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Make Mint Julep Gelato for the Derby!

For the Kentucky Derby, you need Mint Juleps, right? Well for the Derby, or any time, this is a fabulous ice cream recipe for those Summer (or almost summer) days…

This gelato was inspired by our neighbors, Sara & Paul, and their wonderful mint juleps that they make for the Derby.  Their recipe is a little nontraditional, as it calls for lemon, but I like their version even better than then typical Mint Julep drink.

Gelato is healthier than ice cream because it has less fat in it, and it’s texture is just wonderful.  And while I don’t have a real gelato maker, I fake it by using my Kitchen Aid’s ice cream freezer attachment, and using the lowest speed.   (And if you like this, check out my Southern Iced Tea ice cream over on Foodwhirl, it uses a similar process.)

The instructions below take three days, but you can cheat and start today on this, to  have it ready for tomorrow.  Just skip to Day 2, and add your lemon/mint after you add your milk.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups milk (I used 2%)
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • ~3/4 c mint sprigs, loosely packed
  • 1 to 2 oz bourbon
  • 1 teas vanilla extract
  • zest of 1 lemon

Method

I took many of these instructions from the Ice Tea Gelato recipe, so refer to that more instructions, and more photos of the actual freezing process.

Day 1: Infuse the milk with mint & lemon zest

(Photos 1, 2, 3) Zest 1 lemon. Crush your mint leaves in your hands to release the flavors, and place all  in large glass jar with 2 cups milk.  Let sit overnight.

If you’re using an ice cream maker that requires freezing the bowl (like my Kitchen Aid) don’t forget to freeze your bowl.

Day 2: Make  your custard:

(4) Strain milk to remove mint /lemon (put the lemon/mint back in the jar and stick it in the fridge for later use).

(6) Combine egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and beat thoroughly with a whisk until lightened in color and smooth.

Heat milk and cream on stovetop until bubbles are just forming around the of your pot.  (7) Slowly add the hot milk mixture, a little bit at a time, continuing to stir.  When the all the milk has been added and the mixture is combined, return to the pot.  Cook over medium heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees, or had thickened enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon – note, for this recipe, mine never gets that thick, so don’t worry too much about it.

(8) Remove from heat, and place custard in an ice bath to chill.

(9) Return the mint and lemon to the mixture, and add your vanilla and bourbon.  Refrigerate overnight.

Day 3:  Make Gelato!

Strain your custard, and place in your ice cream maker (assuming your don’t actually own a gelato maker, of course).  Use the lowest speed possible–gelato ideally should be made at a lower speed, incorporating less air than icecream, to achieve it’s texture.   Freeze until a soft serve consistency is reached. (similar photos here.)

Either serve immediately soft-serve  if you like, or freeze for several hours to a more solid consistency.

(10) Garnish with a sprig of mint, and offer your guests a little extra bourbon for the top if they so desire!

Published on: May 4, 2012

The Shrinky Dink Test Lab


Shrinkies!Armed with a bunch of old #6 plastic to-go containers, the Dabbled Lab performs a series of experiments on techniques, and you’ll see the successes, the failures, and the “hmmm, what if I tried this instead”s.

Just like the shrinky dinks you played with as a kid, but cheap and good for the earth!

Check it out!

How to make a (paper) graduation cap!

Want a cute graduation mortar board cheap and easy for grad parties or kid fun?  Here ya go!

The Boy graduated from Pre-K the other day, and they made these cute graduation caps for them.  So I reverse engineered it (and improved upon it) to make it into a tutorial for you guys!

These mortar board caps are made from poster board and foam core… easy and fun to celebrate a graduation milestone.

Needed:

  • Black foam core board – about 12 in square.
  • Black poster board (cut to 22 in wide x 6 in tall)
  • Gold fringe and gold floss (60 inches)
  • 1 gold colored brad
  • Staples & glue

Hat:

From your strip of black poster board, measure down 2.5 inches, and fold. Then and cut 6-8 slits straight down to to the fold from one side.  (See photo – note, photo shows an example using paper, not posterboard.) [Click the photos to see larger]

Pull poster board into a circle (see first photo below.)  Measure against your child’s head if handy to determine size.  (Although overlapping the edges by about an inch seamed to be about the right size)

Staple hat together into appropriate size. (See second photo below).

Center on the square of foam core, and glue down.

