Hawaiian Themed Party!

We've always wanted to do a themed party. And surprisingly, we already had a lot of Hawaiian-themed stuff. I made these simple and beautiful hanging decorations that I adapted from a Martha Stewart Halloween craft.

For dinner, we made coconut shrimp and chicken coated in panko breadcrumbs on skewers. Also, as an afternoon appetizer, we made crab rangoons. Aloha!

Birthday Cupcakes

It was just our mother's birthday, and this year we decided to make cupcakes instead of a traditional cake because a) over the summer we got a wonderful cupcake stand and b) we couldn't decide between 2 cake ideas--with cupcakes we could do both!

So, half of the cupcakes are plain chocolate cake and frosted with a chocolate-orange gnache. The other half are the same chocolate cake infused with cream of coconut (like a poke cake) and frosted with plain chocolate gnache, topped with shredded coconut. YUM!

We recently purchased Make 'n Mold decorating bottles and discovered how easy it is to make fun decorative chocolate shapes. We did a simple flower design here. (White chocolate probably would've looked better against the dark gnache.)

Here they are all lit up!

Home-made Marshmellows!

What's better on a cold, snowy day than a cup of hot cocoa with a nice BIG marshmallow floating on top?

Maybe a big peppermint marshmallow? Yum, right? Chocolate and peppermint is one of my absolute favorite flavor combinations! Since I don't know where to find a mint marshmallows in a store, I recently learned how to make them myself!

I've been wanting to try out this recipe ever since last year, when I saw it on an episode of the Martha Stewart Show. This year, I finally did it! And they were so much easier than I anticipated!

The video on MarthaStewart.com is so great that I wont bore you with my instructions. Instead, you can watch Martha's video and read their instructions here. I will say, however, that the instructions are a little confusing in places. For example, they say to spray the baking pan and then cover it with plastic wrap. Instead, don't spray the pan, spray the plastic wrap!

For my marshmallows, I added a tiny bit of green food coloring to the recipe to be extra festive! Tip: If you decide to add a hint of peppermint, keep in mind that peppermint oil is not the same as peppermint extract. I learned this the hard way. My marshmallows came out almost too minty, by using peppermint oil instead of peppermint extract, like the recipe calls for.



Before the confectionary sugar coating. Very sticky!

 

Enjoy in a nice cup of hot cocoa! Yum!

If you watch Martha's video, you'll see that she mentions that some trendy gourmet restaurants actually serve marshmallows as dessert! I was very intrigued by this and had to investigate for myself. These two bloggers write about their meals at Jean-Georges in NYC - here and here - they even include photos of their marshmallow desserts. I also found some companies that make and sell gourmet marshmallows - plush puffs and Manna Mallows - with wonderful selections! I'm sure there are many more too!

Well, this has been my marshmallow journey! Does anyone have any favorite marshmallow flavors or recipes? Besides cocoa, what do you like to eat with marshmallows?

PS- We hope your NEW YEAR is off to a great start!

Holiday Baking

Cookies

I'd have to say that our favorite holiday project is a toss up between making ornaments and baking/decorating sugar cookies! This post is all about the desserts we made for our family Christmas party this year! While perusing the Martha Stewart website (we were searching for royal icing recipes at the time), we found these cute peppermint candy looking designs! Martha used a hard candy-shaped cookie-cutter, but, being resourceful, we figured that the simple circle cookie-cutter would look just as cute! (Really, you could use/try just about any simple design you have!) Here's how they came out:

There's a great how-to with step-by-step pictures for the marbleized peppermint-candy cookies on the Martha Stewart website here. We also did more traditional star, snowflake, and tree designs!

If you'd like to try our sugar cookie recipe, we'll put it in an up-coming post!

Cake Balls

A few months back, we discovered Bakerella and her lovely cake pops! We instantly fell in love with the idea and her great designs. However, our first attempt at making them was slightly disastrous--it's a bit harder than it looks. Forming the cake base is easy, it's trying to get a smooth chocolate shell that's difficult. (That might depend on the type of chocolate used.) That being said, the cake balls are incredibly delicious! Instead of the pops, we opt to make the cake balls because they don't require a super smoothe coating (think chocolate truffles).

We have some topped with crushed peppermint candy canes and others with grated white chocolate to look like snow. How festive!

We tend to make something new every year. What are some of your favorite holiday dessert recipes?

Merry Christmas!

