Roses Are Blue...

It's been a long drought...

...but it's raining babies now!  Ok, maybe not raining babies.  Just isolated baby showers (bu-dum-bump!  Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week).  Sorry.  Moving on.  So, there is one little baby boy baby on the way, expected by my dear friend, Jennifer & her hubby, and I got to co-host the shower here at my house.  It has been about 7 years since I last hosted a baby shower (that sweet little baby is in second grade now) so I was very excited to hang up the baby clothesline again (yes, I still have the 7 year old clothespins).  And luckily, one of my co-hosts, Azure, went a little overboard with her buying so we had TONS of adorable clothes and stuff to hang.  We pretty much decided to forgo a formal theme and just decorate with clothes, food and sweets.  We did have a few flowers and balloons but the cupcakes stole the show (yum!)

I have also been wanting to make a reusable felt banner for years now to use for birthday parties and such so I decided this was a great excuse to finally get it done (plus, I was really trying to keep paper and plastic waste to a minimum).  But then I started thinking that I should make the banner as a room decoration/gift for the baby instead of keeping it for myself (how unlike me!)  And since the Daddy-to-be is a huge (rabid) Cubs fan I decided to go with that.  (My own children are rabid Cubs un-fans so I got a lot of grief for hanging this up...Cubs?!  Are you kidding?  Mom!  Take that down!  I'm calling Papa & Sue right NOW!)  The baby's name will be Maston, in case you couldn't figure that out from the photo...(in which case you might want to put the malt liquor down).

The last gift I made for baby Maston was a little embroidered onesie (done mostly in the stem stitch for those who care to know).  I altered the traditional Cubs colors to make it look a little more babyish and sweet but I think the Dad-to-be will forgive me.  It's hard to tell how small this 0-3 month onesie is from the photo but I'll post a picture of the little munchie inside it come November so y'all can see.  I can't wait to hold him and kiss him and smell him and love him and call him George.

Holy Hiatus, Batman!

Wow.  I was gone for a long time!  And what's worse is that I didn't do a single craft project while we were on the road (gasp!)  We did however get to try out this awesome idea from Bread & Honey while we were camping in Tennessee.  And it worked!  The cakes were absolutely delicious (and so was the fresh squeezed OJ the next morning).  We ended up reusing the orange hulls and baking a second batch but we still had lots of leftover batter.  Which is hard to get rid of in a campsite...I mean, what do you do with cake batter?  Next time we will bring more oranges so we can use up all of the batter and save the tasty cakes for breakfast, lunch and day hike snacks.  They do travel well.

So here is the idea in a nutshell:  Take your oranges and cut off just the tops.

  

Then hollow them out (this gets messy) and strain the pulp for fresh-squeezed OJ in the morning (this part is optional, of course, but fresh OJ is a special treat while camping).

 
Once they are all hollowed out, take your orange hulls and fill them 3/4 full with your cake batter.

Add the lids, wrap the oranges in tin foil and set them in the fire where the coals are nice and hot...you will start to smell them baking...

Now try to be patient (it's so hard!) and leave the cakes to bake for at least 10 minutes before carefully removing them (tongs are VERY helpful at this point) and voila!  Freshly baked delicious cakey goodness at your campsite.  Boy will your neighbors be impressed...

The baked cake has just a hint of orange flavor (duh, thanks Kara) so we are planning to try chocolate next time and see how that is...yum!

And the Easter, err, Spring fun continues...

Ok, so I know Easter is over but it's still spring, right?  I have a few more photos to share of the fun!  One is my egg garland that I love so much.  It is an old project I made from Martha Stewart Living (circa 2000?) that gives me the inspiration to decorate every year.  It is simply blown-eggs-on-a-string (*shakes head*  that Martha... *hearty chuckle*  ...what will she think of next?)  One tip though, dye the eggs BEFORE you blow them.  Otherwise they float.  And it's really annoying to dye floating eggs.

And here, the perpetual Chocolate bunnies!  I love how these turned out.  My boys are getting a little old for stuffed animals (and egg hunts when you really think about it...) but I can't stand a Bunny-less Easter basket!  So this was my solution.  The boys don't think they are as cute as I think they are  (Did you like the bunnies?!  See?!  Milk chocolate and dark chocolate!  Look at the eyes!  They're like the candy ones!  Don't they look like real chocolate bunnies?!) but they did a good job humoring me, "Yeah, Mom, these are great!  Did you make them?  Wow!"  *toss aside for real chocolate bunny*

My weebles got a little playful Easter morning during the egg hunt.  Apparently they'd rather run around and chase each other than hide quietly like good eggs should.

Can you see the egg hiding in the camelias?  Oooo, you're good!  The boys have walked past it about 10 times now...

These delicious looking creations were an idea from Angry Chicken.  I actually gasped when I saw them on her blog and ran straight to the store (I mean, I sent my wonderful husband straight to the store...) for Shredded Wheat and Robin's Eggs.  As I was rifling through the ahem, "baking" cabinet looking for the chocolate chips I bumped into a bag of mini-marshmallows and had a mini-brilliant idea to try marshmallow nests as well.  I think they are even yummier than the chocolate ones but I would be voted off the island for that opinion (does anyone see a pattern here?)

We took the nests to the Grandparents house for Easter dinner and set them alongside each place setting on "Grandmother's China".  It was lovely.  Of course, Grandmother's China could make a pile of poo look lovely...which, come to think of it...