Tassel

Take 48-60 inches of gold floss, and double, and double again, so you have 4 strands.  Knot each end.

You  have two options here.  Either use a 4 inch piece of gold trim, as shown here, or just make a tassel using gold floss.

Fringe version: roll up a length of fringe, then tie with the end of a of your floss.

Putting it together

Use the pointy end of the brad to make a small hole in the center of your foam core.  Use a toothpick to press the knot in one end of your floss through the hole.  Position the tassel string so that 1 inch or so of the string falls down over the side of the hat.  Inside the hat, knot the tassel string if necessary to secure.  Stick your brad through the hole in the top of the hat to secure the string as well.

You may trim off the excess floss from the inside of the hat if desired.

Whether your child is flesh and blood or robotic, Enjoy!

Hope you find this useful!

Tutorial: How to Make the Doctor Who Dalek Cake

Dalek Cake

As promised yesterday, here are more details on the Doctor Who Dalek Cake.  You know I’m a big believer in showing you that YOU can make a really cool cake, and I do one every year for the Boy’s birthday.  Past years: Angry Birds cupcakesDragon Cake,  Perry the Platypus Cake, and Clone Trooper cupcakes.  So, today I’ve promised some of the details of how to make this cake yourself.  Tomorrow I’ll try to get up some of the decor, and a wrap up :)

For my geek friends, these Daleks are based on the New Dalek Paradigm from the 2010 Matt Smith episode, where the Doctor threatens the Daleks with a Jammie Dodger as a weapon, which is a favorite episode of my Birthday Boy.  Mostly because the bright colors make them much more fun on a cake, and they worked well with my design plans.  It’s amazing how many variations of Daleks you can find out on the web!

By the way, these techniques can be used to make any kind of Robot like cake, not just Dr. Who themed Daleks :).

This cake is really make in two parts.  The Daleks on top are ‘toppers’  and they are put on the cake at the end of the process.  They aren’t made out of cake, but
they are (almost) completely edible and tasty.  This makes everything much
simpler, as you don’t need to be able to store a really tall cake like this, and you don’t have to worry about it getting messed up before presentation.  I created the base and the toppers separately, and just assembled it the morning of the party.

So what are the Daleks made out of?  Well, the main body is an ice cream cone, the head/neck is chocolate, and it’s decorated in candy and fondant.  Neat huh?

Here are some action shots!

So, first we’ll talk supplies, then  how to construct your Dalek body, then how to decorate it, and then I’ll go into the cake base.  So let’s begin!

The Dalek Cake Toppers: Ingredients/Supplies

Makes 4 Daleks.

What you’ll need:

  • Cake Ice cream Cones (like these).  I used the Publix brand, the ‘jumbo’ size which is a little larger than standard.
  • 1 batch Marshmallow Fondant(Hint, use small marshmallows, and reserve 4-6 for future use.)
  • 1 package White chocolate flavored candy coating
  • Spray Food colour (I used Wilton Master Color Mist Food Color Spray in Silver.  If you’d like your entire dalek in metallics or black, you could get gold, black or other colors as well.  I just used the silver for accents. )
  • Food coloring.  For mine I used some bright colors and black – these are good (Wilton Primary Candy Color Set)
  • Icing (whatever you used to frost your base cake – you’re just using this for glue in a few places, you don’t need much).
Kids can help make the fondant… it’s fun!

Supplies:

  • Clean styrofoam egg carton (or something similar to the shape of egg carton cups- used as a mold for the dalek head – you could also use a candy mold)
  • Toothpicks (I used colored round ones)
  • Microplane Zester/Grater (optional, but useful)

Candy I used – you can substitute similar:

Prep Work – Dalek Bodies

Fondant:

We’ll be using Marshmallow fondant for this cake, and I’ve gone over how to make it and work with it in previous tutorials, so I’m not going repeat myself here.  Here’s all the details on how to make up a batch: Marshmallow fondant .   Do this the night before.

Knead your colors into your fondant, bonus points if you can get your family to help!

Split up your fondant (use a scale to make it easier, you’ll need about 2 oz for each dalek body/head, in the colors of your choice).  Go ahead and knead in your food coloring to the desired color for each 2 oz ball.  You’ll also need a ball of gray fondant (black foodcoloring) (maybe 3-4 oz).   Save the rest for covering the cake, and making up for mistakes.

