Pepper Design Blog - Page 139 of 358 - A Little of This & That... Renovating, Decorating, DIY Projects & Family

Dr. Seuss Themed Cupcakes & Baby Shower!

May 21, 2012

Hope you had a lovely weekend! We celebrated my birthday on Saturday night (so fun) which made it an extra special weekend for me. My actual bday is tomorrow and I’m looking forward to celebrating again with Kevin and Liv. There’s nothing like a little family time to make for a great day.

During a bit of my spring cleaning around here, I came across a camera card full of photos from this time last year, including this adorable Dr. Seuss baby shower thrown for our good friend Grace and her baby boy Cyrus! I had made Dr. Seuss-themed cupcakes for the special day and I forgot how much I had loved using the creative children’s books as inspiration

The shower was absolutely adorable with lots of Dr. Seuss inspired decorations and food. Great job Cassie and Denise! As for my part, I put together four different cupcake designs based off the One Fish Two Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 & Thing 2 books.

I’m pretty sure I used a standard boxed cake mix for the actual cake part of these guys, but when it came to the neck up I had the chance to get a little creative. I had fun creating four unusual looks and used inspiration from plenty of images found ’round the web, two designs that I especially loved were this one and this one.

The base for each of the four different cupcakes was a flat round icing disk that I made out of a pliable homemade fondant. I must have spent an hour yesterday looking for the recipe I used 11 months ago to share here – but I can’t find it anywhere… argh. You can actually purchase pre-made fondant and marzipan from craft stores or there are a ton of great DIY recipes out there (the marshmallow ones look especially intriguing). Now I need a new go to!

My one suggestion for creating your own is to watch how much you mix your icing. You want the fondant to be stiff enough to mold but you also want to avoid any cracking when it begins to dry. Aim for playdough consistency. (This is for small projects – if you were covering a cake with this stuff I would say that playdough consistency is far too soft and will lead to several lumps and bumps).

First up in assembly were the Cat in the Hat cupcakes. I dipped marshmallows halfway up in a small bowl of water and then in a dish of red sugar (or red sprinkles) to create the illusion of a striped hat. I stacked two marshmallows onto a skewer (that has been cut in half to size) and used the pointed end of the skewer to hold the flipped over hats into place on top of the cupcakes.

The One Fish, Two Fish cupcakes were as simple as a bit of blue sugar, a couple of Swedish fish and a small black icing dot to accentuate the eye facing up. A small dot of icing will also hold the fish in place.

My Green Eggs and Ham cupcakes were actually just green eggs without the ham… but I used a green M&M to serve as the egg yolk and reshaped the flat round icing disk into more of an over easy egg shape. Black icing (bought pre-made in a squeezable tube) helped to outline the cracked egg.

Tracking down blue cotton candy for the Thing 1, Thing 2 cupcakes was a bit more challenging… luckily we had visited Sea World the day before the shower and I snagged a cotton candy on my way out for 1/2 price! A glob of semi-shaped stringy cotton candy helps form the hair for Thing 1 and Thing 2, and a simple ‘1’ or ‘2’ in black icing finished the look off.

Cotton candy has a tendency to melt when in direct sunlight! Lesson learned. Best to bring out the dessert just before everyone gets ready to eat it lest you have a melted, sugary, globby mess on your hands:

All in all a success though! And so much fun to put together. I think my favorites were probably the Cat in the Hat cupcakes and next time I might try and cover that fondant base in a red sugar too for a little extra pop.

Dining Room Update: Time for a Buffet-Over

May 18, 2012

That is, a makeover for the buffet. Not the color! Not my dear blue, but the top, sides, inside…

The dining room is well on its way, but it’s in need of all of those pretty little accessories that make a home feel like a home. She’s had her light fixture updated (ahhh, such a difference!) and the easy next on the dining room list is tackling my big blue box because it involves a fair amount of house shopping for items that we already own (but that might be in need of a new or better location).

A little rummaging around and a few Michael’s frames later…

Now it more represents our family and our mishmash style.

The noticeable big difference is moving the giant mirror out – which was initially a tough choice because it helped to bring in plenty of extra light. The decision was twofold: A. I was hunting for an over-sized mirror for the mantel in the living room and this means that I didn’t have to splurge on a second:

and B. we had been gifted a beautiful piece of personalized art from my hometown of Santa Cruz, California and I was ready to display it somewhere easily seen.

So pretty! That’s the harbor in Santa Cruz and those boats have had their names rewritten by the painter – one for ‘Madness’, our sailboat (more on the story of that name later ;)) and one for my family’s boat ‘Crew-zen’ (my mom owns a martial arts school – have I ever mentioned that? She cleverly included ‘zen’ in the name).

Here’s my intial little mock up in Photoshop of how I thought I would plan out the wall collage:

But then widdled it down to about half of the items. I can always add more later.

