Sesame Street Diaper Cake

December has been a bit hectic with all the holidays but I could not end the year without displaying one of my favorite diaper cakes. I made this diaper cake with the Sesame Street theme and
delivered it this weekend. The mother decided not to find out what the sex would be so the cake was perfect since the colors are neither pink nor blue.

The friends of the mommy-to-be had a nice dinner for her at the restaurant Bahama Breeze. All eyes were on the diaper cake. This one seems to be a bit special because of the well known characters that enhanced the beauty of it.


Elmo being lazy at the top on his floater and Cookie Monster sliding on his boogy board. And who can resist cute and cool Ernie with his glasses.

This diaper cake is beautiful for anyone who is a complete fan of the Sesame Street Bunch.

Bassinet Diaper Cake

A diaper cake does not always have to be in a the shape of a diaper cake. Why not put the imagination to work and come up with another design fitted for a perfect gift for a mom to be. The latest cake I created was a bassinet diaper cake. This one was built for a little girl as can be seen by the pink lase used around for the decoration.

The diaper cake has hidden little gifts and suited perfect for a unique gift. This particular one was not done for anyone special. It will be interesting to see what I do with this cute unique bassinet diaper cake.

History on Poopy Diapers

Today most of us see a diaper as such a commodity that its hard to believe times could have been so different. A baby goes and the mother runs to change the baby's diaper instantly for 3 main reasons.

1. The smell is unacceptable.
2. The idea of a rash is horrible for the tiny one.
3. The sanitary concept is right up there with our need to eat.

But looking back on the history of diapers and getting more familiar with what diapers were a few hundred years ago would astonish most of us today.

In natives times milkweed pulp was put around the baby's bottoms before strapping them onto a papoose board. Women that lived in very cold climates such as Eskimo would use moss and place it in animal skin that was used to carry the baby.

Native times seems very natural and care free, the era that is of most amazement is the Elizabethan era. History shows that in the years (1558–1603) the most common of folks would have a baby with a soiled diaper for a length of four days. After that the cloth diaper was discarded and a new one put to use. Children lucky enough to be born in wealthier families would have the luxury of a daily change. In areas that were of warmer climates babies were allowed to walk around naked as parents tried to time their bowl movement to avoid big messes.

In the 1800s diapers took a step forward in evolution. Changing happened more frequently but the cloth diapers were not discarded. Instead the baby was bathe and the diaper was hung out to dry for the next use.

In the late 1800s the importance of hygiene and not to mention serious issues with baby bottom rashes brought about concern.

Around the 1940s the disposable diaper gradually evolved through the inventions of several different people. One person I seem to admire in my research was Marion Donovan who as a housewife came up with the "boater diaper". She invented it by using a shower curtain and placing a disposable cloth in the middle to change out. This become our first water proof diaper.

Slowly after that the diaper evolved to what we have today.

Considering the second baby

In my quest to figure out what exactly it is I need to do to get ready to consider a second child I realized you can never be ready. A good friend of mine said, you just have to do it. You can't wait around for a perfect life and situation because you will never have it.

I figured I would share this little link I found to be funny.
Enjoy! Baby 123
PS: Have your ear phones low if you have them on!

Winnie the Pooh Diaper Cake

This week I delivered one of my Winnie the Pooh diaper cakes to a co-worker that had a good friend that was having a baby girl. Most of the diaper cakes I make I don't get the pleasure of seeing the reaction from people when they see them. I make them, deliver them, and then wait to hear back from the person to see if everyone liked it. With this one I was fortunate to see people’s reactions.

Men seem to be taken back a bit when they see them. And of course you get the jokes here and there. "Are they used diapers?" "How about making one with used diapers?" Or my favorite; "Is it eatable?"

Women are either shocked to see a diaper cake for the first time and want to know all about them or they simply admire and compare them to the ones they have seen before.

My favorite part of this particular diaper cake was how everyone would stop and ask him about it. With a straight face he would tell them he made it. Imagine a very tall manly guy with a cute little diaper cake at his desk saying he created it. People just had to stop and ask. He later clarified to everyone that I made it but the talk of the day was the Winnie the Pooh Diaper cake.