Using paper, make a template for the top and bottom grey strips.  You’ll want a width of about 1/2 in for the top strip, and around 1 in for the bottom, but since cone sizes vary, templates help.

Roll out the gray fondant thinly, and use your template to measure and mark out the strips (4 of each size) on the sheet of gray dough (but don’t cut out yet).  You’ll probably want to add a 1/2 inch to the length of the strips to allow for shrinkage or sizing mishaps, particularly if you’re doing this over several days.  Spray the gray dough with your silver spray.  Remove the excess-even if it has silver on it, and knead back into a ball for later use.  Once the spray dries, cut out your strips.

Cones:

Melt your candy coating according to package directions in a tall cup.  You’ll be dipping your cone into it, so plan accordingly size wize. Dip each cone to cover the outside, and let dry.  The coating doesn’t have to look perfect, but it should be relatively smooth.

Head bases:

You’re going to use a styrofoam egg carton as a mold.  Pour a spoonful of your leftover candy coating into 6 cups (4 dalek heads plus 2 spares), to about 1/2 inch.  You’ll want the diameter of the exposed candy to be approximately the same size as your neck wafers.  You can trim later if necessary, but get as close as you can.  Refrigerate, and after the candy is solid, you can use your microplane to smooth up the top, and to flatten out the bottom to size as necessary.

Dots:

My dots were going to be silver, so I needed to spray them with silver spray.  If you spray them while still on the paper, they are much easier to do, but be aware, you’ll waste more spray with overspray.  If you peel them off, however, the force of spray can knock them around though.  I decided to use half yellow dots and half blue dots, figuring that if the spray didn’t completly cover, I’d have a consistent color.  (I used the yellow on the yellow & orange daleks, and the blue on the other 2).

“Neck” Chocolates:

Stack 3 chocolate callets, gluing them together with icing (reserve some from frosting the base cake).  Mist the stack with silver spray.

Assembly

I recommend doing 1 full Dalek first, so you can get the technique down, then doing the remainder assembly line style.

Assembling the Body.

Roll out one of the colored pieces of fondant, and using ~3/4 of it, cover your chocolate dipped cone.  You can trim off excess at back and bottom, I didn’t worry if I had a seam in the back.

Place one of the wider silver strips on the bottom of your cone, just under where the ridge is.   Orient the strip so that the ends will meet on the seam side of your colored fondant.  Use water to adhere to the colored fondant, tucking the edges under the bottom of the cone if necessary.  Overlap the ends if necessary.  BE CAREFUL because the water you are adhering with will cause blotchy-ness on the silver painted side if you touch it with wet hands.

Place one of the skinnier silver strips along the top of the cone, leaving about 1/4 in of the colored fondant showing at the top.  Adhere with water, overlap the ends if necessary.

Adding the Silver Dots

Hopefully, you have room for 4 rows of dots between the top and bottom silver strips.  My first one, the white one, did not – so it only has 3 rows.  I modified strip placement on the subsequent Daleks to allow for 4 rows.  3 is fine too, of course, and is a little easier to do, but I personally liked the look of 4.

Put a small amount of icing in a dish to use as glue.  Using your finger, tap out 1 column of glue dots down one side of the body.  Place a silver dot on each one to adhere it.  Apply another column of Dots on the exact opposite side of the body.  Then fill in the rest of the top row (between your two columns) with 3 Dots, then continue down to complete the side.  Turn over, and fill in the rest of the top row on the other side with 3 Dots, then complete that side.  Let dry, and set aside your body.

Assembling the Head.

Place your molded candy head on top of an overturned shot glass.

Cover with a circle of colored fondant and gently smooth, tucking under the ends.

Use your icing glue to attach the head to the stack of chocolate wafers that make up the neck.  Let dry and set aside.

You’re now ready to add the final touches.

Final Assembly and Decorating

First we have create the eye stalk, the manipulator arm, and the gun stick.

Eye Stalk (make 4 of these):

Melt a small amount (~1/4 c) of chocolate or chocolate coating (you can use the white coating from previous if you like, and just spray it silver afterwards, but I had some chocolate so that’s what I used.)

Cut the pointier end of your Mike and Ike candy (the blue one) off, so you have about 2/3 of the candy left.  Using a toothpick, carefully stab through the center of the rounded end, so you can dip it in chocolate.  Dip most of the way, but leave the rounded end exposed, so you still see the blue.  Let dry.

