Headband/Hair Bow Holder

I had very little time or energy for crafting by the time I found out I was having a girl when I was pregnant with Ada. The little energy I had on the days I didn't feel like death was spent chasing Isaac around. Needless to say, I'm not one of those women who love being pregnant. In fact, I pretty much despise it. If the end products weren't so perfect and miraculous, I would never have done it a 2nd time or consider any more!


Sorry. I got a little sidetracked there. The point is that my poor little Ada hardly got anything made for her by her mommy... and I'm still waiting for the day that I can take the time to do some things for her. However, I did get just a couple things done and I want to share one of those today!


When I realized all the ruffles and frills and bows that having a baby girl entailed, I also realized I needed somewhere to put these cute, mostly pink, items :)  That's when I decided I needed some type of hair accessory holder. 


Of course I consulted with Etsy, and got a few ideas. This is what I came up with:

I got a wood plaque from the craft department at Wal-Mart and painted it with acrylic craft paint. Then I cut Ada and the dots out of vinyl with my Silhouette. I discarded the vinyl name and dots and used what was left as a stencil and painted. If I were to do it again, I wouldn't have used 2 shades of pink paint. I'm not sure what I was thinking making the name a different color... I'm going to blame the pregnancy hormones :)


Moving on... I just hot glued the ribbons and screwed in hooks (that I also got at Wal-Mart in the... ummm.. section where all the screws and hooks are). I also would have used bigger hooks if I were to do it again. Obviously, I had no idea just how many headbands my baby girl would need :)


And here it is doing the job it was meant for! Of course I didn't have any bows to attach to the ribbons at the time this picture was taken, and now my hooks are so overloaded with headbands, the bows won't really fit behind or beside them.

If nothing else, this post has told you what not to do if you want to make an effective hair accessory holder! I think sometimes showing our mistakes and trial and error process can be just as helpful as a flawless tutorial. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my little project and I love the personalized touch in Ada's room!

Candy Cakes

Yes, it's yet another post involving candy. I just can't help myself! I made my first candy cake for Halloween last year (2010).

These cakes are so easy to do! For this one, I made a plain yellow cake mix with chocolate frosting, then stuck Kit Kat bars to the frosting on the outside to form a sort of chocolate bowl or barrel, then covered the top with Reese's pieces:

The peanut butter and chocolate was super rich and so yummy! One of the best things about these cakes is that it doesn't matter what the cake looks like on the inside. I mean, I'm sure your cakes always turn out perfectly shaped with no cracks or anything... but I'm just saying... In case by some freak chance something did happen ;)


My husband liked this cake so much, he requested one for his birthday this year.

He wanted Twix and peanut butter M&M's. I decided to go with the mini Twix because I thought the full sized ones would be too big (not to mention cost a fortune to get enough to go around the whole cake!)

As you can see, they weren't quite tall enough, so I did a row of M&M's around the bottom to boost them up to the top of the cake.


Here's the finished cake with candles and all:

These cakes are so much fun and would be great for kid's (or kid at heart, right Ryan?) party!