Spider Cake-Evidence of a Mother's Love....or so I tell myself

I don't know about you, but my kids' birthdays have a habit of sneaking up on me. One week before his birthday, I remembered my son's birthday. I was trying to think of a way to get out of doing the cake this year. He wasn't having it. 3 days before the big day, he told me he wanted a spider cake. YIKES!! I am not a professional or even a gifted amateur!! Naturally, I hit the web looking for ideas. OVERLOAD! Oh, he also said he didn't want a picture of a spider, but an actual spider cake. Well, here is what I found:

Pinned HERE

Pinned HERE

Both seemed like good ideas. Of course, I didn't do it EXACTLY the way they did though. I sort of combined the two methods. Here is what I ended up with:

Here's what I did. First, I purchased black licorice, gum drops and Wilton neon fondant (I mean, who wants to color it?! Not I!) I made THIS chocolate cake (I used white whole wheat flour). It's a darker recipe, and I love it. It's sweet, but not sickeningly sweet. I prefer my cakes like that. I poured the batter into a medium and small oven-safe glass bowl. (The difference in size was visible, but not as drastic as I would have liked. I would recommend using a large and small bowls.) I did have to adjust the cooking time. It took about 20 minutes longer than the listed baking time.

Once they were out and cooled, I took off that top portion with the hump so they would lay flat. Then I started the frosting fun. ;-) I made a standard frosting with powdered sugar, almond milk (we have milk allergies here) and butter (actually Earth's Best "not-butter" Butter). I divided it in half and let the dyeing commence. Let me just say how much I HATE black frosting. GROSS. Probably because it took a WHOLE ENTIRE bottle of black food coloring to dye the frosting black!!! Crazy. I was GOING to do orange for the alternate color in the spider, but I didn't have the yellow I thought I did...so purple it was. I did put one tiny drop of black into the purple. It was looking a little too girlie for my son's tastes. That's why it's a bit of a dull purple.

Confession: I did NOT use a crumb coat. I intended to do one, but this was all being done at about 10:30pm the night before...I was tired and cutting corners. ;-)

I used a ruler and marked off the sections of stripes. Then I used a Wilton #18 tip for all of the stars over that whole cake. I am SURE there is an easier way to do this...and one that looks much better. But like I said, no special talent here and the stars are the easiest way for me to make something look nice...ish. ;-)

Once my hand regained some feeling, not joking, I cut the licorice. There were eight 3 1/2" pieces, four 2" pieces and four 2 1/2" pieces. Then I rolled the orange fondant into 8 small balls, and 2 smaller balls. I took the purple and rolled 8 balls. (I am sorry, but that makes me laugh to read it. ha!) I cut the tops off of 2 gum drops for the eyes. Then I used my trusty scissors and cut 2 gum drops in half lengthwise. I took each half and cut it into a triangle. These were the fangs...or the chelicerae. Then I assembled. The back legs consisted of the 3 1/2" pieces and the 2 1/2" pieces joined together by the purple fondant. The front legs were the 3 1/2" pieces and the 2" pieces joined by the purple fondant. For the eyes I gently pressed the small balls flat and pressed the gum drop eyes into them. Then I just pushed them onto the cake, although I have been told that it's best to put a dab of frosting on the back for glue. I'm lazy though. ;-) Then I pressed the fangs in. A word about the fangs (chelicerae)...I know there are not four, but two looked too vampire-y. ;-) I found that it was easier to get the licorice legs into the cake if I used a knife. I just poked the knife in where I wanted the licorice leg to be, and VOILA! It went right in. So the last 5 legs were easier than the first 3. ha! And then...I was done. DONE! DONE!! DONE!!!

So, that was that. Fun little spider cake. Shall I tell you what my son said?? "Wow! A spider cake!! It looks good, but it's wrong!" ha! Nice. Upon further investigation it was discovered that he was expecting a different color. THANKFULLY, he was happy with the colors he got, though I admit...orange would have been better....

