Mary Rose Cake Tutorial

Last Saturday was a national holiday, so our American friend hosted a Thanksgiving party. I offered to do the cakes. For the adults I made the very indulgent Bailey's Salted Chocolate Pie of course we didn't want the kids digging into that, so for them, I made the Mary Rose.

We had a round sponge cake that my husband had bought home from work (his company makes cake mixing machines and he often comes home with cake on testing days!) plus a couple of Castella cakes. You could easily use this to make a pirate ship for a pirate party. It was easy to put together…

Start with a round cake and 2 blocks of sponge and a jar of jam to use as glue…

Place one of the blocks on top of the circular cake then cut it so it is as wide as the block of cake…

Take one of the off cuts and place it at the front - and after repeat for the front with the other piece…

Cut it again so the back is the same width too…now do the front end…

Now to build it up, one block will go on the back. The front cut 1/3 from the end. Use some jam to stick everything together, adding some jam to the bottom of the ship will also stop it from sliding around. Once all the sponge is cut, simply build it up…

It should look something like this…

Then all you need to do is cover it with your preferred frosting, this could have done with a bit more smoothing over but I was short of time. The sails were simple, cut some printer paper and thread them onto bamboo sticks, I used a bit of masking tape to hold them in place.

Of course, if you were going for the whole pirate theme you would want to add some mini figures and the such like, my distraction technique worked, the kids were happily distracted by ship cake and the adults got to over indulge! Win-Win!

How To Turn Your Pinterest Board Into A PDF

This is a neat little trick and is super quick and easy. Maybe you want to print the PDF out so you can discuss colour options with your house decorator or maybe you want to share the board with a number of friends and family to decide on your holiday plans. I am sure there are many uses, especially if you don't have an ipad or laptop and taking the computer with you is not a viable option.

If you share the PDF digitally, the links should still be clickable so the person receiving it can then click through to your board from the PDF.

If you are a Pinterest user, please pin this :)

Don't want to miss any other great tips, tricks and fab ideas. Then sign up for the Fanzine - It's free and do not panic, I will never sell or pass on your email address.

How to make a font from your own handwriting....

1. Hop over to FontPanda, click through to 'make a font'. Then you need to decide if you want a free font or to pay for one. If you make a free font then FontPanda reserve the right to offer your font for free on their website. If you want to keep the font for yourself (which I would recommend for your hand writing) then there is a small payment.

2. Download the font sheets and fill them in then you have to scan them and send them to FontPanda. 

3. A couple of days later you will get your font emailed to you, if you are not happy with it they will make alterations for you. All you have to do then is install your font*, which is just a matter of clicks and then off you go...

*To install a font on a Mac OSX...

Download the font

Double click on the file ( it should be a .tff file)

A new window will open, click 'Install Font'

Done! 

For other computers you can read how to do it here.

How To Make Pop Up Christmas cards - tutorial

We made our cards on one of the days Ebi-kun was off from school sick. It is really easy to do and quite impressive when you are finished.

What you need:

Card ( we used some that we had marbled earlier in the week)

Scissors

Glue

Pens/Crayons and white card for your pop up image

1. Take a piece of card.

2. Fold it in half, so that the crease in the picture below is at the top of the card.

3. You don't need to really draw these lines but for the sake of the tutorial, draw two lines, about 2cm long and the same distance apart.

4. Cut along the lines and push the piece inwards.

5. When you open up the card, you will have a little pop up area as shown below.

6. This bit is important, you need to measure the distance from top of the pop up section to the top of the card, this is the maximum height of your pop up image. We placed a piece of card as shown below and cut it to size and then Ebi-kun used the card to make the pop up image.

When you have drawn your image, cut it out and stick it with glue to the front on the pop up box section.

That's it, you are done. You can cut more than one pop up section and make them different sizes for more of a 3D effect. 

We got quite busy and made a big pile of cards, all different of course. If you make some, let me know how they turn out!

How to make simple felt bowls

These little felt bowls are super easy to make and would make a great little starter projects for kids. They look so pretty stacked together or can be used for trinkets. Those with little ones, kids LOVE sorting so these make perfect sorting bowls too.

What you need:

8 pins

needle and thread to match the colour of the felt

Felt circle

The circle can be any size, you can use a cup or plate as a template to draw round. If you want to make large bowls then I recommend using thicker felt to make it a bit studier.

Fold the felt in half and put a pin in the half way point on both sides, then fold it again the other way so you have pins effectively at North, East, South, West.

Now fold it again so the north pin touches the east pin and add another pin to the centre of the fold, continue until you have pins placed equally around the edge.

