Pom Poms! Book review, party and my big whoops

So I threw a little party to celebrate the brand new Poms Poms book by Sarah Goldschadt and Lex Walters Wright. There was much fun had. After discussing it with a few people, we decided to make the pom pom hedgehog paper weights on the cover. Hedgehogs are awesome and they are so cute it was irresistible.

Everything was in place. My daughter cut several pom pom makers using the pattern at the end of the book out of scrap packaging cardboard. Quirk Publishing was kind enough to provide supplies and give books to each of the party goers so we could have a fun time crafting. I got yarns, and felt in nice natural colors for people who wanted that and blue of course for my daughter.

We had donuts and coffee and laughed, went through the book discussing the various projects. I'm absolutely charmed by the big tulle pom pom head band. I told everyone about making the coffee filter pom pom then not being able to resist throwing it at my husband.

I took TONS of pictures. Of the felt, the yarn, cutting the pom poms, the really adorable hedgehogs. We made small ones, but my friend Teri made a big one with crystal eyes and a shiny crystal tear drop nose that was just made of cute.

Then I got home, and when I got ready to write this post, I found out that I didn't have a memory card in my camera.

That's the big whoops. This amazingly fun time that was just a great break from all the work that all of us have been doing on various things and at our jobs? Yeah, not one photo. Because I didn't make sure my memory card was back in my camera from when I took the photos of the moose on my way to Michaels to buy supplies to make the hedgehogs.

The hedgehogs are adorable.

The book includes projects to make all sorts of accessories and decorations. If you've seen tissue paper pom poms and liked them for wedding decor, you'll love the coffee filter ones with a hand dyed effect done with food coloring. The pom pom hedgehog paperweights are adorable. A scarf made of pom poms is fun and I think a great way to celebrate all sorts of things. You could make them for holidays or to show school spirit.

Making them with friends is the most fun and the projects would be good for tweens and on up. The simplicity of a pom pom, made using a few different techniques works for all sorts of projects and this book will just get you started. Full color photographs and well written instructions along with a complete pattern section including templates to make the pom pom makers make it easy to create the projects shown. No fancy techniques, just lots of fun.

The first part of the book is the projects. 25 and all of them are simple enough to do in an afternoon and some of them can be done in an hour. I like instant gratification projects! The end of the book covers the various techniques for making pom poms and for stitching things that need stitching. Even better? There is a whole section on wrapping styles. So you can make pom poms that are dotted, striped, speckled or half and half. I want to try the "beach ball" effect to make big rainbow pom poms that I can wear in my hair. (I will get a photo of that when I do it.)

Go like Quirk Books on Facebook, and check out the completely free sampler e-books (Quirk Books D.I.Y. Gift Guide and Quirk Books Entertains Your Kids) they have available on Amazon. 

Here are the photos of the moose that caused the whoops.






Full disclosure- Quirk Books sent complimentary copies of the book for review purposes and for my party guests. They also paid for the supplies. This is my honest opinion of the book. All Amazon links are my affiliate links and the money that I make from them helps pay for this site and my book addiction.

Book Review- Tiny Food Party

I'm going to be completely honest before I start gushing about the cute. I love tiny things, adore tiny foods, and love good food well made. It just delights me, well-made tiny foods are a joy to look at it and to eat.

Tiny Food Party! -Bite Sized Recipes for Miniature Meals by Teri Lyn Fish and Jenny Park is full of tiny, appetizer 1 and 2 bite versions of regular food. While the focus is on making things small, there is also a strong focus on making them well so they are as delicious as they are cute to make for truly impressive appetizers. A lot of the recipes could also be used in bento style lunches, tea party foods, or even a full meal for a dinner party which allows guests to try several different things.

The photographs are wonderful, the colors are bright and cheerful and the instructions are clearly written with American style volume measurements. A few of the recipes use common convenience ingredients, but most of them are made from scratch. The recipes have a nice gourmet/foodie flair with details and flavors like mini churros made with candied bacon in the batter and suggestions for 3 different dipping sauces.

