Photo Transfers

Are you familiar with The DIY Dish?
If you're not, and you like crafty things, then you totally should be.

Way back in April of 2010 a mixed media collage was featured and I have been itching to do the photo transfer ever since.
The trouble is that I have a mad fear of commitment when it comes to hanging pictures in my home and I simply could not decide what photos I wanted to try the technique using!

Recently I decided I wanted to put some sort of Superhero pictures in Zac's room and was leaning towards vintage tin signs, however I was indecisive enough about committing to specific Superhero's I decided it was the perfect time to try the technique so I could have limitless options!
It's super simple to do and looks super cool once it's completed.

(impressed by my fancy photo up there?? yep... I'm getting pretty handy with a computer if I don't say so myself!)
1. You'll need a painters canvas, gel medium, paint brush and your photo. Your photo must be laser printed and if it has words, printed in mirror image.
2. Cover your canvas with a thick coat of the gel medium and then press your photo, image side down, onto the medium, pushing out as many air bubbles as possible.
3. Allow to dry completely, overnight is a great time frame.
4. Dip you fingers into water and rub off the paper. This step takes some time but it's when the magic happens. Your image will stay on your canvas while you wash/scrub away all the white paper backing.

Once the canvas was dry from the water I covered it with a thin coat of mod-podge and allowed that to dry.
After the first picture was completed I got a little excited and embraced my fear of photo commitment and made a few more...

I took the glass out of a few dollar store frames and popped these babies inside for the party...

 and then to hang on the walls in both boys bedrooms.

I am so excited with how nicely they turned out!

A few weeks back Elsie used this same technique on material and I couldn't help myself so I made me and the mister matching shirts, for the party, as well.

(I don't recommend washing in the washing machine though... even on the gentle cycle...)

I'm kind of kicking myself for waiting so long to try this technique, it looks so cool when it's done and it's practically effortless!
Now to decide on the next photo to do this with!!

Superman Bunting

 I love buntings.
I have been looking for an excuse to make one for some time now but always found the task to be quite daunting. It seemed like it would take so much time cutting out all those triangles and sewing them all together to then connect them all...
But I could not have been more wrong!

I had some superhero-ish material sitting around so I decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at a bunting for Zac's party.
It took about 2 hours to make this baby and I love it.
I love, love, love it!

If you've ever thought about making a bunting you totally should, it's pratically effortless and so freaking adorable it's a must make in life

I took a standard size piece of paper, and found the middle of one end. I drew straight lines from the top corner of the sheet to the middle of the bottom.
Cut that out and voila! your template!

Decide how long you would like your finished bunting to be (how many triangles) and cut out double, one for the front and one for the back.

Pin 2 triangles together, right sides facing, and sew, leaving the top open.
Flip right side out and iron flat.

Once you have done this with all of your squares lay them out and measure how long they are once lined up.

Add additional length (I added 14" on either side) and cut a strip of binding your final length (I used store bought binding).

Then just sew your binding on as you would for a quilt!

Couldn't be easier!

I used it to decorate the wall above the food table at Zac's party...

and once the party was done I hung it up over his bed.

I think it's too cute!

Superhero Week

Welcome to...

 here on Happiness is Homemade!

Zac's 4th birthday is coming up next week and this past weekend we celebrated his milestone in a heroic way, with a superhero birthday party!
I had a great time planning the party (I always do!) and made a lot of the decorations myself.
Zac's room has needed a bit of TLC with the decorating so it worked out well to use the decorations I made for the party to spiffy up his room as well.

This week I'm going to show you everything I made, decorations and baked goodies, and have a DIY Palooza of superhero goodness!

That said it is Monday which, as you know, marks a musical intro to the week, and to get you in the spirit of things I am going "theme song" this week.
My boys love superhero's and superhero shows and their favourites are the cartoons from the 1960's.
I listen to them singing, and correcting each other on, the intros to all these cartoons all day everyday.
This is one of Eli's favourites.

Happy Monday!

Superhero's

My boys think they are superhero's.

I love comics and superhero's so when they started showing an interest, I will admit to being very excited. I really wanted the boys to come to their own love of superhero's though and didn't really encourage or focus on the masked crusaders to see how far their enjoyment would go.

It has gone further then I ever could have expected and it's officially gotten slightly embarrassing.

Both boys no longer answer to their names.

Zac has started introducing himself as Green Lantern. Occasionally he puts on his Batman cape and insists on being called Green Bat.

Eli switches his superhero up daily, Wednesday he was Captain America, yesterday Batman and today Superman. He has been running around the house this morning saying "Up, Up and Away!". 

Zac's birthday party is this weekend and it was a natural fit that it be a superhero theme. 

I've been working like crazy all week, sewing decorations, cutting masks and planning the food. 

I do love planning a party!

Next week I'm going to share each craft I made for the party and a few recipes, along with some cute photos of the party.

I'm pretty excited about it and hope you'll come back and check it out.

Have a good weekend!

Book in Review

I feel like I am flying through my list of books to read.
Turns out if you focus on 1 book at a time (instead of 8) you actually finish them!!

A couple of weeks ago I started Little Bee by Chris Cleave.

I really wanted to like this book. All the ratings on the back were super positive and it just looked cute.
The description didn't give away too much as "the publisher's did not want to spoil" the story.

Yah... I didn't like it.

I wish I did, I really wanted to... it was just... meh.
I had no attachment to the characters and quite honestly was pretty over the "story" by about the middle of the book.
It's a story of a 16 year old girl (Little Bee) who immigrates to England after almost loosing her life to "the men" who were killing villages in Nigeria to get at the oil underneath their tribes. She is saved on a beach by the other main character, Sarah, who is having marital issues with her husband.
The story follows these two around as they try to sort out their life issues essentially...
Juuuust, not my thing...

