Portal Cake

My younger brother David just had his 17th birthday, I wanted to make him a cool cake so I decided on the 'companion cube'. It is from the video game Portal, David loves that game and it so happens that I do too  : )

I started off with making marshmallows for the marshmallow fondant. I have never worked with fondant before and heard that the marshmallow kind tasted the best, so that is what I made.

I needed to get a square cake pan (how did I not have one already?!) I'm cheap, so even though this would be a four layer cake, I just got one pan... 

4 hours of baking/cooling time later, the chocolate agave cakes were ready to be frosted! David's favorite color is orange, that that is what I made the inner frosting. The frosting was a 'cream-cheese frosting' folded into sweetened whipped cream, sorry I don't have a recipe I just made it up as I went (It turned out really good though) The key thing is you need a lot of it...

I frosted the middle of each cake liberally but you also have to frost all of the outside so the fondant will stick to it.

The fondant was a little tricky to work with, but it was fun to try something new. After I rolled it out and cut the pieces, I would get them a little wet so that they would stick to each other better.

The fondant part of decorating the cake took me about 3 hours to do (that was with the fondant already being made) The cake didn't turn out perfect but it was pretty good for my first time!

The Cake was a big hit with everyone!

And the slices were huge...

    

Crib Skirt.

Both Chantel and Helena have been trying to find ways to make their nurseries extra cute and give some personality to the room. A colorful way is to add a crib bumper but those are a suffocation hazard and it is recommended that you don't use them, so back to square one... And then I saw this cute tutorial on making a crib skirt and just like that, we had the perfect thing for the room!

      

Chantel loved the idea of having pleats, she already had some brown curtains in the room and I had some leftover striped fabric for the chair, so the colors were all set. (the blue in the middle is hidden under the mattress and is just a scrap piece holding everything together)  

I was trying to do everything for as cheap as possible, so I went to target and checked out their curtain section. Luck was on my side, they had the same brown curtain that Chantel had in the widow and they were on sale too! $4 later I had everything I needed :)   

The tutorial was pretty good and fairly easy to follow. I didn't line the skirt (like they suggest) and I think it still turned out fine, I also made the skirt shorter then the tutorial says to, Chantel's crib had slightly diffrent dimensions (so make sure to measure the crib before you start!!)  

It turned out really cute and went very well in the nursery. It is great to add color, style and also hide all that storage space! When Helena comes out in May for her Utah baby shower, I am going to make one for her to take back with her! 

Hot Potato

Dave now teaches the kids who are 3 years old in primary, and I get to help him when his partner is out of town. Last time I helped, they played 'hot potato' with a crayon box, Dave would put on a primary song and when it stopped, whoever had the 'hot potato' would answer a question about the lesson. The questions were like 'what is something you use water for?' "drink!' 'brushing your teeth!', the kids really enjoyed it. I however vowed to make something better then a crayon box for the 'potato' for next time.

   

And here he is! I had Dave draw the outline of what he wanted the potato shape to be and then I just cut it out of felt, I enjoyed using the felt because it is easy to hand stitch. He is not perfect but I wasn't going for perfect, I wanted him to be a little quirky (success!)  

I filled him with rice so he would have a little weight to him for when the kids tossed him around, he is about 5" tall (so not too tiny) I also added a tie, he is in church after all... The whole thing took me maybe two hours and I'm very happy with how he turned out :)  

So Ugly (Part 3)

I'm almost sad posting this last entry about Chantel's chair, I feel as if I'm truly done with it now that I show you the finished product (even though I have already given the chair to Chantel...) and for some reason that is a little sad. But luckily I'm working on a ton of other baby related protects, as some of you may know my sister Helena is also pregnant! So I have a lot of ideas of things to make for the two new babies coming to the family! 

Because the back of the chair had some indents, I decided to work with them instead of trying to cover them up. After I slipped the cover on, I sewed through the material and foam so the fabric would contour to the existing shape of the chair back.

I then tried, for the first time, to make Cover Buttons! It was actually kind of fun and they turned out really cute.

Cover Buttons are just two pieces of metal that you can add fabric to, it comes with a little plastic thing that stretches the fabric over the metal making your own custom buttons!  

I then added my super cute buttons onto the back of the chair. Isn't that adorable? I then trimmed the excess  fabric and then hand stitched the bottom of the cover onto the foam back.

The last step was to Scotch Guarded the fabric, so it would stand up a little batter to wear!

Drum roll please.....  

  

Isn't it beautiful!? Well I think it is and so does Chantel! I brought it over to her a few weeks ago and just recently helped her set up the baby's room and I must say, this looks a whole lot better then it originally did and goes much better with their white nursery decor!

I thought I would do a side by side comparison, that way you can really appreciate how much the chair has changed!    

It took me many hours and a few blog posts (One Two and Three!) but I think it came together quite nicely!