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Friday, December 25, 2015

DIY No Bake Fruit Cake

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Hi there. Holiday greetings to you. Are you running short of time to bake a cake or looking for a healthy alternative? How about a no bake fruit cake for this Christmas or New Year? Let me show you how simple it is to make a gorgeous looking fruit cake in no time.

Ingredients:
  • Watermelon (I used small )
  • Cantaloupe (I used small)
  • Strawberries
  • Blueberries
  • Sliced almonds
  • Homemade icing or Store bought icing (I bought fresh vanilla whipped icing from bakery section in my grocery store)

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Cut two 1.5 inch thick whole slices of watermelon and one 1.5 inch thick cantaloupe across middle part of fruits. Remove the outer skin and middle seeds part for cantaloupe. Shape them into circles using a plate or bowl as template.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Place the round slice of watermelon on your cake stand or plate, layer it with icing and top with a layer of cantaloupe slice. I filled middle hollow part of cantaloupe with berries. Add one more layer of icing and top it with another watermelon layer.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Here is how your fruit arrangement looks like.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Cover the fruits all around with icing like you usually do for a cake. Its not necessary to have a perfect smooth looking icing. We are going to cover it all.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Covering your cake with sliced almonds is the fun part. All you have to do is take a hand full of sliced almonds, keep your hand at 6 inches distance from cake and throw the almond slices aiming at your cake sides. Almond slices will stick the icing. Repeat this procedure until you cover all around the cake with your almonds. Clear away any of the almonds that fall around the cake. 

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Arrange some blueberries around the bottom of your cake.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Slice the strawberries thin and group them according to size. Placing even sized pieces along a row makes the cake look more professional. We will start with bigger pieces for outer circle and lower the size as we go inside to the middle. You will see what I mean.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Take bigger size pieces of cut strawberries and arrange around outer circle of your cake top as shown.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Take next size group of strawberry pieces and arrange second circle just overlapping the outer circle a little as shown in above picture.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Similarly fill in a third circle of strawberry pieces.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Top the center with a cute little strawberry.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Tada!!! There it is. A stunning arrangement of fruits or a no bake fruit cake as I call it. Don't worry if your watermelon oozes out a little water but make sure you finish the cake as soon as possible. (As we added icing to the fruit it is not good to keep it or refrigerate it for long.) Make it fresh and eat fresh.

DIY easy and quick no bake fruit cake. A healthy alternative. Holiday Recipes.

Hope you enjoyed my post. I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thank you for stopping by. I love to hear your comments.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

DIY Birthday Party Backdrop, Decor and More


DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Hi friends, this post is all about sharing with you how we (myself, birthday boy's parents and aunt) managed to DIY entire birthday party decor including all the knick knacks.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

To see how I made this Colorful Bunting Birthday Banner check out my previous post here.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Coming to the backdrop, we got 2 white vinyl table covers and 4 blue plastic table covers from party city. We gathered 2 of the blue plastic covers in drapery style for the top border. We just stapled the plastic cloth after gathering it together and taped it around to be sure. Above picture shows how we did it before hand at home to save some time at venue.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

For rest of the backdrop we just ironed white vinyl table covers we got to make wrinkles less obvious (always use a cloth on top of vinyl cover before you iron) and for the sides we just dropped blue plastic covers on either ends. Using table covers instead of fabric for backdrop makes it possible to achieve the looks way under budget.
Those cute little monkeys, lions and giraffes you see here and there are from fun to be one boy set from party city. However you could always print them at home or a print store.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Isn't that chocolate wrapper cute??? It screams cuteness to me and they are personalized with birthday boy's name :) We designed this chocolate wrapper from scratch using picmonkey.com . I am not paid to say this but I just love picmonkey for making it so easy to design amazing printables.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

