Diaper Cake

Dave's mom called me up a few weeks ago and asked me if I knew of a good idea for a centerpiece for a baby shower she was throwing.

"DIAPER CAKE!" I shouted into the phone. Because I love them. About two years ago, I threw my friend a baby shower and made my first diaper cake then. The picture I have of it isn't that great.

(To see the details of the rest of the shower, look HERE on our family blog.)

I've improved my technique a bit since then and Dave's mom Becky and I had fun putting it together on her dining room table. While we worked, Grandpa taught Annalise how to garden.

(In the end he said she did very well, except that she didn't quite understand the concept of leaving the flowers IN the ground after they were planted there, and also apparently thought it might be helpful to stomp on them after the planting was through to make sure they were really securely nailed down.)

Inside the house, Becky had assembled the list of dollar-store goods I'd suggested. The shower was for boy/girl twins (like Dave and his sis!) so the colors were pink and blue.

We used an entire jumbo box of Costco's smallest-sized diapers- all 216 of them. We started rolling,

and put a tiny rubber band around each to hold them together. It didn't matter that all they had were black rubber bands (or that the diapers weren't the right colors) because they got covered up later.

For the base, we tied six rolled diapers in a circle with curling ribbon. Then we added another layer of rolled diapers around that and tied it again. We did that a bunch of times until we had a huge circle.

We made the smaller layers the same way and plopped them on top.

We wrapped wide blue and pink sheer ribbon around the outside of the layers (NOT-sheer would have been better but the dollar store only has what it has!) and used the crinkly paper to look like frosting. Becky had only bought one bag of it though and it wasn't enough because we wound up making the cake so big, so we made do with putting plain white paper through the paper shredder and it worked great! We did that with some pink crepe paper too, arranged the baby blocks, and put some cute stuffed animals on top. Yay!

The little hugging bunny and monkey were so sweet. :)

I heard it was quite a hit! To transport it, they slid it onto some sturdy cardboard and carefully drove it away. :)

A Homemade Toddler Gift

In late May, I had not done or thought about any crafts in months. Dave's mom's birthday was approaching though and for the first time in what felt like forever, my nausea, fatigue, and general weariness and misery gave way to a tiny crumb of crafty interest. Annalise had never done a craft before but I thought perhaps it was worth attempting. I baked some sugar cookies and made some icing in colors that wouldn't look bad if combined and set up a little cookie station for her.

She had never used a paintbrush before and became very grumpy when I tried to guide her hand. So we stared at her would-be project for a few minutes and I thought perhaps she would reject the whole idea. But then she picked up a brush and started off tentatively.

After a tiny swipe she took a cookie break.

Newly replenished, she forged on with gusto.

The final product:

And what is a birthday without a bouquet of flowers? My original idea was to trace Annalise's hands a bunch of times on a paper, have her color them, and then cut them out to make a bouquet of handprint flowers. Unfortunately she screeched and resisted so intensely upon the first tracing attempt that we settled for one handprint flower and several others that didn't require tracing or in any other way bothering her highly headstrong self.

I stabbed pipe cleaners through her flowers, tied them together and paired them with the cookies and her homemade card. Her first little art project was a success! Grandma loved it. :)

I'm Alive!

I haven't checked the blog or my emails from it in five months. I owe millions of people responses and answers and replies. I am getting to them now! :) I have some crafts to share. I am excited to make a comeback!