In the end I settled on: a wedding photo of Kevin and me dancing (one of my favorites from the day), a photo of a beautiful village Church in Fiji (where I’ve volunteered several times), a sweet in-the-buff black and white of Liv when she was brand new, an Italian pasta plate + stand that was a wedding gift, and a large round mirror I found on super super sale at Clayton Gray (it’s back to its original price now). Plus my little terrariums and a white pitcher full of eucalyptus branches (Farmer’s Market find, they last forever so I’m replacing the $3 bunch maybe once a month and I love love how they look).

When my dad was visiting from Santa Cruz he was kind enough to help me with hanging the frames (a task I’ve never loved).

And then I added the rest:

You can kind of see how stuffed this cabinet is slowly getting in the above photo, so in full-buffetover style I also emptied her out and went through my dining decor piece by piece. Only must-use items could stay.

Back into the buffet went a handful of platters for entertaining, my favorite BBB punch bowl (I purchase replacement glass cups en mass from Ikea – they’re not visible but behind the champagne flutes), flutes (because life is full of occasional champagne moments) candles with life left in them, tiered platters (in the middle section) a few vases (some holding my fancy napkin holders) and a whole bunch of paper napkins that I had no idea I had. Ah! Feels much better. Room to breathe!

Other minor upgrades from actually quite a while ago include replacing the old, rusty knobs with new versions from Anthroplogie (still need to hunt down a matching turquoise paint to touch up behind the knobs).

I think that about does it for the buffet! That’s one madeover part of the room down, several more to go.

Happy Weekend! We’re celebrating my birthday on Saturday so I’m a little excited for it to arrive!

Read the full dining room story by starting here: upgrading the lighting, the before!

Dining Room Update: The Lighting Upgrade

May 16, 2012

Last I left you, we were starting on the dining room from almost scratch.

This is so fun! This room is in need of almost everything less most large furniture items.

Let’s talk a moment about that new light because she was quite the adventure. The original chandelier was beautiful, ornate and most likely original to the house (meaning it was 77 years old).

She was clearly showing her wear though. Everything from missing pieces to really, really bad wiring.

My favorite accent has got to be the faux dripping gold candle wax :).

Despite it all though I still think it is such a cool piece and that it should stay with the house. Maybe I can fix it up and make it more of an accent light in Liv’s big girl room (whenever we decide to take that on), or perhaps keep it neatly wrapped up in storage so that we can pass the original lighting on to future owners.

What I did know though, was that a new light would be an instant, updated impact to the entire space.

After much pendant hunting, I had narrowed my ideas down to:

I love the big round Eden pendant that we installed in Liv’s room – this has to be my favorite go-to in terms of price and look, and I thought that this version with a natural linen shade would fit the dining room even better. I was also drawn to something a bit more rectangular, like this West Elm shade pendant or this beautiful capiz pendant (so stunning! but Kev was not on board). Finally, I thought a light with multiple drum shades might just fill up the space well, like this one.

After much searching and much envisioning and much research, I finally fell for the West Elm short drum natural linen pendant shade. It didn’t hurt that on one of my random visits to the store, I found it marked down a third of the price! I haven’t seen that discount since but it was clearly a sign that she was the right modern pendant for the space.

I was very keen on the light, but not so keen on the white cable and silver wire/canopy that suspended the light from the ceiling (a little too modern for the space) – not sure why the above shows black because it’s definitely white! The pendant had to be converted to a wired version rather than a plugin, so in that process I opted to nix the West Elm mounting and added the shade to the oil rubbed bronze rods (just two rather than the three stacked 12″ rods it came with) and canopy of this Lowe’s pendant:

A pricey upgrade but definitely worth it. The new bronze mounting fits the Spanish-style space (with those rounded walls and inset ceilings) but the size and shape of the shade makes a huge modern difference.

Using a kitchen pendant light to update another ceiling fixture is an easy and affordable tip, though I must warn that we got this one wrong on the first try. I originally bought a candelabra mini pendant light that emitted about 30W – aka not enough to eat your dinner by! This monster shade needed a real deal light base (like the size of a usual light bulb) and we reinstalled the pendant again with the right sized light mount (thanks Andrew!). Now something like this option or this option, while not as big as I wanted for the space, would have provided three or four light bulbs for the large shade and would have cut down on this problem all together.

Another reason it doesn’t emit as much light as a usual chandelier?

The bottom of the shade is covered with a see-through insert that diffuses any light that comes out of the chandelier. You need as much watts or lumens (the LED version) as possible!

This all wraps up with my love for drum pendant lights, whether you hang them high in the center of a room like the Eden in Liv’s nursery:

Or low over a table, like the new linen short drum in the dining room!

Though I do wish it could be a half a rod lower – just need to learn how to rethread rod iron rods ;).

Read the full dining room story by starting here: the before!

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