Fold your felt together and make a few stitches a few mm from the pin, you can get fancy here and add beads or contorting thread.

Take out the pin and it should look like this. Continue all the way around until you have sewn each marked spot.

Taa-daa, finished! Seriously, how easy was that?

 Now get a different colour of felt and start again, by starting with felt circles staggered in size by 1-2cm you can make nestled bowls...

Fun! What would you use yours for?

And if you are looking for more great sewing projects, take a look here!

How To Make Halloween Scratch Cards

I posted the tutorial for these over on My Organized Chaos, it is easier for me to post anything that involves downloads over there :o)

Halloween Fun - Inflatable Bin Bag Ghosts...

We have our Halloween party at the weekend and I wanted to test this out beforehand, so I made one for the boys to try out yesterday. 

This is really simple to make. Lay two bin bags out flat on the floor, tuck the opening of one bag into the other. Tape the edges using gaffer/duck tape, make sure all the edges are sealed so the air can't escape.

Draw on your spooky face using permanent marker. 

Cut a small hole at the bottom end of the ghost, it needs to be big enough to put the mouth of your hair-dryer in. Turn the hair-dryer on (use the cool setting) and fill up the bag. Once it is fully inflated, remove the hair-dryer and twist the corner, secure with a bit more tape. Done.

Take it outside and listen for the squeals of delight from the crazy kids in the street! I am hoping to set up some kind of course that the kids have to take their ghost through or have some kind of team race for the party.

The boys did eventually burst poor ghosty! But it was a quick and cheap way to entertain them for a while and of course it helps me retain my reputation as the crazy gaijin on the street! I'm sure with different coloured bags you could make no end of cute inflatables.

If you liked this post please pin it or share it or even both, thank you.

I have put together my favourite Fun & Fast Ghoulish Halloween Treats into an ebook so you can whip them up at anytime (why just serve ghoulish food at Halloween?)

17 absolutely disgustingly delicious treat ideas... 

All fast and fun to make

All pretty healthy, made from kitchen basics

Most of them suitable to make with the kids too

PLUS a bonus labels pack too!

The Fingers Get A Make-Over

Today's post is over on the other blog! An oldie but a goodie, the severed fingers have been given a make-over! Click on the badge for the full post - yum!

Olympic Hoopla

This was a quick and easy craft to do. First we took 5 paper plates, I cut out the middles then Ebi-kun painted them the colour of the the Olympic rings. Whilst they were drying we found 3 empty PET bottles and filled them with water and paint, they were supposed to be bronze, silver and gold!

Once they were dry it was time for the newest Olympic sport, hoopla......

How to use bathroom supplies to entertain the kids

I really have to thank the commenter who left a link for making these, I can't find the comment now! If it was you please shout up!

The video we watched made a more complicated version using battery packs and soldering, this is my simplified version of it.

What you need:

A nail brush

Cheap electric toothbrush

tape

pliers/scissors

optional- pens and paper

First take the head off the toothbrush.

Next, use the pliers to pull the bristles out of the top of the nail brush, we tried cutting them first then realised that they would pull out. It is quite hard so you might end up doing it rather than your child.

Next is where your experimentation starts, I would explain to the kids that they need to try placing the toothbrush on differ parts of the brush because depending on where it sits will effect it's performance. We used masking tape to hold it in place until we found the 'sweet spot' and then we secured it better with duct tape.

So have fun playing around with the placement, we found that sometimes it would just go round in circles and other times it was really slow and the we found the position to make it go faster. There are a couple of little video clips below since photos don't really explain it well. We also tried taping  a pen to the brush and later in the day Ebi-kun made a maze with his books, this kept him quiet for ages! As the whizzer hits the book, most of the time it changes direction, occasionally it did get stuck.

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How to plan a Star Wars party part 2

Oh course you can't have a Star Wars party without light sabers. I had seen several posts using pool noodles and that is what I had plan to do.... except, there were no pool noodles to be had! I dragged my poor suffering husband all round the home centre looking for something suitable.

First I spotted some foam that is for covering water pipes but it was white and we actually picked it up and was one the way to pay for it when I spotted the green foam. Again this is supposed to be used to cover some kind of piping but double pipes. No problem, I just spilt it down the middle and cut it to size roughly 80cm each.

I used duck tape to make the handle and then smaller pieces of duck tape to make the 'buttons'. I really recommend using duct tape over other types of tape because it is super sticky and with stand up to a lot of beating. The padawan at the party took their light sabers in the pool and they held up fine. 

