Basketball Cake

My daughter has been making cakes and cupcakes to raise $ for Girl's Camp.  She made this one for a neighbor's son.  Her fondant skills are improving-watch out Food Network!

She used her Cricut Cake. The net is from Everyday Paper Dolls and the letters are from George and Basic shapes. We originally made lines in the little orange balls but I thought they looked like pumpkins.  Even worse- my boys thought they looked like "booties" and couldn't stop laughing.  To play it safe we smoothed out the lines.

Check out our other culinary adventures.
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YW Manual 3 Lessons 16 and 17

I am blessed to teach 14-15 year-old girls each Sunday at church.  We are combining lessons 16 and 17.  I will be sticking pretty close to the manual. I like the question section of lesson 17 and we will go through each question.

To begin the lesson, I am going to tell them about a group of girls that one night all divided up into cars and decided to go to the temple.  Instead of using maps or directions, they would simply flip a coin at each intersection.  (post here).  I will stress the importance of not leaving our temple preparation up to chance.  I'm also sure that many in the car knew the way, and knew that the coin was telling them to go the wrong way.  In the same manner, it is important for all of us to follow the teachings and commandments of the gospel.

 For my handout, I took a picture of the temple from LDS.org.  Using Picasa (it's free) I wrote "Wish you were here."  I am going to mount each picture on card stock to make postcards.  Then I will have each girl write a postcard to her future self.

Here's an example of the Salt Lake and San Antonio temples.

Click here to see other YW lesson ideas.

To learn more about temples click here.

Installing a Drip Line

I have never grown a garden.  Honestly, because we move so often, I don't even have house plants.  A few weeks ago, my daughter and I planted a vegetable garden.  We haven't grown any food yet, but nothing has died yet either. 

Initially, I thought it would be pretty easy.  Former owners had already put in garden boxes and we have a sprinkler system.  My yard has 7 sprinkler stations.  5 in the front yard and 2 in the backyard.   I can't really afford to water an area that large everyday-nor do I have time to hand water every morning while trying to get everyone off to school/ work.  Then, b/c we're in a drought (Our governor has even called on a state-wide prayers for rain and we're praying), we are only allowed to use sprinklers once a week. I needed a solution to my water problem.

I know that drip-lines are the best way to water your garden, but that sounded really expensive and technically difficult.  I've got to tell you that starting this blog has been good for me.  It has really given me confidence to try new things (like wearing hot pink).  I figured, if it was a dismal failure, maybe I could at least get a funny post out of it. 

I went to my local hardware store a bought this kit.  Here's my review:
It came w/ an instructional DVD that I'm sure is fabulous, but I knew I wouldn't have the patience to sit through it.  It also came w/ a booklet w/ step-by-step instructions and colored photographs with each step. Fabulous!  Really easy to follow. I think all instructions should have a colored photograph for each step.

 My biggest problem that I was installing it AFTER, I had planted my garden.  I had to move some plants around so they would line up w/ the holes a little better.  The other challenge was that the tubing comes rolled up and it didn't want to lay flat.  I would bury sections under the dirt and it's fine now.  My only complaint is that I wish it would have come w/ more support stakes.  You can buy them separately, I just haven't made it back to the store.

Overall, I think it's a great systemand  for around $60 I think it will pay for itself. I think if you installed it before you planted your garden, it would only take around 30 minutes.

Here's my garden.  The drip line is brown, so it doesn't really show up.  Click on the pick to see it larger.

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Bloomin T-shirt

I think that I may have created a monster. My daughter is wanting to wear some sort of new jewelry or shirt EVERY day. Last Sunday morning, she needed something to wear to church (besides the 1/2 dozen or so skirts I've either just sewn or re-done), She brought me this plain green t-shirt. We messed around with ribbon and came up w/ this. There's no tutorial. I sewed the white ribbon on w/ my machine. I didn't sew the "leaf" part, so it would stick out. Then I just kept folding and sewing on the blue ribbon to make flowers and top the daisy flower off w/ a button. The tulip looking flowers, I just folded to make look like tulips and then sewed them on by hand.

  It took less then 15 minutes. What do you think?  It even matches her room.

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Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Did you notice the new look of my blog?  I spent a few hours yesterday making it pretty.

My daughter turned 13 and we celebrated all weekend long. For her actually birthday, I made her these.  I thought that they were a little more sophisticated than your average cupcake.  Now that she's a teenager, I've got to do more than sprinkles.

For the Batter:

Preheat oven to 350.

The juice and zest of 1 large lemon

3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg

1 package yellow cake with pudding in the mix

1 1 /4 cup water

1/3 cup oil

Mix all the ingredients and pour into 24 lined cupcake pan.  Bake for 18 minutes.  Remove and let them cool for 20 minutes. 

For Filling:

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/3 cup lemon juice

Place mixture into a pastry bag and squeeze about a Tb. of filling into each cupcake.

Meringue:

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

3 egg whites

1/3 cup sugar

Beat cream of tartar and egg whites for about 45 seconds.  Start adding sugar 1 Tb at a time, until it forms stiff peaks.  Spoon onto cupcakes and bake @ 45o for 5-6 minutes or until the meringue is golden brown. 

They were yummy served warmed and also great the next day after being in the fridge (although the meringue wasn't as pretty)

Linking up here.

Check out what else we ate that weekend.

I made a button!

<center><a href=" http://trophyw.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src=" http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h480/trophyw/feature.jpg"/></a></center>
I'm feeling very smart right now-I made a button for my blog!  I followed Debbiedoos instructions here.  It took me about an hour-but I could do another one in under 5 minutes.  I think I may do some more stuff to spruce up the blog.

Do you like the dark or the light better? UPDATE:  I wasn't completely happy w/ the first buttons.  I thought they were hard to read.  I started the ones in my sidebar in "Paint" and then followed the rest of the directions.

Gross-grain ribbon flower

This is very simmilar to the flower I made here. I used 1 inch wide ribbon.  I cut 9 stips,  each 2 1/2 inches long.  I sealed the ends by hoding them close to a candle flame (don't burn your house down).

Then I folded the ends towards the middle.

Then I hot glued them to a felt circle.

Finallly you can complete your flower with a button, a rosette, or another flower made with thinner ribbon.

Linking up here.
Check out my other fashion fun here.