Cyber Baby Shower Gift

In the last two months that I have been blogging on baby shower gifts and ideas, I’ve come across some nice blogs and people. This week I was very lucky to win a book “The Other Mother” from Gwendolyn Gross. happypandababy.com lists all the winners to wonderful prizes.

Its also one of the blogs I like reading. It has a lot of interesting things all related to babies and baby showers which as you already can see, it’s my area of interest.

I am grateful for the great gift, and I love being in a network of great people.

I look forward to reading my new book!!

Here are a few of my favorites baby shower related:

http://www.happypandababy.com/blog/
http://www.babyandtoddlerproductreviews.blogspot.com
http://happypandababy-ll.blogspot.com/
http://classymommy.com
http://plan-a-baby-shower.blogspot.com/

Baby Shower's 7th gift, tag your next!

A couple of blogs ago I posed a question on how true it was that the 7th gift opened at a baby shower signals out the next mommy to be. Well I found evidence of it being true.
I know from personal experience that my friend who gave me my 7th gift was already 3 months pregnant and had not told anyone. Most people know about the girl that catches the bouquet at a wedding to be the next bride, but the 7th gift tradition at a baby showers is not as popular. Here is one of the few links I found mentioning it: http://www.reallifesolutions.net

Now if the 7th gift given comes from a woman who can’t have children then the tradition defaults to the next gift opened at the baby shower.

This is fun at any baby shower. It makes great conversation and it breaks the ice among people that might not know each other, not to mention there really might be another reason to celebrate another baby shower.

Orchids Forever

A few years ago I created 25 of the candles displayed here. This particular design was created for a bridal shower. Her flowers would be Orchids at the wedding and she loved the idea of having the flowers somehow brought into her bridal shower as well.

One thing that is always the downfall of gel candles is the fact that with time like any candle, you would want to burn it. So doing a quick search on Google you would find forever candles to be pretty popular. Most of the time a forever candle is made with one center area where the wick would be placed so it never burns the scenery around it. For her bridal shower I knew it was important to have the orchid preserved so I decided to create my own idea that would be unique and would not only burn bright and smell great but also have ever lasting life with a switch of the actual candle.



And so the candle with the tea lights came to be.
My car candle and Halloween candle are also examples of my version of forever candles.

For the bridal shower the candle was wrapped in toole fabric with a ribbon with her date and two other tea lights to change out when burned.

Now who said all my candles had to be baby shower related. :)

Back to shower favors after this commerical

I really try to keep my blog only for my candles, diaper cakes and baby shower creations. But I am going to make a little exception because I am such a die hard fan of Sesame Street. If anyone is interested Sesame Street Old School Vol 2 just came out. Its all the wonder years of the 70s to re-live with your kids!!!

I love Sesame Street!!!!

It brings back memories :)

Desired Goal

Every year a Christmas Arts and Crafts festival comes around to our area and every year I go to see what wonderful ideas people come up with. Every year that goes by I always wish to have a booth of my own and sell. It always brings me joy to think I will have excuses for making beautiful things.

Only problem with that show is that most of the stuff there is holiday oriented. So I fear my baby shower and baby items would not sell. Candles can be done for any occasion, but how to put a spin on my baby shower and baby items?

So my goal for next year is to have all my ducks in line, put my fears aside and look into festivals of such sort. Maybe not this particular one but one that would give me a chance to see what people think of my candles and baby shower displays.

In every crowd and at any time of the year, babies are born and baby showers are held.
So I am sure I would have at least one person interested right? hmmm I wonder :)

Baby Shower for second baby

My friend asked me the other day if it was considered bad taste to have a baby shower for the second time with your second baby.
First thing must be clear to answer this question. The decision to have a second baby shower or not is completely up to the mom-to-be and her family and friends that would be attending it. But the question does come up in every family at one point or the another. Is it ok to have a second baby shower?


Here are a few tips on how to make the second baby shower not so second.
1. If the gender is different to the first, then by all means a baby shower is well deserved.

