Hamburger & Fries for cake

This is a re-post from my personal blog, Containers and Compartments. This was for my son, S's second birthday. Instead of making a cake, I made a bunch of hamburgers and french fries, since he's such a fast food loving kid (not really). I got the idea from this post from Bakerella.

Okay, so we didn't forgo cake altogether! It's a brownie cupcake hamburger and sugar cookie french fries! So fun and so tasty (though I found the hamburger to be a little too sweet for my taste).

Duncan Hines yellow cake cupcakes, made a little on the short side. I got 35 cupcakes out of one mix.


Orangey-yellow marshmallow fondant... perfect processed cheese colour!


Tomato red marshmallow fondant for ripe red tomatoes.


Vanilla pudding... mayonnaise.

Brownies.... for the hamburger patties. To stretch my batter a bit, I added 1/2 cup of homemade applesauce instead of increasing the butter, and increased the dry ingredients by 1/3 except the sugar (I figured 3 cups was quite enough). Instead of cracking and falling like they usually do, they were even and fluffy, a little more cake-y, but tasty and beautiful looking.

The "cheese" rolled out and cut for hamburgers. I used a ruler (to make them square) and a pizza cutter and did my best to cut in straight lines. But it didn't matter that much.

The "tomatoes" rolled and cut. I used a biscuit cutter for these and the brownie "hamburgers."

All the ingredients ready for assembly. The bowl is full of the brownies. I squished each one of them before assembling. They were too tall otherwise. The squishing made them a little less perfectly round, which added to the authentic look.

"Ketchup" "Mustard" and Coconut "Lettuce"

Hamburgers assembed.

D taste-testing.


Hamburgers and fries assembled for our friends at the Legislature Grounds.



Delicious! And totally fun!

I made this: Robot

I borrowed this book by Christen Haden of Needle Noodles from the library last week. It's not new on the market, but its copyright is just last year, so that's not so bad, right? I really enjoyed the book. After listening to a podcast about traditional book publishing and e-book publishing, I feel a little guilty borrowing it from the library instead of buying it. Oh well. Maybe I will still buy it. The first thing I remember seeing from Christen was a pattern for a cute Santa, Mrs Claus, Elf and Snowman set (the pattern seems to be missing from her etsy shop right now), which inspired the nativity creatures I created last Christmas for the children.

I made a donkey and Jesus, too, but they were galavanting somewhere around the house at the time of this picture (⁴⁹"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" Luke 2:49)

I made this cute robot from the Creepy Cute Crochet.


The kids like him too, but he mostly just gets thrown around like a ball. Just what I was going for.

Squirt Gun Refill Station

Ok. This is so sweet. I would totally do this. Especially if I had a fountain pump and 1/2 inch hose just hanging around in my garage (and if I had a garage). Instructables rocks.

Doing better already: free fonts

Hey, see? I'm getting back on this blog bandwagon and am looking forward to getting better (and faster, because faster means I'm more likely to do it more frequently if I don't have to take a long time to do one post).

The point of craftevangelist is that I get to share the cool crafty things that I've found with you. And I like to do that. Today I found a bunch of cool handwritten fonts you can download for free from Tripwire Magazine! I love these kind of things. (via CRAFT)

A few of my favorites. I haven't even finished looking through them all! My first thought was to download them for fun and projects at home, but the more I think of it I can use them for some of my design projects at work, too!

Dust off the blog and I made this: purse

Ok, so I've really done a crap job of this craft blog lately. Ok, I've never done a good job of this craft blog. But for the amount of crafting I do, I really have a lot to put here. Because I've never done much of an introduction for this blog, I thought I'd give you my thoughts about it. I wanted a place that was different from my personal blog where I could send people who were interested in the crafty me. My personal blog turned pretty crafty for a while, which was fine, but many people who don't know the real me don't necessarily care to hear about my conversation with my three year old on the bus or why I choose to cloth diaper. I've never been much of a poop-talk, mommy, but still.

As you will learn, I don't spend a lot of time apologizing for things I haven't done, like not blogging. So now that I'm here, let me share something with you. This bag has been a long time in the making. I have a purse. Just a small, regular, going out purse. But I needed a hand bag. A transition diaper bag/mommy purse/shopping bag. I don't always need a full diaper bag... one diaper when we're out is usually more than enough. So if I have one in my bag with a wipe or two, that's usually sufficient. But I always need room for a couple pairs of socks (in case we're at a play place) and I like to have pockets for all my things... wallet, cell phone, iPod, sunglasses, keys, change purse, you know.

