How to make AWESOME EASTER CUPCAKES

With the kids at school, us Mums are always being asked to donate cupcakes for school stalls etc. These little cupcakes are PERFECT for a school stall, or for your Easter table. They are appealing to the eye and they are super easy to make.

SUPPLIES

~ 1 packet of Easter themed cupcakes cases

~ 1 cake packet mix (makes about 12 cupcakes) *Tip: if you are using white or light coloured cupcake cases like in the picture above, choose a light cake mix like vanilla or butter cake. If you use chocolate, you will have to double cup them.

~ Chocolate icing

~ Zip lock bag

~ 1 packet of chocolate speckled eggs, or some other kind of unwrapped eggs.

What to do:

1. Make your cupcakes as per the packet. Like I said above, if you choose to make chocolate cupcakes, you will likely have to double cup them as the dark brown colour and oils will soak into the paper and spoil your Easter designs on your cupcakes cases. I always find that my packet cake mix makes exactly 12. You need only fill your cupcake cases about 2/3 of the way up the cases. Bake and allow to cool.

2. To decorate them, make up some chocolate buttercream icing as per your recipe or directions on the pack. Spread a tiny bit over the entire top of all the cupcakes with a knife, not too thickly. Then place the remainder of your chocolate icing inside a zip lock bag and expel the air and zip up tight. Gently squeeze the icing to one corner and snip a tiny bit off the corner with scissors. As you now squeeze you will get a skinny little wiggly line of icing come out.

3. Squeezing the icing out through your make-shift piping bag, go around and around the outer edge of your cakes wiggling and making it messy until you have something that resembles a nest. After you complete the first cupcake, then stop and move to step 4.

4. Take your bag of speckles eggs and fill the centre of your nest with 5 or 6 of them (depending on their size and how many you have. Be sure to split them between your cakes evenly). Go back to icing your next cake.

5. Do each individual cupcake this way so that when your eggs are placed in the centre, the icing is still wet and your eggs will stick so that they won't fall out.

6. THAT'S IT! Arrange them on a plate and see all your friends be impressed.

How to make a KIDS DINOSAUR CAKE

I know it's tempting to try and keep up with what the other mum's are doing out there with their kids birthdays, and you don't want your kids to feel like they're different or not special, but I do think that spending ridiculous amounts of money on a 3 years olds birthday cake is not necessary.

One of the things that I remember mostly fondly as a child are the cute cakes my mum used to make for me and my sisters birthdays. Not expensive but creative and made with bucket loads (or mouthfuls) of love.

Today I will explain how to make this Dinosaur cake. However, my pictures of the preparation process have been deleted, so I will have to add diagrams and borrowed pictures.

SUPPLIES

~A small loaf tin

~3 pkt cake mixes (these could all be different flavours if you like)

~large pkt icing mixture

~food colouring, including black.

~Very skinny paint brush.

~covered cake board (I make mine out of old boxes)

~decorative paper and clear contact to cover board.

~Pkt disposable piping bags (more info later)

~pkt fondant

WHAT TO DO:

Start making your cakes 2 days prior to day needed. Example, if you need for Saturday, start on Thursday. You can also prepare cakes further ahead than this if you wish and freeze them until needed.

DAY ONE:

1. Bake 3 cakes in your loaf tin. Your loaf tin should do one cake mix each. Do one cake at a time (if you only have one tin) allowing to cool sufficiently before tipping them out of the tin.

*TIP: I find the best way to ensure your cake doesn't stick is to spray inside of tin with canola cooking spray, cut a piece of baking paper to cover just the bottom of the tin, then respray before putting your cake batter in. They will never stick if you do this. Also, make sure you clean your tin out in between each cake.

2. Once all your cakes have cooled, wrap them in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge overnight. This makes them cold and easier to carve.

3. Prepare your cake board. I use recycled cardboard from boxes as this is a cheap alternative to buying special cake boards from supply shops. Choose some paper to cover your board that is fitting for a dinosaur cake. I happened to have scrapbooking paper that looked like pebbles, but you could use just green like grass or anything else that you think would look good. Then cover it in clear contact.

DAY TWO:

4. The first thing you need to do is level 2 of your cakes. This means where your cake has risen in the middle, you need to make flat. I use a serrated edge bread knife to do this. Cut your 3rd cake directly in half vertically (do NOT level).