Here's where I start squealing and clapping. Because those recipes? Are fantastic, clever and incredibly tasty. Shallots in a light, perfect batter to make tiny onion rings, perfect mashed potatoes piped in rosettes on tiny Shepard's Pies, miniature eclairs! If you look at the cover, you can see the little Caprese skewers with a Balsamic vinegar glaze. Under that are miniature toaster pastries. That recipe comes with a few suggestions for filling so you could make them to suit almost anyone's tastes.


One of my husband's favorite recipes, except for size (he feels like a giant when he eats tiny food) is the Country-style Eggs Benedict, I love that recipe too because instead of a Hollandaise sauce it uses a cheesy/garlic sauce that's a lot easier to make and that tastes fantastic.

There are also cocktail recipes for the adults. Little tiny mixed drinks served in shot glasses with gourmet twists and details to make them special and not just a miniature version of a grown up drink. Like the Bloody Marys use a Korean rice wine instead of vodka, and the glass is rimmed with bacon bits. It's a flavorful, spicy, gorgeously garnished mini drink. Adults with a sweet tooth will enjoy the Orange Creamsicles drinks with the honey and sugar garnish.

The authors worked small in very clever ways, and this is one of my favorite cookbooks this year. There are menu suggestions for various party themes, and lots of dessert recipes to go with all the main course and side dish recipes. The end of the book includes equivalencies for people using metric, and a good index to find things quickly.

Published by Quirk Books, you can find recipes and templates HERE.

I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

Book Review: Craft-A-Day by Sarah Goldschadt

Quick note from me: I post my reviews from this site and the bead site to Amazon, as well as reviewing a lot of other things there. The last week I've been at 898 reviews, then today reviewed a set knitting needles to bring it up to 899 so this could be my 900th review. Simply because for that personal milestone, I wanted to review something truly special. This was it.

Craft-A-Day: 365 Simple Handmade Projects by Sarah Goldschadt lives up to it's title. The projects are simple. They don't take a big investment in time or materials. They fit into busy lives well, and are ideal for craft parties or crafting with young people.

It's a lovely book, the projects are very well photographed, not crammed all together on the pages, at 426 full color pages, each project gets it's own page with well written instructions. They are charming and put me in mind of zakka type crafts from Japan, which makes sense. A lot of the zakka craft movement is inspired by Scandinavian crafts and the author of this volume draws a lot of her inspiration from the same background. Simple shapes, bright folk colors and easy techniques done well make simple projects. The style is a clean, bright appealing look. Or if I can stop being a grown up for a minute-It's so cute! I lovelovelovelove the projects in this book.

She breaks down the year into weeks, and each week has a theme. Some of the themes are shapes, and she does clever things with just circles or squares. But a lot more of them are things. Animals, flowers, rainbows, mustaches, ghosts and trees for example. 52 weeks to the year, so 52 different themes. The projects come with complete instructions and templates you can trace or copy for patterns. For the sake of simplicity, the projects use similar construction methods which make it easy, you could work through this whole book in an hour or less a day every day for a year.

The projects are very simple, and great for all level of crafters. Like I said above, it would be a great book to pick a project for a craft themed party with friends, or an evening with a young person. It's also got great quick projects that make fast gifts. Hand stitched felt stuffies, lots of cupcake toppers, card making projects, wall decor projects and jewelry projects. I didn't see a single project in the book that would cost more than 5 dollars to make, and since most of the projects use small amounts of materials, that 5 dollars would cover making a few of each. The projects are really cute, handmade looking, and charming. It's very current and DIY trendy.

I have a friend who was telling me recently that she can't craft. I'm personally going to recommend this book to her. I'm also recommending this to a friend with a crafty daughter, I think they would enjoy this a lot together.

Published by Quirk Books.

I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, my reviews are always my personal and honest opinion. You can read more about my review policy here.

Book Review- Marshmallow Madness!

