 1/3 cups of oil.  Ooops.  I didn't realize this until the cake had been baking for like 45 minutes and it was still liquidy.  It finally baked and I decided since we were crumbling it up it would be fine. 

No, not really.   I should have known.  I mean the balls were pretty soggy even after I froze them.  The first one I tried to make ended up like this.....as did the next few. 

We finally got a few of them to stay on the sticks but an hour later we realized that they were actually leaking oil (yeah there was that much oil in them).  GROSS.  So we threw away all the pink cake.  Fortunately I did make a chocolate cake with the correct amount of oil and B5 made a yellow cake to use

Our next big mishap occurred when B5 threw one of the recently coated melted chocolate balls under T's kitchen table.  Ok she didn't really throw it.  She just dropped it.  I just stood there frozen and yelling while T and B5 actually figured out how to get the (hardening) chocolate off the carpet.  (I also took pictures. I'm sooo helpful in a crisis.)  Good times.

by the way, they got the chocolate up with clorex wipes, I think

So in conclusion, when you make cake balls don't add 4 times the amount of oil the cake recipe calls for and try not to drop the balls on the ground.  See what we had to go through, Shanzie.

Did we end up with any successful cake balls?  You will find out tomorrow in the riveting conclusion, 'Cake Balls-Part 2'. 

How to Make an Easy Affordable Dinner for a Lot of People...

1-Make something in your slow cooker...
I decided to make pot roast.  It seemed easy and like it would be a nice Fall comfort food dish which was my goal.

Do I look scared in this picture?  Uh yeah, I'm browning a four pound piece of meat.  Of course I'm scared.

Slow Cooker Pot Roast (Adapted from allrecipes.com)

4 pound Roast-(I think it was a bottom round roast that I got on sale, not positive on the exact cut)

1 envelope of Onion Soup Mix

1 can of beef broth

1 can of water

1 large (24 oz?) can of Cream of Mushroom Soup

Carrots (like 4)

Medium Onion

Red Potatoes (about 5 small/medium ones)

Salt/Pepper

To make this I.....browned the meat in some oil with salt and pepper.  This was the hardest part just because the meat was so heavy.  Then I stuck it in the slow cooker.  I mixed the soup, can of beef broth, one can of water and mushroom soup together and covered the meat.  I cooked this on low for four hours.  Then I added in the veggies and cooked on high for about 4 more hours.  I probably could have taken it out sooner but it was very tender and falling apart when I finally took it out and that's how I wanted it.
This pot roast cost less than $20 to make and served like 16 people.

2-Make an easy vegetarian dish

Ok I also made a semi-homemade ravioli bake. Aka I bought some spinach/cheese ravioli in the refrigerator section and I cooked it. Then I layered it in a baking dish with marinara sauce, topped it with Italian Blend Cheese and baked it at 350 for 30 minutes. People also liked this and it was good for the people who were not super in to meat.

3-Have people bring side dishes and appetizers

People pretty much always offer to bring stuff if you invite them to a dinner party.  My friends brought appetizers and salad and wine (lots of wine).  Then I conned my mom in to making her (my grandmothers) delicious mac and cheese.  It is a crowd pleaser.  She also made green beans.

4-Have it on your birthday

If it's on your birthday someone is definitely bringing/making a cake.  So then dessert is covered.

Yes I had my birthday party at my house.  But I enjoy entertaining and people brought tons of stuff.  I don't know the etiquette on throwing your own birthday party so we'll just say B threw it for me but I offered to do some cooking and decorating.

Do you like pot roast or would you have stuck with the ravioli?
Have you ever cooked a four pound piece of meat?
Does this count on my 30 for 30 list as having a dinner party at my house?  I think it does.

Miss Cindy Butt-Cigarette Girl Extraordinaire

Well the Murder Mystery Party happened last night and it was awesome. I'm going to do a couple posts about how we made it happen but first I'd like to talk about my proudest achievement... my costume. I was assigned the character of Cindy Butt-Cigarette Girl Extraordinaire. I found these costumes online. But you know I like making stuff. So I thought I'd give it a shot. First off I went shopping at Target where I found a ruffly skirt in the teen department. I decided that I'd make shirt to go with it so I bought some ribbon, fabric and fringe and just sort of started sewing stuff together with no real plan. I ended up with a fairly simple idea. Here is my diagram of what I did.

The top is a long rectangle of silky fabric that goes all the way around my body (plus extra). I sewed two pieces of ribbon to the top to make halter straps that tie around my neck and two other pieces of ribbon to the sides that would tie in the back. The second picture is how it would look tied. I sewed fringe (the gray stuff) all across the top of the shirt to the bottom. But only on the front.

I wore the shirt and skirt together and added a blazer I had from the Gap. Since I was a cigarette sales rep at the Juice Joint, I thought I should look a little professional. I added black hose and some high heels and then the thing that I think really finished off the costume....The black wig. I ordered this wig online last week and it ended up being perfect. I added some bright red lipstick and black eyeliner. Then of course I had to have a cigarette box. I bought a basket on sale from Michael's and added candy cigarettes and some cigars my husband coerced me in to buying and then tied a ribbon on both sides so I could put it around my neck. Then I added some left over fringe from my shirt to some earrings for a finishing touch. The glue was still drying as we drove to the party.

And ladies and gentleman here it is...the finished product. Miss. Cindy Butt...who as it turned out is actually not that nice of a person or such a great saleswoman.

Uh, and yeah, guess who tied for the best costume prize? Thats right Miss Cindy Butt (who tied with Curly T's amazing rendition of a female Chief of Police). This is perhaps one of my greatest achievements in crafting thus far. I'd like to thank my husband for his unwavering support and Hobie for only running across the fabric like 7 times while I was sewing it.

But honestly everyone did an amazing job with their costumes. I had no idea that people would go all out for this but they did and it was awesome. Special shout outs to Beezus5 who cross-dressed for us as Mayor Biggs due to our lack of dude participation, B for his organizational, leadership and printing skills, and $hanzie for power hostessing.

Cindy and Private Investigator Pinkerton. I think they may actually end up together after everyone gets over the whole Murder situation.

Do you like my costume? Should I dye my hair black and get a bob cut? Do you think the PI and the Cigarette girl will end up together in the end?
Tomorrow I'll get with $hanzie and Curly T on how you turn a regular home in to a Juice Joint!