Mouse wanted to have a special cake for Tigger's Cookie Monster 1st birthday. So we decided to make some Elmo inspired vanilla cupcakes to compliment the big chocolate Cookie Monster Cake. The Elmo cupcakes would also match Mouse's Elmo hood costume for the party.
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My lovely brother and niece made the cupcakes for me using this recipe. We halved the recipe to make only 12 cupcakes as we had so much cake with the big cake as well!

We then iced the cupcakes with butter cream icing. Recipe here.
We tinted the icing slightly red with food colouring.
Then dipped the cupcakes into red sprinkles.

To make Elmo's cute features I used.
White chocolate melts for eyes with a little dark chocolate dabbed on to make the iris.
Sugared jubes for his nose.
Mini oreos for his mouth (I think big ones would work too).

These tasted amazing and Mouse was super happy to get his own cakes. Check out the b

 
I think I love refashioning Men's shirts! I found this one at an Op shop for about $2 and thought I might be able to do something with it. After last time making a top from a Men's shirt I thought I should try a skirt this time. I had a look around Pinterest and was inspired by this page of ideas.

The Men's shirt was a size 42 and was the largest I could get on that day. Next time I would try to get something larger to have more fabric to play with.
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First up I chopped off the sleeves and upper collar area. 

I ended up chopping about 5 cm above the pocket as I wanted to keep to pocket detail.

But it ended up being too high on the skirt so I should have just chopped it at the widest part to start with. 






Then the scissors chopped off the sleeve cuffs.

I kept the buttons - I love keeping buttons for some reason!








I then chopped the sleeve material in half long ways to make the waist band for the skirt.











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The top of the sleeve was rounded so I straightened it up with the scissors.










I had quite a bit of fabric in the sleeves and thought I could use them as ties to give some interest to the waist so I evened up part to the sleeve fabric to be about 10cm wide.










I decided I wanted to keep the pocket but not in its original place so I carefully unpicked it.

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Then onto some sewing.

I pieced together the sleeve parts for my waist ties and overlocked them together and turned them inside out so the rough edges were on the inside.







I then got the rest of the wider reserved sleeve pieces and overlocked them together to make a circle about 20 cm larger than my waist.

I sewed in the waist ties where my hips would be.








Then I overlocked the waist band to make a tube  which ended up being about 10 cm wide.

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That part was then overlocked onto the rest of the shirt which I had straitened the top of with my scissors. I left a 5cm gap at the back to thread in some elastic.











Then I carefully re sewed the pocket back onto the shirt front lower down.

I also sewed the front of the shirt down by the buttons so when I moved around there wouldn't be any embarrassing gaping parts through the buttoned up part.






Then I threaded 3cm elastic that was cut to fit my waist through the hole in the waistband and sewed the ends together well. Then I sewed the gap up.


I am really happy how the skirt turned out since I made it up as I went along. The waist ties can be tied to the front or the back. I think I prefer the back as it gives it a bit more interest.

The only thing though is it does look a bit like my high school uniform with the small checks but Mr T doesn't mind that at all!


 
Ages ago I found this awesome idea on Pinterest for Where We Are From gingerbread men styled map wall art. Unfortunately they had sold out and the site was in the UK, so I thought I might be able to make something similar myself. I decided that this would be awesome gifts for all my family for Christmas. Hence I couldn't post this until after the festivities had ended!
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I found an old map book that had been hanging out unloved under the car seat. It was really out of date so perfect for what I needed.

I tried to trace my gingerbread man cookie cutter but the shape wasn't quite right, so I ended up just drawing a shape I liked.

One man shaped and then one with a skirt for the girl.

I then found the map that coincided with where my family was from. 

Some maps had to be found on the net and printed out as some of the map areas were on the binding edge, and also I don't have many maps of Malta lying around!

I cut out the map so the word of the persons home town was near their heart. I also cut out some cardboard the same shape and stuck the map onto it to make it a little raised up.

Then the gingerbread shapes were stuck onto some nice textured art paper with some PVA glue.

Lastly it was just a matter of popping them into some nice box frames and I was done! Well after doing 3 or 4 more for the rest of the family!

Everyone seemed to like them and I think I actually should make one for me and Mr T as well. Will have to find another map book to cut up I think!

 
So I mentioned in an earlier blog that Tigger has a slight obsession with Cookie monster.
We decided to have a Happy Monster Birthday Party for his 1st birthday and to go with the Cookie Monster hood I made him we had to have a Cookie Monster cake.

For the cake I make two 20cm Chocolate cakes and sandwiched them together with raspberry Jam and fresh raspberries. YUM! Recipe here.

Then I made butter cream icing and dyed it slightly blue with food colouring.
We had heaps of fun putting lots and lots and lots of blue sprinkles all over the cake.

