Catching Fire.

We had a Victor's feast before going to see the Catching Fire Premier.  It was fun to eat delicious food and visit with friends.  For our feast we had soup in breadbowls, bacon green bean bundles, some amazing brie, a puff pastry apple caramel pie, firey cupcakes, Nightlock berry fruit salad, a veggie rosette pie, and  various other delights.

The bacon wrapped green bean bundles are from our best bites. They were easy and a really good veggie side-dish.

The Veggie tart is from a European magazine I found online, pg 67.  I just used a premade pie crust instead.  Used a peeler to peel the veggies and for a 9 inch pie it took 4 medium zucchini and I believe around 8 carrots.  We peeled all of the veggies first.  then we made the rosettes and swirled them around.  We decided to make some small rosettes too and I liked the effect a lot.  After the veggies are done, I drizzled with Olive Oil, and sprinkled with thyme, pepper, and salt.  Baked at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.

The puff pastry apple caramel pie came about by accident.  I was attempting to make apple rosettes from a recipe in the same magazine pg 65 as the veggie tart and it suddenly went a bit Sweeny Todd in the kitchen as I almost chopped off a nail.  So I scrapped that idea and made my own.  I thawed a box of puff pastry according to box instructions.  I made caramel in a can, using the boiling method by Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk.  Basically you boil a whole unopened can of sweetened condensed milk for 2-3 hours.  Every 30 minutes I would check it and pour about 2 cups more water in the pan, as the can needs to remain completely covered during the boiling process.  Allow can to cool and then open.  Inside is sticky-sweet caramel.  I spread the caramel over one rolled out layer of puff pastry (about 2/3 of the can) and then sliced 3 apples and laid out sliced apples over the caramel.  I sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, topped with other puff pastry and sealed the edges, pressing with a fork.  I egg wash brushed the top (beat one egg with some water and brush over top) I cut some slits in the top crust and then sprinkled with some sugar-in-the-raw I had on hand.  I baked it for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  Sliced when cooled a bit with a pizza cutter.

For the fiery cupcakes I simply bought premade red-velvet cupcakes and used Wilton's frosting spray colors in yellow and orange to make the frosting look like fire.  To make the mockingjay picks I used my stamp from my last party and just punched them out and taped them to toothpicks.

The brie is a top secret recipe by my friend Toni, if I get it I will post it! :)  And as for the berry salad I just made a traditional cottage cheese fruit jello salad (1 large container cottage cheese, 1 large container coolwhip, 1 box raspberry jello, mixed frozen blueberries and raspberries all mixed together when thawed).

 

We also enjoyed some photo-booth fun.  For the banners I used my Silhouette to cut the title "75th Hunger Games" using the Hunger Games font.  I made the various banners using district logos and pictures I found through tumblr and pinterest.  Props included Katniss' bow and arrows, and various colorful Capitol accessories (the skeleton and turkey hat were pure irony).

For take home goodies I made chocolate peanut-butter and white chocolate peppermint mockingjays.  I found the mold online on ecreater, but it is also carried at various baking shops.  I bought tiny boxes of matches and just printed little labels that say, "Every Revolution Begins With A Spark."  I found these silly bright mustache magnets at target.

A different type of Cake Pop.

We made these cakes from soda pop cans for Cyrus' birthday and Shawn's Bachelor party at work.  They were super easy, cheap, and made an impact.

20-30 cans of soda/beer
3 tiers of cardboard cake circles
Ribbon

The amount of soda you need depends on if you want to make a solid layer or a border.  For the bear cake we made a solid layer and for the Mt. Dew cake we just made a border and filled it with a favorite bag of candy.  Make your base, place smaller carboard circle on top, make next layer, repeat.  Wrap each layer with ribbon.  It is easy and can be adjusted as needed.

Hunger Games: Activities

For the Hunger Games movie premier party we had various activities that could appeal to a wide range of people and ages.    There was no pressure, people could just participate as they pleased.  May this also be a lesson of Pinterest party planning pros and cons!

I found all of my ideas for this party on pinterest.  Some ideas did not work well at all.

Bows and Arrows: On pinterest there was a link to making little bows and arrows out of fishing line, popsicle sticks, and q-tips.  I soaked my popsicle sticks for hours and hours...still no bending without breaking.  So I wandered the Dollar store looking for anything else an hour before the party we could do.  Found some glow-stick bracelets and with a little bit of hot-glue they made perfect bows!  You just bend the glowstick in a large C shape. Wrap fishing line around one end, securing with hotglue, and then string down to other end.  We wrapped a couple of times.  Then use the q-tips to shoot as arrows.  They actually went pretty far and were quite entertaining.

