retro tv t-shirt

My sweet husband, Michael, celebrated his birthday last month. One of his presents was this retro t.v. t-shirt.

The t-shirt was inspired by one of our all time favorite TV shows, The IT Crowd. It is available on Netflix Instant. I definitely recommend it with one caveat- British TV allows much more foul language than American TV. There are a few F-words sprinkled throughout the series-- less than one an episode. It's like a PG-13 movie. Anyhow, one of the main characters, Roy, wears lots of great t-shirts. This one was my favorite:

I recreated it with freezer paper stencils and fabric paint. This was my first time doing a freezer paper stencil on an adult sized t-shirt. I struggled getting it centered and level, as I am sure you can tell! Little kid t-shirts are much easier. If I hadn't left it to the last minute (literally- I did this the morning of his birthday!) I would have bought a new shirt and tried again. Live and learn, right? I also wish I had made the t.v. a little larger.

I do really love how the antennas and the details of the t.v. (the switches and speaker and legs) turned out though.

Michael was very happy with this present. He put it on immediately and wore it the rest of the night. See all those candles? He's OLD! :)

foolproof cake decorations

When I asked Ezra what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday he would give me vague weird answers so I was on my own. I usually try to make whatever kind of birthday cake the kids can dream up but since Ez didn't seem to care I decided to go simple to make it easy on myself as we had a busy weekend. I decided to make sports equipment since Ezra is into all things sports. It was so quick and easy and really fun to do.

I went with a simple 'Happy Birthday Ezra' on top.

Basketball

Soccer

Golf

Tennis

Baseball

I'm not kidding when I said it was quick and easy. The writing and the sports equipment took about ten minutes to do. Getting everything set up (finding and printing the images, melting the chocolate) took longer that making the words and sports gear.

You can use any type of shape or picture. The sky's the limit. I used a unicorn below as an example of a more girl-y version.

Here's how to do it:
Print your image. Lay a sheet of parchment paper over your image or words (wax paper should work too). I used cheap-o chocolate almond bark. Melt it in the micro or over a double boiler. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a #2 tip.

Outline your image with the melted chocolate.

Let the chocolate cool for a 10-15 minutes before handling. Lightly press onto a freshly frosted cake. That's it. I told you it was easy!

How cute would several of these unicorns be lined up on the outside of a cake? If you don't want to use brown buy the white chocolate flavored bark and use food coloring oils (not regular food coloring!) for a custom color.

Whatever shape you make, just make a lot because all the kids will want one to go with their piece of cake. I guarantee it!