Anyway! Another thing pinned and done! Thanks Pinterest for giving me too many projects!!

Beans!! Beans!! The musical fruit!!

Yes, I am childish enough to sing that song in my head every time I make beans...which is frequently. ;-) ANYWAY. I found THIS on Pinterest. It is from a blog called Six Sisters' Stuff. It intrigued me b/c I love pinto beans. Refried beans can take quite a bit of time though. So, I decided to give it a whirl. After all, if everyone on Pinterest is posting it, it MUST be worth it, right? haha So, I followed the recipe basically exactly. Well, almost. I used anaheim peppers from our garden instead of jalapenos (I wish I knew how to put that tilde thing above the "n"), and I used stock instead of broth. (I always thought they were the same thing, but when you buy them from the store, they taste COMPLETELY different. I prefer the stock.) Anyway. I threw it all in the crock pot. It literally took me a total of 5 minutes. Here is what it looked like after about 4 hours of cooking:

I WISH you could smell through pictures. It smelled so divine. The onion and peppers were VERY aromatic. I simply LOVED walking into my house this afternoon! Anyway. Once they were all cooked, I did as instructed. Then I smashed them as instructed. Here is what they looked like all smashed up and ready to be thrown into tortillas (the preferred method for the kidlets in our house):

Anyway, DE-FREAKING-LICIOUS!! I'm so glad I did this because I now have my permanent bean recipe. Seriously. Thank goodness for Pinterest!!

Aged Paint Technique-Headboard and Shelves

All right. A while ago I saw this on Pinterest. It was lovely. So, I decided to try it on my son's new room. He was turning 8 and finally getting his own room. He was not excited about it. He loved sharing with his sister. So, to make it something "special" I decided to MAKE it special. Make sense? So, we got a headboard that was too big. The hubs had to cut a chunk out of the middle and put it all back together. It is SO nice to have a hubs around to do some of the stuff that needs done. Anyway...we also bought a shelf from Lowe's for the expressed purpose of painting it. We already had one that we hadn't put up yet as well. After priming the headboard and shelves, I spray painted them brown. I used Ivory soap for aging technique that the Pinterest link sends you to. Then I painted it blue. I hated it. It was such an ugly blue, not at ALL what I pictured, but there was NO way I was going to buy new paint and do everything over! So I did as directed and sanded the paint off of the soaped up spots. I liked THAT part, but still hated the overall look. So...I did what any normal person would do. I stained the whole thing with a really dark stain and wiped it off. Then I sealed it all with a matte finish. Here is what we ended up with. (DO remember: I have NO idea how to take good pictures or edit them to look awesome. It is what it is. ha!)

This is the headboard result. The only thing I would do different next time is not be so afraid to make those soap spots/paint peeling spots bigger. I have a tendency to be too timid with new things. I won't be so afraid next time.

This is one of the shelves...can you tell the boy is a bit of a hero fanatic? Captain America is the fave!! There are more pictures of this one b/c I wasn't sure you could see the aged paint thing very well.

And this is the corner shelf...my least favorite...mostly because there were issues with the hanging of this shelf. Silly me...I've never done a corner shelf before and didn't bother to read the directions!! I got the holes all drilled, the anchors set...and then I realized that the bottom pieces couldn't/shouldn't meet in the corner of the wall. Awesome. HA! Oh well...it was time for a hand off to the hubs anyway. ;-)

I'm DOING this!

All right. You've heard of Pinterest, right? How addictive is THAT?! Insane. At least, it is for me. So, in an effort to keep myself motivated, I have decided to record the projects that I have actually COMPLETED that I pinned. It's like my own little tracking system. This way I can figure out exactly my time wasted compared to my productivity. ha! Feel free to check it out when or if you want. No big deal. I will always post the link to the pin that inspired the project, that way no one can say I stole any ideas or anything. ;-)