BOO! Two white cakes decorated simply. This was by far the easiest party cake I’ve ever made!
It’s almost time to celebrate Fred taking another turn around the sun (2 years flew by!), so I thought I’d share his adorable little birthday party from last year. We have a lot of friends with birthdays in October, so we decided to celebrate his a little late each year closer to Halloween to free up earlier weekends for other parties. I’m sure someday he’ll insist on having a non-Halloween themed party closer to the actual date of his birth, but until he has an opinion about it, we’re leaning way in! Who doesn’t love a costume party anyway?! Here’s the round-up from his last party and I’m sure I’ll be repeating a lot of it this year because it was so stinking cute! 
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I used to love making little Valentines for my classmates and I distinctly remember refusing to hand out store-bought ones several times. My mom probably just didn’t want to spend money on all of the supplies I needed to make them (and who could blame her), but denying an art-loving child their opportunity to make something is a pointless battle! Since I became a parent, I have tried to teach George, and someday Fred as well, that handmade gifts, handwritten cards or even just proper Thank You notes are important and valued. What better way to show you care about someone than giving them something that took some thought or time? That being said, asking a toddler with little to no fine motor skills to make something for Valentine’s Day is obviously not realistic. Last year, I figured out something that we could make together for his classmates and he loved it! 
Whoa…I’ve been away for a bit! The holidays are the busiest time of year for my work, so it’s hard to take the time to blog about everything I’m doing and during that time my studio fell into a complete state of disrepair. It was finally time to deal with my work space and I’m so happy with the results! This project was a long time coming and there were a lot of things to consider before diving in. 
While I’m more than willing to spend a lot of time and effort decorating my house for Christmas, for some reason I just can’t get it together for Halloween even though I love a good haunted house. Usually we just throw a few pumpkins on the porch and then process them after the holiday for pies and soup, but this year I thought I’d try something a little more fun…as long as it was still easy, cheap and fast! I bought a fairly ugly gigantic spider on Amazon and then basically just made it look a little better with glue and paint. I love the ridiculous scale of it on the house! After we hung it, we realized it needed a little something more, so we grabbed some cobwebs from the drugstore and abracadabra, our house is home to pretty creepy monster spider! 
When we closed escrow on our rental house, I wanted to make changes in each room to make it more “ours” without a lot of fuss or money. Our bathroom was redone cheaply in the early 90’s and it is definitely on the top of our list for a major makeover, but we aren’t ready for that kind of expense quite yet, especially with a $10,000 fence somewhere on the horizon. I decided to give it a quick makeover to tide us over until we could redo the whole thing with new flooring, tile, sinks and hardware. 
I adore a simple, crunchy, lightly sweet slice and bake butter cookie. They are lovely rolled in colored sugar, chopped nuts or coconut. For a quick Valentine’s Day treat, I rolled my cookie dough log in homemade colored sugar and shaped it into a heart when it was partially chilled. Once it was completely firm, I just sliced it, revealing darling heart cookies with a red sugar edge. Super simple and a gorgeous little gift! Recipe after the jump. 
There’s just something about homemade tomato soup in the winter (yes, even in LA) that warms me to my toes. I was never a fan of the canned stuff growing up, but real tomato soup is the perfect accompaniment to almost anything. When my friend served us this family recipe one night last year, I was blown away by how perfect it was and I’ve been making it two to three times a month since that dinner! Her recipe is a little creamy, a little tangy and a little spicy. It also freezes well which has been a lifesaver during busy months. I recommend pairing it with a grilled pimento cheese sandwich or sweet corn muffins! 
I’ve never used my mom’s ceramic cookie stamps and I’ve been dying to for years. I decided to make sugar cookies for my son’s therapy school teachers and thought the stamps would be perfect for banging out a large quantity of simple but gorgeous cookies. At the last second, I thought it might be pretty to dry brush some gel food coloring over the larger designs and they turned out great! These only took about 2 hours total to make, so they are perfect for a last-minute gift or for making in large quantities. 
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