If you've ever had a fresh, made from scratch marshmallow, you know the flavor and texture is so different from the store-bought bags that it's like a different food entirely. The fresh one, that's what a marshmallow should be.

Shauna Sever starts her book with an introduction to the key ingredients, sugar, gelatin, water, salt, vanilla extract , coating and corn syrup. The corn syrup is used for consistent results in small amounts, substitutes can be tries and she suggests a few. I used an organic non-HFCS type that has worked well for me in the past, golden syrup would probably work as well. The coatings are the powders you cover the finished marshmallows in to keep them from sticking.

Then the tools, including tips on how to calibrate your candy thermometer and why you need a stand mixer.

She also explains how the recipes are broken down, starting with the "bloom" which is the process of blooming the gelatin, the syrup, which is what the candy is made from, and the mallowing, which is where you start mixing your bloom and syrup into a gorgeous mass of marshmallows, and the ingredients you might mix in at this point.

Then you get to the good stuff. The recipes. Almost all the recipes have variations listed as well.

She starts with nice, basic marshmallows. Vanilla, chocolate and filled marshmallows. She also includes a vegan recipe and one that uses egg white meringue. The meringue is my favorite for it's light, fluffy incredible texture. Also a recipe for the best marshmallow creme ever. It's the recipe I'll use most since it's very simple to make, and tastes amazing. She suggests it for frostings and fillings. I recommend it with peanut butter on crackers. She also has 2 recipes for graham crackers, one of them is gluten free and vegan.

The next chapter is fruity marshmallows which use purees, juices and essential oils for true to the original flavors. These can get some coloring from the juices used and would be perfect for parties.

Tips for shapes explains how to make very attractive marshmallows like the twisted ropes on the cover.

Happy Hour as alcohol infused treats for your next adult get together. Inspired by classic drinks with tips for mallowing with alcohol in the mix.

Then my favorite chapter. Gourmet treats. These are the marshmallow recipes that made me think of friends who would appreciate them, and this is the chapter that inspired my daughter.  I like the salted ones, caramel and peanut too much. She likes the maple-bacon and the spicy Aztec chocolate. She gives tips for gift giving in this chapter.

Kids in a Candy Store are the brightly colored, candy flavored puffs that will thrill children with fun ideas for presentation.

The last chapter is full of recipes that use marshmallows, rice crispy treats, hot chocolate, a spicy hot vanilla, and a wonderful s'more cupcake that's toasted with a kitchen torch.

If you've had an interest in making your own marshmallows, I really recommend this book. It's gorgeous, with a softly padded cover, bright pastel illustrations and lots of full color photos. It also contains a lot of great ideas that can be a starter point to your own creations.

Check out Quirk Books on Facebook for free downloadable recipe cards from this book.



I received a copy of Marshmallow Madness free from the publisher for review purposes.
My reviews are always my personal and honest opinion. You can read more about my review policy here.

Book Review- The Cookiepedia

The Cookiepedia : Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics by Stacy Adimando is absolutely a must have cookie book.

The author sets out to create and recreate classic cookies, and has 50 recipes total and probably has your favorite. My favorite are Snickerdoodles and they are in the section with spicy cookies.

It begins with an introduction to the pans and the tools you'll need with a quick overview about what they are used for, then into "Cookie Speak" which defines common baking terms you'll see in cookie recipes. The next part of the introduction is about decorating cookies and various techniques and ideas for that.

Then the recipe chapters. Each chapter starts with a double spread of the cookies in that chapter, photographed and shown in true scale, and looking so good you wish you could pick them off the page. The chapters themselves are arranged by cookie flavor profile. Some of the cookies also have their own full page color pages so you can see nice ways to present them.

The recipes themselves start with a description of the cookie and an adorable illustrated oven with the pre-heat temperature and the number of cookies it makes. They also frequently have sidebar tips, as well as a suggestions after the recipe for ways to modify it, and lined note sections so you can add your own notes.

