Zero Calorie Cupcakes

Instagram collage

This project came in the form of a request from my sweet mother-in-law.  She found a scarf made out of crocheted cupcakes and though it was very cute.  She purchased it for $15, and brought it home.  She loved it so much she decided she wanted two more for two of her grandchildren.

I came home from work one day to find a Ream's bag (for those of you not from Utah Ream's is a grocery store) on the kitchen table.  Inside the bag was a very strange looking thing indeed.  I pulled it out and looked at it.  I could clearly see it was crocheted, but what in the world was it?

Cherry join in the middle

I looked and looked and then put it back in the bag, not wanting to spoil a surprise, if that is what is was.  I went downstairs to talk with my hubby before he left for work.  Eventually our conversation brought us back up stairs and to the bag.  Andrew pulled it out of the bag and said his mom wanted to know if I could make something like this for two of the girls.  I looked at it again and then it came to me! It was a scarf made out of cupcakes with cherries, okay that makes much more sense.  And so a new project was born.

The first thing I do when someone asks if I can make something is look for a pattern online.  I feel there is no need to reinvent the wheel, so I usually don't.  That happened to be the case this time.  I was able to find a great patter, which is easy to make my cupcakes.  You can find the pattern here.

Single cupcake

And so I was off!  I needed to make 32 cupcakes, because there are 16 per scarf.  I needed to find some great girly colors.  This is the part of the project I either love or hate - picking out the yarn.  I am picky when it come to texture and color.  The worst thing for me is to walk in to a store with little variety in worsted weight yarn.  I like using worsted weight for almost anything, unless indicated otherwise.  My favorite so far is I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby.  It is the softest yarn I have worked with that is not specialty.  Sadly for me I was not close to a Hobby Lobby when I went looking for this project.  I settle for Red Heart variegated, which is terrible in my book, but the show must go on right?

Finishes Product and some ice cream!

Lucky for me the "cake" part I could make out of I Love This Yarn, so that made up for it.  I cranked out 32 cupcakes in a day, and now I needed to figure out how to attach them to one another.  I figured the cherries would work.  And for the most part, they did.  Some turned out a little crooked, but that is forgivable.  After all you don't want your project to be perfect, right?

In the end they turned out very cute and cupcakey!  My mother-in-law loved them and here's to hoping the girls they are intended for will love them as well!

Freedom Festival Day Three

Yes that is a wicker-work casket...

Day three started with one of the Freedom Festival reps coming around and telling us he hoped the day three crowd was good this year.  Apparently it has been hit and miss in the past.  We decided it would be a good day and started up.  We of course started the day with an amazing donut from next door and then the crowd began to trickle by.  It was a slow trickle most of the day.  We ran random specials ranging from $5 off a dress while Andrew was holding the sign to a clearance price of $10 per dress.  We were able to get some sales off both specials, but it was nothing compared to the fourth.  As I mentioned before we did have a return customer and she brought a friend. That was great! The return customer bought two more dresses and bragged about how much her grand-daughter had loved them. That was great to hear.

As evening approached so did the clouds.  We had decided to start cleaning up the things that were not selling well to make the clean-up easier for us.  While Andrew was taking a load to the car another vendor came by and said there was a high wind advisory in affect and they were tearing down.  When Andrew returned, we decided we should start closing up as well.  It is a good thing we did! Not twenty minutes later the wind started.  We were running the last load to the car and only needed to go back to take down the canopy when the rain started. We waited that out in the car for about a half an hour and we took the canopy down and headed home.

All-in-all it was a great experience and we did well with sales.  I did discover summer time is not the time to sell crocheted items, and that is just fine. I did have several compliments and told my work was very well done. 

Freedom Festival Day Two

 We started on the Fourth bright and early so we did not have to compete with the road closures for the parade and all of the traffic for those who had not camped out the night before to get their spot.  We set up shop and waited.  We heard the parade start, and we had a couple of browsers come through during that point, but once the parade was out the crowds converged on the vendors. As you can clearly see part of that crowd was a brunette Captain America.  He was not interested in dresses.  We also saw Spiderman, but wasn't interested in dresses either.

This was our most popular style of sundress, and I am pleased to say we sold out of them by that afternoon. It was great!  We had a woman come back on the fifth looking for one and was very sad we were out

Freedom Festival Day One

Day one of the festival arrived.  We find our booth space and Andrew proceeds to unpack two cars worth of stuff.  Unfortunately I could not be of much help with the unloading as I was given weight restrictions by my OB for lifting.  That turned out to be a good thing because Landon wondered off and we lost him for about 5 nerve-wracking minutes.  So I stayed at the booth site with him and set up what we could.  

Our booth was between a trinket booth (who was also selling sundresses) and a Mennonite group who made the best donuts I have had in quite some time.  That worked to our advantage later because people would line up to get a donut and they would almost have to browse our booth. 

On a side note Landon left with grandma today.  He told us both good bye and walked of with grandma like he was the king of the world.  I was surprised and happy, but a little heart broken at the same time.

More Festival Prep

When I get home from work on July 2, Andrew tells me he has homework for me to do. SWEET!  First thing I need to create two signs.  One that is the price list explaining the offer and the other stating we accept credit cards (Thank you Square!!).  Putting the signs together was a little more complex that I thought it would be.  Vinyl letters and free-hand placement get interesting. In the end the signs were readable and looked semi-decent.











My next assignment was to put together the clothes rack from IKEA. It was simple - minus one thing. The little tiny allen wrench they included did not have enough leverage to actually move the screw past a certain point.  Luckily Andrew has a tool set that I could raid to complete the job.

My last assignment was to pack up my little guy so he could spend three days with Grandma, or mamas as he calls her.  This was bitter-sweet for me.  It was the first time he has ever spent the night somewhere without us.  More on that to come.

Freedom Festival Prep

How many of you have ever prepped for a big event? Then you know what organized chaos looks like. The last minute where is my brain and how did it end up there? Well take that feeling and add moving to a new place, being pregnant, and still having everyday life to live, and you have what our chaos has look like for the last two weeks.

Moving was a fun adventure. We had to figure out where everything is and then make sure it is ready for the festival. Luckily we have been able to find almost everything. 

Next I had to out the finishing touches on the projects that still needed buttons or embellishments. Hooray for iTunes and movies!

I had to go through what I had and make sure it is ready for the public.

And of course this had to be done in the living room at 10:00 pm.  It really did take up most of the living room. Don't worry though I cleaned it all up before I went to bed.

The last thing to do now is find out if we need price tags in out items and finish up some last minute projects.

The Big Announcement...!

As many of you who read this blog know, I am a sucker for newborns and their photo accessories!  Sadly I haven't posted in a while and I am fairly certain my last post was about newborn sets.

Well here they are in action! This cite little guy is sporting the Dino and sock monkey. His sweet mom approached me  about making them. It was so fun!

What did I learn? I need to work on my gauge. It's still a little off, but I am getting there. Also I love creating sets like these.  I have one request I need to work on.  Watch for it coming soon.

In other big news-That Yarn Girl in conjunction with Blue Orchid Imports will be at the Freedom Festival in July!  All you Utah County fans come check us out!