Friday's Scissors and Cream! (Chocolate suckers, button sugar cookies, & minky baby blanket)

For those who are new to our blog I have taken on the challenge to broaden my domestic goddess talents. I will be posting "first attempts" to crafts and recipes each week for your entertainment success or total failure! I call these my Friday's scissor and cream posts.

Enjoy...

Baby Shower Time!

I was lucky enough to host a baby shower for my friend who is having a girl. The theme was "Cute as a Button" with the colors pink and yellow. A while back I saw this theme as a 1 year old birthday HERE. I ordered the chocolate molds she used asap in hopes of someday copying the theme in another party style. HERE is another site teaching newbies, like me, how to use melting chocolate and these molds. The chocolate was a challenge to work with since it was my first time using molds. I over cooked a batch making the chocolate clumpy and difficult to squeeze out of the baggie before it hardened. I learned that the trick is to remove it from the buner as soon as the chocolate has melted down to only a few small chunks remaining and then you keep stirring it to melt it all the way. This ensures it from being over cooked. Another thing I learned was that the hole size you cut your baggie matters greatly with the small shallow buttons. You need a teeny-tiny hole to manuer from button to button without getting chocolate goop everywhere. For a halloween party HERE I made a moss block to hold cake pops. This worked like a charm to display the chocolate pops.

Chocolate Mold Suckers

Button Sugar Cookies

For Thank You's I made these little sugar cookies. I scoured the kitchen for the right tools to use for the design. These 2 canning jar rings and candy themometor did the trick! HERE is the sugar cookie recipe I used. I always add lemon extract instead of almond especially in this case since the mom-to-be loves lemon in pretty much anything.

DIY Minky Baby Blanket

Okay, this project was totally NOT done by me. Kayleen is probably laughing in her chair right now :). So, here is the story. Since girl stuff is SO much fun to shop for I decided this was a great opportunity to start making baby blankets to give as gifts. The first time I sewed it I put two ends together thinking the cute little old lady at Joanns did her job and cut me a straight piece of fabric. This was mistake #1. Second mistake: I had no idea how incredibly hard of a material "minky" fabric is to sew. Its super slippery! This meant after I was done sewing two whole sides my two fabrics no longer measured up to eachother. I ran over to my sewing expert friends house for yet another attempt for someone to teach me how to cut in a straight line! Sad, I know! But, how the heck are you suppose to make a square when none of your sides are straight to begin with? Kayleen saved me and this poor little blanket. I went around it with a zig zag stitch and called it good. HERE is a simple blog if you need a tutorial. HERE is a step up with a fancy minky blanket. I probably would not suggest minky fabric for your FIRST quilt though!