Cupcake and Heart T-Shirt

I had fun refashioning my own ruffle shirt, so I thought I'd make up some for the girls as well. And since Valentine's Day is coming up, this cute Cupcake and Roses Valentine T jumped out at me.

I found a couple old black shirts in the girls' shirt drawers, went through my stash and got to work. Seriously, making 2 of these shirts only took about 1 hour. They are so adorable and functionally cute.

Both girls love pink and purple, so I used those main colors in my fabric, and sewed everything with purple thread. The Bean was so happy with hers, she wore it to school the next day.

And that made me so incredibly happy.

Ombre Chocolate Cake

I've been dreaming of making i am baker's rose cake for a while. It's so beautiful and, from her description, pretty easy to make. I was stuck on what cake to pair it with. I found the Black Magic Cake, which looked deep, dark, and decadent. I was going to use raspberry jam for the filling and simple buttercream (made with a combo of butter and shortening) for the roses.

Despite my best intentions, things didn't turn out quite the way I expected. Mostly due to user error.

The cake is incredibly simple to make. It is very moist, deep and decadent and delicious. However, I underbaked it just a touch, which made constructing the layers a little hard. And the crumb coat wasn't great because the moist cake kept, well, crumbling.

My second issue arose when, for some bizarre reason, I decided to decorate the cake while the girls were awake and running around. Now, while the rose technique is easy, you definitely need a chunk of uninterrupted time to get the crumb coat done well, especially on this cake recipe. In short, I needed more of my attention, and more icing, than I could give at the moment, so I scrapped the rose idea.

I found a great ombre variation of the rose cake, which has also been kicking around in the back of my head. I had an idea to make a chocolate ombre frosting design, I just needed to go to the store to get some frosting. I didn't have enough of my buttercream to finish the cake, and I didn't have enough powdered sugar to make any more. Also, I was just at that phase where I wanted to get the damn thing done.

What happened next was a lemons-into-lemonade moment. After our playdate, I went to give the girls a bath before naps, only to discover we had no water. A call to the water company revealed there were a bunch of main breaks in the area and who knew when we'd get water back. I pack up the girls, in their pjs, to go to the store to get bottled water, paper plates, and... chocolate and vanilla fosting.

Fate has a great sense of humor, because water was back when we got home.

By this time, I was too tired to even pipe any frosting, so I just mixed and smeared around the cake. In about 10 minutes, I had an ombre chocolate cake. And, it looked fairly good, much to my surprise.

Now, I'm going to say something shocking: while I like frosting, I don't like massive amounts of frosting. I also don't like avocados, so, who knows. Next time I make this, I'll probably do a Dream Whip or whipped cream-type frosting. The cake is dark and lucious, but it doesn't really need a "big" frosting to balance it out.

I will definitely try both the cake recipe and the rose technique again. But only during naptime.

Ruffle T-Shirt Refashion

I have an amazing supply of plain t-shirts. Scoop, crew, v-neck, usually in a nice jewel tone or black or gray. The Merona brand from Target is my favorite. But right now, the trend is for embellished shirts, with sequins, ribbons and ruffles. I tend not to do a lot of emphasis on my top half, since I have broad shoulders and a big chest, so I passed on the fancy shirts.

Until I found some really cute stuff on Pinterest (go figure). This tutorial for vertical ruffles caught my eye, but then I found this one, with two long ruffles and buttons, and decided to go for it.

I had a dark gray shirt that was getting too short, so I cut the sleeves off that for the ruffles and put them on a light gray, scoop-neck t-shirt. I had a bunch of black buttons in my stash, from projects that never happened, so this whole new shirt didn't cost me anything. It was so quick and easy, the longest thing to do was hand-sewing the buttons on.

For my next refashion project, I may do the vertical ruffle shirt or one of the other beautiful shirts from the same site.

Lip Balms and Lotion Bars

I guess it was inevitable that I would try to make my own bath products. It's a little like baking, and, really, for me lip balm is a basic food group. My friend, S, made two kinds of sugar scrubs and a solid lotion bar as Christmas gifts for everyone, which inspired me to scan Pinterest for recipes.

I made two kinds of lip balm and a solid lotion bar. I made the Minty Chocolatey and a variation of the Coco-Rosey lip balms from Crunchy Betty. They were both really easy to make, honestly. Just some melting in a saucepan and pouring into tins. I got the butters and oils at Whole Foods, in the beauty section, and the tins are 2" round wedding favor tins/boxes from Michaels.

I made a Sweet Orange Hibiscus balm instead of the rose version. I steeped hibiscus tea, instead of rosebus, and used sweet orange essential oil. It smells divine, but doesn't have a lot of color from the flowers. I don't know if there's a difference between petals for tea and just dried petals, but I'll definitely try it again to find out.

The lotion bar recipe is from SoapNuts.com.

Basic Lotion Bar

3 oz. beeswax

3 oz. cocoa butter

3 oz. sunflower oil (may substitute sweet almond, jojoba, etc.)

essential oil or fragrance oil

Melt beeswax and cocoa butter together in top of double boiler.

When melted, add sunflower oil and stir until completely mixed.

Stir until mixture cools slightly before adding essential oils, about 1 teaspoon. Pour into molds and let harden.

I added Chamomile and Geranium essential oils and a little bit of Vit. E oil, to make it a little less hard. I just used a mini muffin tin, this recipe filled up about 9 molds. I popped them out and put them in the round tins.

For the lip balms, I got all fancy and made labels with my Silhouette machine and vinyl, bit I ran out of steam for the lotion bars. I may just use the labels that come with the tins and, gasp, actually write the description on them.

I've handed them out to friends and The Bean's teachers, who were very appreciative. In Colorado, especially during the winter, keeping hands and lips moisturized and crack-free is a big chore.