After designing we printed them at a office print press on to magazine style glossy paper. Once printed we cut them to size and stuck them using double side tape at the back where two ends overlap a little. By the way they are regular Hershey's chocolates behind the wrapper.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Here is one more simple DIY Cupcake Stand using dollar store plastic bowls and plates. We got 3 of those bowls for a dollar and the plates for dollar each at a local dollar tree. With just a little hot glue gun magic we joined bottom of the bowl to center bottom of plate and Tada! cupcake stand is all ready.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Here are the pictures of cupcake stands in action. We arranged them on either side of the birthday cake.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Yes! We made those Thank you tags too, without any fancy cutting machines. We designed the tag using picmonkey.com, printed onto thick glossy sheet at a office print press and then we hand cut each of the tags using a pair of scissors. It was little tedious to cut those fancy edges but the end result was well worth it.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

We put together little bags of sweet treats and topped with a Thank you tag for everyone who attended the party.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Basket of sweet treats and little fun goodies for kids at the party.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Last but not least we also made a photo booth out of plastic table covers from dollar tree. I made a banner saying "Photo Booth" the similar way that I made Bunting Birthday Banner. Photo booth is always a fun option for both kids and adults.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

My friend (Birthday boy's mom, Shriranjini) ordered few of the props on etsy.com and we got those colorful garlands from dollar tree. We made "Grab a prop and strike a pose" poster using picmonkey.com, printed and put it into a dollar tree acrylic photo frame.

DIY Birthday party backdrop on budget. DIY colorful birthday banner. DIY personalized chocolate wrapper. DIY Cupcake stand. DIY photo booth. DIY return gift tags.

Here is a close up picture of cute and delicious cake, just for you. I hope you enjoy this post as much as we enjoyed the party.
Thank you for stopping by. I love hearing your comments. Have a great day :)

Saturday, October 3, 2015

DIY Colorful Bunting Birthday Banner


Hello friends here is one more DIY Birthday party Decor as I promised. Making this banner is really simple and fun. I made this for a little hero, Saketh's first birthday party. 

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

All you need for making this banner are a whole lot of colorful scrapbook papers, bunting banner template, scissors, glue stick, pencil, doilies, alphabet stickers, hole punch and a thread. Let's get to the fun part. Will tell you details about products I used as we go.

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Google search for a bunting banner template image and you will find plenty. Pick whichever you like and print it on to a card stock paper. Cut out the template using a pair of scissors. (You could even draw your own template, its pretty simple and self explanatory.)

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Start tracing your template outline on to backside of your colorful card stock papers. (I just showed tracing on front side of card stock to make it clear for you that I am tracing on color card stock and not a white sheet)

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Cut out all the traced colorful flags.

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

 I am using Wilton 4 inch dessert doilies and glitter letter stickers. ( You can use whichever pattern you like instead of doilies or even leave them blank and just stick letters)


DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Stick doilies to all your color flags using glue stick.

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Now is the fun part. You just gotto play with arranging color flags in which ever order you like and stick letters to the flags. I really got to the point of breaking my head with arranging a perfect order of colors to make it look good. But frankly it doesn't matter, the final banner is still going to look pretty with random colors. 

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Here is my banner coming together. "HAPPY"

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

"BIRTHDAY"

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

"SAKETH". 

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Punch holes at upper corners. 

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Tie the alphabet flags together using a thread and making sure you keep alphabets in correct order. Often when you punch holes at corners and try to tie them together with a thread, the paper will be ripped in the process of tightening the knot. Here is a little trick I invented. Get the thread through the holes, place a pen (or anything similar) and knot the thread tight. Once you are done knotting, remove the pen. Try it! 
Finish knotting all the flags together. And that's it! It's that simple to make handmade birthday decor.

DIY Birthday Decor. DIY Colorful Bunting Banner.

Here is a picture from the birthday party. More DIY posts from this party to follow. Hope you like this simple and fun DIY Birthday Banner. Thanks for stopping by. I love hearing your comments. Have a happy weekend :) 

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

DIY Butterfly Themed Birthday Party

I love everything about birthday parties. All the fun, Joy and Happiness. After all its one of the ways way to celebrate life and thank almighty for greatest blessings. This story is about 1st Birthday party celebration of my friend's pretty baby girl. My friend and I did little internet search for themes and she fell in love with butterfly theme. We stuck to 3 colors white, green and pink shades, so that we don't make it very busy for eyes. Here is how party decor turned out. And I am telling you it was way under our estimated budget ;)

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

         The venue was their apartment community hall. We weren't allowed to make any big changes to the hall or stick anything to walls. So we went ahead and used existing curtain rod to hold our background which is white tulle fabric (tulle fabric roll ordered on amazon).

