Oreo Owl Cupcakes

I Pinned it, and made it! Yes, I love Pinterest, and have thousands of Pins, but how many have I actually made? Maybe 20-ish. The teeniest drop in the bucket, when compared to how many Pins I’ve saved! I don’t think I’m alone in this either. So no judging, just do it!

My Mom actually emailed me this Pin, but of course I had seen it all over Pinterest… cutest cupcakes!! And because I am not so talented in the confectionary creation department, I go for the easy decorations. Frosted cupcakes, Oreos, and Reese’s Pieces? Easy.

Here is the Pin I saw…

Here is the original post from One Charming Party…

http://onecharmingparty.com/2010/10/21/halloween-school-party-food-station/

And here is my version… boxed cake mix, with homemade frosting… Yum!

Of course my kids had free license when it came to decorating, but I did strongly encourage they have normal owl eyes this first round. My son added yellow cheeks and a brown piece of hair, and my daughter went with two tufts of blonde hair for her sweet owl. Mine, of course is the boring one on top. 🙂

I used this recipe for the frosting, but made a couple of small changes. A whole stick of butter instead of the 6 Tbsp, and heavy cream instead of sweetened condensed milk. I recommend doubling the recipe if you want to cover a whole batch of cupcakes.

Here are a couple more pics, just for fun…

Make these with your kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, or just neighbors and friends! They are so easy, and just plain fun!

Happy Fall Y’All, as they say here in the South. 🙂

-Heather

Spooktacular Mini-Oreo Bats

Happy Halloween!

Sunday was my night for family dinner and ever since the implementation of the Vixen diet, dessert has been scant in my household.  My new favorite after dinner treat of a bowl of pineapple isn’t really going over big with the seven year old set.

It’s Halloween and we’ve got to celebrate so I picked up a small bag of mini Oreos at the store.  Sure, full size Oreos are great, but aren’t they just cuter in mini form?  Plus these kids are about to get the mother load of candy, we only needed a small treat!

I had seen some great Oreo Halloween pops at The Idea Room and I knew I could whip out some adorable mini versions.
I dug around in my cabinets for the required materials: Sprinkles, chocolate and some construction paper and I set to work. Simply dunk the Oreo in a bit of meltable chocolate and apply sprinkle mouths with fangs, eyes and wings while the chocolate is setting up.I freehand cut the bag wings, but this is something that you could easily create out of chocolate as well.  I won’t lie, sprinkle application is a bit tedious since they are so small, so thank goodness this is only a “snack” sized bag!  I even left a few “blank” with no faces and I think that look worked as well.

They turned out stinkin’ adorable.  I used several different color sprinkles for the eyes and they all have a creepy cast.  Best of all, the crowd approved!

And there are no leftovers, it’s easy for four people to work through a snack sized bag of mini Oreos and not feel like they’ve had too much.

I think you can just hear that last bat looking at the pile of discarded wings and thinking – “oh no!  Where did everyone go?!”

–Martta

Halloween Applique Dress

All of the adorable Halloween fabric had inspired me to make another comfortable t-shirt dress for my little girl. I picked up a yard of my favorite print at Joann’s (30% off), and a long sleeved t-shirt from Target…$6…cheap. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to embellish my dress, but I discovered I already had some lime green ric rac, and then discovered this site with a free witch hat applique template! By some amazing alignment of the stars, this template matched my fabric perfectly!!

I started off by cutting the bottom of my shirt off. I had my daughter put the shirt on, then put a safety pin where I wanted the skirt to start. Then, I added 1/2 an inch for seam allowance… it was approximately 7 inches from the underarm of the shirt.

I forgot to take pics of the beginning skirt steps, but you can also check my instruction here for further info. My finished skirt is about 15.5 inches for my 4 yr old, and it’s a good calf length on her. Add an inch for the hem, and 1/2 to 3/4 inch for the upper seam allowance, and you have the length you need to cut.I folded a half inch, then another half inch for the hem, then sewed a straight stitch all around.

I used my lime green ric rac I had picked up from an online discount craft site called Pick Your Plum. Each day they have a new craft item listed for a pretty deep discount. Check it out! And, no, I am not getting any kick back from them. 🙂

You can finally see my fun fabric here! Using my hem as a guide, I pinned my ric rac 1.5 inches from the bottom. I didn’t want to have my ric rac move too much, so I chose to go overboard on the pins and pin every other “hump”. (Or is it a ric? Or a rac?) Anyway, that seemed to hold it in place pretty well for sewing.

Before attaching the skirt to the shirt, I worked on the applique witch hat. I’ve never appliqued before, so this was a journey and took some thought process to convince myself I was doing things in the right order!

I cut out my template pieces (printed it more than once to get the 3 pieces), then used Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 interfacing to get the shapes onto the shirt. The instructions on the package are pretty clear, so follow the package for your interfacing to get your fabric shapes.

Here are my 3 shapes cut & ironed onto the shirt. I had the purple dot & bright orange fabric in my stash. Now theoretically, if you did the interfacing correctly, you can stop here… but, that doesn’t really look finished, right?! Thankfully, my sweet husband bought the clear sewing foot I needed to do applique, for my birthday!! I’ve never taken a class for applique, and Martta (who did take a class!) was on vacation in a far away land. I was left to my own devices… so I played with the length & width settings on my zig zag stitch until I found the “look” I wanted. Using black thread, I outlined the purple band & orange buckle, then followed around the outline of the hat with lime green.

Quite honestly, I had a few mishaps… expected, kind of, but I was really hoping for a perfect run…Ha! The knit shirt makes the shape tend to get wavy looking when finished, but when my daughter was wearing it, I didn’t notice. Also, along the bottom, you can see where it looks a little rugged… black shirt & black fabric? Makes it hard to see where the 2 pieces meet… even with a clear sewing foot. So again, in the big scheme of things, not too noticeable, but a tip… err on the side of the fabric & not the shirt.

Next up… attach the skirt to the shirt! Again, I did this in the tank dress I linked above, but here’s a quick review…

Gather the top of the skirt using your longest stitch length, then pulling the bobbin thread to gather until it matches the diameter of your shirt opening. Pin, right sides together, and sew using the super stretch stitch for knits, or even just a straight stitch will work. Just be sure to finish your seam if you aren’t using a serger. I use a small zig zag stitch as close to my first stitch as possible, then trim the excess.

Flip it right side out and try on your pretty little girl!

My little girl LOVES this dress, and thankfully, I finished it in time for our Halloween playdate!

Have fun making a Halloween themed dress for your little girl! And let us know how it turned out & what you learned!

-Heather