kitschymissy.com

I just found this awesome website!

http://www.retroreprints.com

They have hundreds, or thousands of coloring pages from old and new coloring books!

I’m giddy! A little while ago my dad picked up an old coloring book and sent it to me.  I don’t know how old it is - I’m guessing from the 70’s for as good as condition as it is in, but it might be older.  I just love the look of the pictures - so quaint and cute! Anyway, I’ve been on the search for more and I stumbled across this website.

They don’t have images for all the books they have listed yet but I did find some goodies: Berentain Bears (one of my favs growing up and now one of Allie’s favs), Labyrinth (yes, you read the correctly), Mr. Roger’s. . .

The website is still a little clunky - its sometimes hard to find books that actually have images uploaded.  Or some are listed as having images, but when you click on them there are no images. Hopefully, that means they’re coming soon? I can’t imagine being faced with the task of scanning a bazillion coloring book pages!

But once you find images you just hit print and voila!

Happy coloring!

Oh yes, so as for choosing what kind of cupcakes to do for Allie’s birthday. . .

While I loved the rainbow cupcakes very much and will find a reason to make them sometime soon in the future, I didn’t want to run out and by all the food colorings.  I had pink on hand already as I decided I was going to use that for the frosting beforehand.  So I decided to do pink & purple. . . Allie’s favorite colors and I thought it would be kind of Cheshire catty.

I wanted to put pink and purple in alternating layers, but I ran out of purple on the second batch and had to try and make more using the pink - the color was a little off and I still didn’t have enough batter so they didn’t come out as well.  Unfortunately, everyone ate them up before I could get a picture of the insides of one of the first batch.

I was afraid the coloring might alter the taste, but they came out great - very tasty, no weird taste from the coloring and I made buttercream icing with just butter this time (the recipe I was using called for half shortening. . . I’m sorry, but shortening is so nasty!) I’m excited to try this again though and have been thinking about other color combos - I’m thinking black & white would be very cool!

That being said, I ran across some pictures of a Mondrian cake you can get at SFMOMA!! WHAT!? I might have to try this when we go there in September! Right now I’m studying the photos and trying to figure out how I might make my own. . . I think I almost have it figured out. . . now do I want to try it?

Wow. Look at this:

Yep.  There you go - crazy cat lady lipstick from Paul & Joe.

I can’t decide if maybe I secretly kind of like these for their sorta creepy kitsch appeal.

My heart seized when I saw these:

Rainbow cupcakes of Awesomeness

Good lord - chroma!

Anyway, yeah, those got me excited. . . now I can’t decide what to make for Allie’s bday. . . I was going to go all Martha Stewart marble cupcakes using Strawberry (pink) & white but these put Martha’s cupcakes to shame.

I’ll need a moment to think about this.  Man, if all my decisions could be this trivial.

So summer has begun and while I’m trying to get my thesis finished, I’m also trying to find some new things to relax my mind. . . Also Allie will be starting kindergarten in August so I feel a little overwhelmed by it all.  Seems like the last five years have flown by. . . Her birthday is next month (right before she starts kindergarten) so I’m trying to think up something amazing.  Anyway, I feel like I have so many little loose ends to tie up right now.

Allie and I have been visiting the library every week now - we’re going to have the entire kiddie section read by the end of the summer!  Anyway, I’ve found some fun books there - I pick up a book on amigurumi.  I know it would probably amaze you to know I haven’t tried this yet. I picked up crocheting from my mom a while ago and can do really simple things but haven’t done it in a while. Anyway, I found the book Creepy Cute Crochet and brought it home.  Anyway, I’ve been practicing a little but my freakin hand cramps up so bad now I can barely do it! Its very uncomfortable - I’m not sure whether to just give up or keep trying and maybe it’ll stop hurting after awhile?

Next on my list of crafty things to do is Allie’s 5th birthday party.  Man, I don’t even remember my 5th birthday.  I just want to do something simple, but I feel a lot of pressure because all the parents out here throw these ridiculously large shindigs that put all my childhood birthdays to shame.   I try not too care so much but like I said, you feel this pressure to not let your kid down.

Allie wants an Alice in Wonderland party, which is awesome, so I’m thinking of just having it at our house.  I’m planning to just invite the girls from her class + some other girl friends (which is only about 7 or 8 kids). Sorry boys! (like they want to go to a girly tea party anyway!) I’m trying to develop some cute ideas and have been scouring the internet for other people’s ideas.  She also wants me to make her a “White Queen” dress -heh heh. . . that might be one of my projects to start this weekend.  Oh and  kitty will be the Cheshire Cat of course (some how I’m supposed to make a Cheshire Cat costume for a cat. . . haha). I think I get to be the white rabbit. .

And somewhere in all this I promised myself I’d finish two chapters of my thesis by the end of July.  This is going to require A LOT of caffeine.