Buttery starts with frosted animal cookies, and has some very traditional cookie recipes in it, it also has frosted maple pecan cookies. Maple, butter, pecans, I'm drooling a bit.

Chocolatey has recipes for standbys like chocolate chip, but also has a cream filled sandwich cookie recipe which uses butter instead of grease for the cream filling and makes a cookie that will make you swear off the blue bagged cookies forever.

Fancy Cookies are the cookies you impress adult friends with your mad baking skills. Buttery alfajores sandwich dulce de leche, French macarons with a classic almond filling are a lot of people's favorite cookies are two of my favorites from this chapter.

Fruity is fruit filled or flavored cookies. My favorite kind of store bought cookie are fig bars and there is a recipe for those, also for pretty Linzer cookies, thumb prints and homey classics like oatmeal raisin (another personal favorite!)

Spicy is my favorite chapter, with molasses spice, gingersnaps and my favorite, snickerdoodles. It also has a recipe for a cracker like savory "cookie" seasoned with salt and pepper that would be excellent on a cold day with tomato soup.

Finishing up, we have Nutty and Seed, which is cookies with nuts or seeds. Classic peanut butter cookies with their familiar fork pressed hatch marks, almond biscotti and pistachio butter cookies are my favorites in this chapter. The pine nut studded pignoli cookies are just lovely to look at and simple to make as well.

The photographs and illustrations in this book are very well done, and give it a contemporary crafty look and feel that make it a nice gift book as well as one for your personal library.

I do have one minor quibble with the binding, it's spiral bound, then cased in a regular binding. It opens flat, but if you aren't careful to close the pages before the outside binding you can bow the pages that were opened. It's a very minor quibble for a great collection of recipes.

Published by Quirk Books, you can get this book from Amazon.com using the affiliate link below.


Amazon.com affiliate links don't affect your cost, and provide extra income to me personally, which helps support my book addiction.

My reviews are always my personal and honest opinion. You can read more about my review policy here.

 If you click the cookies tag in labels, you'll find lots of printable cookie boxes!

Book Review- Microcrafts

Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share is a compilation of tiny handmade crafts that can be used as jewelry, gifts and little decorations and whimsy on shelves.

I'm absolutely charmed by tiny things and as you all know, I love crafts, all sorts of crafts. So this collection was a winner from the start with it's cover of a tiny stitched cat next to a spool of thread.

Tiny projects that are stitched, cut, felted, knotted, knit, crocheted, sculpted and in the best crafting tradition, make use of even the tiniest scraps.

One of my favorite things about this book is that the diminutive crafts aren't used in dollhouses, they are wearable, or perfect for gift giving, or an unexpected artsy craftsy touch.

There are a lot of little stuffed animals and monsters in this book. A little patchwork dog, those sweet tiny kitties from the cover, baby monsters and little owls. There is also miniature book binding to make a pendant, a little walnut shell boat and my personal favorite, the tiny plants in little thread macrame hangers.

For the paper artists out there, you aren't left out. A miniature bunting, some wonderful decorations and the most wonderful little fairy tale paper pieced cards you've ever seen.

Okay, the little plants aren't my only favorite. I also love the miniature polyclay taxidermy in it's stylish white and brown, tiny teddy bears with their little blankets and matchbox bed and the felt flower pocket necklace.

Crafts for many levels of crafter made tiny. These aren't pieces that will take forever to put together, and they are so whimsical and charming. They would make wonderful gifts, and it's a book that you could share with a young person who is interested in miniatures. They would be wonderful in a room box or to make a very special shadow box.

At the end of the book is a techniques section which also includes tips for making jewelry, displaying and ways to use these miniature crafts. It also has well diagrammed tips for miniature sewing.

Being so close to Christmas right now, I'm thinking of starting now so next year I can have a pile of handmade tiny gifts all wrapped under a miniature tree to give out to friends. As a beader, I can see uses for a lot of these miniatures in beaded pieces as well.

You can find out more about this book from Quirk Books My reviews are always my personal and honest opinion. You can read more about my review policy here.