For the eyes I melted some white chocolate melts and spooned them onto some waxed paper and made big circles for each eye. I then pressed a dark chocolate melt into the white chocolate to make the iris. Then I put it in the fridge to harden up for about 10 minutes. Once then were firm I had lots of fun making them all goggly eyed like our favourite monster!

I used a Cookie Time cookie with a bit broken off ( and taste tested of course!) and pushed it into the icing and slightly into the cake for Cookie Monsters mouth.

It tasted so good with the Chocolate and Raspberry combo and I just love butter Icing. Tigger loved it too, although I'm not sure he really knew what all the fuss was about!
 
Last year Mr T and I were invited to a party were the theme was travelling. We decided to go outside the box and go as Steam punk Time travelers.
For those of you who don't know what Steam punk is, have a look at this wikipedia site. It is a very cool alternative style and very fun to dress up.
One of the main features of Steam punk is that most of the outfits have goggles similar to aviation goggles but jazzed up a bit.
I really tried to see if I could hire some or even buy some 2nd hand goggles, but with the party looming I just bit the bullet and made some with some great help from Youtube. See these sites for inspiration.

Threadbanger on Youtube.
Instructables.com

This is what I used to make my goggles using everyday items I had at home.

Old denim Jeans
2 Empty Toilet rolls or kitchen roll
Plastic clear drink bottle ( like a Sprite bottle)
Sellotape
Black sewing thread
Sewing Needle
PVA glue
Black, gold, brown acrylic art paint
Paint brush
Thumb tacks of different shapes
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To make the eye pieces first of all I cut the toilet rolls on an angle so it would fit nicely on my head. These would be the round parts of the goggles.

I got the plastic bottle and traced around the end of the toilet roll to make two circles that would fit on the end of the rolls nicely.

I then carefully stuck them on the straight ends of the rolls with clear sellotape on the outside and the inside so it was attached well.
(I would have used fancy glue to make it neater but I didn't have any and I was on a time limit!).

I cut the second toilet roll into four thin strips about 1cm wide.
I stuck these with the PVA over the sellotape that was attaching the clear plastic to cover it and to give the ends of the eye piece some definition. I did two layers to make them stand out more, overlapping them as they were not long enough to go around fully.

I painted the eye pieces gold with black and brown to give it a dirty bronze look. 

To make the strap I cut the hems of the jeans off about 3cm up from the end.

I cut the denim in half and cut a 2cm piece off to be the nose piece.

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I followed that by measuring around my head from temple to temple to see how long the band of denim had to be and cut it to size with about 1cm extra on each end for sewing allowance.

I shaped the denim with the ends getting larger towards where they would attach to the toliet rolls to look like triangles. This makes a more aviator look I think.

I then hand sewed the triangle ends onto the eye pieces with black thread. It was a little hard going through the cardboard but you could use strong glue if you had some.

Then making sure the band wasn't twisted I sewed the smaller 2cm piece to make the nose piece onto both eye pieces.

The denim was then painted black with gold and brown accents.

I finally added some different shape thumb tacks around the front of the eye pieces to make them look more mechanical and gave these a little brush of paint to blend in.


I was really happy how these turned out and made another pair for Mr T for his outfit. It took me one evening to do 2 pairs and mainly took me that long because I had to figure out what to do.

Below is a picture of our full Steam punk Time traveler outfits. We had a blast at the party and have used the goggles for other dress up party's too.

 
Mr T has finally let me refashion some of his tired work shirts, which I am super excited about as I have been bugging him for ages to let me use some of the older ones to have a play with.

I saw this top on Pinterest and thought I could give it a go.
These are the steps I took to do it, but you can refer to the above tutorial for more help.


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First I cut off the sleeves on both sides.

I then folded the edges over twice to the outside and pinned them.

The colour of the inside was pretty cool and vibrant so I left it like that.

I then sewed it down with a straight stitch.













I then cut off the collar.

The first time I did this I didn't go low enough, and had to re cut it below the back yoke of the shirt to make it sit better.













I then folded the front and back top parts over twice about 2cm to the front  and sewed it down with a straight stitch. 

This makes a tunnel to thread through cord/ribbon to make the shoulder straps.

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I then cut the sleeve material in a spiral to get a really long continuous bit of material about 1.5cm wide.


















I folded it in half and over locked the rough edge to make a sturdy cord.
















I then cut the cord in half and used one half to thread through the front and back top tunnels.

I used the second half as a tie around my waist.


I really love wearing this top as it is really nice and loose to wear on hot days.

I actually have been wearing it inside out as the inside stitching is really neat and the colours of the inside are so much more vibrant.

But when I wear it the right way you can see the buttons and the inside parts are visible at the arm holes and neck as a sort of bias biding look.