This picture shows how to level a round cake. You would do the same, only to your loaf cakes to take off he part that has risen in the middle.

5. Make up icing with about 2 cups of icing as per instruction or recipe.

6. Take your cake board and upturn one of the levelled cakes in the middle. Apply a little icing on the underside to help keep it from sliding on your board. Cut a sliver of cake off each end of this cake to make the ends straight. Then take the 2 halves and place them one on each end of this, cut side touching, and put icing between to stick them together. You should now have one long mismatched looking cake with two tapered ends. Take the other levelled cake and also upturn and "stick" it with icing above the first levelled cake, cutting the ends straight like the other one. This forms the body of your dinosaur with the hump in the middle. 

7. Now here's where a bit of skill is involved. You now need to take a small serrated edge knife (like a steak knife) and slowly start to carve your cake into a dinosaur shape. Start by curving the sides to create a humpy spine. Then taper down one end for a tail, and the other end for a head. On the tail end start by cutting off the corners. Save one as this will add to your lumpy head. Leave the head quite broad and humpy, just smooth off corners. Then add the cut off you saved and stick that on with icing. Keep shaving off cake over the whole thing until you are satisfied you have a dinosaur shape. I used one of my sons dinosaur figurines for inspiration at this point. Also make sure that all joins are well blended with your carving so there are no bumps.

The basic shape of your cake after carving should look something like this.

8. Next you need to smear a thin layer of icing over the entire cake. This will help bind everything and keep your carved cake from crumbing everywhere. It will also help your piped icing to stick well to your cake. After you're done, clean up your cake board of any icing smears or crumbs. Set aside.

This is a picture of a car cake I borrowed from the web, but shows how your dinosaur should also look after carving and thin smear of icing all over.

9. Take your fondant (Orchard brand is readily available form the supermarket) and colour a small portion of it the colour that you'd like for the spikes on the back. Add food colouring a little at a time, kneading well between each addition until you have the desired colour. Mould little pieces into spikes, plates or however you want it to look and set them aside as you are going. Now take a larger blob of fondant and mould into for cylindrical like pieces. These are the legs. Just press them up to your cake where they belong. Now also take 2 pinches of fondant and make 2 tiny discs for the eyes and stick in place. Also 2 for the nostrils. Make a long skinny sausage for the mouth and press that in place. You will also make a tail out of fondant to connect to the tapered end of your cake and curl it to one side. Take your paint brush and black food colouring and paint black dots for the eyes, nostrils and paint the mouth black too.

10. Make up another huge batch of icing (as per instructions on pack) and set aside a small amount  (a couple of heaped tablespoons) to use later for tufts of grass. Colour your batch of icing in the main colour of your dinosaur. Be careful that your icing does not become too runny. Add more icing mixture if this happens. Your icing should be quite stiff (but not dry) for piping onto your cake. 

11. Stick your spikes all along the back. And horns if you made them. They should stick to the icing cover you put all over your cake earlier.

12. Now you are ready to pipe your icing. Get your "Multix" brand disposable piping bags (available from the supermarket). These are excellent. There are 5 bags in each box and they come with a coupler and 4 different piping tips. Assemble as per directions on pack with one of the star tips. 

Take a tall glass and put your tip and bag inside the glass and turn the plastic over the outside edge. Place as much icing into the bag as will fit. Take out and twist the top off (you could also use a bag clip) expelling any air. 

Have a little practice at making little stars with your piping tips. Squeeze a small amount out and pull straight up will form little pointy stars. 

*TIP: It might even be worth taking time to view a short tutorial on YouTube, but is not hard to do. 

You will cover your whole cake this way, going around the eyes, nostrils, spikes etc. and covering your legs and tail.

13. Colour the icing you set aside green. This will be your tufts of grass. Remembering to keep the icing stiff for piping. Either empty out your piping bag by squeezing out its contents, or setting up another bag. I used blue and then put the green through the same bag as the colours were very close. If you are using completely different colours, you may want to use a new bag so as not to contaminate your colours. You will also switch your tip to a writing tip, which looks like a little hole. To make the grass, use the same technique as before in bunches, some longer and shorter to resemble grass tufts. 

14. I also added rocks and a leaf out of fondant, but this is not necessary. Use your own imagination! 

I hope this has been easy enough to follow. Please feel free to leave a comment.

How to achieve THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TABLE part 2.