2. If the gender is unknown or the gender is the same as the first, host a diaper warming party.

3. Have a welcome home party for the baby instead of a baby shower.

4. Have a baby shower celebration but only do it with the closest of families. You have to remember there will be close friends and relatives that will want to give you gifts regardless.

5. Host a "Come up with your crafty idea to what mommy might need party."

6. Host a "Casserole shower or pampering mommy shower."

In other countries, it is known for a mother to have multiple baby showers because every family member throws her one. So the key would be to know the people your closest to and how they would feel. If they really care about you, they would'nt think twice for a second celebration.

And in most cases, its not you throwing the party anyway!!!!!

Fruits and Craft Day

A few blogs ago, I mentioned that I had attended a Candle convention. The highlight of the convention was making candles that looked like fruit. Even though I didn’t get into making them I did keep a few of the little gifts they gave away. This weekend I decided to let my daughter put together a little candle. All the fruit were already created so it was a perfect arts and craft task for my little 2 year old. The fruits were given away to promote sells for any type of candle design.

So I had my little girl put them all together. I helped her pour a bit of gel over the fruit wax pieces, added a wick and created an adorable little table centerpiece.

This was not created for any baby shower but it is definitely something to think about. Fruits are beautiful and with a little bit of imagination they could light up a baby shower room.

For this particular example it was fun time with my daughter and watching her eyes light up to see her cute candle creation.

Butterfly Baby Shower Favor

As beautiful as gel candles are, they are not as popular as wax candles.
The main reason is the undeserved bad reputation they earned a couple of years ago from stories of candles exploding. I will devote another blog article on that in case the interest is there to clearly understand the confusion on gel candles.

In the baby showers where the favors are gel candles people are amazed at how beautiful they are and yet they don't see many of them around. Under different lighting the gel candles can take on an appearance of a celestial water paradise. In the sun the appearance turns in an aqua bubbling world of beauty.
When creating the candle favors one can control the amount of bubbles desired by the temperature to which you heat the gel. This baby shower candle was created for a mom-to-be that had a passion for butterflies. Everything at the baby shower was butterfly related and most of the baby gifts all had butterfly theme.

Baby Shower Centerpieces

When it comes to enhancing the decor of a baby shower, there are a few areas that are key to bringing out the spark to the moment. When a person first walks into the room the first things they will notice is the accents placed on the walls or at the tables.

The cake, centerpieces, and extras placed around the room are the key to making the baby shower beautiful.



My pictures in this blog are examples of one of the many cute ideas that could be made. These were created for a baby shower requested from a guest of another.

Notice the creations of the flowers and their stems. They are all made of baby socks. The cover around the base is of a baby blanket and the little extras are all baby related.

A baby shower center piece can be either done for the mom-to-be to take home and use or it can be created for the guest to keep as keep sakes.

Hallow Spirit Candle

As I have mentioned before in previous blogs, the great thing about being creative and making different things is that the possibilities are endless. I have a good friend of mine that had a baby at the same time I did. When I say same time I mean almost literally the same time. We got pregnant with only about 4 days in difference. And our babies were only a day apart when we delivered.

Well for her baby shower she decided she was going to celebrate the arrival of her little girl with decorations of her favorite holiday. And it fit perfectly since the baby was due end of October.

Below is the picture of the favors given away at her baby shower.


My little girl Calista decided to help pose as Vana White for these candles :)
Both little girls turned 2 yesterday and today.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Rhiannon!!!!

Shower Car Candle Favors

The great thing about working on different diaper cake or candle designs is that every request comes with different desires and needs. When someone is looking for a unique idea but expresses there need for design orientation, it gives me the challenge to come up with something that will go with what they are hoping for. Whether they are looking for diaper cakes or candles, my first question is what if the baby’s gender if known. If the gender is not known then we go with neutral colors. Next, does the mom-to-be have a particular theme for the baby’s room? Or does she or who is preparing her baby shower have a theme to make her diaper cake or candles.

For the picture displayed here. The baby was a boy and the room theme the parents had chosen was cars. The baby shower was also going to follow the same theme. So we put together a perfect baby shower favor for a keepsake for all the friends attending. The baby shower was really cute with car balloons and so many cute little details that just said boy all over them.