          Happy Birthday banner, table cover, cupcake stand, helium balloons, cups, plates and kids blow out play treats were all from dollar store. Isn't it awesome??? They were all butterfly themed too. We saw kind of similar ones in party city and they were way too expensive compared to dollar store. I am a great fan of dollar store when it comes to single use items.
 
DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

Cut and fold decorative tissue papers into fans. Join two fans together to form a circle. Mix and match to suit your taste.

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget
Letters for banner and thank you tags designed using picmonkey.

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

We designed little girl's name banner using pic monkey and few color tissue papers as shown in above pictures. I love using pic monkey for the fact that its way simple for everybody to use and many features of it are free.

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

We planned to cut several butterflies out of card stock and stick randomly on background. Luckily I came across this butterfly die cut sheet at Michaels, its white with pretty pink glitter on it. We just had to cut individual butterflies out of die cut sheet and already done with 20 pretty butterflies!

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

Then we cut few butterflies out of card stock as planned. For an easy cut, fold card stock into half, trace one half of butterfly (1 wing and half body) on to it such that body part falls across folded edge of card stock and cut both the folded sides together along traced edge. When you unfold you have a completely symmetric butterfly. (I hope you got it. Let me know in the comments if its unclear to you. Will be happy to help.)

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

Tada! Yummy butterfly cupcakes with edible candy butterflies. Yes! I made them and its very easy to make. You can check my post on edible chocolate decor for details on how to melt candy.

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

As shown in edible chocolate decor post, melt and trace butterflies on parchment paper sheets. To make the butterfly wings stay up in V shape, fold a card stock paper into V shape as shown in the picture and carefully place traced chocolate butterflies into V shaped paper fold. Make sure the center body of butterfly falls in the center of paper fold. Now freeze the chocolate butterflies until they are set.
Once the cupcakes are frosted with your favorite frosting, (I made simple butter cream frosting) add the butterflies on frosting and you are done!

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

My friend picked this cutest two tier butterfly cake from local bakery. God!! isn't that cute?? Tasted yummy too!

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

These gorgeous butterflies are hand painted by my friend on a little canvas, personalized with birthday girl's name and date on the back to give as return gifts for the ladies who attended the party. Aren't those beautiful? She is one amazing artist I know.
Ofcourse kids got toys as return gifts.

DIY Butterfly birthday party on budget

So that's how our party went. Hope you enjoyed the party. Here is a pink and lavender banner circle template in case you want to make your own birthday banner too. By the way all the opinions stated are my own and I am not paid for any of it. Thank you for fluttering by. Have a good day :)

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan

Hi friends, its been long since I wrote. I am back with Rakhi, right on time for coming up Raksha Bandhan. For my friends outside India, Raksha Bandhan is a festival that celebrates love and affection between brothers and sisters. On the day of Raksha Bandhan sister ties a Rakhi on brother's wrist as a symbol of love, Sisters pray for their brother's well being and brothers take a vow to protect their sisters. So here is the Rakhi I made for my brother.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

 I am sharing the procedure of how I made it, in case you love to make one for your brother. After all what's more special than anything handmade? 

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

Grab yarn or embroidery floss of your color choice. You can use just a single color too. Go by your style. Here I picked red, green and gold colors for Indian elegance :)

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

I tried an 8 strand fish tail braid for my rakhi and that is what is shown in above picture. Its very easy for beginners. (If you are familiar with any other braids you can definitely go ahead with those too.) 
1. Use tape and arrange 8 strands in a row. 
2,3,4,5. Grab the left most, right most threads and braid in the middle every time. That is move left most thread to center right and right most thread to center left.
6. Tighten the braid as you move and keep repeating.
Its quite easy to do than see. Trust me, once you get a hang of it you can finish it pretty fast.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.


Your braid will eventually look like this. Once you reach sufficient length for your rakhi stop braiding and finish with a knot (general overhand knot). Remove the tape, used to stick the other end and finish it with a knot too.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

Use super glue to secure the knot and trim extra threads. I left 4 threads out of 8 on either side.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.
Draw and cut a circle piece out of felt cloth.
Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.


