Hello one and all! How are you doing on this fine day? I’m doing wonderful as our weather is amazing and that makes me happy 🙂
Today is going to be a short-is post but I figured I could do a “quarantine crafts with Jasmin” post with my sister’s birthday cake that I made and decorated a couple weeks ago!
My baby sister Bridget turned 4 a couple weeks ago and for her birthday, she wanted a horse cake. As I semi-enjoy baking, I was charged with the job. Well not exactly charged, I kinda volunteered but anyways: I was charged to make her cake.
Since a box mix is easier, we decided to do that rather than make a cake from scratch. Also I’m sorry but as I wasn’t planning on doing this post, I didn’t take many pictures of the process. My mom picked up 2 boxes of cake mix so I could attempt to make a four layer cake, something I’ve never done before and it was quite fun! I also had two cans of vanilla frosting. and some sprinkles, because sprinkles make everything better, am I right?!
I had quite the mess going on xD.
Bridget just wanted a plain cake with some play horses stuck on the top so I decided to spice it up and attempt an ombré frosting look. Wow I was an ambitious child. Just kidding, but I had not a clue on what I was doing. So I kind of just dyed some frosting to what I thought was a dark shade of purple and slathered that along the bottom. Then I attempted to make a lighter version of purple for the middle but it turned out to be around the same shade of purple as the bottom one but oh well. I didn’t stress too much. Then I plopped a generous helping of plain white frosting on the top and then I went ahead and tried to blend that down into the purple. It went pretty smoothly except it looked pretty chunky and rough.
Kinda messy. So I used a neat trick my mom taught me: you dip a frosting smear-er thingy into a cup of hit water and you smooth out the frosting. It must melt the frosting kind of with the metal on the frosting smear-er and it gives the cake a glazed look. So I did that and this is how it turned out! I also threw some sprinkles onto the bottom to add some extra-ness! What’d u think?
Notice the glazed look on top? *raises eyebrows and nods professionally*
I’m honestly quite proud of myself, I think it looks pretty awesome, maybe even awesome enough to be from a store 😉 My sister was quite pleased and so was I, so it was cool! Sadly, I couldn’t have it as I was gluten free, and the cake was full of gluten but everyone that ate it thought it was delicious. So there was a happy ending 🙂
Thank you so much for reading this, you’re the best 🙂 Have you ever made an ombre cake? Have you ever made a 4 layer cake? What’s your favorite cake flavor? Mine’s probably chocolate but honestly cake is delicious so I can’t choose xD Hope you enjoyed, talk to me in the comments, I’d love to chat!
Hello beautiful people! How are you doing? I’m doing great and today I have an exciting post! It’s my first official collab (well kinda, I don’t exactly know) but anyways, as you saw in the title, I’m doing a collaboration with my friend, Erin, from KittyJade!
wow why did that low-key sound like a youtube video introduction?!
Over on her blog, I did a post about my top 5 extras to add in letters and in return she wrote this lovely post for me! I hope you enjoy and make sure to check out the post that I did on her blog, right here! Now onward to the post!
Paper
The most basic component of letter-writing is always important. Firstly may I recommend unlined paper! Most of us can write in a straight line, and if you can’t, practice makes perfect. Paper without lines looks much neater but also gives off the correct ‘vibes’. Lined paper is what we associate with school work and studying, and your friend doesn’t want to be reading like a teacher marking a paper! Just bear that in mind. Also, you’ll need to think about what pen you’re using to dictate what thickness of paper you shall use.
Pen
My go-to pen is the basic biro, but we are all different. Some prefer ink pens, or gel pens and maybe even quill and ink! If you are looking for a good gel writing pen I can recommend the Uniball Signo. Whatever pen you go for, just be aware of smudging and bleeding. Thin paper is ideal for a biro, but not for gel pens.
Envelope
Of course, the envelope. You must always keep in mind the envelope size in ratio to paper. It’s not particularly nice to receive a letter folded over again and again. I usually opt for envelopes that are slightly smaller than A6.
Stamp
You can’t send a letter without a stamp! These are the most costly part of letter-writing. Particularly with the current situation, letters won’t arrive as promptly as usual. However I still use 2nd Class stamps because they’re cheaper.
Stickers
Although stickers aren’t necessary, they are a cute addition to any sort of mail. Either used on the seal of an envelope, or maybe throughout the writing! It just adds a bit of colour and maybe even humour to your correspondence. Jasmin wrote a whole post about cute things to add to your letters, so make sure to check that out after this one!