23 baby shower forever gel candles were created. They all can have the tea light changed out if one wants to light them up. Most of the times, these candles are just kept as keep sakes. But either way the candle is a delight.

Value of a Diaper Cake

When looking to purchase a diaper cake, not only do you have a wide range of designs, but the price spectrum can be overwhelming. Diaper cakes can range in price anywhere from a few bucks to way into the hundreds. The question might be why the difference and what goes into making one of these beauties to either be so cheap or so expensive.

Well for starters you can find yourself in two scenarios, either the diaper cake is overpriced, or you have a diaper cake that’s true to its value. But how do you distinguish between them?

The advice I can share is if you are looking to know what your money is buying you, ask for the contents within the diaper cake. The contents hidden within the diaper cake can mean a world of difference in the price of the cake. The person purchasing the cake must also understand that presentation is also key to the first impression. My opinion, the perfect diaper cake would be one that truly is breath taking and that it carries all the essentials that a mom-to-be would need. With those things in place you have yourself a great buy. I am not going to tell you there is a perfect price because there isn’t. The best bet is to analyze the contents you are purchasing inside the cake and make sure you compare to a few when making the decision.

When purchasing a cake, also consider the time and quality of the cake. At a baby shower of a good friend of mine, I was more concern with her loving the diaper cake itself then the contents I had hidden in it.

Like any gift, it depends on what you are willing to spend on the person you are buying for. Know what you are buying and you should be fine.

Angel Candle Paradise

Center pieces were the highlight of my preparations when I was putting together my little girls baptism gathering. Since I am always looking for something unique to stand out and I don't want the same generic stuff you find in every party store, I decided to work on my own centerpieces. A baptism in our family is considered a highlight in our lives and it brings a feeling of purity and innocence. What better then to take my candle hobby but instead of devoting most of the time in the candle area, I decided to build a garden paradise with a heavenly angel in the middle. I didn't make the candles, I simply bought them and created the hallow area to have a perfect space for my angel. The candle towered over the center of the garden and birds sat at the edge of a bird bath. The bird bath water was made of gel.



I had 6 tables and each had one of these candle center pieces making them the main decor for each. I used a variety of flowers in every candle centerpiece. So no two candle centerpieces were alike. They were all taken home by one of the guests after the party was over.

Popular Baby shower Gift

You can search online under a wide variety of categories related to babies and baby showers and with no doubt you will come across a bit of ads offering you a huge selection off diaper cakes.

Diaper cakes have taken a huge takeoff in the last three years becoming a well known gift and gesture in lots of baby shower gatherings around the country. You might be amazed to ask people around you what a diaper cake is though, because the chances are the answer to your question will be: what is a diaper cake? Most of the popularity lies mostly within the people either in the industry related to babies or parents themselves. But like anything it is not because the exposure isn’t there, its simple because the necessity has never been there to either come up with a shower gift or the person simple has no babies of their own.

The great thing about diaper cakes is that the creativity is endless. There are no two diaper cakes alike. It’s not beyond any one's reach to create a beautiful masterpiece. It could take a bit of time in creating depending how detailed you are. But most people master a certain look and stick with it. I know my first one took me a few hours but it was wonderful to see the ending results. I probably still take more time then most would find worthwhile, but most of that time lies in treating every diaper cake I create as my very own “Michael Angelo’s David”. Of course diaper cakes, like art, is left to the eye of the beholder.

Passion for Diaper cakes

My passion for diaper cakes came when I had my little girl Calista. I was searching on ebay for sesame street toy figures and came across a beautiful diaper cake. It grabbed my attention since I was invited to a baby shower and I was on the search for the perfect gift. I decided to go on the hunt to find information on how to make a diaper cake and created my first diaper cake.

After a few requests I was on my way to perfecting every diaper cake I set out to create. Every cake I would make I had a hard time letting go. I guess it was because it was my way of knowing I did my best to build the prettiest cake.

This link will take you back to one of the cakes I did in the past:
Johanna's Diapercake

I will post more as I make them and some from the past that were a babyshower delights.

