DIY GIFT GUIDE, Gift Idea

Bridal Shower Gift: Kitchen Towel Cake

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_Final2

While pinning the heck out of some awesome fall bridal shower ideas I stumbled across a cute idea to do a version of a Diaper Cake with kitchen towels and other utensil. If you want to see the original, here was my inspiration.

I went to Home Goods, Target and Amazon for my supplies:

  • Normal dish towels
  • Microfiber dish towels
  • Scrubby dish towels
  • An apron
  • Cloth napkins
  • A pie plate
  • An oven mitt
  • Wooden spoons
  • Measuring spoons

I bought what I thought I needed, returned the extra sets I didn’t use, and gifted Dana a bag for the odds and ends that didn’t work. Depending on the size you’d like your cake to be or the size of your pie plate (which the cake sits in), you’ll need varying amounts of each.

I started on the bottom layer and wrapped up the largest, “normal” towels. Then, I tied them together with some twine. When that was secure, I folded the apron, which had beautiful fall colors throughout, and wrapped that around the towels to beef up the bottom layer. I knew I wanted the oven mitts on the bottom layer, so I took twine and tied it around the apron and the oven mitts to keep the entire bottom layer together. Then, I broke a plastic hanger and stuck it in the middle so the remaining two layers would have support when I needed to move the cake around.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_step-1

I probably should have added more towels to the bottom layer since there was such a gap between the edge of the pie plate and the bottom, but the cake was already so full of towels. I ran back out to Home Goods and picked up a set of burnt orange cloth napkins, rolled them up and stuck then around the base of the cake.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_step-2

For the second and third layers, I went through the same process. Choose towels, roll towels, secure with twine. I stuck each layer onto the hanger to make sure the sizing was appropriate. Then, I took the top layer off and added the wooden spoons into the second tier of the cake. I simply stuck them into the folds of towels, then angled and shoved until they were secure and looked right. I did the same thing for the measuring spoons, too.

kitchen-towel-cake_step-3

Once I was satisfied with layer 2, I added the top layer. I did redo the layers three or four times until I thought they looked right, so don’t get discouraged if your towels don’t look amazing on the first go around.

Kitchen-towel-cake_step-4

Pretty cute, huh? All I needed was ribbon to cover the twine and the cake toppers 🙂

For cake toppers, I ordered this adorable set of pumpkin salt and pepper shakers from Amazon. They barely fit on the top of the cake, so I was glad I went with this set instead of other sets that had two of the stumpier pumpkins. To make sure they didn’t fall off, I removed the stoppers (put them in a baggie or you’ll lose them!) and stuck each shaker on a skewer I’d shoved into a fold of the top tier.

Kitchen-Towel-Cake_top

I love love love this as a gift for a shower — especially for a bride who is a baker-chocolatier-chef extraordinaire like Dana is. It was a lot of fun to make.

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It certainly is charming, isn’t it?

What clever gifts have you made for a bride-to-be? There are so many cute ideas out there!

Life, Vacation

Happy October

It’s the most wonderful time of the year — fall time! After spending a hot week in Florida, I am so excited for cool weather.

My mom, sisters and I just went to Disney World last week, hence me being M.I.A. from the blog world.

We hit up all four parks and then did the Universal Parks, too. My favorite by far was the Harry Potter portions of the parks. And then Animal Kingdom. That was an awesome park.

My poor mom got the shaft in my pictures. I swear she was there and that we have a ton of photos with her! In fact, we got the memory maker package so the Disney professionals took a ton of photos of all four of us. I will share those later.

I’ll also have to share some old school pictures of the family and the new versions that we recreated. We spent a ton of time at the parks finding old places that we’d take pictures more than a decade ago. I can’t wait to see the side-by-side comparisons!

Anyway, the vacation was awesome. The weather… too hot for my liking. It is time to break out the fall decor, like my fabric pumpkins from a few years back, and the fall clothing. Finallyyyyy!

Hope you all are enjoying the fall weather where you are.

Life

Fall

In case you don’t follow A Smith of All Trades on Facebook, which you totally should (duh!!), I just had to share this photo of a tree in our neighborhood that I posted last night. It is one of the prettiest trees ever and just screams: “FALL!” The shot is rather tight — and I cropped it a bit more — but the tree was the only orange thing in sight. All of the other trees were green, so this one stood out like crazy. I also love the little bench underneath.

Too pretty to not post!