v.2

The cupcake craze is really in full swing now and Sienna is all into cupcakes too! It must have started when I gave her a cupcake at the Easter Egg Hunt! There are these 2 stuffed cupcakes that came with the kitchen set the 1st floor tenants gave to her and she loves those things! Well, if you know me, you know I love me some cupcakes so she must have inherited from me! On Monday afternoon, I finally made the chocolate cupcakes with banana cream cheese frosting that I had on my list to bake. I didn’t plan this very well because Monday night I attended Cupcake Night at Etsy labs. I’ve been meaning to go to a couple of their recent craft nights but it turned out those nights were rainy and I got lazy. But I was intent on going to cupcake night! Free cupcakes and cupcake crafts! And then after cupcake night, Brenda met me so I could give her her camera back (I was testing it out for her) and she gave me the leftover mini cupcakes that her friend (who is a pastry chef and used to work at Union Cafe!) baked. Oh man. I thought I would never say this but…cupcake overload!! Good thing I signed up for that aerobics class at the Community College!

Filled and ready for the oven!

Frosted (I opted not to add the yellow food coloring) I really need to take more care in photographing food! I looked so much better than this!

I thought these cupcakes were good but they taste best the same day they are baked. I noticed the bottom of the cupcakes got dry as each day passed. Also, the recipe says it should make 12-15 cupcakes, I got 21! (I gave some to Jana and some to Peter!)

My cheesey attempt at coloring. Good thing I can bake the real thing better than I can color the fake thing! HA!

I was delighted to find that they had cupcakes from Ivy bakery in Bay Ridge. A place I attempted to go to twice but were closed both times! They were good! (Now I’m dying to try Robicelli’s cupcakes!)

Cupcakes from One Girl Cookies. I was intrigued with the blue icing. I’m such a sucker. The icing tasted a bit too sugary. I prefer the more creamy type. They had other cupcakes from other places but these were the two I tried.

These were the cupcake crafts I did, they are tags, or going to be tags.

I also got to meet Rachel, the founder of swap-bot and a new transplant to Brooklyn! Such a sweet person!

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So super cute, I’m not even going to password it!
From the morning of Mother’s Day!

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 Recent crafts for swaps!

My very first sewn potholder from the book The New Handmade. Front and back.

My 2nd and 3rd attempts at a sewn potholder from the same book. I got bold and tried a cupcake applique and did the cherry using the freehand embroidery needle. I was a little confused with the handle but I improvised and just did it the way I thought it should be. Came out cute, I think! The blue one is the same on the back.

A crochet water bottle holder (my partner loved it!)

Reverse applique coasters for the Coaster swap.

A card I made at a Stampin Up meetup using watercolor crayons. I sent this to Geneva.

For the zippered pouch swap. My partner likes Asian themes.

I had fun doing the watercolor cards so made a couple more for a swap. This is one of them.

And this one isn’t for a swap but for Sienna!

She may not look it but she really liked the apron. I think she wanted to go into the kitchen and start helping daddy. The cheap one that came with the little baking set she got for Christmas ripped and I used that as a template. I had no idea she’d be so into ‘cooking’!

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This weekend the weather was like summer! Dare I say I thought it was too hot! Especially Sunday! Saturday we decided to head over to Marine Park with Sienna and her bicycle. We also brought Skippy along. Well, I wasn’t surprised that the ‘bike riding’ didn’t last long. Yves just pushed Sienna as we were trying to get Sienna to understand the pedaling part. It will take some time. It might have lasted 10 minutes, if that! We stopped for a snack and then Yves took Sienna into the playground and I lugged the bike and Skippy back home. Skippy made a few friends! Later that night, I met up with Tammy to go see Cirque du Soleil at Randall’s Island. I’ll write about that in another post!

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The weather was so nice this past weekend, it’s such a bummer that it’s going to rain the beginning of this week! Friday night we usually have date night but my dad had a cold so could not babysit. We decided to all go out for a family meal at the local Japanese restaurant. It was very nice! Yves got his usual sushi and I got a whitefish katsu bento box to share with Sienna. She really enjoyed the shrimp tempura!

They gave these special chopsticks to Sienna. I don’t know if I am the right person to be teaching Sienna how to use them correctly!

Grabbing for the shrimp tempura!

Then on Saturday we decided to go to Sunset Park to the playground and then have a little picnic with Bahn Mi sandwiches from our favorite place. Yves always gets the original and I get the chicken and an order of summer rolls where Sienna picks out the shrimp. Well, they didn’t have any summer rolls so decided to get her a meatball bahn mi. They are so cheap! Lunch for 3 under $12.

Relaxing with daddy

Here is an amusing video of Sienna eating part of the sandwich on her own. E-mail or leave a comment if you don’t have the password!