Hi again. I'm back with part 2 of your Perfect Christmas Table.

Like I mentioned at the end of my last blog, the rest of the decorating now is pretty much done with food. Every time I do Christmas, I like to find different ways of putting everyone's names on the place settings. Because my whole theme had started with a pretty Christmas bauble that I liked, last year I decided that I would make Christmas baubles with everyone's names on them. But these ones would be edible! My idea was to make some slightly oversized chocolate truffles and cover them with fondant to look like baubles. I made them green like the rest of the table with little gold tops for the ribbon. I then dusted them with edible shimmer dust (available from cake decorating supply stores) to make them shimmer, then simply piped the names on with royal icing. I know this may seem difficult, but it was not at all. Find a good truffle recipe and buy some ready made fondant (also available from the cake decorating store). Roll out your fondant cut into large circles and drape over your prepared truffles and tuck any excess under the truffle where you can't see it. Don't be afraid. Give it a go!

As an extra treat, I also decided that a beautiful shortbread star Christmas tree would look stunning sitting at one end of the table. I bought a star cookie Christmas tree kit and iced each star with royal icing in the colour of my green theme and put it on a clear plastic platter that I bought at one of the bargain stores. At home I already had a floating candle bowl that rarely got used and placed battery operated lights inside that you can get very cheaply from most chain stores. I then placed my platter with the cookie tree on top. To finish off, I also found a battery operated light up star in my travels one day, so this sat proudly on top of the tree. It looked truly amazing.

The next thing I added to the table (also food) was a cupcake stand full of little hand made paper bags filled with chocolates. I found a pattern in the Better Homes & Gardens magazine to make these cute little bags and used some decoartive scrapbooking paper to construct them. They were all different designs and patterns, but the colour of the paper was the same. After filling them, I tied the tops with a ribbon bow and arranged them on my cupcake stand. You could do the same, or find some other way to display them. Just recently I had been doing my grocery shopping in Woolworths and found cheap cardboard cupcake stands that would be perfect, and you could also decorate the stand to match your table too! I decorated my cupcake stand with another string of battery operated lights like the ones under my shortbread Christmas tree.

The final addition to my table I've left to tell you about until last, but it was actually the first thing that I completed and which was the basis of all my decorating.
Hanging over my dining table I have a pendant oyster light. The glass slips into a metal  ring hiding the light bulb. I got hold of an old wire coathanger and bought a few rolls of different kinds of ribbon in green and gold to match my table theme and got a couple of cheap packets of plastic baubles in the same colours. I sat and tied varying lengths of ribbon to each bauble and hung them around the ring of wire until the whole wire was covered with baubles. I then tied the ring of wire to the metal ring on my light fitting. The effect was dramatic and beautiful. You may not have the same kind of thing hanging over your table, but if you let your creative juices flow a bit, I'm sure you'll think of something that works with what you have.

So now you've heard about the details of how I put together my Christmas table, the last thing to show is the end result. Remember that none of this cost heaps of money. And if you grab bits and pieces here and there over the course of the year, it will not feel like anything at all. Go shopping after Christmas and pick up some bargains on decorations in the sales following Christmas and you'll be able to save even more money, just by planning ahead a little. Most of all, have fun, include the kids, play Christmas songs and have a great time with it!

How to achieve THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TABLE part 1.

Part One

Ever looked at the glossy mags of gorgeous Christmas tables adorned with glitzy decorations and beautifully folded napkins and wished you could get the same look? But then decide that it would probably cost a bomb and give it a miss?

Well I'm here to show you that you CAN achieve a beautiful Christmas table that will not only serve a feast for your family, but also a feast for their eyes! And you'll have them talking about it for months later. The only thing you need worry about is raising the bar so high that you'll soon become known as the "Hostess with the mostest"!

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, "Decorating the Christmas Tree", it all starts with a theme. Either colour or feel. Example: red & silver or perhaps an Aussie feel or tone. You're only limited by your imagination. And the brilliant thing these days is that there is so much available at bargain prices if you bother to go searching for it. And the colours in decorations has moved on from the reds and greens and now anything goes! Also, I'm the kind of person that if I can't find what I'm seeing in my head, I will happily make it. I will expand on that later.

