Birth Announcement

I have always loved making cross-stiched birth announcements for little babies (remember this one?)  The problem is that I am usually really behind on finishing them.  For example, the one I made for my daughter.  She turns 4 next month.

I had initially bought this pattern several years ago for a nephew being born.  In the catalog's tiny picture it seemed perfectly masculine but as it arrived and I started working on it I realized this would be more appropriate for a little girl.  So I put it away and kind of forgot about it.

Then when I was cleaning up my upstairs craft room to move to my new one in the basement, I found it and decided it would be perfect to finish for my daughter.

I got it framed at this place.  They are amazing!  It costs a little more to get things professionally framed but it is well worth it, especially when it comes to fabric.  And these guys do the best job of anyone I've found.

My daughter knew just where to put it.

Monster Cake for a First Birthday

I found an idea similar to this one on Pinterest and I thought it would be perfect for my one-year-old's first birthday party.

Again, being short on time, I made the cake layers the week before the party.  I made 9-, 8- and 6-inch rounds out of boxed funfetti cake mixes (it took 2 to make these 3 layers.)  Once they had cooled I wrapped each layer in a sheet of waxed paper and then a sheet of aluminum foil.  This time I took the layers out the morning that I frosted the cake (I figured they might be easier to handle if they were still partially frozen.)  I used a can of vanilla frosting to do the crumb coating.  This is the beginning of the monster cake:

The frosting I used for decorating is a Meringue Buttercream recipe from Martha Stewart.  It's yummy, but it is much more time consuming than regular ol' powdered sugar based frosting.  I chose this recipe because it stated in the recipe that it was good for decorating--which it completely was!  I frosted the day before the party and the frosting held it's shape perfectly.

I used Americolor gel paste to color the frosting again (they really are the best!!!)  The bottom layer was made using a large star tip (I forget which size.)

The middle layer I used a grass tip.  It totally blew my daughters mind away when she saw that the frosting really was starting to look like monster fur!

The top layer was made using a smaller star tip.  I loved how the colors turned out!

After I was done dipping my monster eyeball cakepops, I used the leftover white chocolate and milk chocolate pieces to make extra eyeball candies.  (Also my daughter is in a major playing-dressup-phase which includes all of her old dance costumes.  Adorable.)

I used 6 of the large eyeball candies for the cake.  Here is the final product again!  With advance planning, this cake really wasn't hard at all to make!!

The man of the hour.  He got to demolish the top layer while the rest of us enjoyed slices of the bottom layer.

Monster Eyeball Cakepops!

I decided on a monster theme for my one-year old's birthday party (which was last week.)  For the next several weeks I will be posting about some of the things I did for the party.

I've always, always wanted to try making cakepops but for some reason they have always intimidated me.  I've heard several people say how easy they are but I've also read several accounts of how time-consuming they are and that they ended up with disastrous results in the end. 

I did a lot of research and ended up finding this web tutorial.  It worked perfectly!  I'm linking up here so that, not only can I give credit to my source, but that I can easily find it again to make more in the future!

I found all of my monstrous ideas on pinterest, including one for these cakepop eyeballs.  I thought they were so adorable!

I was a little short on time the week leading up to the party so I made the cakeballs and attached the sticks a few weeks before the party.

I found a lot of tips on freezing and thawing cakepops but ultimately I decided to take them out of the freezer the night before I would decorate them and then let them sit at air temp while I prepped the dipping chocolate.  I had no problems whatsoever so, according to my limited knowledge, my technique worked just fine.

After I dipped them in white chocolate, they took a long time to dry so it was several hours before I was able to put the blue 'eyelids' on.  I melted down chocolate candy melts a few weeks prior to make they eye centers and stuck them on while the white chocolate was still wet.  I felt like they needed something a little extra so I made washi tape banners for the sticks (I also needed an excuse to go buy more washi tape.)

Here's the final product!

If I were to do anything differently, I would have opted for white candy melts instead of white chocolate.  Like I said, the white chocolate took forever to dry whereas I feel like the candy melts dry a lot quicker.  I also would have bought 2 styrafoam blocks to use as cakepop stands.

My Week On: Lab Week Edition

So this post really started out as a post about Flower Gems and then turned into a whole "look how crafty our transfusion department was for lab week" thing. 

Flower Gems (aka red blood cells)

These things are SO COOL!  My coworker initially found them to make a string of lights to run down the middle of the lab.  All you do is add water to these tiny, bead-like polymers and they expand to fit their space which, in this case, was test tubes.  Next she popped a light into each tube and this was the result:

The obvious thing to do with these flower gems was to experiment.  I am, after all, a scientist.  I placed one gem in each well of an ABO reagent plate (we use for automated testing, I use for science)

and added water. 

I really hoped that each of these beauties would erupt out their well, but alas they conformed to their space and no further.  Either way, they are still awesome and I can't wait to buy some of these to play with at home.

