Twilight Party

One of the students I work with in the afterschool program is moving out of state with her family and today was her last day.  As much as I try not to have “favorites,” there are always students that you connect with more than others; she is definitely one of those students.  At the beginning of the year, she started reading the Twilight series and after discovering that I am a huge Twilight fan, started waiting for me every day outside the afterschool program homework room to discuss what she had just read and to gush over the dreamy Edward Cullen.  She is well-behaved, polite, hard working and just genuinely a good kid. We were all sad to learn that her family was relocating to Oregon (although it does make her one state closer to Forks).  The other afterschool program staff members and I decided that a Twilight themed going away party was absolutely necessary.

I knew I had to make vampire cupcakes.  Since it was a bit of an experiment, I felt it was necessary to document my work. 

Step 1: I melted Wilton Candy Melts and poured the melted candy into a Ziploc plastic bag. I then trimmed off a very, very small amount off of one of the corners, making it into a makeshift pastry bag.

Step 2: I found clipart of vampire fangs and transformed it into a template for the candy pieces.  I placed the template under a sheet of parchment and piped the melted candy on the parchment.  I did all the white fangs first and then, when they were cooled, made the lips.

Step 3: I made red velvet cupcakes and cream cheese buttercream icing.  I then rolled the edges of the cupcakes in black sprinkles.  I topped the cupcakes off with the cooled, candy fangs and a little “blood” (red gel icing).

I can definitely think of ways to improve them next time, but I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

It was nice of Robert Pattinson to make an appearance.  The girls (ok me too) went crazy over him!

We ate cupcakes, took pictures, watched New Moon and had a great time but our party had a sad ending.  Our student is gone…  She will be greatly missed but I am confident that she will succeed at her new school and in the future.

In happier news….SPRING BREAK!!!   WOO!!!  I am off for 10 days! Maybe now I can tackle some of the overdue items on my wedding to-do list….

I am a huge nerd…

It has recently come to my attention that I am a huge nerd.  I submit the following evidence to support my case.

Exhibit A:  My mother (and Lisa Kudrow’s new show Who Do You Think You Are?) recently introduced me to ancestry.com and I am so hooked!  I have been up until 1am the last few nights researching my ancestors.  It is like an amazing scavenger hunt through historical documents.  At work I dream about going home to my computer and continuing the quest.  So far, I have been able to trace one line of my family back 9 generations to a John O’Daniel born in 1718.

Exhibit B: I was very excited to receive my my census form.  I have been looking forward to it for months!  This is the first time I will be completing my own form.  I became even more enthusiastic about it after I began searching through hundreds of years of census projects for my new hobby (see Exhibit A).

Exhibit C: I saw the glass below and I LOVED it.  I want a whole collection of them. Even Ethan thought it was nerdy and he wears a Star Wars watch with lightsaber hands. 

FABRIC!

My table runner fabric is finally in and I have one runner completed (kind of)!

This is definitely a victory.  I have been looking for fabric for months and was starting to feel a little defeated.  I had been primarily looking at online fabric sites but wasn’t finding any good deals.  I was convinced that I could do better in the garment district in L.A.  I dragooned my mom, step-dad, fiance and friend into accompanying my on my quest.  After an hour or two I started to realize that they all had a pretty similar selection– mostly jerseys, silks, wools but no cotton prints.  Finally, I found this great Michael Miller print at the Michael Levine store, but it was $10 a yard!  I didn’t want to pay that much but really liked the fabric.  Being the disciplined, budget shopper that I am, I went home empty handed.  However, a week later I found the same fabric on sale for $6 a yard at Fabric.com AND when you buy more than $35 worth of fabric they give you FREE SHIPPING.  To say that I was excited is an understatement.  I love getting things on sale.

I have already cut the fabric and sewn one of the runners. Unfortunately, I got the wrong color thread and have to rip the stitches out and re-do it (I blame it on the terrible fluorescent lighting at the fabric store).  It’s not a huge inconvenience, but they are each 90″ x 15″ so that is a substantial perimeter to re-hem.

This might be a good way to get my mom involved in wedding projects, but only because I don’t want her to feel left out.  I know, I am such a considerate daughter.