Remove the toothpick, and reinsert it in the other end.

Use scissors to cut off the end of a small marshmallow, making a disk.  Stab it onto the toothpick and slide up.  Repeat so you have 2 marshmallow disks about a 1/4in from the eye.

Gun Stick (4)

Basically, take a blue Mike and Ike candy and insert a toothpick into the wide end.  I then painted on stripes of chocolate, meeting at the pointy end.  Let dry.

Manipulator Arm (4)

For the arm, My Handy Husband suggested a Dum Dum lollypop, cut in half.  He took a Dremel with a saw blade attachment and cut it, smoothly up any rough edges with the microplane zester. I then turned it cut side down and dusted the outside with silver spray (which was pretty much empty at this point!). If that’s too much for you, you can always use half a round chocolate candy impaled on a tooth pick.

Extra Fondant Touches

Using your leftover gray/silver fondant, add a small pea sized ball in the center front of the head where you’ll place the eye stalk, and a strip with two small balls on the front of the silver strip where the arms go.

Assembly

Using a toothpick to make a pilot hole, insert the stick of your Dum Dum into the left body fondant ball.  Stab the right fondant ball with your Gunstick toothpick.  Both should stick straight out, and will be held in place by the structure of the cake cone.

Wet the end of a tic tac, and carefully press into the head, one on either side, to make the lights.

Then press your eye stalk toothpick into your fondant ball in the center of the head, sticking straight out.

Using some icing, glue the head assembly to the body assembly.  Let dry.

Place your daleks in a cool dry safe place (do not refrigerate) until time to assemble your cake.

The Cake Base

The cake is simple a tall round cake in my example, but you can of course use anything you like, since you’ll be topping it with Daleks.  In fact, feel free to cheat and buy a purchased premade cake if you like–the Daleks are enough work, you won’t feel that guilty!   But me?  I have to make mine, because I just don’t storebought cakes that much.  So I’ll walk you through what I did, and you can modify it to your own needs &/or time constraints.  Note, you should make the cake first, even though it is last in these instructions.

For my cake, I did ‘cheat’ and go for boxed cake mix.  I can (and do!) make cake from scratch, and it’s not significantly harder or more time intensive, but in this case, I was saving my effort for the decorations.  So, 2 boxes cake mix.  I split into 4 layers, coloring each layer differently with candy color, just for fun.

Supplies:

  • 2 boxes cake mix plus extra ingredients, baked into multiple layers.
  • 1 batch cream cheese frosting (1 pkg cream cheese, 1 stick butter, 1 lb of powdered sugar, dash vanilla extract – combine in mixer and beat well)
  • Part of our fondant batch (maybe 12oz?)
  • Vanilla Wafers sprayed with gold/silver spray
  • Gold food spray

Level the layers as necessary*, then stack and ice each layer with a thin coat of frosting. Don’t worry too much about how it looks, just get it as smooth as you can.  You’ll be covering the whole thing up anyway.

*Now, I was being quick and lazy, and didn’t level off my cakes after they cooked… which you can get away with if you only have 2 layers.  But LESSON LEARNED you really have to level out when you’re stacking 4 layers.  So I had cake failure, when the Crack in the Universe manifested itself on the top of my cake.  

After my cake failure, I removed the top two layers (set aside for later eating, they still taste great!) and replace with another batch of cake.

Let the icing on your cake dry out a bit so it’s not wet to the touch (I waited until the next day) and then you’ll cover the whole thing with your marshmallow fondant.  I colored my fondant with a little bit of yellow food coloring to make it a better base for the gold spray, but in retrospect I don’t think it was necessary.

So, we’re now going to cover the whole darn thing with our marshmallow fondant.  This takes patience and time, so don’t skimp on either.  Role out a thin sheet of fondant large enough to cover the cake (good tips on how to size here), and carefully place centered on the top of the cake.

Gradually smooth out the sides, flaring out the fondant, so it covers without wrinkling.  This is really hard to explain so I just found a good video on how to do this.  Watch this first, then try it on your cake.  Mine wasn’t near as neat as the one on this video, but it was close enough.  I added snake of fondant around the bottom to hide any sins.

I’ve never covered an entire cake in fondant, but it worked pretty well for a first time.

Also, you could just skip the whole fondant thing, and just ice the cake as you normally would.

I then sprayed the entire cake with gold food spray.

