Mango Birds Fruit Art

Hi friends, I am back with another beautiful fruit art using just a knife. One evening when I asked my daughter what fruit art should we make with mangoes, she said let's make birds mommy. And she added that yellow birds will look cute. Well, I think they definitely turned out cute.



To make this fruit art you need a few strawberries, one mango, and edible googly eyes. Then I added a couple of apple slices and few blueberries to get enough fruits on her plate. You can substitute with whatever fruits are available in your kitchen that you think might suit the design.



First I sliced a big chunk of mango going right next to the seed and then using the tip of my knife I traced a bird shape. After making sure I like the shape I went around again going a little bit deeper.



Then I pushed the bird shape inside out and sliced under the bird all the way. Check out the video at the bottom of the post for any clarifications.



For strawberry hearts, first I cut each strawberry vertically half. Then from the top, I cut out a small 'V' shape and curved around the edges. I used these strawberry hearts for bird's wings and to add some love on the top.



Slice two thin pieces of apple to form a ground (on which birds are standing). And I added a line of blueberries that look like rocks in our art.



I also cut 2 small triangles out of grapes for bird's beaks and 4 tiny rectangles for legs. If you don't have edible googly eyes on hand then you can always cut 2 small circles out of blueberries for eyes.



Here is the final design. What do you think? Did it turn out cute? Let me know in the comments. Thank you for stopping by.

Don't forget to check out this video on youtube for a clear understanding. And be sure to subscribe to my channel. Thank you once again. See you soon.

Simple Fruit Art

Hello, if you have been following me on social media you know how much I am into fruit art these days. It all started when my little one suddenly lost interest in eating fruits. I couldn’t give up and kept running behind her to get a cup of fruits into her tummy. It was most frustrating for both of us. Suddenly one day I got reminded that I had a few fruit skewers left out from her birthday party and I decided to give them a shot. I cut a few different colored fruits and put them on a skewer. I went to her sneaking it behind and said surprise here is a fruit wand for my princess. Thank god it worked and she got so excited to eat fruits that day. That’s the beginning and I never stopped after that. Making simple yet beautiful art on the plate was fun for me and it was fun for my little one to eat. It was a win-win.

As I started sharing them on social media few of my friends reached out to me and asked to make short videos to show them how I make those food art plates. So here I am sharing my first fruit art video with you all. This one doesn't need any kind of special tool, just your regular kitchen knife will do the trick. I am going to show more fruit art and breakfast art ideas. Subscribe on youtube to be notified when I post them.

 I share my food art pictures on Instagram. If you want to see some stunning yet simple fruit art I highly recommend following me at letsmakeitlovely.

Hope you enjoyed my first food art video. Do tell me in the comments if you will give it a try. Thank you so much for stopping by. See you soon.

DIY No Bake Fruit Cake

Hi there. Holiday greetings to you. Are you running short of time to bake a cake or looking for a healthy alternative? How about a no bake fruit cake for this Christmas or New Year? Let me show you how simple it is to make a gorgeous looking fruit cake in no time.

Ingredients:

• Watermelon (I used small )
• Cantaloupe (I used small)
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Sliced almonds
• Homemade icing or Store bought icing (I bought fresh vanilla whipped icing from bakery section in my grocery store)

Cut two 1.5 inch thick whole slices of watermelon and one 1.5 inch thick cantaloupe across middle part of fruits. Remove the outer skin and middle seeds part for cantaloupe. Shape them into circles using a plate or bowl as template.

Place the round slice of watermelon on your cake stand or plate, layer it with icing and top with a layer of cantaloupe slice. I filled middle hollow part of cantaloupe with berries. Add one more layer of icing and top it with another watermelon layer.

Here is how your fruit arrangement looks like.

Cover the fruits all around with icing like you usually do for a cake. Its not necessary to have a perfect smooth looking icing. We are going to cover it all.

Covering your cake with sliced almonds is the fun part. All you have to do is take a hand full of sliced almonds, keep your hand at 6 inches distance from cake and throw the almond slices aiming at your cake sides. Almond slices will stick the icing. Repeat this procedure until you cover all around the cake with your almonds. Clear away any of the almonds that fall around the cake. 

Arrange some blueberries around the bottom of your cake.

Slice the strawberries thin and group them according to size. Placing even sized pieces along a row makes the cake look more professional. We will start with bigger pieces for outer circle and lower the size as we go inside to the middle. You will see what I mean.

Take bigger size pieces of cut strawberries and arrange around outer circle of your cake top as shown.

