Cupcake burgers and cookie fries, oh my!

Does it really get any tastier than cupcake burgers and cookie fries? If you haven't been to Bakerella's blog before you need to go. Run, don't walk and check out her post on these adorable treats. Her photography is amazing and her baking skills are outta this world. And she offers a download to make the little trays, fry wrappers and the tissue paper. That's right baby, I made the entire ensemble that you see thanks to Bakerella!

Hidy-ho neighbor!

I needed to make a card for our neighbors to thank them for watching over our house while we were on vacation. They even turned on our sprinklers since our yard was drying up and dying. Ya gotta love neighbors like that. So we got them a gift card and I whipped up a little card (fits in an A2 envelope). I thought I would share it with anyone else who might want a quick and simple card. Give it to your neighbor who just moved in or just for the heck of it :o)

Click on the house to download!

Party Giveaway!

I'm doing a giveaway! Check out Design Dazzle and leave a comment on her blog about the partyware you would like to win. You can win a $25 gift certificate and free shipping for anything in my shop! The gift certificate is good for 1 year. The contest closes May 28th at midnight (PST). Design Dazzle has some wonderful ideas for kids rooms, parties, decorating, etc. It's definitely one of my favorites for future party inspirtation!

My shop is now open for business!

Wow, who knew it would take all day to upload all my stuff?! I finally got it done, mostly :o) My etsy shop is now open and I even made my first sale on the first day! It was a small sale but a huge deal to me. I've created a new blog that will be strictly my party blog. It is where I will share my new products, party ideas, games and recipes. You can check it out here: http://www.partiesbyhardie.com/ . And as you can see, I've added my etsy shop link over in the sidebar. I'd love it if you check out my new blog and share what party theme you would like to see next. If you don't see it listed in the poll I've created, then just leave me a comment with your favorite theme idea.

Party Themes!

OK, this will be the mother load of pictures post. I am almost ready to put my party stuff on etsy, I just have to finish a few last minute touches. So far I've made a princess theme, an ocean theme, two different colored cupcake themes and a monkey theme. Here's what I have done so far.

Jackson-1 month

I just wanted to quickly share a photo of my little guy in his one month onesie.

There's a party goin on round here...

I've been MIA for quite a while, but for good reason. I am starting a little business venture. I have been working for the last couple of weeks on party ware. I have been creating some themes for kids parties and baby showers that I plan to sell on etsy. I'm really excited about this project. It's pretty much all I think about now. I have a million ideas but for now I'm working on my first four themes and when those are complete, then I will open my etsy shop and see how it goes. If noone is interested, at least I enjoyed making the stuff. For now, I will leave you with a little sneak peak, see if you can figure out what two of the the themes might be!

A simple onesie

I've seen several ideas on the internet for onesies that mark a baby's monthly milestones. I really liked how simple this one was. The idea came from this blog. I made a four inch circle in Word, filled it in with blue and typed in white. Then I printed it out on iron-on transfer paper and ironed it on the onesie. Cheesy-easy! I plan on doing this for each month until he's a year old.

Digi-scrapped birth announcement

Finally! After three weeks, I finally got my son's birth announcements done. The hubby is going to be picking up my prints today so I can make sure that they look OK. I really wanted to make my son's birth announcements this time since I knew I could do it cheaper than what I could buy them for online. I used Andrea Victoria's Mod Bebe Boy papers. I really wanted a picture where he was awake but unfortunately my camera was having issues with the shutter so it has been sent off to Nikon for repair. This was the best picture I had available (sniff, sniff).

Easter goodies

I haven't officially started any Easter projects, please, that would require me to be on the ball. But I thought I would share the Easter projects from years past. There's also the post on the peeps jars and treat bags here.

This is a carrot box that I made for stamp club and filled with candy.

This was a springy card a friend and I made forever ago.

I am alive!

Sorry for the looong delay. I'm still alive. I had my son 3 weeks ago and we've had my MIL and mom visiting. Now everyone is gone and it's life as usual. I'm still trying to get the hang of managing three kids with little sleep. I really hope to get some crafting done this week. I need to make a 1 month onesie for my son, I've registered for Jessica Sprague's photo editing class online and I bought some felt food patterns, magnetic printer sheets and sticker paper for the printer. I've got lots of things I want to make, now I just have to find the time to do it. Oh and I also had my one year blogiversary so I really want to do a giveaway, now I just have to figure out what to give.