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And thats all for today! I think these are all essentials and I love the tips and insight Erin mentioned, she included some good points that I hadn’t even began to think about! Thank you so much for reading and make sure to check out Erin’s blog right here!
What are your letter writing essentials? Do you write letters? Hows the COVID19 situation going for you? I hope you’re all doing well! Talk to me in the comments, I’d love to chat!
Hey Hey girlies, how are you? I’m doing pretty good! Today I am back with a much anticipated post: (or so I think anyways) My watercolor cards!! These cards are super easy to make and they’re great to stick in letters, cards, journals and everything in between! During quarantine I’ve been pen-paling quite a lot with my friends and so I’ve been sending these in my envelopes and I think they are really cute little add-ins! I found my inspiration for these on Pinterest and Etsy, I would look up christian stickers or even just inspirational stickers and then paint and draw them onto cards and kaboom: Lovely inspirational watercolor cards! Anyways, I’m sure you would like to see some photos, so here they are!
I love this song and this ended up being one of my favorite cards ❤
These are the medias I used while painting, some regular water color, some water based ink brush pens and some Prismacolor calligraphy pens 🙂
These are the notecards I use, I was gifted them for Christmas a couple years ago and decided to use them, which was a good idea because I had SO MUCH fun making all my cards! Sometimes if I wanted smaller pieces of paper, I will cut the pieces into half or whatever size I want and it works wonderfully 😉
This is the first card I made last week and it’s definitely one of my favorites! I just love how it turned out and I can’t wait to stick it in a letter and send it to a friend! ❤️
Oooohh another favorite 😉 I don’t know why I sound surprised or whatever because I literally just uploaded this photo but I love how this card came out! The Bible verse is lovely and I love the yellow sunshine, it gives me happy vibes 💛
And here are all the ones I did last Sunday! I didn’t do quite as many as I still have quite a few from last time but I really love how these turned out!
Anyways, thats all for today! What is your favorite card? Will you try making some of these? I would recommend it, they’re so fun 🙂 What’s you favorite art medium to create with? I hope you enjoyed and thanks x million for reading, I appreciate it more than you know! Drop a comment, I love to chat ❤️
Hey hey lovelies. How are you on this lovely day? I’m doing quite good! I am back with another award and I AM SO EXCITED!! I was nominated by the wonderful Erin over at her blog, KittyJade and I was also nominated by the amazing Jirah, over at her blog, Jirah Merizz. So thank you so much Erin and Jirah for nominating me, you guys are the sweetest 🙂 Tags are super fun and they’re lovely for when I have no ideas of what to post! Anyways, I was thrilled to be nominated, it means so much! ❤️
If you could shift into an animal, what animal would you want to turn into?
I’m going to say the same thing as Erin, a bird! Birds are so graceful (usually anyways ;)) and I love watching them just drifting through the sky and floating around. It would be such a powerful and breathtaking experience to be able to fly like a bird, dipping and swooping!
What is one thing you are currently obsessed with?
Writing letters, journaling, and texting my friends. During quarantine, the thing I miss most has got to be my friends, theyre pretty awesome 🙂 ❤️I’ve been writing quite a lot of letters to my pen-pals and I got some new pen-pals recently from Finland so it’s been really fun to get to know them and start learning more about them! I’ve also been really enjoying journaling, a friend sent me these stickers (on the pic below) and I loved how this page turned out! And I’ve been texting my friends a ton, trying to keep in touch!
If an unstoppable force collides with an immovableforce, what happens?
Well. um. I-. I don’t know. But since I read Erin’s post and comments, I learned that the forces would work against each other and eventually come to a stop? I think anyways, let me know if any of you are physics geniuses!
What is your favorite book that you read in 2020 so far?
Hmmm. *tries to think of what I’ve read this year* *fails*
I read The Fault in Our Stars, and loved it as usual but I think I need to recall a book that I read for the FIRST time this year. Okayyy… I recently read The Lovely War and really enjoyed it! Ooohhh I also loved Wait for me, I definitely reccomend both of those!
What is the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
I don’t really get advice from people.. That sounds bad but I can’t really recall when anyone really gives me advice. The most repeated piece of advice that I HAVE heard has gotta be “Trust God’s plan.” I also believe that the advice “Live in the moment”, is one of the most important pieces of advice you could receive! Give me some advice in the comments, I could always use advice 😉
What is the best gift you’ve ever received?