A couple years ago, we bought a set of plain silver ornaments at an after-Christmas sale. Last year, we decided to paint these boring ornaments to brighten them up and embellish them a bit. We started each with a base of acrylic paint; then, we decorated them further with some fabric paint. We chose to use fabric paint mainly because we already had a bunch that we've collected over the years, but we also love how easy it is to maneuver. Also, we thought that the "puff" paint look would give the ornaments a nice 3D effect.

This first set fit nicely together. We love the classic colors! The rustic yellow is surprisingly delightful!

[Click to enlarge]



This next set of ornaments is a little more colorful and creative, though less cohesive than the first set. One of them is a glass cube, which reminded us of an ice cube. So, we filled the glass cube with blue and white tempera paint, then shook the cube until the paint was evenly distributed, creating a nice marble effect.   

[Click to enlarge]

Making ornaments has been a holiday tradition in our family since we were really young. It's so great to look at the ornaments that we've made over the years. (If you have kids, we recommend making a few new ornaments every year with them. Remember to write the year they were made on the ornaments, so you can look back!)

Also, ornaments make great hand-made gifts for family and friends!



Letter to Santa!

Just before Christmas, I saw the cutest felt Letter to Santa envelopes at a craft store. I almost bought one, then I thought that it would make a fun project to help get me into the Christmas spirit! I was really pleased with how it came out, so I decided to share it with you!

This project is simple and incredibly versatile! It's a great idea to personalize for children, or just for decoration!

1. Cut out the envelope shape from an 8"x10" piece of felt. Use the shape guideline I drew below, cutting along the solid lines. (You'll end up folding along the dotted lines later.) Make sure that the 2 big rectangles are the exact same size.

2. With the shape cut out, fold the bottom rectangle/flap up (along the dotted line), so that it aligns with the center rectangle. (TIP: Iron along the fold, to secure it.) It'll look like the this:

3. Fold in the side-flaps. (Iron along these folds.) Use fabric glue or a hot-glue gun to glue the flaps to the outside of the flap you folded up in step 2. It'll start looking like an envelope. *Instead of gluing the flaps down, you can pin them down and sew them, like I did. I used a thicker embroidery thread for a bolder look and to introduce a new color.*

(It'll look like this after step 3.)

4. Next, you'll want to cut a small buttonhole in the top, triangular flap. Then, you'll want to fold down this flap, iron it down flat, and sew a button, matching it up with the buttonhole, so that you can close your envelope. *You can also use Velcro to close the envelope.*

(After step 4, your envelope will look like this from the back.)

5. With the triangular flap down, the front of your envelope will look like a plain rectangle. So, all you need now is a few embellishments!

To make the stamp, cut out 2 small pieces of different colored felt. One should be a small rectangle, and the other should be a slightly larger rectangle with zig-zag cut edges.

Glue the small rectangle to the middle of the larger one. (Or you could sew it, like I did.)

(your stamp should look like this.)

Fasten it to the top right-hand corner of the envelope, and you're practically done!

6. All that's left is anymore embellishments! Here's where you can go crazy and get creative! I embroidered "To Santa" on the front of mine and sewed on holly made with more felt and red buttons! To personalize it, you could also add a child's name, if it's a gift or project for a child.

Advent Calendars

One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is opening up the boxes on an advent calendar and discovering what images (or candy!) was underneath. I got to open the odd days and my sister got the even days, so we wouldn't fight.

I remember using the traditional paper door-style advent calendar when I was younger, but this year, I found some really interesting different types of advent calendars on blogs and in stores.

Paper & Cake (on Etsy) via Twelve Crafts Till Christmas

I love the style of this one!

happythought (on Etsy) via Twelve Crafts Till Christmas

This one is a garland!

Target

Keepsakesbykristi (on Etsy)

This one is made in a muffin tin! Very creative!



CopyCrafts (on Etsy) via Twelve Crafts Till Christmas



Last year I thought that it might be pretty cool to make my own advent calendar. I had initially thought it would be pretty simple to make the traditional cut-out doors type, but then I found this one on the Twelve Crafts Till Christmas Blog (shown above). I used this as the inspiration for the one my sister and I made. Here it is:

For ours, we used a big piece of cardboard that we had laying around the house, which we spray painted green and cut into a tree shape. Then we chose a few basic ornament designs that we cut out of cardstock and decorated them with numbers on one side and ornaments on the other side. We then poked small holes in the top, strung them on string and taped the string to the other side of the "tree." As the days go by, you can flip over the number sides to reveal a cool-looking Christmas ornament for the cardboard Christmas tree!