An Owl Birthday Card

I made this card for a friend's daughter who is turning five (look away Bente! :o) I cut the owl with my cricut and the lettering inside was also cut using my cricut and the SCAL software. The font is Forte. The red patterned paper is from Nancy Kubo's Sugar Coated digital paper kit.

Dog-gone cute cookies

I saw these dog cookies in last month's Parents magazine. They called them pooch pops since they baked them on sticks. They suggested using the sugar cookie dough that you can buy at the store and mixing some of it with cocoa to get the brown ears. I just made my own sugar cookie dough and mixed some of it in my mixer with some brown Wilton food gel. They were really easy. You use a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out a heart from the brown cookie dough and the original cookie dough. Place the plain heart on the cookie sheet, cut the brown heart in half and place on each side of the plain heart. Press some mini chocolate chips into the plain heart and bake. The ears will bake into the head part. Then use some white icing to glue on some eyes and a nose using M&M's.

*On a side note, someone had asked me where to find the original orange candy corn this time of year. Our Super Target has the Jelly Belly brand of candy corn in their bulk candy section.

More cuteness

OK, last ones I promise. I just bought Nancy Kubo's new XOXO graphics and she had the cutest dinosaur and elephant that I just had to try. Sadly, elephants tail was a bit too skimpy to cut so he is tailless. I'm tellin you, I'm in love with my cricut again. There is now a way to combine the best of two worlds, digital scrapbooking and cricut.

Robot Valentine

Here's a robot I cut with my cricut. He came from Mindy Terasawa's Itty Bitty Robots graphic stickers. I didn't include all of his parts because he had a ton of little pieces.

A cricut honeymoon

My cricut and I are on our 3rd or 4th honeymoon. I go through phases with my crafting. I get on a roll with a particular type of craft and then get bored with it and move on to another craft. So my poor cricut had been collecting dust. Well, I have been in love with my digital kits and was working on some valentines day projects and started wishing there was a way my cricut could cut out some of the images and save my poor hands from cutting them with scissors. I ended up finding a great tutorial for converting PNG files (digital images are usually saved this way) to SVG files so that I could import them into SCAL and cut them with my cricut. So since I have been working on some owl valentines, I decided to cut out Nancy Kubo's owl from her Little Owl digital kit. I was ecstatic when it worked! I have so many digi kits and now my possibilities are endless! I plan on cutting out a robot later today so I'll share pictures of him when I'm done.

This guy is about 5" tall.

This is Nancy's digital sticker kit. Can you just imagine all the cute things I can cut now?!

Nuts for you valentine!

This is the valentine treat that I made last year for my sons' classes at Mom's Day Out. I stamped them using Papertrey's Punny Valentine stamp set. You can see Nichole's original directions here. This year I plan on doing robots for some little boys and owls for some little girls. Now I just have to get my booty in gear and get them done so I can get them in the mail on time :o)

Since these were for kids I opted not to do nuts with all the peanut allergy issues, plus I don't know that kids go nuts over nuts (he, he,he). Instead I used the marshmallowy circus peanuts.

Groundhog Cupcakes

In celebration of Groundhog's Day, we enjoyed some tasty groundhog cupcakes. Unfortunately, old Phil has predicted another 6 weeks of winter. Fooh :o(

Groundhog Cupcakes

• chocolate cake mix
• chocolate frosting
• Almond Joy or Mounds (I think I would use Mounds next time)
• brown mini M&M's
• black, pink and white icing or gel
• chocolate cookie crumbs

1. Remove a piece of cake the width of an Almond Joy candy from the center of a baked cupcake. Then spread a layer of frosting on the cupcake.

2. For the groundhog's eyes, I just used black decorators' gel. Add a tiny triangle of pink gel/icing for a nose, brown M&M's Minis for ears and cheeks, and a tiny rectangle of white gel/icing for teeth. Set the groundhog upright in the hole and sprinkle chocolate cookie crumbs around the partially emerged groundhog.

The original recipe can be found here.

An itty bitty book for William

I decided to make something for my little guy, William. I plan on making one for my other son, but probably something to do with cars, pirates or robots. This little book was created using Nancy Kubo's Little Dreamland kits. I printed all the parts out on matte photo paper and glued them down onto 4"x4" chipboard. I used my bind-it-all to bind the pages.

Strawberry mice taste nice!

I made these cute little strawberry mice today for my boys. You can find the recipe and directions here on the FamilyFun website.