Take next size group of strawberry pieces and arrange second circle just overlapping the outer circle a little as shown in above picture.

Similarly fill in a third circle of strawberry pieces.

Top the center with a cute little strawberry.

Tada!!! There it is. A stunning arrangement of fruits or a no bake fruit cake as I call it. Don't worry if your watermelon oozes out a little water but make sure you finish the cake as soon as possible. (As we added icing to the fruit it is not good to keep it or refrigerate it for long.) Make it fresh and eat fresh.

Hope you enjoyed my post. I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thank you for stopping by. I love to hear your comments.

DIY Birthday Party Backdrop, Decor and More

Hi friends, this post is all about sharing with you how we (myself, birthday boy's parents and aunt) managed to DIY entire birthday party decor including all the knick knacks.

To see how I made this Colorful Bunting Birthday Banner check out my previous post here.

Coming to the backdrop, we got 2 white vinyl table covers and 4 blue plastic table covers from party city. We gathered 2 of the blue plastic covers in drapery style for the top border. We just stapled the plastic cloth after gathering it together and taped it around to be sure. Above picture shows how we did it before hand at home to save some time at venue.

For rest of the backdrop we just ironed white vinyl table covers we got to make wrinkles less obvious (always use a cloth on top of vinyl cover before you iron) and for the sides we just dropped blue plastic covers on either ends. Using table covers instead of fabric for backdrop makes it possible to achieve the looks way under budget.
Those cute little monkeys, lions and giraffes you see here and there are from fun to be one boy set from party city. However you could always print them at home or a print store.

Isn't that chocolate wrapper cute??? It screams cuteness to me and they are personalized with birthday boy's name :) We designed this chocolate wrapper from scratch using picmonkey.com . I am not paid to say this but I just love picmonkey for making it so easy to design amazing printables.

After designing we printed them at a office print press on to magazine style glossy paper. Once printed we cut them to size and stuck them using double side tape at the back where two ends overlap a little. By the way they are regular Hershey's chocolates behind the wrapper.

Here is one more simple DIY Cupcake Stand using dollar store plastic bowls and plates. We got 3 of those bowls for a dollar and the plates for dollar each at a local dollar tree. With just a little hot glue gun magic we joined bottom of the bowl to center bottom of plate and Tada! cupcake stand is all ready.

Here are the pictures of cupcake stands in action. We arranged them on either side of the birthday cake.

Yes! We made those Thank you tags too, without any fancy cutting machines. We designed the tag using picmonkey.com, printed onto thick glossy sheet at a office print press and then we hand cut each of the tags using a pair of scissors. It was little tedious to cut those fancy edges but the end result was well worth it.

We put together little bags of sweet treats and topped with a Thank you tag for everyone who attended the party.

Basket of sweet treats and little fun goodies for kids at the party.

Last but not least we also made a photo booth out of plastic table covers from dollar tree. I made a banner saying "Photo Booth" the similar way that I made Bunting Birthday Banner. Photo booth is always a fun option for both kids and adults.

My friend (Birthday boy's mom, Shriranjini) ordered few of the props on etsy.com and we got those colorful garlands from dollar tree. We made "Grab a prop and strike a pose" poster using picmonkey.com, printed and put it into a dollar tree acrylic photo frame.

Here is a close up picture of cute and delicious cake, just for you. I hope you enjoy this post as much as we enjoyed the party.
Thank you for stopping by. I love hearing your comments. Have a great day :)

Let's make Car Candy!!!

I have few posts that I wanted to write for almost 5 months now and never got around. Most of those are related to birthday parties. I decided to write them along with my on going craft posts. So you can expect quite a few party decorations and treats in my upcoming posts.
Coming to this post. I made this Car candy for a little boy who loves cars. Don't you think its the best birthday treat for a kiddo? Ding!! Only if the boy also likes candy. Anyways, I tried using this Wilton candy mold for the first time and found its pretty easy and fun to do with kids too. It would make an awesome treat for a Car themed birthday party or little boy's summer play party. Don't you think so?

I am very excited to share with you how easy it is to make these sophisticated cars. Laughing at my own joke right now!