Sienna Eats a Bahn Mi from Lisa on Vimeo.

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Last Thursday, Geneva was kind enough to invite me and Sienna over for lunch along with Starr and her kids and Yan Lin and her son. It worked out well since the Little Gym was closed for Spring Break so our Thursday was free! It turned out to be a beautiful day! I brought over some chocolate lollipops (I had a lot!) and Geneva made pizza and Asian Noodle Salad and rice krispy treats and Starr baked some chocolate chip cookies. YUM!

A part time little sister perhaps? LOL. Sienna really likes Sylvie!

Sienna was really jamming with the guitar! Bopping her head around like she was really playing!

Dessert time! Can’t you tell?

Phoenix enjoying some chocolate!

Sienna chowing down on a chocolate chip cookie! (And wearing one of Nico’s crocs!)
AND some rice krispy treats!

Geneva and Sienna

Sienna doesn’t usually have so many sweets but it was a special occasion so I didn’t care! We didn’t get home until about 2:45 pm and Sienna fell asleep pretty fast in the car. Once home, I put her in her crib and that only lasted about 30 minutes! It was a fun day!

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Tuesday was the April mixer and that was the title of my mix. I made chocolate lollipops to give out in lieu of making a cover for my mix. Sienna sort of helped me with some of them by putting the sticks in. You could see that on Shuggy’s blog. I bought the edible food writer pens to add some color and details but I was very disappointed in how they worked. As in, they didn’t work very well! That’s what I get for being lazy!

This was a mold for covering sandwich cookies. I couldn’t resist the cute animals on them!

It did get a bit messy!

We met up at the Ace bar at first but it was so crowded and I think they were having some event there. So after the first drink, we hightailed it outta there to a more quiet bar down the street. I think it was called Sophia’s. Me, Brenda and Joy met up beforehand to grab some dinner and we intended to go to Porchetta’s, there wasn’t any room (super small) so got indian food instead (which was delicious too!)

I have also uploaded my mix so if you are interested in downloading it, let me know and I can send you the password! Here’s my setlist:
No Dice    Beirut
Feel Flows    Beach Boys
Bag of Hammers    Thao
The Lion & The Teacup    Bishop Allen
The Great Defector    BellX1
Best Imitation Of Myself    Ben Folds
Gay Peace    The 1900s
Spiralling    Keane
Go Full Circle    Dah-Veed
Sister I’m A Poet    Morrissey
Girls & Boys    Blur
The Size Of A Cow    The Wonder Stuff
Crash    The Primitives
Calcutta    Hopewell
Tattva    Kula Shaker

And here’s a funny photo of Brenda and Joy playing the shooting game at the second bar!

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Big surprise, I am still behind on my blog posts. In my quest to keep off the computer and not get sucked into it, my blog gets neglected. So I’m going to try to make this quick post about some recent swaps I’ve done. A fun one that I was excited about was March is Craft month swap. You make a different item each week and then send them off to your partner. Actually, I have not sent mine off yet as my partner seems to be having trouble with swap-bot and her address is incomplete. (I actually have her full address written down but want to wait to hear from her!) I started off making this super cute Noriko purse from Lazy Girl Designs. My first time doing something of this design and I’m so proud of myself for sewing on a curve well! I have sewn on a curve before, or rather, attempted to sew on a curve before and my results were not worth bragging about! So I guess I just need practice!
The inside was a glittery red fabric. Seems kinda plasticy but the label said 100% cotton.

My partner likes owls so I crocheted this owl ami from the Lion Brand site.

My partner also loves pink and purple so I wanted to make something with those colors and found this simple wallet pattern. I got a little confused with the instructions so I don’t even know if it’s correct. (I think the pockets are wrong!)

I had gotten these dangles by accident on an order and was told I could keep them (!) so since I’m not a gold person, I’m glad I could use them for swaps! My partner likes Winnie the pooh so made this pendant.

The second swap I’m writing about is the Colorific Tote swap. You make or buy a colorful tote and fill it with things with the colors red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, brown and black. Some stuff I bought but here are the things I made:

This is a market tote from bunny bum. I love how she set up this tute!

I carved her a stamp using the orange material from PZ Kut.

Her husband is a Marine and she said she is very patriotic so I thought it would be cute to crochet this USA magnet using camouflage yarn.

And here is everything all packaged together. I know she received the package earlier this week but she hasn’t rated me yet so I hope she likes it! I made her a set of coasters using leopard print fabric (a favorite of hers) and I forgot to take a photo of it so you can only see it in the upper left of this photo.

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Some cute photos of Sienna and Grandma that I wanted to post before I forget about them! It’s amazing how fast Sienna has grown!

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