In the picture above, is my Christmas table from last year. I begin thinking about my theme very early on and actually mentally plan my Christmas sometimes a couple of years ahead (only because I only host Christmas every 2 years). My theme for last year was chartreuse green and gold. I had seen a Christmas bauble in that colour and fell in love with it, and so that became my colour scheme. If you can't think of a colour scheme, take a walk around the shops. Get inspiration from the decorations isle, or from the Christmas fabrics available. Spotlight is a great place to go to get inspired. And be sure to take someone with you who won't quell your enthusiasm.

If you don't own one already, invest in a long plain white table cloth. I bought mine years ago and I use it VERY often and although it was on the pricey side when I got it, it has been well worth what I paid for it.
If you don't have the cash to get one right away, I like the Chinet brand paper with plastic back table cloths that you throw away after you use them because they don't look as cheap as a plastic table cloth, but not as expensive as a linen table cloth. Get a couple if you need extra length and overlap them.

 Now I will explain to you my table in detail, and you can use that to get your table planned in your mind. I find it helpful to write my ideas into an exercise book, complete with diagrams, pictures and even swatches as this helps me get a feel for the end result.

I need to seat 12 people at my Christmas table, but I only have a 6 seater. So we covered the top of our table with some board big enough to seat 12 and used 4 chairs from our other table, and 2 fold away chairs. To disguise the ugly look of mis-matched chairs at the table, I decided to cover the chair backs. But how to do it cheaply??? I discovered that a standard pillowcase slipped perfectly over the backs of my chairs, hiding the different backs at the table. But I needed 12. A shopping trip to The Reject Shop and I found pillowcases in packs of 2 for $2-$3 per pack, so there was a very cheap solution to that issue. Also at The Reject Shop I found some rolls of cheap ribbon to use to tie bows around the backs of the chairs to give them an opulent feel. And yet this all cost about $20.

The table runner was bought from Hot Dollar and cost about $3 for a roll of organza that was about 50cm wide and about 3m long. It was the right colour and gave the table a bit of sheen. You could also use wrapping paper in a design that you like. This could even be the basis of your theme. Or (as I've done before) you can cut the paper or fabric into placemats and omit the runner. It's up to you and your imagination.

The napkins I used I got from IKEA. If you have an Ikea store near you, they have napkins in all sorts of colours in huge packs at a bargain price of just a couple of dollars. I wanted to have my napkins folded in a way that was unique, so I used the most valuable tool any of us have...Google! On there I found some napkins folded to look like bows. They were rolled up on the diagonal and then folded in such a way they looked like bows, then tied with ribbon in the middle. I then added an ornament hook through the back and hung them on my glasses, but again, let your imagination prevail.

Christmas crackers. I LOVE crackers that look beautiful and decadent, but when you go shopping for them, the price of the nicest ones will near give you a heart attack! When I went shopping for my crackers, I wanted plain gold ones that wouldn't break my budget and I found...nothing. So, like I said earlier, when I can't find what I'm looking for, I make my own! I started collecting toilet rolls until I had 12. I went and bought the cheapest crackers I could find ($2 for 6, got 2 packs) then took them home and deconstructed them to get the cap, snap and motto out. I then got some gold tissue, ribbon and some decorations to make my own, using the stuff I extracted from the bought ones. And presto! Crackers that look beautiful and were CHEAP at just $10 for 12!

Next, decorating the middle of the table. I'm a bit of a pack rat. Pretty things that I come across in my travels have value to me, and I lovingly keep them because one day, I know they will be useful. I filled a bowl up with bead garland, bought some cheap tealight candlas and arranged them onto a paper plate in a circle, stuck them to the plate, then wrapped gold ribbon around the outisde to keep them all togther. I also bought 2 big brandy balloons from The Reject Shop and filled them inside with white lilies.

In my next blog, I will continue with the rest of the table decorating as already this is quite lengthy. The next part of this involves using food to make an impression. But NOT difficult. So stay tuned :)

How to make HALLOWEEN COOKIES

Thought I'd add a quick blog today (seeing as it's Halloween) on how to whip up a batch of Halloween cookies. Doesn't take long and the kids will love them!
You could either grab a knob of cookie dough from the supermarket (if you're pressed for time) or you could make them from scratch like I did with a simple cookies recipe. Due to copyright, I will not be able to post the recipe I use here, but I did get it from a Women's Weekly kids dress up and party ideas book. Be sure it is a recipe that is not too crumbly. Shortbread recipes are not really suitable for these.

