Revamped Outdoor Chairs

I have been trying to find ways to update my home without spending a ton of money. One way that I have been doing this has been to revamp the furniture that I already have.

We bought these outdoor chairs a few years ago for very little money. At the time they were fine, but their color was not doing anything for me so I decided to spray paint them.

This took me about 1 nap time to finish (about 45 minutes). I had to split it into two because I only bought one can of spray paint for all 4 chairs and had to go back to Lowe's to get 3 more cans.

 

Total I believe I paid about $12 for the spray paint, do not remember what we paid for the chairs but not much. Our patio is staring to look better already.

Decorating Flower Pots with Toddler

 For Mother's Day this year I wanted to do a craft with my daughter for her Grandmothers. I decided to take out my paints and have her decorate some terracotta pots.

 She had so much fun, she did not want to stop painting.

The pots came out pretty nice and her grandmothers loved them. I don't have a picture of them here but after they dried we planted some flowers in each of the pots.

Flower Pot Cake: Food Network

I first saw this project in the Food Network Magazine and then saw it floating around Pinterest. I made this cake for Mother's Day.

Here is the original pin.

Food Network - Flower Pot Cake

I started out by finding a DIY Fondant recipe on Pinterest, you can see how I made that here.

                           

I lined the 8" and 5"(the recipe suggests using a 6" pan but I did not have one) pans with parchment paper so the cakes would not stick to the pans.

I mixed up some boxed devils food cake mix and poured it in each pan. Then baked the cakes following the directions on the box.

Even though the package said that both cakes would be done at the same time the smaller of the two was done about 10 minutes before the other one.

After the cake had cooled I leveled off the cake, stuck the two cakes together with frosting and used a serrated knife to cut away at the cake and create the shape of an upside down flower pot.

This is were it started to go wrong. I was suppose to cover the cake with icing and then put it in the freezer for 30 minutes before putting the fondant on.

I rolled out the fondant while the cake was in the freezer, that was pretty easy.

So here is what the cake looked like after I applied the fondant, I think that if the frosting had stuck better the fondant would have stuck better.

I decided to put it in the fridge overnight to see if it would hold its shape better.


Here is the final product. Even though it did not turn out as well as I thought, it was still delicious.

DIY Fondant

I decided to create the Flower Pot cake that has been floating around Pinterest for a while. It calls for fondant and when I went to the store to get the pre-made fondant all of the packages said they were made in factories with tree nuts. My daughter and Mom are allergic to nuts so I decided to find a recipe on Pinterest on how to make your own fondant from scratch.

Here is the recipe that I found:

Homemade Fondant by My Crazy Blessed Life

This recipe uses mini marshmallows and powdered sugar. So very inexpensive and easy to do. Head over to My Crazy Blessed Life for the full recipe.

I melted the marshmallows in the microwave and mixed in the sugar. This took a little bit of effort because it takes awhile to have the marshmallows stop sticking to the spoon.

Once I got the all the marshmallows to stop sticking to the spoon I got a cutting board and sprinkled some of the leftover sugar on it and kneaded in the food coloring. I did not have gel food coloring like the recipe asked for so I used liquid food coloring that I had on hand. I decided to use yellow and red to make an orange (the closest thing to the color of a flower pot). I used gloves while doing this so that I did not dye my hands at the same time, my daughter was helping me up to this time, food coloring and toddlers don't mix.

Here is the finished product not bad. We'll see how it works out with the cake. The flower pot cake will be my next post.

Welcome To My Blog

Hi Readers,

My name is Caroline, I have a Bachelors in Interior Design and a Masters in Art Education. I'm now a stay at home Mom to a 2 year old daughter and love all things arts and crafts. I am addicted to Pinterest, really addicted. I've started this blog as a way to record my experience with my Pinterest projects and share them with all of you. I will post my successes and my failures and everything in-between. I hope you enjoy my Pinterest journey.

Sincerely,

Caroline
Hooked on Pinterest