The Fondant Experiment

Little man's birthday party is coming up in less than a month already. We are having it early since the twins will be here around his actual birthday. Since I am going to be making his birthday cake, I decided to try something new and use fondant this time. I've never worked with it before, so today I'm making a trial cake to see how it turns out.

I found the recipe over at snappee turtle. I only made half a batch of each color and that was plenty to cover the 9 inch double layer cake I made with some left over.

One thing to remember is that the fondant has to sit overnight in the fridge so make sure to mix it up the day before you want to decorate your cake.


Marshmallow Fondant Recipe

To make one batch of fondant you will need:

• 16 ounce bag of mini marshmallows
• 2-5 Tablespoons of water
• 2 pound bag of confectioner's powdered sugar
• Food coloring
• Crisco shortening (this is used to grease the counter and your hands to smooth the fondant)

1. Pour all the mini marshmallows into a large glass bowl. I only used about half the bag since I was only making half a batch. Add 2-5 Tablespoons of water. (I put 2 Tablespoons). Microwave in 30 second increments for about 2 minutes or until the marshmallow is creamy with no lumps.

2. Add food coloring to the marshmallow and wait for it to cool off.

3. Add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time to the marshmallow, kneading it with your hands. Make sure to use shortening on your hands quite often, it is very sticky.

4. Wrap the fondant in plastic wrap and place in zip lock bags. Refrigerate until you are ready to use. It should be allowed to settle overnight.

Make your cake as normal and frost it with regular frosting. This makes the fondant stick to the cake better. Take your fondant out of the refrigerator and get ready to roll it out. You can get a fondant rolling mat with circle measurements on it to show you how big it should be to cover your cake, but I just rolled it out on wax paper.

I had a 9 inch cake and I made sure the circle I rolled out was at least 12 inches across. It ended up a little bigger than that and as you can see I had plenty to cover the cake. Carefully peel the fondant and place over the cake. This was tricky for me, it kept wanting to stretch too much. Use a pizza cutter to cut the excess fondant off the edges.

 I rolled out the second color and used cookie cutters to cut out shapes. I think it turned out fairly well and I learned a few tips for next time when I make the actual birthday cake. Now we have a yummy strawberry cake to eat this week!


(linking up here, here, here and here)

mother's day canvas how-to

For Mother's Day this year we decided to make all the grandmas a homemade gift from little man. He is too young to get much out of it, but I had fun making them. I have seen lots of handprint and footprint crafts lately, so we decided to make one of our own.


Mother's Day Canvas

What you will need:
a small canvas - I used 8x10 inches
acrylic paint in the colors you want to use - I had purple, blue, pink and green
1/2 inch wide ribbon for edge of canvas
ribbon to use for hanger on back
hot glue gun with glue sticks
small paintbrush
foam paintbrush
sharpie marker




How to make it:
1. Use the paint to make the footprints and handprints with your child. We took off all little man's clothes and put on a paint shirt for this step since I knew it would get a little messy. Let it dry.

2. Use the small paintbrush and other paint colors to draw in the body of the butterfly and the leaves of the flower along with anything else you might want to add. Use the marker to write the child's name and date on the bottom of the canvas.

3. Once that is all dry, use the hot glue gun to glue the 1/2 inch ribbon around the entire edge of the canvas. Glue a small loop of ribbon to the back to use as a hanger. And that's it! A nice, simple craft for your child to make for grandma. Little man didn't understand the concept of making a handprint, so they looked a little odd, but he had fun playing with the paint. 

learning how to customize my blog

I've been working hard to learn some basic HTML and other stuff to update and personalize my blog today. I had forgotten everything I used to know about it from way back in the day. Some of the things I learned:

• How to change and customize my banner. Thanks to Helene at Bloggerial

• How to make a button for my blog. This one I had to figure out myself, none of the tutorials worked quite right. I still have to figure out how to add the box below it so others can copy and use it. I've already tried three different things that haven't worked but I didn't want to spend any more time at the moment on it.

• How to add social media buttons to my sidebar. Thanks to Kira at Primp My Blog

• A refresher on some very basic HTML.

I spent a long time designing my banner and button and then came up with a completely new theme, so I had to make another one. I like to keep things simple without a lot of clutter. If anyone has any suggestions or comments on the design please let me know!

I'm working on getting more content on my blog, but while I do that I'm trying to get some followers. I linked my Instagram account and my Pinterest account to my blog. I also created an account on Bloglovin, which will also help me connect with other bloggers. There are tons of other blog networking sites that I will be looking into when I have the time as well. I will eventually be creating a Facebook page for my blog, but haven't had the time to do that yet.

For now I will keep working on my design to make it more appealing at the same time that I write as many posts as possible!