The other great thing is that they are actually quite soft so there is less chance of injury or kids hurting one another with them. I highly recommend that you make enough for each child and their dad!

bubble snakes....

I have seen this on several blogs and popping up all over Pinterest and so I'm not sure who started the craze so giving credit is difficult but a big thank you to whoever it was. 

This is incredibly easy to make. Cut the bottom off a PET bottle then either pull a sock or cut a piece of sock to cover the bottom, and hold it in place with tape. To make the snakes use washing up liquid and a bit of water in a bowl, dip in the blower and blow... and then collapse into a fit of giggles, M-chan looks like she is going to pee herself!

The kids played with this for well over an hour and would have played longer if they had more time. We also ended up with several other kids from the street wanting to have a go. Baby T-kun and baby M-chan loved just playing with the bubbles, it was a bit windy so they were blowing all over the place too adding to the excitement.

So if your kids say that dreaded 'I'm bored', first get them to do some cleaning... I find that usually fixes the problem! and then make them some snake blowers.

I should say that we did try with coloured bubble solution too but it ended up staining the kids T-shirts so I don't recommend it and really, they were having so much fun they didn't need the added colour.

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make them fall in love.. pt III blogging series

So, ready for part III? If you have missed the start of this series, here are parts I and part II. Today we will tackle writing and reading, let's get cracking...

Let's start with the writing...

• Obviously, what you write about is an important part of your blog post and writing isn't as easy as it sounds, but with time you will discover your own style and your voice. Whatever you write about do it because you are passionate about it, it will show in your writing.
• Write quality posts, ones that will be interesting or useful to your readers. I am rarely stuck for something to write about, my secret... I keep a notebook with possible blog post topics, they might be those 'in the bath genius ideas' to answers to questions from readers or something that I have suddenly discovered and can't wait to share.
• Before you hit publish, spell and grammar check at least once.
• If you only have time, say once a week, to write your blog posts then make good use of the schedule function, write three or four posts then schedule them to publish over the course of the week, your digest readers will love you for it. This may backfire if you have scheduled happy posts about rainbows then you have an almighty earthquake and a full on national disaster - I am hoping that won't happen again.
• Another time to use the schedule function is when you know you are going to be away for any length of time.
• Also use the draft function, sometimes you get half way through a post and it just doesn't feel right. Don't delete and don't publish it, keep it as a draft and go back to it in a few days time. Looking at it with fresh eyes will really help you decide exactly what to do with it.

Now, I want you to make life easier for your reader...

• If you use a sidebar, keep it neat and tidy.
• If you have badges or banners, keep them all the same size, it looks much neater.
• Keep moving, flashy, blink things to a minimum, it is really distracting if you are trying to read and half a dozen flashy things are going off at you.
• Make it easy for a reader to contact you, having your email address above the fold or on your 'about' page or better still both. If you don't want your email address out there then set one up specifically for your blog or public use. I have several email accounts but they all get forwarded to one, one of the reasons I love gmail is because this is so easy to set up.
• Make sure you have a search box, so many times I revisit a blog looking for something specific but there is no search and I have no joy with labels or tags, I end up giving up.
• Tags and labels, I discovered recently that with blogger you can pick which tags to use as labels, so when I tag my posts I use as many as possible to help when someone does a search but I have a limit of 15 labels that are in my sidebar. I tried to get it down to 10 but I blog about such a wide variety of subjects, it wasn't going to happen.
• Social media - this blogging thing is all about sharing and creating a community and as social media has taken off in an insane way in the last couple of years you need to have those social media share buttons available.
• Make it easy to subscribe to your RSS feed or email list, not everyone actually clicks over to your blog to read it, I read most of mine in google reader, I know some of my readers are reading this through Facebook *wave* and I know other prefer to get it delivered to their inbox.

Finally, this weeks big NO-NO is...

Music. Never Ever have a widget set to auto play music on your blog, you will scare readers away in their droves. Think of your readers, I am a punk chick myself but I appreciate that it is not every ones cup of tea and not only that I know that, there is probably a mom or two reading this whilst their little one is down for  a nap and I am pretty sure they would be using some not-so-nice words if they clicked through to my blog and got blasted with some Rancid which woke sleeping baby and spoilt mama's quiet time.

I like to listen to music or a podcast as I am reading blogs, I don't need no Celine Dion upsetting my vibe! And of course, there are those who are surfing the web when they should be working, you don't want them getting in trouble with their manager do you?

So, what I want to know today is...What is your number one pet peeve when you go to a blog, please share below, I am sure there is something I haven't mentioned! 

If you are enjoying the series then please share with your friends and why not hop onto the mailing list while you are at it.

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