Final Cake Assembly

The morning of the party, I used icing glue to attach a row of gold/silver sprayed vanilla wafers to the side of the base cake, just for fun.

Place your Daleks on your cake, pressing into the fondant layer to steady them.

Since the top of my cake was a little bit rounded, I also used a vanilla wafer under the front of each Dalek to level it out.

And there you have it!  The completed Dalek Cake.  If you’re going to try this yourself, please read through all the instructions first.  I’d suggest planning to do this over several days.  Day 1: Bake & ice your cake, and make your marshmallow fondant.  If you have time, go ahead and dip your cones.  Day 2: Do all your prep work.  Day 3: Assemble everything else.

Let me know if you have questions!

Published on: Jun 20, 2012

 

Octopus Baby Shower Cookies

For a friend’s baby shower, we did an octopus theme (the mom was having twins, so the theme was “she’s going to need 8 arms!” These cookies match the invitation.

Here are the cookies I made as shower favors.  They weren’t overly difficult, but a tad time consuming. I’ll post the recipe in a later post if anyone is interested, but basically it’s a non-leavened sugar cookie, covered with royal icing.  With small skewers for sticks, inserted before the cookie is baked.

The octopus is drawn on freehand, and it doesn’t take artistic talent… Everyone is cute, unique, and just a little bit ‘wopty’!

See below for the how to.

The Base

First just ice the white circles.  There’s many good tutorials for this, but they generally involve using a stiffer icing around the edge, and filling in the center with a more runny version.  I didn’t do that neat a job with mine.  Let that harden before you do the octopus.

Here’s a great tutorial from Wisdom of the Moon on working with royal icing, with a ton of pictures, so you can get the idea.

How to draw the octopus head and arms.

You’ll need your royal icing to be a little runny (but not as much as fill icing typically is), so that it will expand to fill a little bit, but not too runny or it will just flatten out (leading to fat legged octopuses without as much dimension).  Add a little water to thin, and practice on a spare cookie or parchment. Let them dry before you move on to the real ones, as it may take a few minutes for the icing to flatten.  If the icing doesn’t merge together when you draw two lines next to each other, then thin it a bit and test again.

Now, here’s a picture of how to draw the octopus – it’s just 4 lines.  The head is created when the lines merge together.

Adding Accents

You can decorate the octos any way you want, but I’d suggest at least adding eyes.  Here’s what I did.

Eyes: 2 large drops of white icing, topped with tiny dots of blue.

Spots:  Random drops of blue

As you can see, they are all different, and not quite perfect, but that really added to the charm.

If you try this, I’d love to see!

You might also like…

I just realized I never posted the actual finished invitation, but the illustration for the invitation is here, along with instructions on doing a quick neat photoshop coloring job:

Published on: Feb 2, 2011

St Patrick’s Day Printable: Origami ‘Cootie Catcher’

Originally published 3/15/2013 – Republished 3/15/2016

My FedEx Out of Office blog post is up for March, and I almost forgot to share it with you guys before St. Patrick’s Day!   This is a fun printable (with Dot artwork, naturally!) that your kids can fold up and have fun sharing with their friends.

St Patrick's Day Printable: Origami Fortune Teller (Cootie Catcher)

You remember these from grade school, right?  You would make them out of a piece of notebook paper, then play with them telling fortunes until they were confiscated by a mean teacher!  We always just called them fortune tellers, but according to the internet, they are also known as Cootie Catchers.

I’ve got the printable and the instructions on how to fold it up, if you’re a little rusty, over at FedEx Out of Office.

EDIT: Apparently the FedEx blog is kaput, so here are the instructions! How to Fold your St. Pat's Cootie Catcher!

 

 

Fun with Kids: Bead Spiders

The last time we were down visiting Grandparents, Aunt Linda brought her bead supplies, and taught The Boy how to make a bead spider. So I documented the process to share it with you guys! (Now, The Boy’s version reflects how much fun it is for a kid to take all kinds of different beads and put them together, without much regard for symmetry, but The Husband also followed along with the lessons, and the photos below show the more symmetrical and traditional one that he made. But honestly, let the kids go wild. The Boy loves that HIS spider has star shaped front feet and 3 different leg patterns!)

