Snowflakes, Unicorns, and Cakes

Whew! It has been a long time since I’ve written a blog post in here! The holidays and end of the semester kept me so busy. I haven’t had too much time to be creative with my crocheting lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t made plans for the new year! I’ve got lots in store for you this year (well, what I have planned anyway).

During the break, my kids and I had the chance to play in snow in our own yard for a few days. It doesn’t snow often (this is the first time my kids have had a ‘real’ snow instead of just some frozen slushy icy rain) so we made the best of it!

Last week was my birthday and I decided to make my own cake this year. Now, I love to cook and I enjoy baking, but I don’t usually make decorated or fancy looking things. Think function over fashion. But this year, I decided to try my hand at decorating a cake. Now, I’ll totally fess up to scouring Pinterest for inspiration after watching one-too-many videos from Yolanda Gamp over at How To Cake It.

But I did it. I was directed to a yummy vanilla cake recipe from Rock Recipes. And a simple homemade vanilla buttercream frosting recipe. I used fondant for the first time as well. Anyway, here’s my first attempt at making a decorated cake. I present my Unicorn Pinata cake:

Not too bad for my first attempt. It’s not perfect, but I was pretty happy with the outcome. And, I’m not much for cake (though, I do love a good buttercream frosting), but this cake recipe was really good and I actually ate some of it! My kids loved seeing the sprinkles spill out when we cut into the cake. As for the rest of the cake, I sliced it up, wrapped up each piece in some saran wrap, and stuck them in the freezer for an attack of the sweet tooth. Makes it so we won’t eat the entire cake at once and saves some for later!

Car Organizers

I pride myself on not being a messy person. Like, I probably should have sought some professional help with this at some point in my past because I do think about organizing and rearranging things more than I probably should. But, it doesn’t keep me up at night and it doesn’t usually stop me from being productive (unless I have one of those rare ‘I must empty every cabinet in the kitchen to purge and rearrange’ moments), so I just embrace it.

This is the back of my van. Well, was the back of my van. Not too bad, right? Well, it drove me crazy. I felt like there was just so much stuff in the van with the big pink milk crate full of the essentials (extra clothes, towels, blanket, wipes…just stuff you need with two young kids). So, I wanted to do something about it.

I had previously made these pretty striped things to put on the seats when my kids were rear-facing in their carseats so their feet wouldn’t get the actual seats in my car covered in grossness. Since they’re now facing the front of the van, I no longer need them. So, I decided not to let them go to waste and added mesh pockets to them.

My mom was visiting when I did this and she helped me out by ripping the edging off of both of these so I could hide the edges of the mesh under them along the edges. I hate using my seam ripper, so I’m glad she was here to help me with it.

Since the third row of my van is almost never up and in use, I attached these seat organizers to the back of my second row seats. Voila! I was able to get rid of that pink milk crate and still have the things I need with us. They’re not the easiest to get to (you can’t reach them unless you get into the back of the van), but since the stuff in there is just for ‘in case of,’ it’s fine. Much better. The clutter look from before isn’t there anymore.