Tinkerbell Cake

My daughter recently had a birthday and she just had to have a Tinkerbell party! A few years ago, she had a Tinkerbell party and I made a Tinkerbell cake with the Wilton's pan of Tink's face. This time, I wanted to do something different and this is what I came up with.

The cake itself is a strawberry cake (the same recipe for the strawberry basket cake) with purple and green sprinkles to make it a confetti cake. The frosting is the same strawberry cream cheese frosting as the strawberry basket cake, but with extra powdered sugar added to thicken it some. I made the flowers out of fondant using a cookie cutter and a toothpick to press in the lines to separate the petals, then brushed some edible gold dust (Wilton's) onto the flowers to look like pixie dust. I bought the Tinkerbell doll at Target in the toy section, since I thought it was cuter than the cake-topper Tinkerbells. All the kids loved the cake! 

I was originally thinking of giving out fairy wings to the girls and pirate swords to the boys during the party, but decided against it since the wings would get caught on everything and I'm sure someone would get hurt by a plastic sword. Since I want all the moms to still like me, I bought eye patches for the boys and made bell bracelets (since Tinkerbell's voice sounds like a bell to humans) for the girls instead. The bracelets were super easy, I just used stretchy sting and little bells! 

Reusable Panty Liners

I have been busy the past few months, so busy that I haven't had time to post what I've been up to! Between weeding my flower beds (where do the weeds keep coming from?!?!?), house work, and taking cake decorating classes (more on that in a later post), it has been hard to find a spare moment.

Last night, however, I finally finished up a sewing project I had started several months ago for reusable panty liners. I saw the pattern for them here in Hillbilly Housewife's website a while ago and at first the idea grossed me out, but after a while the disgust turned to curiosity. What would it be like to use cloth liners? Lots of people use cloth diapers for their babies and they don't seem to be grossed out by the clean-up, or at least not enough to stop using them. So with the Hillbilly Housewife pattern in hand, along with some old flannel baby blankets and towels, I set to work on making some panty liners.

This project was really easy to do, which is nice since I am not really an experienced sewer. I followed the basic directions in the pattern and for the inserts I sandwiched a piece of dish towel between 2 pieces of flannel baby blanket. I would definitely recommend following the suggestion in the pattern to use darker flannel since it hides the stains better. I had a bunch of light pink flannel blankets from when my daughter was a baby, so I went ahead and used those instead.

They were easy to make, but were they easy to use? The answer is yes! They are so comfortable, since they are just soft flannel. They are more bulky than disposable liners, but they breathe better and don't ruin your panties with adhesive strips. And washing them really isn't that bad, either. I just rinse them out in cold water and wash them in my regular loads of laundry.

To make your periods super "green" switch out your tampons for a Diva cup or other menstrual cup, then Aunt Flo will be virtually waste-free!