[anything_slides cat=spider-2 width=500 height=350 delay=3000 resume=15000 animation=750 order=ASC orderby=menu_order theme=minimalist-square]

Halloween Food: The Mummy’s Hand..

yummy sausage mummy hand for halloween dabbled.orgHappy weekend… this is from several years ago, but it was so good, I thought it deserved a repeat!

My dear creative friend, Chad, made this for the Halloween party …  and was kind enough to give us a tutorial, so we can all make our own!

Sausage and Bread Mummy Hand

Published on: Oct 3, 2009

The Skylanders Party Highlights: The Invitation! (free printable)

Kaos Skylanders Party Invitation (printable)

 

Continuing the highlights from yesterday’s Skylander’s Cake, I just realized I never posted the invitation to the Skylanders Party.  I wanted to do something a little different, and most of the invites I’d seen in my travels around the web were just repurposed graphics of a selections of popular skylanders.  And while cute, I figured why not give the Bad Guy a starring role in the invitations?  So here is Kaos, inviting the Skylanders to come to a party.  And really, he promises it’s not a trap.

So, if you’d like to use this yourself, here’s a free download, because Dot is just all kinds of sweet that way!  Here’s the graphic with a more generic “you’re invited to a birthday party” message, that works for anyone child’s name (Click for large):

Download the Skylanders invitation from dabbled.org

Just right click and save: https://dabbled.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/skylanders-invitation-dabbled.jpg

OR, if you’d prefer to personalize the banner that Kaos holds, you can download this blank printable, add your own text either via a graphics program and print, or by hand, and have the invite color copied. (Click to see larger)

Download blank Skylanders Kaos invitation from Dabbled.org

Just right click this link and save the file: https://dabbled.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kaos-skylanders-dabbled-blank1.jpg

Of course, if your kid’s name is Dominic, you’re welcome to use the real invitation :)

More highlights to come!

 

Highlights from the Skylander’s Birthday Party: the Cake

I’ll get a tutorial up on several of these, including the cake, but here are some of the highlights from The Boy’s 8th Birthday Party – Skylanders!  But if I waited til I got around to doing the tutorials, you’d never see the cake for months.

Here is the Cake.  I decided that I would go relatively simple — a fondant covered floating island… with Candy Clay Chompies.
Skylanders Chompie Birthday Cake

This year’s Birthday Cake (Skylanders) is in the works!

OK, I know, I’ve been a slacker, don’t shoot me!

But it is June and you know what that means, time for another birthday party for The Boy and another birthday cake.  This year The Boy is turning 8, and he’s all into Skylanders.

So I’ve been working on the cake today.  It’s not going to be as ambitious as last years Dalek cake for the Doctor Who party, but I am trying out a new technique: Candy Clay.

Today I made candy clay, baked 4 cake layers for a 2 tiered cake, frosted the top and bottom tier with a crumb coat, and made up and colored a batch of marshmallow fondant.  whew!  I’m going to go play around with my candy clay now….

So, follow along on Twitter if you like to see pics of the in process stuff.

instagram cake photos

Pics from Instagram.

Previous The Boy Birthday Cakes (with tutorials):

Tutorial homemade dragon cake dabbled
Dragon Cake, featured on the cover of Amazing Cakes (Instructibles) book.
Perry The Platypus Cake (featured a bunch of places, including Disney blog.)
Perry The Platypus Cake (featured a bunch of places, including Disney blog.)

Angry Birds Cupcakes Tutorial
Angry Birds Cupcakes

The Dalek Cake, from last year's Doctor Who party.
The Dalek Cake, from last year’s Doctor Who party.

My first one - Robot cake (featured on MSNBC)
My first one – Robot cake (featured on MSNBC)
Clone Trooper cupcakes (from the Phineas and Ferb meet the Clone Wars party)
Clone Trooper cupcakes (from the Phineas and Ferb meet the Clone Wars party)

Tutorial: Super easy (& inexpensive) french door curtains

…or (almost) no-sew ‘two seams and you’re done’ curtains you can make in less than an hour.
Make almost no-sew french door curtains super quick and easy. Just 2 hems, so very little sewing for a neat effect!

We have a GREAT sunroom. It’s got a huge vaulted ceiling and french doors on both sides and lots of windows. But, we also have a computer at a desk in the corner, and the light from the windows can cause a glare on the screen. Hence the need to occasionally cover up these gorgeous windows with some sort of curtain. And curtains or shaded on french doors are really a pain in the butt to me. They either get in the way, or they are clunky and unattractive, so I had avoided doing anything about the glaring window til forced to by nagging husband and kiddo.