Capital Couture Nails and Makeup:  We had a bunch of nail polish and brighly colorful/glittery makeup for people to play with.  The Capital is famous for it's outrageous colors and stylings so we had fun trying to look the part.  For the gents we also had a cutout of Senica Crane's beard. We got our nail ideas from Pinterest.

Don't Eat Peeta:  My sister created the board game for this one.  I have posted the rules before in a Don't Eat Peter Pettigrew game we made for Harry Potter. 

Cake Decorating:  I posted about our Peeta Mellark cake decorating contest on the Hunger Games:  Food post.

T-shirt making:  A few of us got together to make Hunger games themed t-shirts with my Silouhette heat-transfer.  The LOVE t-shirt was inspired by a poster found from pinterest. (More info below)

Prize Reaping:  I had various prizes like key-chains, little figurines, and buttons from Hot-topic.  I also had a water-bottle with some survial stuff inside, soundtracks, bags, and movie posters. I wrapped them up in yellow, red, and orange tissue paper to make them look like fire-balls (inspired by these).  I made some bags inspired by painted ones I found here.  I used heat transfer instead.  I downloaded the shopping cart and bread from the Silouhette store.  I made the mocking jay symbol by downloading a picture of it and using the trace tool on the Silouhette Design.  The font is the Hunger Games font from dafont.com.  I created the parachutes for my shirt by welding parts of a parachute man from Silouhette with the bread or a basket.  I also got the "Prep-team" graphics from the silouhette store.

Decorations:  I had seen silver parachute decorations on pinterest but there wasn't any tutorials online so I winged it by covering strofoam bowls with aluminum foil, attatching jute tied around bread (the same bread from Silouhette, cut out of brown cardstock).  I hung them with fishing line.  I printed several of the posters I had found online, and I wrapped the silverware and placed it in a cornucopia as I had seen here. 

Favors:  For party favors I made bookmarks by copying pages of the book and stamping them with this amazing mockingjay stamp I got on Etsy. I bought various magnets, pins from Mud in the Blood on Etsy and Pinbackattack.  I stamped water bottle labels and included fireballs.

Organized and Inspired...

The wonderful Emilie has created an event called Organized and Inspired.  

Super excited about this because we all need a little more organization in our lives.  I know that when my scrap space is clear I can get a lot more done and the inspiration flows a little more freely.  I am excited to follow Emilie on this organization journey and hope you take advantage too!

Happy scrapping and crafting!

Harry Potter Party-Games/crafts

For our Harry Potter party we played a few games and made some crafts.

We made Snitch Christmas ornaments inspired by the ones I found here.    Now is the time to do this as plastic gold Christmas balls are really cheap.  Basically you just hot glue some sparkly pipe cleaner to the back of the ball and form wings.

 This is an awesome Owlery garland made by the wonderful Annicka.  They were a perfect little detail that I love so much during parties.

 We made up a fishing game to win the sword of Gryffindor.  The sword was just a foam one with hot-glued jewels all over it.  The fish are just cute laminated fish (thanks Annicka) with paperclips on them and we had a magnet tied to a pole.  On the back of the fish were the numbers 1, 2, and 3 which corresponded to the different types of prizes you could chose from.

 "Don't Eat Pete" is a game where you put a piece of candy on each square.  One player leaves the room while the others decide which square is "pete".  The object of the game is to get as much candy as possible without getting pete.  If the player grabs pete everyone yells, "Don't eat Pete!"  In this case pete is Peter Pettigrew.  We have played this game many times in a wide variety including The Office, Star Wars, Dumbledore's Army, etc. 



Some cute Thanksgiving ideas...

The Turkey Cupcakes are from Family Fun.

The nutty candles were featured on Write Click Scrapbook today.

I love thie turkey picture holder and found it featured on eighteen25 last month.

Gratitude project by Becky Higgins is linked here.

Indoor S'mores and some favorite new links.

It's bonfire season and I love some good old fashioned s'mores, but I love these even more because they come without the lingering smell of smoke when you get home.

1 12oz box Golden Graham cereal (8-9 cups)
1 12 oz bag chocolate chips (1 1/2 cups)
6 cups miniature marshmallows
5 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup karo syrup
1 tsp vanilla

Melt together 5 cups of marshmallows, the chocolate chips, butter, and karo syrup. Melt over low heat stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour over golden grahams cereal in large bowl. Stir until evenly coated, add in remaining 1 cup marshmallows.

