Wonderful Wall Art

What could be better than letting your child decorate their own room? How about doing a family art project together so everyone can decorate! That's what we did this weekend. A few days ago I found a post on HowAboutOrange about wall art and thought that it would be a fun thing that we all could do together. So we all went to the craft store and found the foam core, for the boys I had them do theirs on the thinner kind and me and Greg chose the 1/2", it's around $5-$6 for a sheet of the thicker kind and about $3 for the thinner kind. Not to bad considering that they are fairly large pieces of board. Then we all went down to the scrap booking isle. In the turtorial it said to use decorative paper and where better to find pretty paper then in the scrap booking isle? I let the boys each pick 3 diff sheets and me and Greg got some as well. Then after we all made of our mind on what we wanted we went in search of paint for the sides. You can buy little bottles of acrylic paint for about $1.50 each in many many diff colors. The boys each got one color that would go well and I got 2 diff ones, Greg shared a basic black with Zack. The only thing left was the spray adhezive and x-acto knife. We finally got all we needed and left the store with our bounty.


I traced the largest piece of paper on the board for the boys and told them that they can draw a shap in the middle and then another one, I also showed them online where the idea came from so they had something to reference. Zack drew a curvey square and triangle and circles, Johnathan wanted something more even, so we went with the basic picture frame style with a few rectangles and solid squares.


For Zacks it was easier to cut the shape out first and then spray it and stick the paper to it and cut off the extra, for Johnathan I stuck the paper first and then cut out the frames. I did mine similar to Johnathan's and Greg used 3 solid rectangles for his. After everything was cut out and the paper was glued down, I painted the edges and that was it.


It is a really simple project and the pieces can be moved around and rearranged when ever the mood strikes.
This is Zack's, he chose a orange and black flame paper, solid orange paper, and a shiney metallic silver paper with the edges painted black.
This is Johnathan's, he chose hot pink paper (yes, he really did choose pink, if you ask him it's his favorite color) and then a pink and cream flower design paper.
This is Greg's, he used a solid brown, and then the other 2 that look like vintage ink block prints and layered them on top of each other. It looks really good in person. I love the black and white designs.
And this is mine. I did mine is a dark green, a light moss water color type of paper, a green and cream fern leaf paper and a cream water color paper.

This was such a good project and I think that I will be using this idea in the future many times. There is so many different possibilites.

Adventure with cupcake pops

On Saturday our laptop finally went all the way down the crapper and we went out and got ourselves a new fancy desktop. Not to shabby, more than I wanted to pay but beggars can't be choosers, right? The boys and Greg are happy with it, so by extension I am too.

I also made my little cupcake pops that I saw on HowAboutOrange. It went well, altho I didn't realize how long the process actually takes, so I didn't make a whole bunch, but I did freeze the rest of my cake mixture (I have had good results with freezing batter before). Here is the first pic of the mixture and the few balls I rolled, I also out some in a shallow dish so I could use some cookie cutters.

After they sat in the freezer for a bit I used a small candy mold that is shaped for peanut butter cups and filled about half way with melted chocolate and put a small cake ball in the middle, I also cut some flowers and leaves out of the shallow dish. I put sticks in the flowers and put them back in the freezer (it was really hot this week and everything was melting just being on the counter, so most of the stuff sat in the freezer when it wasn't being used right away) after the mold had it's chocolate and smalls cake balls :) in it I put it back in the freezer. I heated up some diff colors of candy melts and go my sprinkles out.

I dipped the flowers in either pink or purple candy and the leaves in green. They needed to be held up in the fridge so they can harden again but since I forgot to get some Styrofoam at the craft store and it was way to hot to keep leaving I came up with a brilliant idea!!

I used a strainer to stick the sticks in. I worked really great! for the cake balls in the molds, I took them out and stuck a stick in them and dipped the tops in white candy melts then added sprinkles or whatever. I was rather happy with the way they came out. I was gonna do a bunch more but everything was melting so quick from the heat I was covered in cake and melted chocolate just from the ones I did. But all in all it turned out great, and I am totally gonna do the rest of them. Here is the finished result with little bags and a ribbon.

And yes they are being help captive in my freezer until they meet their demise on Monday when I take them to work.

Well I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!!

What is a "Koekje Mom"? Well . . .

Hey!! it looks like you (my delightful readers) have landed in quite a nice little spot (my blog). Let me start first by saying welcome and I hope you enjoy!!
A little about me: I am a mother of 2 very strong minded/willed/smelling boys, ages almost 8 (Zack) and 9 1/2 (Johnathan), and I am a girlfriend to my very wonderful better half (Greg).
What is “Koekje” you ask? Very good question. It is the Dutch word for ‘cookie’, or ‘little cake’ it’s pretty much the closest thing to ‘cupcake’ that I could find. I wanted something unique and since I an 90% Dutch with a sprinkle of Scottish I figured it would be a great way to be slightly in touch with my roots not to mention I think it just looks pretty cool. It is pronounced cook-yay, but there could be better way to explain how it sounds and I am all ears if someone has a suggestion.
I decided it was time to start writing about some of the things that I have created, would like to create, things that helped sort out my busy life, family stories, and who knows what else. Since I am trying to start a small cupcake/other random baked things shop I might as well start here and share stuff along the way. So here I am.
I hope to write tomorrow about what foodie thing I may attempt and hopefully post some pics of the outcome.

Thank you all for stopping by and have a wonderful day.