I Teach T-Shirt

My son is transferring to another preschool in a week and we’re all really sad to leave his teachers in the old school behind.  Fortunately, my daughter will be starting there at the same time my son is leaving so I’ll still get to see them occasionally for at least another year.  His teachers have been really wonderful and we wanted to make them something nice to show them how awesome we think they are.  I came across this post a while ago on Skip To My Lou for a DIY cap for a male teacher with a superhero logo on the front and the words “I Teach.” and just plain text in the back that says, “What’s your superpower?”  I was so in love with this idea but, I didn’t think my son’s teachers (all female — some older) would care to wear a cap as much as they would a t-shirt so I looked up the cost of how to have the t-shirts made (yikes!) and decided to make them myself.

I started by making a superhero logo and text as an image in GIMP (free Photoshop-like image editor) and I then purchased some nice plain cotton fitted t-shirts for women at about $5 each at Target.  After reviewing many iron-on transfer sheet products, I decided on the Avery 3279 Dark Fabric Transfers because it seemed pretty unanimous that so long as you used the product exactly as specified in the instructions, that the transfers would come out great.  The only snag I ran into was there didn’t seem to be an easy way to print out and just iron the “What is your superpower?” text on the back of the shirt without putting it on a background first so I decided to put the text on a simple oval background.  Once I had the images, all I had to do was print them on the transfer paper (after printing test pages on regular paper first, of course), trim the transfers, remove the backing (which ended up being the most difficult part of the process) and ironed them onto the t-shirts.

Front

Back

I also added a little heart next to the sizing information on the inside of the shirt with my son’s name so they would remember who gave it to them.

Label

The last and final step, according to the transfer instructions, is to wash them inside out to ensure they don’t bleed.  This was a super simple project and I love how they came out!   I hope the teachers do too.   Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Owl Cookies (final product)

I recently had the pleasure of making some owl cookie party favors for an owl themed baby shower.  It was my first time decorating cookies with royal icing so I had to do some searching around to see what the best method might be in addition to my own trial and error.  The first thing I needed was an owl shaped cookie cutter.  After doing some searching, I came upon this post from My Owl Barn that suggested using tulip cookie cutters and cutting off the stem.  I just happened to have a tulip shaped cookie cutter in my baking drawer and actually preferred the wide shape over the longer cookie cutters I was able to find online so this was perfect!  That was the easy part.  Next, I had to actually figure out how to properly make the royal icing.  I used the following recipe that can be found on Prudent Baby:

3 tbsp meringue powder
1 1lb bag of confectioners’ sugar
6 tbsp warm water
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Beat all the ingredients together for approximately 12 minutes or until it forms stiff peaks.

While the icing is getting beaten, I prepared my pastry bags and decorating area.  Once the icing was ready, I scooped some into separate mixing bowl and covered the remaining icing with a  damp towel.  I added coloring to the scooped out portion and then added more warm water by the teaspoon until the icing was the right consistency.  The first time I attempted to make these cookies, I didn’t add any additional water and not only was the icing difficult to pipe out but, it also solidified too quickly and would leave a border on the cookie.  That was not the look I was going for so I decided to add more water and followed Marian from Sweetopia’s “10 second rule” to get the right consistency.  Marian has great tips for cookie decorating on her site and I highly recommend it.   Once the icing was ready, it was just a matter of putting it in the pastry bag and starting to decorate.  This was the fun part but also the part that required the most patience and the most practice.  My plan initially was to just make the first layer (the base of the owl) with no additional decoration and let it dry overnight  However, I tried the marbling technique for the feathers on some practice cookies I used for my son’s valentines in preschool and I loved how they came out.   Instead of the traditional arched feathers, I made little hearts for feathers on the body and think it came out quite cute.  I basically made 2 rows of little v’s  and then dragged a toothpick down the middle making sure  to clean it off each time.

Base layer for valentine owl cookies with heart "feathers"

Then, the following day, I added the eyes and instead of using chocolate chips for eyeballs as I had planned on for the baby shower cookies, I decided that hearts came out so nice that I’d put them in the eyes as well (plus, I had some leftover pink icing I wanted to use up).  Here are the final pictures for the valentines I made for my son’s classmates.

Finished products drying overnight

All packaged and ready to be handed out...

My son, B, has got a LOT of classmates

By the time I had to make these cookies for the baby shower, I was an owl cookie making machine .  I was able to pump them out relatively quickly.  Instead of heart shaped feathers on the body, I made upside down archs by drawing two straight lines and then running a toothpick down them twice.

baby shower owl cookies - first layer drying overnight

Once the first layer was nice and dry, I made the eyes, beak, wings, and eyeballs (chocolate chips).  Here were the final products.

Added Eyes

The baby shower cookies drying overnight

Packaged and ready to be distributed!

At the shower with other owl brethen

I’m really excited about how they came out and with Easter coming up this weekend, I’m hoping to find the time make some cute Easter cookies as well.  These cookies are great fun to make and are delicious but they are very time consuming!

Are you a cookie decorating afficionado?  How do you think these came out?  I’d love to hear what you have to say!

Easy Empire Waist Top

This is Amy Butler’s Easy Empire Waist Top from her Little Stitches for Little Ones book.  The “easy” part is a misnomer.  While I do love Amy Butler fabrics and have the utmost respect for how talented she is, I have to say the instructions for this pattern were very confusing and could have used some more diagrams.  Once I figured out what the instructions were trying to say, it wasn’t bad at all and in fact, I’m thinking of making another one for my daughter, Emily.  I made this one above for my good friend who is having a baby in a few weeks and can’t wait to see the baby in it!

I chose to use two Michael Miller’s Lush Modern Lotus in pink and Michael Miller’s Bonne Amies Petit Point in pink for this top and I think they look quite nice together, don’t you?  Here are some close ups of the top to show it’s features:

This is the back of the top. It has a button closure on top. I wish I had enough time to searching for a cute button for it but ended up just using a plain white one.

This one is a close up of the sleeves. The sleeves have a little slit in the center but I made mine a 1/8" wider than was called for in the pattern to put more emphasis on it.

I also made the Kimono Style PJ Pants from the same book.  These were very simple and easy to work up, though the pattern called for a 20″ elastic band which was too big for the pants.  I ended up using only about 16″ for the 3-6 month size.

All in all, I love how the outfit came out and I’m really excited to see it being worn by a baby.  It’s the first pattern that I’ve attempted in this Amy Butler book although I’ve owned this book for over a year and have bookmarked many of the patterns.  Wishful thinking, I guess.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get to some more of them because I do love Amy Butler and am hoping my issues with this particular pattern was just a fluke.

Let me know what you think and if you’ve completed this project yourself, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!