Make It Monday: Cardboard Tube Pumpkins

These sweet little pumpkins are simple and inexpensive to make. A great fall craft for preschoolers.

What you'll need:

Makes two pumpkins

Empty toilet paper roll

Scissors

Hole punch

Orange paint

Paint brush

Green pipe cleaner

Directions:

Step 1. Cut the toilet paper roll into 6 equal rounds. Punch one hole in each round. Paint the rounds orange and allow to dry completely.

Step 2. Cut the pipe cleaner into two 2" pieces (stems) and two 3" pieces (leaves). Curl the end of each 2" piece up like a snail (See picture above).

Step 3. Insert 2 cardboard rounds into one other one so the punched holes line up. Insert one 2" curled pipe cleaner through the holes from the inside out, forming the stem (See picture above).

Step 4. Wrap one 3" length of pipe cleaner around the stem to form two leaves. Repeat steps 3 & 4 with the remaining cardboard rounds and pipe cleaner pieces.

 

These can be displayed in a vase as a fun table centrepiece or strung up as festive garland on a mantle or in a window.

Happy Monday!

Willow's First Birthday

This post has been a long time coming. We celebrated Willow's first birthday a month ago and I'm just now finding the time to sort through photos and share the fun on my blog. This is likely going to be a common occurrence now that I'm back to work full time.

The Invitation

A black and white photo with simple circles was the design for the invitations this go round. I'd say my self taught Photoshop skills were a success on this one. Although I created the invitation on my own, I can't fully take credit for the design. I found inspiration by sifting through invitations on Shutterfly. But I will take a great deal of credit for birthing the adorable little girl on the card.

The Cupcake Cake

The cake recipe I used is quite possibly my all time favourite. It is the White Almond Wedding Cake found on Allrecipes.com. I added a few drops of red food colouring to make the cake batter pink and baked it in the form of mini-cupcakes and a few regular sized cupcakes.

I find it easiest to a make a cupcake cake by first figuring out the layout before icing the cupcakes. It took me a few tries to figure out how to make a bunch of mini-cupcakes look like the number one, but I eventually succeeded.

Here is my personal icing recipe:

Almond Buttercream Icing

1 cup butter, softened

1 tsp almond extract

3 cups confectioners' sugar

1 1/2 tbsp milk

Cream together the butter and almond extract. Add the confectioners' sugar and beat well. Add the milk, mix until light a fluffy. Add food colouring as desired.

And voila, a sweet cupcake cake for Willow's first birthday.

Yummy!