SUPPLIES:

-Cookies cutters. If you already have planned ahead a little and have some Halloween ones, great! But if not, an oval shaped or round cutter will be good enough as these could be easily made to look like little pumpkins.
-Royal Icing. Either make from scratch OR make the same discovery as I  did and run down to the local supermarket and grab yourself a bag of Queen brand ready made powder royal icing -- just add water!! The most brilliant discovery since mining for gold.
-Food colouring, (according to what shapes youa re making). For pumpkins you will need red, yellow and black.
-Disposable piping bags (Multix make them available in supermarkets) or a plastic ziplock bag.
-Paper towels.

1. After baking your cookies and letting them cool, make your Royal icing according to your recipe, or (as I would do) out of your packet mix into a bowl. Take about a third of the mix out and put into a separate bowl to use for the black (if you're doing pumpkins). Add food colouring to the colour you need. If you are making pumpkins out of round cookies, add one drop red to 2-3 drops yellow for a good orange colour.Continue with these ratios till the colour is the intensity you need it.

2. Once your colour is mixed, try to make sure the mix is not too runny to start with. If it is too runny, add a little more powder or icing sugar. Place the icing in your piping bag or inside your ziplock bag. Cover any remaining icing in your bowl with a few paper towels that have been wet and wrung out a little, by placing it over the edge of your bowl making sure not to leave any gaps. This will stop what's left from getting hard. We're going to come back to this later.
Snip a tiny bit of the corner so that when you squeeze the bag you get a string of icing come out.

3. Start by tracing the outside edge of your cookie with the icing from the bag, gently squeezing as you go around. Then set aside and move onto the next cookie. This will create a sort of a dam wall that will begin to set hard by the time you've been around all of them and come back to the first one, which will allow to you fill in the centre and keep the edge neat.

4. Once you've done them all and the icing is hard or at least semi-hard, empty the contents of your piping bag back into the bowl you mixed it in. Give it a stir and then stir in a little more water to make it a bit runnier than what you iced the edge with.

5. Take a teaspoon and drop tiny blobs of icing inside the cookie and spread around a little with the back of the spoon until there is no more cookie surface to see. If the icing is the right consistancy, the surface of the icing should go fairly smooth by itself. Set aside and go to the next one. Work as quickly as you can to avoid your icing from starting to go hard in the bowl.

6. For your pumkin faces, colour the icing you set aside black and make to the same consistancy as the icing used for the cookie edges. Put this icing in a separate bag and do the same for the edges, piping your face on to how you'd like them. Prctice on a piece of paper if you need to to make sure you get them how you want them to look.

7. Set all the cookies aside to set fully. Give them out as is, or put into plasitc loot bags.

Happy Halloween! >: D

Preparing for Christmas Part 1 - THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Christmas probably has to be my favourite time of the year. Growing up, Christmas was a fun time when we spent special time with family, ate, drank and made merry. Every Chriastmas Eve (still my favourite day of the Christmas/ New Year period) we would have Open House where friends and family were casually invited to stop in and stay awhile for nibbles and drinks, while Christmas tunes played in the background. They always turned out to be the greatest evenings and loads of laughs and fun. A tradition we kept going for a long time until our family started moving far and wide. I still like to organise an Open House when I host Christmas these days.

I host Christmas on alternating years. My sister does the ones between mine, and we have done this since we both were married, as both our in-laws live overseas. It has evolved into quite the competition, and it's HEAPS of fun.

So! The first thing I do in preparing for my Christmas festivities is to decide on a theme, starting with the tree. No plans ever end up with the WOW factor unless you start with a theme. When my husband and I moved into our first home, I bought a 6ft tall Christmas tree. At the time, I still did not have the interior decor to my liking yet, so when I began purchasing my first ornaments, I decided that the theme for my Christmas tree would be gold & silver. I chose this scheme because I figured that whatever interior design I settled on in the future, or changed, it would always look appropriate.

MY rule for picking out decorations is that they have to sparkle in some way. I like when I turn the Christmas tree lights on in the evening and the lights reflect and shine off every ornament. Glitter, spun glass, shiny glass, mirrors, beads. If it has bling on, it's going on my tree.

As you may imagine, I did not buy a full tree of ornaments all at once. That would be ridiculously expensive. What I did buy was some big packs of shiny plastics balls that were $5 for example, for 24 balls, and I bought a few packs of those. Some bead garland, and of course lights, and I think that's all I had hanging on my tree the first year. Every year since then, I've added to it, and now it's so full, I have trouble getting everything on! So much so, that now my children have their own little tree that goes in the other room that they put their own special ornaments on that they've collected and made over the years.