My life? Idk? I’m pretty happy that I happened to be born on this world and the life that God has given me is pretty amazing and I’m so thankful for it. Another one of my favorite gifts has got to be Birkenstocks and takis xD Also getting anything in the mail is such an amazing gift, I love it! Me and my friends have been sending quarantine mail to each other and its so fun!
If you could spend a day with anyone (fictional, alive, or dead), who would you choose and what would you do together?
When I was little I always dreamed about Laura Ingalls Wilder coming alive again and me showing her our modern world. I always thought it would be so cool because she would be super amazed and probably horrified at how far our world has come, I mean we have cars that drive by them selves now and she would be horrified at how scandalous some clothing is 😂 I think it would be really fun to hang out with her though, I love showing people around and yeah, it sounds fun? ( heyyyy maybe I should be like a tour guide or something?? Theres an idea xD)
What is your dream reading space?
Wellllll…. I really love reading in my bed with a fuzzy blanket but I mean a nice little cozy chair like this and some plants would be pretty cool 😉
Picture from Pinterest 🙂
What are your goals (reading or otherwise) for 2020?
Just live a good life. say yes. meet some new people. be kind and try to be the sunshine. grow closer with Jesus. Fill up some journals. Be more active. start driving. get out of my comfort zone. grow my blog. stay friends and maintain relationships. grow relationships. spread the word. be a light. the list goes on and on……
And NOW, onto Jirah’s questions!
If there’s no quarantine, what are you doing right now?
There is a quarantine right now, sadly. I’m getting quite sick of it but I’m enjoying the down time and the excuse to slow down 🙂 IF there was no quarantine, I would be at softball practice, which sounds pretty fun. Although typing this blog post is also quite fun 😉 I honestly would enjoy either but I might pick softball practice over blogging (sorry!!!!!) because I was really looking forward to this season. 😦 Oh well though.
What are some of your favorite Netflix series?
I love AWAE, it’s really the only Netflix I watch bc my mom doesn’t like Netflix but I loved it 🙂 Anne and Gilbert are goals ❤️
How long have you been blogging already?
Let’s see… I’ve been blogging since November so: 5 months now! That’s not that long but it also is quite a while! Thank you guys so much for following along!
What are some of your favorite posts that you’ve written?
Hmmm I really love all my bullet journal posts, and I was quite proud of my latest one which you can read here !
What inspires you to blog?
okay tough one. All my blogger friends inspire me and I was going to link to them all but I realized that I couldn’t possibly link them ALL so yeah, all of you guys inspire me though! ❤️❤️❤️
Would you still write if WordPress never existed?
I think I still would, I would probably just use blogger *hides face* It’s not that bad, ofc I love WordPress because thats where I started but I kind of knew of blogger/blogspot before I knew of WordPress. So yeah, I would hope I still would write!
Describe one goal you’d like to achieve before the year ends.
Grow closer with God. Recently during Quarantine I’ve been really reading the Bible more and I recently started using YouVersion which is awesome! I highly recommend it, you can do all kinds of reading plans, either by yourself or with friends and it’s been really nice 🙂 I’m doing a plan right now called Habits Of Happiness and its really quite amazing!
Would you rather have a cat or a dog?
Dog. I don’t have anything against cats, I just like dogs better?
What is your favorite book?
The Fault in Our Stars. bet u didn’t know that huh? *raises eyebrows* 😂
If you had to change your name, what would it be?
Maybe Madeline, I really like that name. But I also really like my name, so I don’t know if I had the choice to change my name if I would want to!? Would you change your name if you could and what would you change it to?
You (pretend your blog is linked pretty pleaseee :))))
Okay I nominated 8-9ish people, thats enough right? As always, no pressure if you don’t want to or can’t do this, that’s fine! If you do end up doing it, let me know, drop the link in the comments so I can check it out!
My Questions:
Favorite meal?
What’s the first thing you notice about someone?
What was your favorite game as a child?
What is a trend that you hate/hated?
What makes you feel accomplished?
How is quarantine going? or how did it go if we ever get out of it?
What is the highlight or most anticipated thing during your year?
What is the outfit your wearing right now and on a scale of 1-10 how do you rate it?
How many unread emails do you have right now?
If animals could talk, what animal would be the most annoying?
And there’s that! Do you have any amazing advice for me? What makes you feel accomplished? Would you change your name if you could? Did you enjoy this post? I hope you did! Have a great day!
The Writer of Letters 