Bless Your Nest! - Bird's Nest Necklace Tutorial

So I decided to make a bird's nest necklace...because I saw it on Pinterest.

"diy {bird nest necklace}" - Original pin from Sarah Ortega.

It seems like my friends are in the baby-having stage of life these days.  Which is a fabulous stage, if you ask me! 

There are babies everywhere!  Have you noticed?  I hadn't.  Until I had one of my own.  And now I see those little angels all around.  I guess its like when you get a new car and then everyone on the road is suddenly driving the exact one you have.  

Please tell me this happens to you too.

Anyway, a precious friend had just told me she was expecting miracle number two. Then I had a lengthy discussion with another dear friend who is contemplating having a baby (translate: I am begging her to have a baby-she will be an amazing mother!).  

Then I saw these adorable little bird's nests and I had to make them.  Like yesterday.  Because they are such a sweet way to represent your little family and keep them close to your heart.  

And seriously, I went to Michael's the same day and bought the wire and beads.  Couldn't wait to make this!

Here's what you'll need:

Beads of your choosing (seed pearls for me) and some jewelery wire (I bought 18 gauge silver wire-a mistake).  And you'll need a pair of needle nose pliers.  I forgot to put them in the pics!

Ok so I think I've mentioned I have a little problem with lazy.  I see these little gems on Pinterest and in my haste to make them myself, I often neglect to read the instructions.   As in I never read the instructions.  Which is why I bought 18 gauge wire instead of 24 gauge, which Sarah recommends.  

That means I couldn't get the wire to thread through the beads (the smaller the gauge the thicker the wire)!  When will I learn?  Probably never.

So what to do...

Improvise!  The beads came on a thin plastic string.  I just used it to tie three beads together.  If you buy the correct size wire, you can just thread the beads that way. 

I just knotted the string around the beads.  

Next I wove the wire between the beads.  Be sure to cross the beads on one side only.  This will be the unattractive back side of the necklace.  You don't want wire all over the front.  It should look like little eggs in a nest, not a mine field.

Once you have the wire through the beads, start to wrap the wire in a circle around the bead cluster.  You can make your nest as thick as you want.  Once you have the desired thickness, you can wrap the wire around the nest for added detail.  Like so:

Attach a jump ring before you twist the wire closed in the back.  Or you can just twist your wire in such a way so that you make your own jump ring (this is the part that the chain will go through).  

One mistake I made that really bugged me when I gave this to my friend was that I made the jump ring so that it would lie flat against the chest.  It should be perpendicular to the chest so that the necklace will lie flat. 

Also, my wire was ridiculously thick!!  I couldn't get it to bend properly in places.  This was super annoying.  Buy the proper gauge, people!

I am really loving Sarah's blog, by the way!  She is super crafty and she gives really thorough tutorials.  She even sells some items in her Etsy shop, Poppy & Pine.  

She is out of these lovely necklaces at the moment, but no worries.  You can make your own!!  

This project gets a big A+!  It cost less than $5 for the wire and beads and I have plenty left over to make several more necklaces.  This was so much fun for me.  I feel like these are going to be the next big jewelery craze.  

Better get busy ladies!

Personalized Letter From A Disney Princess

So I decided to write a letter to Tiana of The Princess and the Frog...because I saw it on Pinterest.

"Write a Letter to Your Favorite Disney Character and Get an Autographed Picture in Return"-This pin originally came from Couponing to Disney.

(This post originally began in Novemeber.)

Miss Precocious is obsessed with The Princess and the Frog!  Obsessed!

Except it sounds more like "The Friendses and Frog" when she is demanding to watch it.  And I will surely miss it when it comes out sounding right...

Anyway, I saw this pin that says you will receive an autographed picture of your favorite Disney character if you send them a letter to this address:

Walt Disney World Communications
P.O. Box 10040
Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040

Or, if you'd prefer, you can receive a black and white photo if you write to your chosen character at this address:

Walt Disney Company
Attn: Fan Mail Department
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521

The black and white photos take longer to receive and if I'm being honest, patience is not really on my list of virtues.  So our letter is definitely going to Florida.

I used one of the homemade envelopes from an earlier post.  LOVE these!  And they are totally fit for a princess.

 

Our letter was simple: 

 

"Dear Princess Tiana, 

I love you and I can't wait until I am big enough to come visit you.  Until then, could you please send a picture?

Love,

Miss P"

And because most of you don't know me and you can't actually picture me doing this, I will tell you that I literally ran alongside the mailman's truck trying to give him this letter.  And it was hysterical (not for me, but for anyone who might have been peeking out their window).

I had just missed getting it in our box but he was still on my street.  Yet somehow he didn't see me running along side him.  Or my fat dog. Or my hysterically laughing toddler.  Imagine that!  (Told you he hates me!)