I made the cupcakes for Allie’s preschool graduation today! They have a little ceremony and then a potluck at the school - cute stuff.

Anyway, the classes at the schools are divided into Green Bears, Blue Bears & Red Bears so we made little bear faces in all three colors! Do they look like bears? I was thinking about adding ears because right now they could be bears or bunnies or puppies. But then again what do 4 year olds care? It’s cake with frosting - that’s all they care about!

I let Allie pick the flavors - she chose red velvet (for Red Bears!) and confetti (one of my favs!).

Some stuff I picked up in Ohio. . .

Little skunk. . .

Kissing kids. . . these look like something my great-grandma woulda had in her house. . she actually might have.

I liked this Rocco-esque plate - picked it up for a dollar!

This isn’t from Ohio, but I love this little guy! He came all the way from the UK to live with me here in Hawai’i (they make a lot more guinea pig stuff there for whatever reason). A Guinea “piggy bank”?

So I meant to get this stuff up sooner, but yeah, you know. . .

Anyway, it seems like the weeks just fly by. . . I never have a enough time to do the things that waste my time.

I get so excited for the Kentucky Derby every year - you have to understand this is like my “Super Bowl”.  I can’t put into words the little jitters of excitement I feel - I’ve loved horses and horse racing since I was a little kid and although it has its problems, I can’t turn myself off from it.  The beautiful horses and the roller coaster of emotions one can experience are like crack to me.  One only has to watch Secretariat’s amazing Belmont race to experience those eerie heebie jeebies you only get when you know you’re seeing something that should be impossible. It’s stuff like this that keeps me hooked.

So enough about that, let’s get down to the business of the Kentucky Derby party.  Unfortunately because of the time difference (+ 6 hours) here in Hawai’i, I can never really get people into the party mood for the Derby.  The race is usually at noon and not too many people, myself included, are too keen about mint juleps at 11 AM on a Saturday. But, I still get excited and will put on a party for myself & Jason and the couple poor suckers I can coerce into coming.  I see this as practice for the one year I can finally put on a huge, elaborate Derby party. And I’ve already found out that mint juleps aren’t going to work because they are nasty and no one wants to actually drink them.

This year, I did some lovely little cupcakes and made my first foray into cake/cupcake decorating by making little red roses to put on the cupcakes.  I’ve always wanted to try my hand a cake deco, in fact, they used to have a 4-H project where you decorated a piece of foam to look like a cake and displayed it at the county fair. Seriously. haha. I never did it, but I thought it would be fun and now with the advent of all these cake decorating shows, I’m pretty sure that I might have missed my calling in life.  These people are truly artists but with freakin’ cake! I love art, I love cake. . .I should just quit grad school already. just kidding.

Ta-da! I bought some cheap little plastic horses off of eBay, whipped up a batch of buttercream icing and found some YouTube videos that demonstrate how to make buttercream roses. I did red roses because, of course, the Derby winner is always awarded a blanket of red roses! My icing was a little to soft/runny so I was having some issues and my roses kept collapsing when I tried to move them from the nail to the cupcake. Next time it’ll be better hopefully! I volunteered to make about 4 dozen cupcakes for Allie’s preschool graduation this week. . .trying to come up with some cute ways to frost them! Wish me luck!

Okay, I know I’m a huge nerd and that I’m ever closer to assuring that I die alone surrounded only by my pets but I’ve been wanting to broadcast streaming video of my guinea pigs for a while and just finally got around to looking into it. And it’s pretty darn easy with ustream.tv

So here it is, I present you with the first season of Kawaii Cavies!

Free live streaming by Ustream

Ok, so it’s probably about exciting as watching paint dry for everyone else, but it’s fun for me to watch them and see how they act when I’m not around. I’ll probably only have it on during the days I’m at work so the stream will only be up Tues/Wednes/Thursdays or whenever I feel like it.

Got this idea out of a craft magazine of some kind.  Find a sturdy square cardboard box.  On the lid, measure about 1/4″ from the each edge and cut out the square with an exacto knife.  Gather some fabric, ribbons, pictures, small jewelry boxes in different sizes, stickers, small toys and go crazy!  I was going with a “woodland animal” theme for this box.  I covered the entire outside of the box with one type of fabric (using a spray adhesive) - you’ll probably need some craft glue or hot gun and wooden clothes pins to make the corners and edges stick.  I used another type of fabric on the inside. The boxes were tricky to get to stick on the fabric on the inside. . . I used a lot of hot glue.

Those little boxes of miniatures from Japan are great to use this project.  That’s where the little deer & bunny came from.

I haven’t thought about how to actually hang it yet, but I think you could tape a photo hanging wire on the back (using masking tape/aluminum tape) - nobody will see it anyway!

On to the next!