And for entirely too long, I was hauling around a reuseable shopping bag (not a cool one) with my purse in it and all the other crap I wanted to carry. Finally, my coworker, who brought her sons to my son's birthday party, gave S his birthday gift, it came in a cute reusable bag that I commandeered and carried that around. It was a big step up from the one I was using.

All this time I was dreaming of and looking for the perfect fabric for my handbag. I have a small stash of fabric. So I couldn't just go to my stash. After nearly 9 months, I acquired all the fabric I needed for my handbag. And a couple months later, in less than 2 days (mommy days... naps & evenings) I designed and put together the new handbag. And I'm SOOO pleased with it!

Isn't that a fun lining fabric? I bought it for aprons that I made for me and Z... (I changed the style of apron I was planning to make so that I would have extra leftover to line a handbag!)

Not too bad for a first time, eh?

Amazing Paper Cutting

I just found this amazing paper cutting artist through Dude Craft.
wow
She is phenomenal.
Check it out.

Shirt Dresses

I had to tell you about this. This was originally posted on my personal blog, Containers and Compartments, but is definitely appropriate for here. Shirt Dresses are taking the craft blogging community by storm lately. I've seen many women making these cute little dresses for their daughters. So if you haven't seen one already, here are my first two.


The first shirt dress I made was a retired shirt from my husband's closet. He really liked this shirt, but he just didn't wear it anymore and I thought it would make a fabulous dress for my little Z. I must say I was impressed with my first transformation. It went relatively smoothly, even though I lost the elastic a couple times in the sleeves.


And because I made both sleeves for the dress from one of the man's shirt sleeves, I had an extra sleeve leftover to make a matching headband made from this tutorial. Z isn't exactly into headbands yet (but she really should be since I plan to help her grow out her bangs).


And since the first one was such a positive experience (even after elastic trouble), I hit the thrift store and found this man's dress shirt that was destined to be a little girl's dress.


I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but it's two different pinks and purple and a little bit of grey and maybe brown. Seriously, what man bought this shirt for himself to wear? No matter. The world has been set right again.


How sweet is that, eh? Love it. I definitely prefer these sleeves to the elastic ones. Less work, less elastic to lose in the casing. This one had a pocket on it that I had to pick off before I could take it apart. There are some small holes from the stitching where the pocket used to be, but I'm hoping those will close up the first time I wash it. I moved the pocket down, too. I wanted to move it to the right side of the dress, but Z wanted it on the left. Who am I to argue?


I decided to finish it with a cute top-stitching design instead of a straight hem finish, just for something a little special. I matched the detailing on the top of the pocket.

Here's my little model. It's possible the pocket's up a little too high, but I'm not going to worry about it. She's also got a bunch of blocks in her pocket, so that could be contributing to the wonky-ness of it.


The matching headband is probably a little too wide, but we can fold it over no problem. She's actually wearing it! Right now! As I type this! Yay!

Spring Chickens - Free Pattern from roman sock

I'm very eager for spring to arrive. There have been far too many cold winter days in March for my liking. I realize most of March is technically winter anyway, but it's supposed to be the end of winter and I'm just not prepared for such cold temperatures prevailing the whole month.


When I saw these cute crocheted chicks on roman sock, I thought they looked super easy and cute. They promise to stitch up quickly, just in time for Easter.

Spring. Good news indeed. Link.

Edit to add: I made a couple of these, too!  Here is my version. I thought he looked cute with a little tuft of hair on the top of his cube head.

Here he is with his buddy and the egg bunnies I made, all posing in front of the children's Easter baskets.

He looks a lot greener under the late night lights.

Craft Evangelist on Art Fire

If you came here from Containers and Compartments, welcome to my craft blog!

While I have an Etsy shop, I have since joined Art Fire. It's still in its beta stage, so it will be cool to be in on the ground floor of a new site and community there. Also, total bonus, Art Fire has no listing fees and takes no commission on your sales. You can list up to 10 items at any one time totally free. Or you can buy a verified account for $20US per month. Right now members can buy a verified account, however, for only $12US per month, for life. Since I heard they were going pretty fast and I can quit my membership at any time, I decided I didn't have much to lose. Right now, the items listed on Art Fire are identical to my Etsy shop, I copied all my listings to Art Fire.

Since I've paid for my first month upfront, it's also an incentive for me to get my online market presence re-vamped and get going with some of my new ideas, especially related to the mission of this blog.

If you are interested in checking it out, please follow this link Register on ArtFire.com because it marks you as my referral. If you want to sell your crafts or art online, what have you got to lose?