Since he 'didn't see me' and the letter didn't get mailed today (Thursday) it will go out on Saturday because tomorrow is Veteran's day and the mail won't run.  Now I'm getting annoyed that he didn't see me because that letter is going to sit in our mailbox for two days...  OK so mailed on the 12th of November.  And...

Did we receive a response from Tiana?

Yes!  Today is 12/19 so just about 5 weeks later we received a lovely postcard.

Signed by ALL of the Disney Princesses!  Miss P was beside herself with joy when we got the mail today!  (It's the little things.)

What a fun way to surprise your little one!   And it will only cost you $0.45.  Can't beat that!

Thanks Pinterest!

Mickey & Minnie Mouse Cupcakes

So I decided to make Mickey and Minnie Mouse cupcakes...because I saw it on Pinterest.

The original pin is just a picture in cyberspace found at this link.  The link looks sort of shady...and all you will find there is the exact picture I posted.  Maybe don't click it?

Computer-virus-paranoia be gone.

Ok.  Aren't those cupcakes adorable?  Miss P is a huge fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (and the hot dog dance)!  So when I saw these cupcakes, I knew I had to make them for her.  Or with her, as it turned out.

Let's get started. 

This is what you will need:

Cake mix (and everything needed for that), Mini Oreos, Oreos, two sticks of butter, 7-8 cups powdered sugar (2lbs), and some milk. 

Oh and a sweet little pair of hands, eager for an opportunity to help (or sneak frosting).

You could just use tub frosting...but buttercream is tres delicious.  

And I guess the kind of liner you use is up to you, but I really wanted to be authentic Mickey/Minnie Mouse, so I bought red and white polka dot liners.  You can find them here on Amazon for $3.94 with free shipping. There are 50 in a pack and they held their color really well during baking.  

While I mixed the cake, my sous chef lined the cupcake pans...

Look at that little hand!!!  Love.

While the cupcakes were baking, we started working on the buttercream.  I don't strictly follow any particular recipe.  I always start with two sticks of butter and the rest varies each time depending on what the bc looks like in the bowl.  

If you want to make some delicious buttercream, start by cutting up two sticks of butter (I do this with butter straight from the fridge):

Hahahahaha!  Can you tell I had some help here?

Add about 1/3 cup of milk and 1 cup of powdered sugar.  Start the mixer on low.  Then gradually add in more and more powdered sugar and milk (no more than another 1/3 cup of milk) until you reach a smooth but sturdy consistency.  

The buttercream will taste better if you have some sweet little hands directing the stand mixer.  Trust me.

If you are frosting a cake you will want the bc to be more firm, but if you are piping cupcakes it needs to be a little less firm. 

I used almost all of the 2lb bag of sugar.  There is probably about 1 cup left so I that means I used about 7 cups. 

Now that's a lot of sugar!

I don't know about you, but these look perfect to me.  Just cake...

Miss P and I are a perfect team.  She only likes the frosting and I only like the cake.  

Even though I don't care about eating the buttercream, I do love to decorate with it!

I used my favorite Wilton 1M tip.  Pretty swirls of yummy goodness:

So perfect.

This was the point in the project where I wished there had been an actual site linked to the original pin.  Because I had no idea how to make bows for the Minnie cupcakes.  

I just winged it (where did that saying even come from?)...

I thought I would tint some candy melts red and pipe them into the shape of a bow.  

Have you ever worked with candy melts?  They don't like to be tinted.  I think the only reason it worked for me this time is because I used a gel color and not a liquid.  And I only used a very tiny amount.  You can't add liquid to candy melts because it will turn them into a clump of shame. 

Another thing I don't like about candy melts is that they harden back up extremely fast.  Like literally by the time I had transferred them from the bowl I melted them in to the bottle, they were too cool to pipe.  That's why I keep this handy:

That's a mug full of steamy hot water.  

I piped some bows onto a sheet of wax paper and let them dry for about 10 minutes.  

Meanwhile, I assembled the mice.  And I figured out that they play much nicer if you only use one side of the Oreo.  The cookies were a little too bulky for the cupcake when they were whole.

Also, OCD induced tantrums can be avoided if you make sure your 'OREO' imprints are all facing the same way.

Not that I had to redo any...

Hi there, Minnie!  What a lovely bow you have!

You're lonely?

How about a friend?

Don't they look happy together?

You can literally see how fast those sweet hands removed the bow! 

"Nom, nom, nom..."

This project was easy peasy and made my little one super happy.  I only wish I could have done a better job on the bows!  If I did this for a birthday party, I would definitely try to order candy bows from somewhere because piping them out of candy melts was not the way to go.  Overall, a solid B+.  Can you really go wrong with cupcakes?