Cadillac

So for valentines day I decided to make Corey something I knew he would like and use. He loves his car... a Cadi... and he is always leaving his uniforms all over the house. So to kill two birds with one stone I made him a wooden plaque and attached two hooks on it so he can hang his uniforms from it. Sorry if the pictures are blurry I took them when I still had an iPhone4 :( have no fear though I use a Galaxy S3 now so they won't look like this ever again I hope.

So as I stated before I am a dispatcher. Between calls on my night shift I spent time practicing how to draw the Cadillac symbol.

I then practiced on the actual wood and used some crayons for color. I even drew where I wanted the hooks to go. To transfer the image I drew I placed my paper over the wood where I wanted it to be and pressed down hard over all my lines. I leaves an indentation in the wood so all you have to do is trace the lines with a paint brush.

So here is how far i got. I started with the black and then the grey.

I used painters tape to make the edges perfect. I also used the sharpie paint markers at first. NOTE TO ANYONE DOING THIS DON'T USE THE PAINT MARKERS!!! They bled out everywhere and it was such a hassle to try and fix. I ended up going to Michaels and just buying the regular wood paint and redoing it all.

This is almost finished!

I bought stencil letters at michaels and added his last name at the top to make it more personalized.

All colored in

This is the finished product! I hand painted in the dark grey accent leafs that cadillac has. We went to lowes the day I gave it to him and I had him pick out the hooks he wanted on it and we mounted it to our wall :) He uses this everyday and now I don't have to keep picking up his uniforms and he doesn't have to wonder where he last put them.

Movie weekend

So Corey and I spent the weekend watching movies on demand. I want to share my thoughts on these movies to either convince you to watch them yourself or help you avoid the suffering I withstood.

The Prestige

A movie about two dueling magicians who once worked together. 1 magician (Hugh Jackman) had his wife killed in an accident while performing some magic trick where she was tied up under water. The other magician (Christian Bale) is the one who tied the ropes so naturally Hugh Jackman spends the whole movie trying to kill Christian Bale or ruin his tricks. There is a twist ending and the whole movie you are trying to figure out how they do these tricks. Short of it all WATCH THIS MOVIE. I wasn't a believer and didn't really want to watch it but Corey talked me into it because he has seen it before and I am happy we watched it.

Lawless

This movie I thought was going to be your typical boy movie (since those are the types of movies Corey likes). But let me just say that this is probably one of my favorite movies ever. Shia LeBeouf is a whiny annoying kid the entire time but other than that it is amazing. The story is about a family of moonshiners during the prohibition trying to make their living while the 'law' is trying to stop them. The oldest brother played by Tom Hardy is a man of few words yet he is such a family man. The middle brother played by Jason Clarke is the enforcer of the family who basically kicks anyones but who hurts or upsets his family. There are two love stories in this that aren't prominent but they do play a part. Mostly the entire movie I was on the edge of my seat cheering for the bad guys. And working in law enforcement it is very odd for me to do that. This is 1 movie you should watch on a date night.

Zero Dark Thirty

After reading about my friends and co-workers seeing this and talking about how good it was a truly looked forward to watching it. If it wasn't for the fact that this is all based on real events and having all lived it we know what happens, I wouldn't have been able to follow the movie. I spent a lot of the movie asking Corey, 'What did they just say?'. I mean I know it is a movie that is pro america and all that but it was confusing. The one good thing about it was that hottie Jason Clarke (middle brother from lawless) was in it.= with Jessica Chastain (the waitress from lawless). This is a movie that made me really appreciate living in America because I couldn't imagine living the way people do in other countries. This movie is take it or leave it for me. It was free on demand and it was a date night for us so I don't mind having watched it but I don't feel I took out of it what my friends who have seen it took from it.

Sooo thats my reviews of the movies we watched this past weekend. If you feel differently about any of them that ok we are all different people and will view things differently. This is just my interpretation on the movies.

Safari Cake

This was my first attempt at using Fondant and I decided to make it as well. So a little back story. It is my amazing boyfriend Corey's sisters Sweet Sixteen and we were throwing her a surprise party. We were in charge of a safari cake with a blue to match her streamers. The picture below is Corey rolling out the fondant. For the cakes I just used box cake because we had to make 3 separate cakes and I made them all double layered. It helps to make these a day early, ice them, and then place them in the fridge to set.

