The Crafty Red Rabbit

So one day, Caleb asked me if we could make a layered cake from scratch. Since it was nearing Christmas, I thought I would be the perfect project for our annual Baking Day. I picked a spiced eggnog cake and frosting recipe and found some easy decorations for the top. We made some marshmallow snowmen and penguins pops, Christmas tree pops made from candy melts and sprinkles, and houses cut from wafer cookies. The snowmen and penguins were originally supposed to be coated in white candy, but my mom was concerned with them already being too sweet. This didn't affect the penguins , but unfortunately, it made the black candy that formed the snowman faces bleed across the surface of the marshmallow. We ran out of time, so I wasn't able to pipe a string of Christmas lights around the cake like I intended to, but it still came out cute. Caleb laughed his head off at how silly the snowmen and penguins looked and the cake itself turned out delicious.

It had been a while since I had made some jewelry, so when I needed to come up with some gifts for a few of RJ's family I figured it was a good time to revive the hobby. Since they were all related (his step-grandmother, stepmother, his aunt and her partner), I thought it would be cute if the pieces matched. Stacked jewelry seems to be super popular at the moment, so I decided to go with a couple bracelets each. I looked at my collection of beads and picked out a handful of different types in the same color palette. As they were all a fan beach themes, I went with soft aqua tones and then contrasted them with metallic copper colors. I went for beads in different shapes and sizes that had some translucency to them, reminiscent of colored sea glass. Magnesite in its turquoise color and evocation of nature with its organic veins was thrown in. And finally clear crystal with just a hint of smokey brown or light blue to suggest water. Since I only had a few beads of each type, ra...