So! Moving on!
I have found the last couple reads to be slightly disheartening in my bubble of good books. While they have all been well written, none have completely sucked me in so deep that I can get lost in the characters and the story.
And I like to get lost in books.
What's the point in reading a book if you can't get a little lost, is my opinion.
I decided that due to my current low-ish state of reading, I'm going to re-read some favorites.

I'm taking on The Hunger Games again!!!
I'm so super excited actually. They are turning this series of books into movies and I am beside myself with excitement about them.
Some people have Twilight, other's have Harry Potter, I have The Hunger Games.
My tummy actually does flip flops every time I watch the trailer.

Come on March 23rd!!!!

Have you read any good books lately? I'd love some suggestions!!

Whole Wheat Bread

I did it!

I did it and then I moon walked across my kitchen with a triumphant fist pump.

I found the perfect sandwich bread recipe.

The perfect whole wheat sandwich bread that is!

 

It has been a delicious journey through many loaves of bread, but I think I am officially ready to claim this one as a winner for my family.

Parker House Rolls are traditionally fantastic white rolls that are buttery and fluffy and straight up heavenly.

Knowing that they were a winning recipe I decided to give them a go using just whole wheat flour, skipping the rolls and just dumping the whole mound of dough into a bread pan.

Normally taking all the all purpose flour out of a recipe and swapping it with whole wheat, in its entirety, makes a dense, heavy loaf that could easily be used as a weapon to fight off household intruders.

I honestly had no real expectations or hopes when I decided to make this drastic change to the recipe so to say I was shocked when it turned out fabulous is an understatement. 

I jumped, I clapped, I giggled like a love sick teenager. 

Sad that I would get this excited about bread, yes, but the love I have for bread could also be described using the love sick teenager analogy.

I made another loaf just to be sure and it was also wonderful. Then I swapped out 3/4 cups of the whole wheat flour for some multi grain flour and that was awesome too!

I'm kind of thinking that the Parker House Rolls recipe is like the holy grail of all bread recipes. You can do anything to it to change it up but in the end it's always going to be a winner.

You should try it, and let me know if you have as much success with it as I have.

I've even swapped out the sugar for honey! sheesh! I'm telling you! I'm freaky excited about this bread. I feel like the options are limitless!

Whole Wheat Bread

3 tbsp warm water

3 tbsp sugar

1 package (2 1/2 tsp) active dry yeast

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter

1 cup milk

2 3/4 cups whole wheat (bread) flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

Stir warm water, 1 tbsp sugar and yeast together and set aside until foamy, about 5 minutes.

Melt 3/4 stick of the butter in a small saucepan and add the milk, warming until room temperature/slightly warm (looking to take the chill off the milk). Pour into a large bowl and add the yeast mixture, remaining 2 tbsp sugar, flour and salt and mix it up either with a wooden spoon or your hands (I prefer my hands... I find it easier to gage if I need more flour or not if I'm elbow deep in the bread making process). 

Dump the dough out onto a clean surface and kneed until it's smooth adding only enough flour to keep it from sticking to the surface you are working on, roughly 5 minutes. Whole wheat bread doughs will not get as smooth as a white dough and you also want them to remain slightly sticky to the touch. If you add enough flour to take away all sticky-ness you're running the risk of adding too much making a dense/dry loaf... just sayin'...

Form the dough into a ball and plop into a greased bowl, cover with a tea towel or cling wrap and set aside until doubled in size, roughly 1 hour.

Once the dough has risen dump it out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and give it another quick kneed, I usually only go about 30 seconds or so, and form it into a log. Place in a greased loaf pan, cover once again and allow to raise about another hour or so until doubled in size again.

Preheat oven to 375. Bake the loaf for 35-45 minutes until the top is a nice deep golden colour and the loaf sounds hallow when you tap on it. Allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes and then remove the loaf allowing it to cool on it's side.

It's great warm but if you are hoping to cut it into thin slices allow to cool completely to room temp.

Not sure if it's worth mentioning but I'm kind of old school when it comes to bread making and do it all by hand. I have a stand mixer with a hook but have horrible luck with it as I never seem to get the right consistency and always seem to add too much flour. All that to be said, if you try this recipe and it's no good the first time, try doing it again without the fancy equipment and see if it turns out differently.

I hope you make this and enjoy it as much as I did!

**recipe adapted from the Parker House Roll Recipe found in this book**

Movember

November marks that time on your calendars that every man loves and every woman hates.

It's Movember folks.

The time of year when men grow themselves some extra facial hair in an effort to raise awareness for men's health... and for some, just the sake of growing some nasty facial hair.

I am currently surrounded by all kinds of facial hair wierdness...

It's only natural that I felt a little pressured to join in the fun and grow myself a mustache. Trouble (perhaps not so troublesome in reality) is that I can not grow facial hair.

This means I (happily) settle for the mustache on a stick variety.

Last year I made one of these using felt, this year I decided to step it up a notch and use some fun fur for a more... voluptuous look.

I followed all the same initial steps you can find here, except instead of covering my cardboard template with felt I cut the fun fur to fit. 

When cutting fun fur it's worth mentioning that you want to try and avoid cutting the actual hairs, just the backing.

Once you've got the shape of your mustache in your fun fur, glue it to your cardboard template and allow to dry.

Once it's dry hot glue a stick to the cardboard and flip it over to style your lovely bushy mustache. You can use mustache wax or hair spray to help the fun fur stay in place once you are happy with how it looks.

And there you have it! Now you can hang with the guys.

Peace Out!

(funny how having a mustache makes you feel so much cooler...)