Fondant is 1 package of mini marshmallows + a ton of powdered sugar. I have a fondant mat i purchased from Walmart for $10. I suggest you invest in one if you plan on doing fondant cakes because it made my life so easy. Take about 3/4 of your powdered sugar and make a volcano like mound with a large hole in the middle. Mini marshmallows are microwaved for 30 seconds at a time stirring every 30 seconds until it is creamy. This is when you add the food coloring. I made several batches on fondant so what ever color you want add how ever many drops you need, and stir!!! Now for the very hot and sticky part. You can choose to use Crisco on your hands and the mat to help with the sticking but honestly it still sticks to you. i just used it mostly on my spatula. So you keep folding in the powdered sugar into the marshmallow until it basically becomes like play-d'oh. That's when the handsome helpful boy friend comes into play with the fondant mat.

Now my 2nd layer cake was 9" So all he had to do was roll the fondant out to the marker on my mat but really you just want the fondant as thin as possible so you can do without the measurements. I then laid the mat over my cake. I peeled the mat off and smoothed down my fondant starting from the middle of the cake and going in a circular motion toward the edge. Don't force the fondant it will go itself. I watched about 25 videos on this before I attempted it, and since i don't do video posts I highly recommend you do the same. So once my fondant got toward the bottom you just cut along the edge of the cake and push it in toward the cake to give it a finish.

As you can see her name is Kemlyn. I made some black fondant, rolled out and used cookie cutters to spell out her name. Add a little water to the back and they stick right onto the other fondant.

Layer 1 was Zebra. This is a 12" cake triple layered. I rolled out the black fondant and used a pizza roller to cut thick squiggly lines. You don't want them to go all the way to the center because it will make the middle layer cake uneven.

As I placed on the middle layer i cut the excess of the zebra stripe off to make it seem like it goes right into the cake.

Top layer was giraffe! Corey was not home at this point so I had to do the picture taking by myself so not many shots of this. Basically it is yellow fondant with brown fondant cut into odd shapes and placed all around.

I used a black icing piper to add some finishing touches around the layers.

Here it is with the candles!

And the proud big brother and the birthday girl with the cake!

Halloween jar crafts

These are my finished product based on a pinterest find, mason jar Halloween decorations. I plan on making these to give out to family and friends with a battery powered tea light in them :)

These are the products I used. Acrylic Gloss paint in Green, Pumpkin, and Black. Make sure to read the labels that they are OK for glass. I used a white Sharpie paint marker. Halloween Googly Eyes. Martha Stewart Halloween Stencils. Elmer's Glue. 1 Neuman's Alfredo Sauce jar and 1 Classico Pasta Sauce jar.

This is the back of my pumpkin jar.

Now directions. I cleaned my jars out and let them sit outside for a few days just to make sure they were extra dry. So for the Frankenstein Jar i took my green paint and squeezed a decent amount into the bottom of the jar. Slowly turn the jar on its side and twist it to spread out the paint evenly. Start from the bottom and go up. Once you are about 1/2 inch from the grooves place your jar upside down on a piece of paper. Move it every so often so paint doesn't build up. For visual instructions just YouTube 'how to paint a mason jar'. honestly, that's how i figured it out...

So, once my paint was dry for Frankenstein I used a thin paint brush and dipped it in my black paint so I could give him a face. I painted on the hair later to cover up the sell by date. Once the black paint is dry use the Elmer glue and attach mismatched googly eyes so he looks put together.

For the pumpkin / trick or treat jar I just painted the inside pumpkin following my Frankenstein directions. After it was dry and all dripped out I taped the two stencils from the Martha Stewart Stencil set to the jar. I used the white sharpie paint pen and out lined/filled in the stencil. The paint pen worked wayyy better than a paint brush which i attempted on a different jar that didn't make it to this blog post based on it's poor quality. I do not blame the stencils or my painting abilities. The stencils are for flat surfaces and use of a sponge or rolling pin. Sharpie Paint Pens are your friend when it comes to these.

Honestly this was insanely cheap. No need to go buy mason jars when you can just slowly collect your pasta sauce jars and reuse them at no cost. The paint I found at Michaels Craft Store for .99 along with the stencils and googly eyes. I spent less than $15 total there and still have a good amount of paint. The stencils are reusable! Also I have figured out this paint peels off of glass so I am going to experiment painting some decorations on my windows with a sponge in a small area. If it comes up easy I will do a post on that as well. No more buying those sticky window clings that never last.

Update! These are a few more jars i made. These jars i bought from walmart :)

Imade