Gather the supplies:

• Wilton Race Car Pretzel Mold
• Candy melts in colors you like
• Lollipop sticks or pretzel sticks
• Parchment triangles or Parchment paper roll
• Few microwave safe bowls to melt candy

Procedure for Car Candy:

• Colored Car candy has to be built layer by layer using one color at a time. You need to start coloring the front details of car first and then move on to building car's body. 
• Take one color of candy at a time, pop in microwave safe bowl, melt the candy as per instructions and put the melted candy into parchment cone. (Here is a detailed video tutorial that helped me make my parchment cones.) 
• Using parchment cone, gently squeeze the candy into mold. Its pretty much like how we colored a coloring page in childhood. You can completely get creative and pick which color goes where to make your car look really cool. 
• Once you are done with one color partially freeze the candy and then move on to next color. This way the colors of candy won't mix and the outcome will be as you desire.

Here is how I built my Colorful Cars:

I took black color melted candy into parchment cone and squeezed candy on to car tires and wind shield frames in the molds. I kept the mold in refrigerator and partially froze candy in mold for around 15 mins.

Next, I took white melted candy in parchment cone and started filling the mold (i.e., took out from refrigerator) wherever I wanted white on my car fronts. Then I repeated freezing candy in the mold.

I repeated same procedure of melting, sqeezing and freezing the candy with blue color candy. 

Once I am done coloring car design details, I placed a lollipop stick into each car mold, went ahead and squeezed a lot of candy into each mold to fill car body. I did each car in different color. Tip: Once you fill entire mold, tap the mold slightly on a flat surface (using vertical movement) to get rid of any air gaps and squeezed candy  patterns. Also, this gives a flat surface for your car back. Then, I froze my candy for few hours to make them solid.

Simple version: If you are running out of time to use different colors just squeeze single color of melted candy and pop a lollipop stick into each mold. Slightly tap the mold few times to get rid of air gaps. Freeze it for few hours. The car candies will still look good in shape and kids will still enjoy eating them.

After freezing for few hours, car candies popped out very easily by lifting with their attached lollipop sticks.

VROOM VROOM!!! The race cars are almost ready for a race. Using knife cut any candy tail edges that are formed at rear end of your cars and you are done.

I used a small carton box covered with scrapbook paper and drilled holes into it to serve as candy holder. I also printed out name of the birthday boy and stuck on it for a touch of personalization. I made 2 batches of these car candies and I really liked how they turned out. Sorry, I couldn't take nice pictures, as I was running late for the party.

Let me know what you think of this car candy treat. Isn't it pretty easy to make with kids? I love hearing to your comments. Thank you for stopping by. Have a great day.

Valentine's day Special - Chocolate dipped Strawberries

Want to impress your valentine on this valentine's day or just treat yourself with something sweet and delicious? Try these gourmet style chocolate dipped strawberries. Be it kids, friends or family, everyone will love them. They work wonderful even as a romantic dessert for your husband or fiance ;)

They taste so delicious that I don't need a reason or occasion to make them for myself. Here is how easy it is to make them.

Things you need:

• Fresh strawberries
• Chocolate chips of your choice 
• Microwave or just a double boiler on stove top
• Vegetable oil (optional)
• For toppings: White chocolate, your choice of nuts finely chopped and mini chocolate chips (optional)

1. Wash and thoroughly dry strawberries. If your strawberries are wet, chocolate won't stick to them. 

2. Get ready with your toppings in advance. ( I used finely chopped cashews, mini dark chocolate chips and white chocolate.) Melt the white chocolate and put into a ziploc bag or parchment cone.  

3. Cover a plate (or cookie sheet ) with parchment (or wax paper).

4. If you have microwaveable chocolate go ahead and melt it according to directions on your package. 

If your chocolate is not microwaveable, then use a double boiler on a stove top and melt the chocolate. Don't have a double boiler either? No worries many of us don't and here is a tutorial on how to make a double boiler at home. It just takes seconds :) 

Tip: If your melted chocolate looks thick, add little unsalted butter or vegetable oil and mix thoroughly.

Once you melt the chocolate, dip your berries 3/4th way using a circular motion, wipe the excess chocolate that is dripping from berries on to the bowl side wall and place them on parchment paper covered plate. 

To add toppings, as soon as you finish dipping the berries in chocolate roll them in your favorite topping before you set them on parchment paper covered plate. 

Randomly drizzle white chocolate (that we melted earlier) on to chocolate dipped berries.

5.  Now leave the berries at room temperature for about 15 mins and then put the entire plate of berries into refrigerator for about 15-30 mins. 

6. Lift chocolate dipped strawberries off the parchment paper on to serving dish and enjoy!!! Don't they look irresistible?

Hope you will give it a try. I am sure once you try them at home, you will never buy them from store again.

Happy valentine's day :) Thank you for stopping by. I love to hear your comments. Have a great one.