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Here is a photo with my lovely Nana and my new top on Christmas eve, which was a very hot day, so I loved having the coolness around my shoulders and loose fitting around my abdomen.

Threading My Way_Featured
 
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My brother and I were given a challenge this Christmas by an Auntie to create something inspired by this picture to the Left.
Unfortunately the link to the bakery that originally made it doesn't seem to work but it looked amazing.

We thought we were up for the Challenge so gave it a go.



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My Brother made an amazing frame work from wooden dowling and a clip board.

He hammered it together and screwed and glued it and then covered it all with foil.

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I then cut out templates to fit the frame work in basic shapes and  then made my gingerbread house recipe. YUM!

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We then stuck it all together with Royal Icing and let it set.

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Then it was decorating time with the family help taste testing as we went!

Considering it was our first ever go and we have to make everything from scratch we are super happy how it turned out.

Tigger and Mouse can't wait to attack it either!

 
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We had our Mainly Music Christmas Party last week and we were asked to dress the kids as wise men/kings, Shepherds or angels.

I raided the dress up box at the last minute for ideas and found some old bandannas that were perfect size for Kings capes and then made the crowns out of newspaper.

I folded the newspaper over a few times to make it stiff and stapled it to the size of the boys heads.

Then I painted points with the top half black and bottom half gold to look like a crown without any annoying fraying paper bits.

Considering this took me approx 5 minutes to do with a little longer for the paint to dry I think they look pretty cute!

 
I have just been accepted to contribute to Refashion Co-op!
Very excited to be able to join all these inspirational bloggers.
Check out my first blog for them here.
 
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Cookie Monster and Elmo Inspired Hoods
Tigger is turning ONE!! I can't believe my baby boy is toddling around and tearing the place up. 
For quite sometime one of the only things that would calm him down if he was upset was to listen to Cookie Monster sing "C is for Cookie". So we have decided to have a Happy Cookie Monster Birthday Party for Tigger. Of course we need dress ups so I came up with the idea to do furry Cookie monster and Elmo inspired hoods for Tigger and Mouse to wear to the party.

I had a look around the internet and have been inspired by the following web sites which have done animal hoods. Have a look if what I have done is not clear enough, 
Check out
www.fleecefarm.com
http://greeneggsnhamm.blogspot.co.nz
http://www.craftster.org

What you will need - for 1-3 year old boys

Paper to make pattern
30cm by 50cm approx - Lining material - I used old t-shirts 
30cm of 150m roll approx - Fake fur material what ever colour you like - I used red and blue
5cm by 5cm white material for eyes - I used some old fleece
3cm by 3cm black material for eyes - I used some scrap black cotton
Dome Snap clips set 
Hammer
Pins and scissors
Matching thread
Sewing Machine
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1 - I traced around one side of an animal hood at play group to get the right size and shape of hood I wanted. But check out the fleecefarm web site for a different way of doing it.

I then cut it out to make a pattern.




2. I then used the pattern to cut out two sides of lining for inside the hood.

I used old t-shirts for the lining and just cut through two layers of t-shirt.




3. I used the same pattern to cut out the furry material. Be careful to make sure you have 2 sides of fur. It is probably easiest to fold over the material and cut through two layers.

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4. To make the eyes fold over the white fabric and cut circles the size you want the eyes to be.










5. Then fold over the black fabric and make smaller circles to make the irises.










6. Pin the black onto the white where you would like them to be placed.

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7. Sew the black circles onto the white circles using black thread. You can use zig zag or straight stitch going around the outside of the circle. You could also be very clever and do a proper Applique if you have time.





8. Pin the lining pieces together right sides together and Sew the pieces together from the forehead to the back of the neck. I used a zig zag stitch as it was t-shirt material.







9. Repeat with the furry materials, pinning furry sides together and tucking any extra fur inside while you are pinning. I Used a straight stitch for this.

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10. Place the eyes where you would like them and pin on. Sew with white thread around the outside of the white part of the eye. You could use straight or zig zag stitch for this.






11. Pin the lining and furry pieces together right sides facing each other. Make sure all furry parts are tucked inside.






12. Sew from the back of the hood around all the seams but leave about 5-10cm at the end and backstitch.
You now need to turn the hood inside out so the furry part and right side of the lining are now on the outside.

You then can fold the last little bits in and finish off closing the hole with the machine - or hand sew it for a neater job.





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13. Lastly use the dome snap closures on either side of the neck. Use a hammer to knock them into place or follow packet instructions.

You could use velcro but I thought it would get messy with all the fur!!





So there you have it!
My take on Elmo and Cookie Monster inspired hoods.
They are not exactly alike due to different length furs, and I think Elmo has a nose. But the boys love them and we are now set for the Monster Party.
Just need to sort Mr T and myself out now for some Monster madness.