Bunny Bait Recipe and Free Printable Bag Toppers

For my son's preschool Easter party I made a really tasty and cute treat called "Bunny Bait." Since I decided to package the Bunny Bait in Ziploc bags for practical reasons, I felt that I needed to jazz them up a bit. So I whipped up some quick Bunny Bait bag toppers to staple to the top of the bags. Voila! A cute, yummy, and easily transported treat for the Easter Party.

To make 24 bags of Bunny Bait, I tripled the recipe, and filled each bag about 1/3 full.

Here is the recipe I used:

-1 bag popcorn
-About 6 oz. pink vanilla candy melts
-About 1 cup pretzel sticks broken into small pieces
-1 bag Easter M&M's (regular kind)
-Sparkly Easter sprinkles

Pop the popcorn, being careful not to burn it. Place in a large bowl. Break the pretzels into pieces and Mix with popcorn. Dump the bag of M&M's into the bowl. Melt the candy melts in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. Pour the melted candy into the popcorn and mix all together until evenly coated, being careful to mix the items that have fallen to the bottom of the bowl. Spread mixture out on a large cookie sheet or wax paper. Add sprinkles as desired. Once coating is dry, place into bags as desired or serve in a large bowl.

This was another great idea that I found via Pinterest. The recipe I used came from this great blog, where you can find more information about the recipe and variations of it.

If you would like to use my Bunny Bait Ziploc Bag toppers, you are welcome to download them here: please note that they are fairly large as they are Ziploc size. Enjoy!

"Sprinkled with Love" Baby Shower Sprinkle.

When it was time to plan the baby shower I was throwing for my sister-in-law in honor of her 2nd baby girl, I loved the idea of a "baby sprinkle." The idea of a sprinkle is that it's a smaller, more intimate baby shower with a "sprinkling" of gifts for the 2nd baby.

I searched high and low for ideas and materials for a baby sprinkle, but didn't find much that went with what I had in mind. I did find some inspiration on Pinterest (see my idea board here.)

So I decided to go with the idea of a rain cloud raining sprinkles, and this is what I came up with:


The Logo I designed for the party.

Sprinkle cupcakes and cupcake toppers

Centerpieces for the tables.

Party favors: Tags designed by me, heart salt shakers from Beaucoup.com

Dessert table decor: "Sprinkle Rain Clouds" on chandelier: Made by me. I used a paper punch to cut out the raindrops, glued them on silver string, and tied them to the chandelier. Then I stuffed pillow fill on the chandelier to make it look like a cloud.
Desserts: Heart Palmiers from Cost Plus, Biscotti, and marshmallows dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with rainbow sprinkles. Rainbow sprinkle cupcakes from Roxy's Sweet Treats.

Sprinkle decoration made by me. For this one, I tied the strings to an embroidery hoop.

I enlarged my logo into a sign for the front door.

Close up of sprinkle cupcakes and toppers.

Close up of dessert table chandelier decoration.

Close up of desserts. The marshmallow pops were a big hit!

Food table and chandelier decoration.

I arranged the sprinkle shaker favors onto a cake stand.

Making Progress

After a really inspirational talk with a wonderful friend who is supporting me in my process of living a more creative life, I decided to take a step back a bit and re-evaluate my blog. While I want to post my projects, the focus of my blog was meant to be on my creative process. After a few months now of creating, it's a good time to stop and look at how far I've come.

The biggest thing I have learned is that by opening myself up to my own possibilities, I have unconsciously opened up myself to so much more in life. I feel like so many good things are coming my way these days. My relationships with people are stronger than ever, I feel great about myself, and I am thinking of doing things that I never would have imagined doing a few months ago. No, it's not because I made a few little projects. It's that when you become open to possibilities about yourself, possibilities seem to come your way.

I feel like creatively I have come a long way as well. I am really proud of my Baby Sprinkle project that I've been working on for a while now. I really struggled with the computer design for the party circles as there was no available clip art that fit the theme I am using. I finally came up with something that was a combo of 2 clip arts that I made an image with. I love the design! This clip art search led me to begin thinking about learning how to design my own. I am interested in dabbling in graphic design software, but am really not sure which to use or where to start. I am starting to do a little research and talk to people to find out more about this.