Tissue Paper Poof Balls (aka white blood cells)

Another coworker of mine made thousands of these for her wedding...so she volunteered to make a few more for our lab week decorations.  They are are also super awesome!  You take a square of tissue paper, fold it accordian style, gather it in the middle, and then poof it out.  Then, if you are the only guy in the department sick of working with craft-hungry chics, you place said poof ball on your head.  And see if anyone notices. 

Bruce, the Hemolygator

I received some parts to do a quick repair on an instrument of ours.  When I was done, I was cleaning up and about to throw the packaging when I paused, looked at it, and thought: that looks like an alligator.  So I found a few pom-poms and drew on a nose.  Then a coworker thought it should be named Bruce and eat red blood cells.  Then another coworker thought "if it eat's red blood cells, it should be called a hemolygator."  So that's how Bruce, the Hemolygator and transfusion lab week mascot was born.  He's still around.  I dare anyone to throw him away.

Cookie Differentials

This is actually the second time we've done this.  The two ladies in the picture were the originators along with myself and another who no longer works here.  I think we are also the only ones who participated in this--which is too bad because it is only the best activity that we have done.  Ever.  Basically, you decorate cookies to look like different types of red or white blood cells seen on a cell differential (a hematology test.)  We had to do thousands (an exaggeration?  I wish...) while we were students.  It's fun to know all our hard work paid off when we get to use our knowledge in fun ways.

Here are mine for the year: a megakaryocyte (which would have looked so much more awesome with whoppers instead of raisins,) a howell jolly body in an erythrocyte, a lymphocyte with an inclusion which I can't remember (but I'm sure this all sounds like latin anyway, so it doesn't matter) and a neutrophil in a patient with Chediak Higashi syndrome.

The best part is being able to eat them.

Volcano!

For preschool a few weeks back, we had a Luau theme.  It was really anything related to Hawaii but the other 'L' themes (from the site I get my theme ideas from) seemed sort of Lame.  haha...  So Luau it was.  We learned about beaches and oceans too.  My daughter seemed to really like it.

The part she liked best, however, was SCIENCE!  That 'a kid.  Naturally, we had to make our own volcano.  I'm sure every parent in america remembers doing this when they were kids, even going so far as to build a paper mache cone and awaiting anxiously the "lava" that erupted.  Every parent but me, that is.  I had never done this before.  So it was a true science experiment for both of us.

Rather than go the fancy paper mache route, we just used an old sparkling cider bottle that we had.  Luckily I had the foresight to put the experiment in an easy-to-clean mixing bowl. 

I put a few table spoons of baking soda in the bottle, along with a few drops of food coloring for effect.  I added the vinegar and waited for the explosion, and...nothing.  Not at all worried, I grabbed the bottle, put my thumb over the hole and shook it up a little bit.  Then I poured in A LOT of vinegar and the lava started to flow!  My daughter was so excited!

Okay, I was a little excited too!

I peruse a lot of blogs (and I mean a lot) on my downtime at work: craft blogs, mommy blogs, food blogs...and it leaves me a bit discouraged.  I have zero (like, literally) downtime when I am at home.  (Okay a slight exaggeration--but I've been saving that spare 45 minutes an evening to watch the Office with my husband.  I call it my golden time.) 

Anyway, I collect countless things on Pinterest that I am going to do "some day."  Only recently have I truly started to accept that my kids are my job right now (I know--2 kids in and I'm just barely figuring this out) and that everything else is just going to have to wait.

I'm not abandoning this blog: I am still slowly getting my craft room put together piece by piece (it actually looks really good!) and I do still love to bake with my daughter, but I just have very little that is exciting enough to share.  As if my post on short ribs weren't a good indicator :) 

One of these days I'll take a picture of the pegboard my husband built for me.  It is awesome.  And pretty.  Pretty awesome.

Slow-Cooker Short Ribs

I found some short ribs on sale at our grocery store last week (under $3!!) so I bought them but I didn't actually know how to cook them.  I did a quick search on my phone and found a recipe for slow-cooker ribs.  I have since then closed the webpage, but I'll try to remember it off the top of my head.

• 1/2 c ketchup
• 1/2 c honey
• 2 T Worcestershire sauce
• 2 cloves garlic (I used 2 t garlic powder)
• 1 onion (I didn't have one so I used dried onion)
• Boneless pork short ribs

Mix together ketchup, honey, Worcestershire sauce and garlic.  Place onions on the bottom of a slow-cooker with ribs layed on top.  Pour the mixture on top of ribs and onions.  Cook on low for 8 hours.

These are SO DELICIOUS!  My husband said that it tastes just like the ribs he makes but he uses bottled Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue sauce instead.  Not that the mix was hard to make, but pouring it out of a bottle sounds much easier.