Vanity for Christmas

This year, Natalie's Christmas wish was for a "pink" vanity, mirror and bench. So of course, my hubby did everything he could to give her the gift. We found a 1920's vanity that had been primed and was a little bit beat up. We bought it on Wednesday before Christmas from a local antique shop and had the vanity and bench sanded down and painted by Christmas Eve. The edges were sprayed silver and then top coated pink, then sanded. That night we made a cushion for the bench and moved it into the house for the morning reveal. As a finishing touch, a spray of silver sparkle was added. Thank goodness my husband is a painter by profession and has the shop to do these kind of projects.

It was a huge hit in the morning when she spotted the bench under the tree. So fun to give homemade gifts!

Christmas morning!

The photos don't really do it justice, but I still wanted to share the finished project!

Tinkerbell-Princess Birthday Cake

So this blog is a few months past due. Natalie had her 4th birthday at the end of September and I tried my hand at the doll cake. I used the Pampered Chef recipe and glass mixing bowl. This worked great because I could bake the cake in the glass bowl and it came out no problem. Here is the cake before I Tinkerbell was shoved down into the cake.

That is exactly what I did too. I took Tinkerbell (the doll of choice this year) and pushed her down in the middle.

I bought premade frositing for the skirt and added green food coloring to make it match the doll. Wax paper on the plate works well so that after I finished frosing and removed the paper the plate was perfectly clean. I also attempted for the first time using cake decorating tips. This was a ton of fun and I enjoyed trying various tips to make different designs. The frosting for this step I made from scratch so that it would be the perfect consistency and added blue and red food coloring until it was the right shade of purple. I did add some purple sparkles to the skirt too.
Natalie loves to have a theme for her parties. Where does she get that from? So this year's Tinkerbell, green and purple theme was a hit. The cake tasted great too. There was even extra cake for the next few days.

Sundress Woohoo!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Successful "Sewing Day" Project #2: Sundress

My second inspiration today came from Lil Blue Boo blogspot. A simple sundress idea and tutorial got me started and now at the end of the day my daughter has two of them.
Sundress tutorial

Since Natalie loves pink, I knew I had to make a pink dress, but struggled finding fabric that wasn't too grown up. To my fortune I found the perfect print.

It however, was not pink.

I think the dress with cherries has become my favorite, but of course I did find pink fabric and made her a second dress in her favorite color.



I also did variations to this project. I added the flower and button with removable safety pin and a bottom band to tie the whole dress together. I used the serger again rather than double folding (super quick). These were so easy and fun to make, not to mention to give to Natalie and see her bright smile.