50th Birthday Survival Kit

I know I promised to show you yesterday's craft, but the Christmas tree pins are taking long than expect to make. Plus we did a little reworking of the original idea. Instead I decided to show you the 50th birthday survival kit I made for my brother-in-law.

I got the idea from LEIA LEGWEAK'S HANDMADE CRAFTS. I wanted to give him stuff he would use and still be funny.  This is my kit.

I got a storage container at Walmart for $4. I printed the labels that read "50th Birthday Survival Kit" on sticker paper.

The items inside all had labels that were also printed on sticker paper. You can get the list Here.

·       Duct tape- instant face lift

·       Red tablets- to encourage hair regrowth

·       Needle nose pliers- for getting rid of nose hairs

·       Glue- hold everything together

·       First aid kit- for when you fall down

·       Rubber bands- to get your flexibility back

·       Little blue pills- for increased sex drive

·       Memory mints – for those senior moments

·       WD40- to lubricate your joints

·       Magnifying glass- for when you lose your eye sight

·       Starburst- for a burst of energy

·       Notebook- to write things down before you forget

I got most of my items at the dollar store and the rest, I got at Walmart. This was a fairly cheap and fun gift. 

I will be linking up here:

Thomas the Train Cake

Good Morning everyone! I am soo happy to be posting from my house!!! We have power and Internet, yay!

Today I need to go order cakes for my brother in law and nephew from the bakery that did our wedding cake. I won a gift certificate for $150 worth of cake for picking the name of their new mascot...Sweets the penguin. :)
Since brother in law turns 50 and nephew turns 21 and they are having a combined birthday party, I thought I would donate the prize to them. What am I going to do with $150 worth of cake?

It figures that I, cupcake/ cake baker wannabe, would win something like this. I swear when I typed sweets on the post on Facebook I had no idea it was a contest. Go figure.

But since I got cake on the brain, I wanna show you one of my first cakes that I made back in Feb.

This Thomas the train cake was made for my nephew, Charlie, for his 2nd birthday. Not bad for my first frosting job.
To make this cake I baked 3 cakes. 1 sheet cake 15x11 and 2 round 8 inch cakes. I mixed up some blue frosting using vanilla can frosting and Wilton icing colors. I frosted the whole sheet cake blue. I used one round cake for the face and frosted it gray. I made the gray frosting with vanilla frosting and a small amount of Wilton black icing color. I cut out the smoke stack from the other round cake.

Smoke stack was frosted gray. To get the face, I printed out a picture of Thomas the Train to fit my cake on   thin paper. I then took wax paper, turned my printed paper over so that it was upside down, put the wax paper over it and traced the outline of his face with black icing. There might be an easier way to do this, but I am new at this, bear with me. I laid the wax paper over my round cake until I had my outline, and then I filled it in after removing the wax paper. 

Charlie is 2 1/2 now. He still talks about the cake and that auntie Lexi made it for him. 

I will be linking up here

Beer & Candy Gift

Today is my brother-in-law's birthday. Last night we were going to have his birthday dinner but he and his wife had other plans. So instead of making a cake, I got to make a fort with their 2 1/2 yr old son. It was fun. I love how easily amused little kids are . I did learn that I proably should have some last minute activities ready to go for whenever we have him again. Hmmm... any ideas? We don't watch him that often though. Ok enough rambling..on to the birthday gift.


I was really clueless as to what to get him, so I settled on something easy that I knew he would like.

Beer

I don't drink much so picking out the right one was kinda hard. I figured Samuel Adams was a good choice though.(The first thing had said about the gift was "oooohhh and thats a good beer" so I guess I did good )

I needed to jazz it up a bit though. After all I couldn't just give him a plain old  6 pack of beer..

so

I

added

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Candy

Please forgive me for the quality of the pictures. I took them with my phone. Also, I cannot tie a  nice pretty bow, so I tied it like I was tying my shoelace. If anyone could teach me to make pretty bows..give me the link to your tutorial please.

I just taped a whole bunch of candy that I bough in bulk at Costco to the outside of the 6 pack ( I used some of the leftovers for another gift today but that will be in another post ), then tied it with a ribbon.

It was simple and inexpensive, but got a good reaction.

Tomorrow is my 1st anniversary....Wait til you see my take on the "paper" gift.

I will be linking this post up here: