Bake a Valentine Heart (Birthday) Cake for your Sweetie

My Hubbie's birthday was last weekend.  Unfortunately (and fortunately :-) I was away on my sister's bachelorette destination weekend in Nashville.  Of course I wish I could have celebrated with him on the real day, but we made do and celebrated last night!

Eliana's favorite shape right now is a heart.  Her favorite color is red.  So Jonathan ended up with a Pink Heart Cake for his birthday...     Since it is so close to Valentine's Day it would also be the perfect cake for your Valentine!  Jonathan is of course my and Eliana's Valentine (and hopefully will be both our valentine's for years and years to come).  So, even though it is not the most masculine cake, he is deserving of a heart cake coming from his two girls whether it be for his birthday or Valentine's Day!

How We (Eliana and I) Did It:

1. Bake your favorite cake in a 9" round and 9" square pan.

2. Cut the 9" round cake into two half circles.

3. Turn your 9" square into a diamond (turn it) and place both half circles on two adjoining sides.

4. Make your favorite icing.  Spread it over your heart cake.

Here it is all together in 1 picture showing the steps:

Note: This ends up being a very large cake.  I didn't have a platter that would hold it so we opted for a very large cutting board to serve it on.  It worked out great because it was really easy to cut the cake since it was already on a cutting board!

This cake was inspired from a pinterest post I found last year.  The owner of the pin is: Katie Brown Home Workshop and her heart looks much better than mine so make sure you check out her post too!

The Story Behind The Recipes We Used:

Jonathan loves yellow cake with white icing.  He is a simple man.  I found two recipes that looked very promising and put them together - 1 recipe for the cake and 1 recipe for the icing.  The cake recipe we used was from The Smitten Kitchen - Best Birthday Cake.  The icing recipe we used was found on the Pioneer Woman's site but originally came from Tasty Kitchen - That's the Best Frosting I've Ever Had. 

The icing was very good.  I would make it again.  The cake I am sure would have been good if I had used the right flour :-/   Note to others:  When the cake recipe calls for "Cake Flour" do not use "Pastry Flour".  I went out and looked specifically for Cake Flour and couldn't find it.  So I found Pastry Flour and assumed they were the same thing (a cake is a type of pastry, right?).  So, I am going to give this recipe another try and use any flour that doesn't state "self-rising".  The cake was still good, just not great.  It had a bit of a cornmeal taste to it...  Sorry honey!  Maybe I will make this again on Valentine's Day with the right flour!  

Happy Birthday Jonathan! I love you!

For other Valentine inspired crafts check out last year's post: DIY Valentine Pillow and Tutorial!

A new New Year's Family Tradition

We started a new family tradition - decorating the Christmas tree for the New Year!!!   We also decided to stay home and have a family fun day - it was fabulous and relaxing!  We had fun in the snow and redecorated our Christmas Tree to celebrate the coming New Year!  Then we toasted with Champagne (and milk for Eliana) at 9PM - we even counted down the 10 seconds prior to 9 and then called all of our family right after "midnight".  Jonathan and I celebrated the real midnight together, but out big celebration was at 9PM and then Eliana went to bed.

To redecorate the tree for New Year's we first took off the Christmas ornaments.  Then, we threw beads, pompoms, paper crowns and the things that you blow into and make noise into the tree.  It was fun to redecorate it and great motivation to get the Christmas ornaments packed safely away.  Eliana thought it was great that we got to play "dress-up" with the tree!

Then we went outside for some fun in the snow

 A very light snow, but oh well...

Eliana loved sledding!

Making Snow Angels:

And just playing in the snow with Finnegan:

No family event would be complete without Rosie (Eliana's baby doll):

A new family tradition: Updating the Christmas tree for the New Year! 

Merry Christmas 2013

Have Yourself A Very Merry Christmas! 

And May All Your Days Be "Bubbly" and Bright!

Merry Christmas from the Edwards' Family!  Best wishes to you and your loved ones during this holiday season and for the year to come!

We are busy right now opening presents from Santa, going to church (we go Christmas morning), enjoying too many good foods and quality time with family for this to be a long post.  So you also go enjoy your family and cherish every moment of this Christmas! 

XOXO,

The Edwards

Shoutout to Tiny Prints: Tiny Prints did such a wonderful job on our Christmas Cards this year!  I am always so happy with the quality of the cards they produce!  Thanks Tiny Prints!

DIY Wrapping Paper

Our homemade, or better yet, "Child Made" wrapping paper looks a little bit like modern art - freeform shapes and lines that intersect in beautiful disarray!

It looks a little bit like our Child Made Thank You Cards except we only used red white and green paint for this art project.

It is a fun way for a child to give a gift that is from them.  Eliana is currently using the phrase, "Eliana Give It!" for gifting presents to others - she uses the phrase for most of the presents we wrap.

We decorated both brown and white rolls of paper - here they are tucked under the tree!

How we did it:

Buy plain rolls of paper:  We bought both brown and white.  You can find these at any office store (we found ours at Target and Staples).

Plan out your space:  We painted on our kitchen peninsula and kept moving Eliana from one side of the peninsula to the other so that she could decorate both sides of the paper (she couldn't reach all the way across from the one side.  You also need to have space to continually unroll the paper as the paint goes on.  We didn't have enough space to paint an entire roll in one sitting.  We painted about a third of a roll per painting session.

Provide child friendly paints and brushes: We used red white and green for our projects because we were making Christmas wrapping paper.

Get Creative: We painted some parts of the paper and stamped our hands for other parts of the paper.  You could also use foam stamps, toilet paper rolls or cookie cutters to make other shapes on the paper.

This was a fun project to do with Daddy - we had it all set up and ready to do together when he got home from work! 

Daddy did a good job wiping up the extra globs of paint Eliana would leave behind - he periodically put her initials on the paper with the extra globs of paint.

Allow time for the paper to dry:  We let our paper dry overnight.  Then roll it back up so that it looks like a roll of wrapping paper again.

When painting with a 2 year old the paint gets thick in areas - so allow plenty of time to dry!

Wrap your presents:  This paper is especially fun for gifts that are from children.  We added ribbon to the wrapped gifts to finish them off!



We painted in two sessions - one with the white paper and one with the brown paper.  During the brown paper painting session, Eliana's Uncle Thomas came to participate along with his girlfriend.  After painting her own hand and putting it on the paper, she loved painting their hands and stamping them on the paper too!  Everyone got messy, but everyone had fun!  It really can be a project for all ages!

Painting Uncle Thomas' hand:

Painting Samantha's hand:

 Part of the finished product from the brown paper:

And then just for fun, painting Uncle Thomas' fingernails (because Uncles are cool like that) :-p

Ready to be opened Christmas morning!

Decorating Our Tree - Through a Child's Eyes

There is something spectacular about watching a child at Christmas!  You relive the many miracles of this time of year through their eyes.

We have a family tradition where we eat appetizers, listen to Christmas music and decorate the tree together as a family.  It is one of the only times that Eliana is allowed to eat anywhere outside the kitchen.  That fact by itself makes it a special tradition!

This tradition is even extra special this year because one of Eliana's favorite Christmas decorations is Christmas trees.  We have several throughout our house - most are fake, but this one is real and we had so much fun decorating it and watching the magic of Christmas build in Eliana's eyes!

We kept the food simple:

Toasted Coconut Chicken with a Sweet Chili Sauce
Turkey Brie and Apricot Flatbread
Goat Cheese Pinwheels with Carrots and Zucchini
Grapes

Wine and Milk (Milk for Eliana)

Eliana excited about getting to eat in the living room!

The best part was watching Eliana and Jonathan decorate the tree together.

We don't have a perfect tree.  And we definitely do not decorate it perfectly.  We haphazardly place ornaments on branches and the main things we look for when we hang an ornament is: 1. Will it stay on the branch? 2. Will it pull the branch down too far?  If it passes those two questions/pieces of criteria then it stays where it was put.