Category Archives: blog

Let’s Make Cat Donuts

  May 20, 2013 - 8:00 am | blog
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Please excuse yet another break in my ten year story (actually I checked and saw my part two never posted! I’ll have that up tomorrow) but I made these cat donuts for crafternoon and wanted to share! I’ve seen cat donuts like this that you can buy in Japan, and have wanted to make them for so long. I searched for instructions but couldn’t find anything…so I thought I’d experiment and hope for the best. After a few bumps, they worked out really well and were pretty easy to do.

Here are the basic supplies…
-peanut butter melts When I was thinking about what kind of frosting could work for these donuts I knew I wanted something that would coat the top in a nice thick layer. Then the chocolate melts came to mind and I thought they would work great. When I got to the store and saw they had a peanut butter flavor, it was the perfect color and flavor. You could also do chocolate, or pastel cats.
-whole almonds If you make these for some one with a nut allergy you will obviously need to sub the peanut butter melts with another flavor, and the almonds for something else like the melts cut into a triangle shape? I haven’t had a chance to experiment with this part but I’d love to hear if you have any other ideas that would work. ETA–Seanna Lea commented that candy corn might work for the ears and I think that’s a great idea! I’m going to give it a try next time I make them.
-plain cake donuts I went with plain cake donuts because they are nice and dense
catdonutmypapercrane1
1. First you want to melt your candy melts into a deep small dish. Follow the instructions on the melts. I found that two bags coated about 20 donuts.
2. Dip an almond into the candy melts and press into the donut, for the ears. Stick these into the freezer for a few seconds to harden the almond in place. At first I had tried just pushing the almond into the donut, but lost a couple of ears this way when I turned over and dipped the donuts. It’s worth the extra step to secure them in place.
3. Once the almonds are secure dip donuts down into the peanut butter melts, then turn back over and let sit on parchment paper until the coating is dry. This actually went pretty smoothly and easily. Just make sure you bowl is deep enough to easily dip the donuts with almonds sticking out of them.
4. Once they are completely dry you can use various icing to raw faces on your cats. You could use candy eyes, or just pipe little faces on. I used premixed/precolored frostings for these.

let’s talk about ten years…

  May 17, 2013 - 8:00 am | blog
48 Comments

I’ve been meaning to make a post about this for awhile now. I kept thinking my blog’s ten year anniversary was in May, then when I finally went back and checked it was actually April. So it is time that I talk about blogging for a decade…here goes! The photo above in my website and blog as it looks now, which is so very different from the way it looked ten years ago when I started it. Ten years ago I had a newborn baby, a great passion for making things, and a computer. I decided I would make a website and a blog so I could have a set place to share the stuff I was making. Before that I had been sharing it on message boards like the Nervousness.org community. People were giving me great feedback and I felt really excited about being able to make things and share them with people all over. I was making all sorts of silly purses. Hedgehogs, dead cat purses (cartoony I assure you) and then one day I had a long skinny scrap of brown fabric that reminded me of toast crust. I made a toast plush and thus my plush “food with faces” was born.
So here is the thing about looking back at the blog and website I made ten years ago. It’s embarrassing, seriously it is so embarrassing. Not only did my website have clip art, it had patterned back grounds. I luckily drew the line at a website that played music and had dancing gifs but that was probably only because I couldn’t figure out how to make them. I had no experience with web design, and it showed. I wrote embarrassing things. Friends I referred to myself as a “hip housewife”. I can only thank my stars that I did not have access to the internet when I was 16, because if I find the 25 year old me embarrassing, I am sure 16 year old would be mortifying. That being said people were incredibly lovely, encouraging, and no one told me my website looked terrible….well, not right away.
Here is how it looked about 3-4 weeks in. Oh and I had a yard sale section.
Any blog readers go way back to when I made tampon dolls? Here is a photo of the original doll. Which to me looks as though it was made by a five year old. Embarrassing, I tell you! These dolls actually were very popular and I am told that the image of my son’s arms holding a bunch of them can still be seen on some websites. I just got tired of being known as the “tampon lady”. I just thought they were funny, and well of course I was making dead cat purses too.
Here you can see the first toast dolls I made. First I’d like to point out they are not toasted at all, they should of been referred to as bread. I remember I had dolls like this the first year that I sold at Crafty Bastards and then a few years later I had perfected my design, upgraded to wool felts and my bread range looked like this. (and apparently I thought it was fine to post blurry photos) Well a girl came up to me and said she remembered my toasts from before, but then she saw that they cost more (I believe they were $15 instead of $10) and she was upset about the change. I think I should of brought along a photo of the old toast to show her she was getting something much better haha.
Then of course there were my original donuts, you can see the donut holes I made here too. Again these look really rough to me. You can see I have sewn hundreds of donuts over these last ten years.
At some point I got tired of trying to keep a blog on a website and switched to live journal.
Finally in 2005 the amazing Kristen Davenport (who now has a vegan food truck in Austin TX go taste her amazing baked goods!) sent me an email saying she wanted to build me a proper website, for free. I told her she could do it for trade and in the meantime she created the little webpage you see above to direct people to my zen cart powered webshop. I’m going to go ahead and leave you hanging here till tomorrow to give your eyes a rest before we go on. I’ve got an exciting giveaway at the end of my story, kidrobot goodies, handmade goodies, maybe some spoonflower fabric too–so stay tuned for that!