Another development is that I am going to start selling my tags to customers of Roxy's Sweet Treat, just as as a way to help her out and test the waters as to how possible selling my work is. This makes me curious about perhaps posting my work on etsy or making my skills known to my social circles. I find this very scary. I have lots of questions about business licenses, taxes, and whether or not I can use other people's clip art. My other concern is that I am really enjoying making them , and I fear that adding a price tag to it and all the expectations that come with that will take all the joy out if it.

As for my latest projects, I'm really happy how the favor tags, cupcake toppers, and centerpiece party circles for the Baby Sprinkle came out. I opened an old design on my computer while making them, and I couldn't believe how far my skills have come since then. I have a much better understanding of the programs now.

Another great thing that has come out if this journey is a return to self-introspective writing in my life through my little blog. It's been decades since I kept a journal, and I forgot how enlightening it can be. I'm enjoying keeping it to myself so that I can focus on my growth instead of worrying about what everyone else thinks.

This is a good reminder that the creative process is what's important right now, and I need to stay focused on that. It's a little premature to be worrying about blog followers or starting a business! I need to take this one day at a time and just enjoy the ride.

On that note, here is the design for my Baby Sprinkle Party circles that I am so darn excited about!!

Another Free Download for St. Patrick's Day and Making Cupcakes

I also downloaded and printed party circles that I found on Pinterest and used them as cupcake toppers. Again, they were already designed and free. All I had to do was punch them out and hot glue them to a lollipop stick.

My son also wanted to make the rainbow cupcakes from Family Fun magazine, discovered via Pinterest. I found them to be fairly time consuming and difficult to make. It was hard to figure out how much batter of each color to put in. I ended up putting too much at first and ended up with jumbo cupcakes. Some I did only one color, and dyed the frosting green to make more traditional St. Patty's cupcakes. I am, however, getting better at frosting them with a frosting bag.

Papercraft Downloads for St. Patrick's Day Gifts

I found some really cute St. Patrick's Day ideas and free downloads from Pinterest to do for my son. One was a series of clues for him to go on a hunt for St. Patrick's Day gold, ending with a paper pot of gold that I printed, stapled together, and filled with candy. The other was a printable that I downloaded, printed, cut out with a punch, and stapled to the top of a bag of Rolos as the pot if gold.

The best part was that all this was free and already created! I also got ideas on other ways to design things from seeing these designs by other people.

Special Hello Kitty Flower Tags

I finally found a flower punch that I can use to layer with my smaller circle punch for favor tags. Making tags this way is much more time-consuming, however. I wouldn't make them for just anyone! My niece's 3rd birthday was the perfect occasion to try them out. She wanted Hello Kitty for her party, so I made a modified version of the ones I had made previously, but I changed the clip art, added a cuter font, and layered them onto red daisy shapes. I thought they were pretty adorable. Then again, anything Hello Kitty is adorable!

Getting Ready for the Baby Sprinkle

Lately, most of my creative time has been spent preparing for the "Baby Sprinkle" that I am hosting for my sister-in-law and niece to-be. I am literally doing a "sprinkle" theme, as in dessert sprinkles. I found lots of great inspiration on Pinterest. I am finding cute ways to incorporate rainy sprinkles into the theme. I found a cute invitation on Etsy, which I purchased for like $10. The seller emailed me the file, and I downloaded it and had them printed as photos at Walgreens.

I am now working on decorations for the party. I'm making a hanging cloud with paper sprinkles. I punched various colors with a small balloon punch. Then I trimmed the tips off to make them look more like raindrops. This was very time consuming. Now I am in the process of gluing them onto skinny silver string and tying them onto an embroidery hoop. When done, I will top it off with a cloud of pillow fill.

The other sprinkle project I am working on is tags for the favors. I had a hard time finding clip art, but finally found some on mygrafico.com. I am working on designing them, but am not quite happy with them yet.

I need to get cracking! I only have two weeks left!!