Whipped Cherry Lemon Cake

It's been almost a year since I found out I was allergic to eggs and Pinterest has been such a fun way to collect "pins" of food I can eat.  


One thing that has been especially difficult is with dessert.  With the help of my "Desserts I Can Eat" board, I've been able to collect a bunch of recipes of sweet treats.  Now, when I feel the need for sweets, I can go to the board and voila, the recipes are there waiting for me.


One recipe I came across early on was making cake from a boxed cake mix plus one can of soda (which apparently is an old weight watcher's recipe).  


Here is my take on it:

Whipped Cherry Lemon Cake

Cake:


One box of lemon cake mix
10 oz. of Diet Mountain Dew


Mix the two together and bake as per the boxes directions.


Topping:


Combine 1 container of cool whip with one can of cherry pie filling.   


Top the cooled cake with the topping.  


Serve and ENJOY!

I'll take 12

That's right. I bought 12 of them and received $61 in catalinas and ShopRite gift cards. Sounds great, right? You can do it too but sorry, you only have today! What if I also told you that I have never bought or used this product before too? Well, it's true. One of my couponing mottos is if it's free I'll likely by it and if I make money on it I'll definitely buy it! This is a money making deal buying Clairol Natural Instincts hair color! You will also need 6 coupons from the 6/17 Smartsource circular (I used (4) $5 off 2 and (4) $2 off 1). Here's the breakdown: (12) boxes at $5.99 = 71.88 *you will need to do 6 transactions After each transaction you will get a $6 Catalina After the sixth and final transaction you will also get a $25 ShopRite gift card reward! Final money maker of $17.12 (not include tax). Not a bad day getting paid to shop!

Have a Sweet Summer

In honor of today's brutal heat and the official second day of summer 2012, I wanted to give my idea on my "handwritten" font lettering from my treat top bags.  


I initially was thinking of printing the words out and then glueing them onto various backdrops to make the bag tops.  After deciding that it would be too much work, I decided to just write them myself.  


Because I wanted to give them a "fun" look, I decided I should do a little more than my normal handwriting.  That's where my computer came into the project after all.  After looking through my fonts, I decided to use one of my favorites, Bumble Bee BV!  


Next, I simply typed my phrase and centered it into a box that was roughly the same size the paper I would be using.  The computer screen then became my "stencil" as I studied how to form each letter and worked letter by letter on my bag topper.  

It's certainly not perfect, but a great way to try a new way to write things by hand.

Try it for yourself next time you want something to look "extra special!"

An unexpected crafting object

A few weeks ago, I hosted a crafting girl's night at my house.  One of my crafty friends from sweetsongbirdofmine.blogspot.com/ came with a rather unusual crafting object.   I'll give you a few seconds to take a guess.  Did you think of something?  Well, here is what it was...

A pool noodle!

As you can see, we first used duck tape to transform the noodle into a circle.  Our pool noodles would soon become the base for our patriotic wreaths using old jeans.  

That night we finished one wreath, which I unfortunately didn't get a picture of with my camera.  Over the next week or so, I worked on one myself.  

With 50 vintage mother of pearl buttons,

Yarn pom poms,

and burlap and vintage lace!

I just loved the finished product!  

With a few more noodles sitting on my crafting table, look for additional variations in the next few weeks!

End of the Year Teacher Gifts

As a Preschool Director, I'm always looking for ideas for gifts for my ladies.  I love giving a thoughtful gift to them because they mean so much to me!


Back in the fall and way before I was introduced to Pinterest, I was at Michael's (which just happens to be one of my favorite spots to find treasures) and noticed cute cupcake liners in the clearance bins.  I instantly thought of putting together a baking themed gift as my end of the school year gift.  


It wasn't until my rise in Pinterest that I decided that I wanted to make my own  cake mixes and present them in a ball jar.  Next, came shopping for cute mixing bowls.  This is the highlight of the story because I didn't bring the cupcake liners with me when shopping nor did I take notes to their color schemes.  But the Lord directed me to the right bowls because the cupcake liners matched and coordinated perfectly.  That's right, each and every one.  Even the lone purple mixing bowl.  

Preparing the cake mixes was simple and I followed a chocolate version from www.frugalouis.com and a yellow version from  www.afewshortcuts.com.

After typing the recipe card, I assembled the gift by bunching up one piece of tissue paper at the bottom of the bowl before placing the ball jar.  A small piece of tape was affixed to the top of the jar to help the cupcake liner "hat" from falling off.  

A little clear wrap and some curling ribbon finished the project. VOILA!

End of the year Preschool gifts

With the end of the school year drawing near, I've been using pinterest for brainstorming and idea catching.   This year I wanted to give a little something to each of the Preschool students.   


A pin, "End of the school year treat bag toppers" from anythingbutperfect.com caught my eye!  The image was a sweet alligator paired with the wording, "See you lator alligator."   


After searching around CVS for candy deals, I left with 6 bags of various Hershey kisses to make 35 treat bags (I would suggest at least one or two more bags).  Instead of the alligator theme,  I decided to go with "Have a sweet summer!"  I then headed to the computer to work on a design for the bag toppers but wasn't getting having much inspiration.  


My mind traveled back to many pins of handwriting and calligraphy ideas.  Could I learn calligraphy for this?  I came up with another idea and back to the computer I went.  This time, typing in my phrase and choosing one of my favorite fonts, "Bumble Bee BV" to use as a visual template.  


I actually was able to replicate the font fairly easily and only made a few errors.  Here is a close up of one of the bags.  Check out the font and let me know how I did!

Have a sweet summer!