dinner

  May 16, 2013 - 8:00 am | blog
8 Comments

Sometimes I love preparing dinner, and some nights all I think is “seriously? I have to do this again?” Since my husband works evenings-dinner falls on my shoulders.
Starting two weeks ago I’ve have been taking time out each Sunday to make a weekly menu. Then I go through what we have have, and make my shopping list according to the menu.
One of my boys is super picky, so the menu idea has helped give him a heads up on what to expect. For me knowing that I have everything I need to make the meal that is already planned makes it much less of a chore on the days that I don’t feel like cooking. It’s easy to switch around days in the case that instead of craving that casserole you have your heart set on the salad planned for a few days later.
I’ve been trying to remember to post our dinners over on instagram. I actually look back through when I am in a dinner rut to help plan out some ideas.
The first dinner above on the left was something my friend Molly makes, shredded BBQ on baked potatoes. This BBQ was a prepackaged meat substitute which made it super easy. I did make the baked mac n cheeses, and homemade biscuits this night, so it wasn’t work free. But this was a Thursday which means Tom has off and those dinners are always extra special.
I also made ahead a stone fruit slaw which no body liked, and I just thought was “ok”.
The second dinner pictured is just a big chopped salad shaken with dressing and some shredded cheese, and then topped with fake chicken. Super fast!

Mother’s Day

  May 15, 2013 - 10:41 pm | blog
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Mother’s Day was great, and not just because of the adorable little coconut cake. My husband had the day off & the annual used book sale had its “fill a bag for $5″ day. For breakfast we made Leige Waffles (hot sugar waffles) which I’ve been craving since I tried one on my last trip to NY. They take a little while to make because you need to let the yeast rise, but it worked out well since the book sale didn’t open until noon.
Then the rest of the day was spent planting new flowers and two blueberry bushes. Oh and of course there was the coconut cake too.
I got some lovely records I have been coveting and BioShock Infinite. I have discovered though that I cannot play FPS type games. It makes me dizzy, and I am rubbish when it comes to the fighting. But the game is really beautiful so I’ve been making Tom play it every night so I can watch. I’ve been wanting to start a new game since finishing Ni No Kuni, but to be honest—I just want the new game to be just like Ni No Kuni!

Happy Mother’s Day

  May 12, 2013 - 7:00 am | blog
4 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day friends! Here are two photos of my mama, one when she was pregnant with my older sister Heather, and one of her currently.
My Mom is the reason I love to sew, she let me experiment on all her sewing machines, even when I’d mess up the tension half the time. Always letting me dig through her fabric scraps even if I just wanted them to sew ANOTHER hair scrunchie!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!