Press into a greased 9x13 pan. Use a greased sheet of wax paper to press down evenly. As hard as it is, allow to cool for at least an hour before cutting for best results. Cuts into 24 bars.


Now onto some new favorite sites:

The Fat-free Vegan: Sinlessly Delicious. While I am neither vegan nor fat free there is actually some pretty tasty things and ideas on this blog.

The Creative Operation. This craft/scrapbook blog is by 2 OR nurses and boy do they have some beautiful stuff.

Scissors.Paper.Cake. This site is a visual gathering a party ideas. Total eye candy.

The Beehive Bizarre

Today I went with some friends to the Beehive Bizarre which is just a little boutique where people sell their online (usually etsy) shop stuff. It was fun to wander around and check out the latest and greatest in arts and craft (non-scrapbooking). Lots of flowers and headbands and felt were for sale and I got lots of good ideas. Some of the stuff I got as pictured above:

1. Fell instantly in love with this Vinylicious Designs book cover. Harry Potter all the way.
2. The bound book is a journal made from an old school hardback cover book. I have made ones from paperback and thought this one was really fun.
3. a pack of Vintage flashcards.
4. A cute felt and t-shirt fabric flower hair clip from Wendy and Peter.
5. Some little silk flower bobbypins...I espcially liked how they were on playing cards.
7. Some super cute magnets. The Owl and Unicorn are from Isabell's Umbrella, who had so many cute little creatures like gnomes and t-rex's as well. The little Viking I got for my sister and it's from Noddin Shop which has tons of cute and fun zombie, viking, skulls, etc...

I love supporting the little people who take so much time to be creative.

Valentine's Day 6

Make a fun craft from Family Fun.

They have a lot of easy, creative, and relativly cheap ideas.

Another fun idea is homemade heart crayons as found at Emilie Homemade.

getting back in the groove

Since I have been moving and trying to pick up hours at the hospital I haven't been too crafty as of late. Trying to get back in the groove I did this:

This is a picture frame I made for a friend's baby on her 1st birthday. Daphne loves Minnie Mouse.

I found this great paper at Joanns. I don't know what brand it is but it is texturized. Also got the cute little mickey buttons there as well. Frame is just a basic wood one I picked up at Michael's, and the name I cut with my Silouhette machine, using the "Waltograph" font at dafonts.com. Glues the letters on by running them through my Xyron machine.

and baked this:

I love love love the cute little muffins. They are banana chocolate chip bread muffins. I love banana bread but it is still too hot to have the oven on for an hour, plus I hate waiting for it to cool a bit after it bakes before you can take a yummy bite. Bananas to muffins in my mouth is only 30 minutes total. Excellent.

Creation

In Rent there is a line at the end of La Vie Boheme that says...

"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation."

So for today's Seattle trip inspired recipe I am having a creation challenge. Create whatever you want and love. No day but today right?

What I would create if I had skills too would be a scarf like Marks'.

It is stripped white and Navy...I would like it to say "No Day But Today" on the bottom below the fringe.

Alyssa, you should make it for me, lol.

To read about my RENT experience while in Seattle, go here.

wood block picture stand

This is a very simple idea I saw at a local scrapbook store, Pebbles in my pocket. It is an easy gift idea. They originally purposed it as a Girls camp craft and now have a father's day block you can see and order here. I am making some as my "Pay it forward" blog gifts.

Basically all you need is:

1 Large paperclip or alligator clip and wire
3X5 inch block of wood sanded et painted to desired color
Modge Podge and Foam brush
Patterned paper and embellishments of choice
Sticky Dot or glue for paper clip

Cut patterned paper to fit front side, or individual squares for each side and modge podge in place. After dry decorate as desired. Glue single end of paperclip on front corner of block and place embellishment over glued area.

Top with a picture held by the paper clip.

Another way to repurpose is to turn it into a recipe card holder.

My finished product.

Map Purse

I think this is a super cute and fun idea.

For exact how-to go here.

basic supplies you need are:

1 map

1 toy car

clear laminate

velcro

cardboard

sewing machine

I love maps and travel!

It's starting to feel like spring in the Wasatch Front...at least it is at my home, we haven't had snow for a few weeks, the birds are out, and I haven't needed my coat yipee!!

Some fun spring related crafts I want to try are...

Make and Takes fun spring straws.

I love this Happy Spring Apron from Feathered Nest...I think sassy aprons are so much fun!! too bad I suck at sewing but hey these don't look too hard... Another easy and darling apron she has posted is found here.

I love making mini-scrapbooks and finding new ways to display pictures. In January Martha posted this accordian album idea as a simple yet fun way to display some pictures.