So, I wanted a solution that would be easy to make, easy to remove, and look nice while it was up there. So what’s the secret? Well, note the 5 lovely buttonholes at the top of each panel. Does that give you any hints? It’s a shower curtain! We found a pretty black cotton waffle weave shower curtain at Target for less than $20.  And it’s held up by buttoning the button holes onto pushpins stuck in the door.  I used clear ones, but you could also do this with some really fun and funky push pins.

Materials:

  • 10 clear (or interesting) push pins.
  • 1 standard size shower curtain of a nice material, like cotton, with 10 holes at the top. [I originally wanted one with grommets at the top, but didn’t find one, and I think the button holes by themselves work fine.]
  • Sewing machine (or a needle and thread and a bit more time and patience than I possess.) Pins, Scissors, matching thread.

How to do the transformation:

  1. easy-french-door-curtains-2Cut the shower curtain in half down the middle.
  2. Starting with the Left half:  Measure the distance from the left seam to the first button hole.  Fold your right seam and pin all the way down, the same distance from the 5th (last) buttonhole.
  3. Noting the size of the hem on the left side, stitch down the right hand side with a similar size hem.
  4. Trim the excess fabric.
  5. Repeat with the right half.
  6. Hold up your curtain to the door and determine where you want it to hang, and mark each button hole.
  7. easy-french-door-curtains-1Stick pushpins where you marked, then just slide the buttonholes onto the pushpins!
  8. Easy peasy mac and cheesy, you are done. The curtains can be folded back on themselves to let in light, or removed altogether, easily.

There are some really cool shower curtain patterns and fabrics out there, so you can really get creative with this project.  Just make sure you pick one that has 10 evenly spaced holes, meant for inserting the shower curtain rings.

That’s all there is to it…  hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and it inspires you to make something cool !  There are some more sewing type projects in the Related Posts box below, so if you like this, go check them out too…

cheers,

dot

April Fools Food!

Dinner on April Fools Day (can you believe it’s almost April 1st?) calls for making something unusual, right?  Maybe a bit tricksy.   Here are a few ideas, both sweet and savory, with an April Fool’s Day twist.

April Fools Food Ideas from around Flickr

Nothing is what it seems…
Top: Sushi? – I made this last year for an April Fool party, and again at halloween (instructions)
Middle: A cupcake?
Eggs and Toast?
Bottom: Veggies and Fish Sticks?
Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup?

Here are a few more ideas:

Related:

(Originally published 2009, updated with more goodies 2013)

Easter Idea Roundup

Silk Tie Dyed Eggs
Cake Eggs!
Roundup: Easter Sweets
Easter Egg Coloring Ideas
Make your Own Peeps!
The Chicken Egg Family
Fabric Easter Basket Tutorial
Chocolate Filled Eggshells from not martha
hanging blown easter eggs
More great egg ideas at Wisdom of the Moon

 

Click on the photo above for Cool Easter ideas from the past–
And here are some more resources:

Pretty boiled eggs (so you can tell them apart from the raw ones in the fridge!)

boil eggs with onion skins for a pretty brown egg colorI hesitate to publish this right before Easter, as it’s really a year round egg hack, not an easter egg hack, but I suppose it is extra useful at Easter, where you might want some pretty brown eggs.

If you’re looking for fancier Easter egg ideas, you can find some here, here, .. and an Easter basket here.

So I usually buy a big thing of eggs, and boil a handful of them ahead of time to throw in lunchboxes or to make tuna salad with, or whatever, and I like to be able to tell them apart from the non-boiled at a glance.  I used to take a sharpie and mark the ends (maybe with a little face so it would be cute in kid’s lunch), but this is my new plan, and I love it.

Also, I love the look of brown eggs, but I’m not going to pay extra for them just because they are aesthetically pleasing.

So, my solution?  Whenever I boil eggs, I throw in a handful of onion skins (I pretty much always have a bag of yellow onions on hand) and a dash of vinegar.

By the time the eggs are done, they are also a lovely peachy brown color.

Other ideas — that might actual be Easter related:

Of course, this is also a way to cheat and make quick easter eggs.  No dying, just dye while boiling!

Or you can do these, then wipe them down right after you take them out.  You’ll leave a speckled brown effect which you could then dye over in blue for a robin’s egg look.