Grab few rhinestones, beads and glue to embellish the felt circle.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

Use a toothpick for precised glue application. I added a thin bead lace around the circle.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

Get creative and embellish the circle piece to your liking.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

Add little glue to center of the braid and stick the embellished circle piece. Cut and attach a smaller felt circle piece to its back so that it feels comfortable against wrist for when you tie rakhi.

Make a Rakhi for Raksha Bandhan. Gift for brother.

That's it! Tie handmade lovely rakhi to your brother and celebrate Raksha Bandhan. If you live far from your brother like me, then send him your handmade Rakhi and it will surely brighten his day. Atleast I hope so :)

Once again Happy Raksha Bandhan to you. Thank you for stopping by. Celebrate your day :)

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Let's make Car Candy!!!

I have few posts that I wanted to write for almost 5 months now and never got around. Most of those are related to birthday parties. I decided to write them along with my on going craft posts. So you can expect quite a few party decorations and treats in my upcoming posts.
Coming to this post. I made this Car candy for a little boy who loves cars. Don't you think its the best birthday treat for a kiddo? Ding!! Only if the boy also likes candy. Anyways, I tried using this Wilton candy mold for the first time and found its pretty easy and fun to do with kids too. It would make an awesome treat for a Car themed birthday party or little boy's summer play party. Don't you think so?


I am very excited to share with you how easy it is to make these sophisticated cars. Laughing at my own joke right now!


Gather the supplies:

  • Wilton Race Car Pretzel Mold
  • Candy melts in colors you like
  • Lollipop sticks or pretzel sticks
  • Parchment triangles or Parchment paper roll
  • Few microwave safe bowls to melt candy

Procedure for Car Candy:

  • Colored Car candy has to be built layer by layer using one color at a time. You need to start coloring the front details of car first and then move on to building car's body. 
  • Take one color of candy at a time, pop in microwave safe bowl, melt the candy as per instructions and put the melted candy into parchment cone. (Here is a detailed video tutorial that helped me make my parchment cones.) 
  • Using parchment cone, gently squeeze the candy into mold. Its pretty much like how we colored a coloring page in childhood. You can completely get creative and pick which color goes where to make your car look really cool. 
  • Once you are done with one color partially freeze the candy and then move on to next color. This way the colors of candy won't mix and the outcome will be as you desire.
Here is how I built my Colorful Cars:


I took black color melted candy into parchment cone and squeezed candy on to car tires and wind shield frames in the molds. I kept the mold in refrigerator and partially froze candy in mold for around 15 mins.


Next, I took white melted candy in parchment cone and started filling the mold (i.e., took out from refrigerator) wherever I wanted white on my car fronts. Then I repeated freezing candy in the mold.


I repeated same procedure of melting, sqeezing and freezing the candy with blue color candy. 


Once I am done coloring car design details, I placed a lollipop stick into each car mold, went ahead and squeezed a lot of candy into each mold to fill car body. I did each car in different color. Tip: Once you fill entire mold, tap the mold slightly on a flat surface (using vertical movement) to get rid of any air gaps and squeezed candy  patterns. Also, this gives a flat surface for your car back. Then, I froze my candy for few hours to make them solid.

Simple version: If you are running out of time to use different colors just squeeze single color of melted candy and pop a lollipop stick into each mold. Slightly tap the mold few times to get rid of air gaps. Freeze it for few hours. The car candies will still look good in shape and kids will still enjoy eating them.


After freezing for few hours, car candies popped out very easily by lifting with their attached lollipop sticks.
VROOM VROOM!!! The race cars are almost ready for a race. Using knife cut any candy tail edges that are formed at rear end of your cars and you are done.


I used a small carton box covered with scrapbook paper and drilled holes into it to serve as candy holder. I also printed out name of the birthday boy and stuck on it for a touch of personalization. I made 2 batches of these car candies and I really liked how they turned out. Sorry, I couldn't take nice pictures, as I was running late for the party.

Let me know what you think of this car candy treat. Isn't it pretty easy to make with kids? I love hearing to your comments. Thank you for stopping by. Have a great day.