Origin of my Candle hobby

About 7 years ago, when neither babies nor marriage were yet in my horizon, I met a coworker who had a hobby of making gel candles. Out of interest I asked him if it was hard to make one. He said it was the way he and his wife relieved the everyday mundane and stressful jobs they both had. From that point on I took on the desire to make these candles from an example he brought me to work one day. The candles were fascinating since the gel candles were so beautiful. And so came the beginning of my gel candle search. About a year later, wedding bells started to sound and I knew soon I would be making wedding plans. I searched for shower favors everywhere and all the ones I found that were of my liking were to expensive for my budget. So I ventured into making my own gel candles as favors.

About a year later on April of 04, I was so into them that my husband and I took advantage of a Gel Convention they were having in Las Vegas and went. Yes, I know what you must be saying, what a bore. But I loved every minute of it. It was great, we killed two birds with one stone since Vegas was also a great place to take a vacation. The specialty of the convention was gel but they introduced a popular new craze, the mix of wax and gel to make beautiful food candle creations. The attached image is an example of a food candle they had on display there. I never really got into this type of candles but if you are interested, you can find all type of accessories related to this type of candles at: http://www.geltyme.com/

Today I still love making them, although now candles share my love with a new addition to my hobbies…. Diaper cakes. Diaper cakes give me the ability to be just as creative as the candles so like candles I put so much passion in every single one of them.

Baby Related Links

I've added links that I find to be informative. The gender predictor is a fun little test you can do to guess what you baby's gender will be if your an expecting mother. I went on a hunt to find out how right it could be. I found that in most cases when I asked the women I knew, 8 out of 10 had the gender the Chinese Calendar had chosen. So being that is for fun and knowing it can’t be guaranteed, it was fun to see how close it really gets.

Baby Gender Chinese Predictor

On another note, this may be a common thing to do at baby showers that I was not aware of but at mine, someone told me that the 7th gift opened is the next women to have a baby. And what was funny was the girl who had given me the 7th gift I opened, was indeed already pregnant.

Mother's Day Candle

Here is another request that was made for a mother-to-be from her husband on Mothers day. This is a fountain with little birds sitting on the edge of the glass. At the babyshower I had two other people later ask for the same design.

A Diapercake was later done for this mother.

In the coming days I will post pictures of that diapercake.

Johanna's Diapercake

Talking to my friend Johanna the other day I remembered on the first beautiful diaper cake I created for her cousin. I was not present at the baby shower where this cake was the center of attention but from what she tells me it was a complete hit. Johanna later told me that her cousin for situations we all know if we have been pregnant, had time creep up on her and was not fully prepared for the baby. So the booties, bottles, baby wipes and a few of other little hidden extras came of great help to her!!! :)

Candle Dish

I was going through some pictures of the different little things I have done for baby showers and I came across the candle dish that was a great hit.

The mother of this baby had a room decorated with an animal paradise. She professionally had someone paint a beautiful tree with all types of animals. So as a keepsake to go with her room I created a dish candle that she later put on a picture stand and had it sit on the dresser to go with the room. I hope the picture is clear on what it was. On the far left you had the candle that sits in its own little area. The rest of the plate was the small paradise created with all types of animals and a little river running through it. You have a hippo, zebra, giraffe, alligator and a lion. Next to the candle there is a palm tree. All these were the animals in the decorations the room had.

A little history

The pictures on the right side are two of the pieces I created for two different babyshowers. The diapercake was done for my sister who was hosting a small gathering for a friend. Everyone loved the cake's pink cheery colors. I will admit sometimes after making them, I have a hard time letting them go.

The candle was one of 23 shower favors I made. I kept one and I have it as decorations in my living room. These candles were done for my friend's babyshower. She was having a boy and the theme of his room was going to be cars. So I decided what better then a forever candle that had tiny cute little cars. Its really pretty. Sometimes I feel pictures don't give these creations the credit they deserve.

Diapercakes & Candle Blog

I decided to start this blog because with my busy schedule ,I never seem to keep a discipline on taking the time to do what I love to do. I have this passion to create beautiful things like candles and diaper cakes. So this will be a journal on all the things I create and information I come across on my journey to devoting time to my hobby.