Another idea is to use this as a base, then dye as usual, for a neat natural effect.  I’m not sure how well it would work (let me know if you try it) but I think it could definitely be a cool effect.

How to boil an egg

If you need to know, here’s how I like to do it.

Put your eggs in a large saucepan, covered with water.  Turn up to high, and bring to a boil.

Since I have a gas stove, I turn it down to low for 3-5 min.  Then I turn it off and let it sit for 15 minutes.   (If you have electric burners, you can just turn off after the boil, and let it sit for 15 minutes, as the electric burners retain heat.)

 

So Long spammers, and Goodbye to (some) comments

Robot painting a no spam sign: dabbled.orgHello all… Dot here. Yes, I still love you guys, but the eternal war with spammers has brought me to a crossroads. Dear spammers: No, none of my readers want to buy your essay, really–And the comments have always be ‘no-follow’, so Google doesn’t even notice your link. But telling them this has been in vain, so I’ve made the decision to get rid of WordPress comments, and have only Facebook comments.

Why now?

If you’ve been around the crafty/bloggy web as long as I have (2007!),  you’ll have noticed that the importance of comments has changed dramatically over the past few years.  I used to only be able to tell how popular a post or project was by either looking at the stats, or getting feedback in the comments.  Comments were the way we all communicated, and I will say between blog comments and Twitter, that was the way I built some great relationships!   But times have changed, and blogging/craft-blogging has changed with the rise of social media as a real force.  I don’t control the conversation anymore, my projects are floating around Pinterest, or shared in a variety of other social ways.   People don’t want to talk about it here, they want to talk about it with their friends.  Which is awesome, but it has definitely changed blogging.

Why Facebook?

No, not the evil Facebook, I hear you say! Although I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, most everyone has an account, so most everyone will still be able to make comments. I’ve had facebook comments available as an option for a while, and people seem to like them – you can choose whether your comment shows up on your timeline, so it’s a neat way to “like” a Dabbled project, and even share why with your friends! Also, your Tweets referencing any Dabbled article will continue to appear in the comments section, and old comments will still appear. So nothing’s REALLY lost. Except your ability to find cheap drugs or term papers, sorry!

But what I I need your wonderful guidance, Dot?

One thing that I will say, is that I don’t watch the facebook comments as closely (kinda like how slack I am on comments on the Facebook Page!) so if you have a question for me about a project, feel free to drop me an email – you’ll get a better response. It’s Dot at this website, you can figure it out.  Or send me a tweet (@dotatdabbled), that works pretty well too.

How to Get Rid of WordPress Comment box (while leaving your old comments)

You know I have to throw on my developer hat and tell you how to do this yourself, right?  If you’d like to do this to your blog, there are a couple of options.  One is to simply turn off comments in your Dashboard settings (Discussion section).  That will turn off comments for all future posts.  For past posts, set the “Close Comments after X Days” to 1 to close all the old ones.  This should leave your comments, but not allow more.

However, because I had already added Facebook comments (and they were tied in to my WP comments, in that they already added to comment count, and so forth) I didn’t want to do this.  In my case, I edited the comments.php to remove the line <?php comment_form(); ?> (which is what calls the comment form, specifically).  So, everything else still works exactly as it used to, but the actual form is never called.

So…

Continue to enjoy the posts on Dabbled, and continue to comment, or share, or whatever works for you.

Cheers!

Dot

 

How to make an adorable Needle Felted Alien

Make a Needle Felted Alien photoWe’re always looking for cute (and maybe a little silly or geeky) crafts here on Dabbled, so when Lark Crafts offered a tutorial to share with you guys from their new book Wee Felt Worlds, I said, “Yes, Please!”

The book has a bunch of really cute creatures and scenes you can create with needle felting – everything from a silly science lab, to a sweet shop, to a pirate island… with easy to follow instructions.   It looks like it would be a good introduction to the craft of needle felting, you don’t have to already know how to do it.

Tutorial: Big Purple Alien Blob

Huggable and utterly lovable, this friendly alien blob loves making friends, playing sports, shopping, and taking long walks along the lunar landscape.

Needle Felted Alien tutorial on dabbled.org

Download the Full Tutorial : Alien Blob from Wee Felt Worlds

Or… buy the whole book of projects (use the link below to support Dabbled!)

Enjoy!