Once I had a conversation with someone who told me that Christmas trees only look good with red and green ornaments. Haha. Ridiculous! I do however, have a very strong aversion to Northern Hemisphere themed decorating ie, snowmen, snow, holly, and the like. I prefer things that remind me of my Christmas's growing up; lots of lights, Christmas bush, Agapanthus flowers etc.

I believe that all Christmas trees look magnificent if there is a theme. That could be a combination of colours; like pink & purple, red & gold, black, white & silver or just one colour, like all blue. It could be just one kind of ornament; like all glass balls, or all stars. A friend of mine collects Disney ornaments, so her tree is all colours, but all Disney characters. Even better is it if it fits in nicely with the room it's in in some way.

This is a picture of my Christmas tree taken last year. And for the first time since being in our house, I moved it's location in the room (just for a change).

Once you have the tree up and decorated, then the next step is choosing gift wrap and ribbon ready for tizzying up your gifts, but will save that for my next blog.

So if your Christmas tree is ready for an update, or you're just starting out with a new tree, now is the time to start planning!

How to make a HOGWARTS COSTUME

The reason for making this costume is for the Bookweek Parade at my children's school where they are allowed to go to school dressed as their favourite book character. My sons best friend is going as Harry Potter so he decided he would go as Ron Weasley. But with a few minor additions/ changes, this could be any of the characters that attend Hogwarts.


SUPPLIES
For the character of Ron Weasley, you will need:

• A can of orange coloured hair spray
• About 1.5- 2m of black poplin fabric (available at fabric stores like Spotlight & Lincraft). It is ususally cheap at about $2-$3 per metre.
• 2 x roll of wide ribbon in burgundy and gold (or whatever house colours relevent for your character) to make into a tie. (Or dad's tie if it's the right colour).
• Iron on hemming tape.
• Small piece of elastic.
• Small stick from a tree branch.
• (Optional) Burgundy & gold yarn for a scarf).
• (Optional) stick or broom handle and rattan for a broomstick.
• White school shirt or polo shirt.
• Pair of black shoelaces.

For me, I have all of these supplies lingering in my cupboards at home, as when it comes to craft, I'm not one for throwing things away because I know they will be useful at some point down the track. You may even find that you have some of these things at home too. Don't be afraid to substitute if you have something that will do, eg. Coloured felt instead of ribbon for the tie, or even some old business shirts or clothes that you can chop up that are the right colours. Be resourceful!

 GETTING STARTED - Gryffindor Tie

To make the tie out of ribbon (or strips of coloured felt or other fabric you have gathered up):
1. Cut lengths of ribbon about 15 cm each on a 45 deg angle in about 10 of each colour. Like this:

2. If you have a sewing machine or have access to one, sew the strips together alternating the colours so you end up with a striped effect. If you don't have a sewing machine, you can also grab iron on hemming tape (a girls second best friend) and use that. Cut strips of the hemming tape to match the lengths of ribbon and then cut them in half again lengthways to make them thinner. You can then overlap your colurs joining them with the hemming tape. Works just as well. Be sure to to line up the sharp angle end of your ribbon with the blunt angle of the other colour so that you end up with it looking like this:

3. If you have sewn your pieces together, then give it a press to make sure it all sits flat. Cut off one end until you have a flat bottom that creates a right angle with the sides of your tie, and all your stripes sit at a 45 deg angle. Then take the cut end of your tie and fold up the bottom about 1cm, press, then fold in the 2 corners to form the point of your tie and press again. Should look something like this:

4. Then fold in the sides creating a slight taper from the bottom of the tie to the top and press. Repeat on the other side. Turn it over and look at it from the front to make sure it looks right. If you are happy with how it looks, take some hemming tape and iron to stick all your seams down so it all looks perfect from the front (don't worry about the back). Like this:

5. Take your piece of elastic and cut it to fit around your childs neck (so that it's comfortable) and tie a knot in it. Take your tie and make it into a false tie over the elastic so that when your tie is on underneath your collar, it looks like a real tie.

NEXT - Hogwarts Robe

For our Hogwarts robe, we are simply going to make our black fabric into a cape.

1. Take the black poplin and hold it lengthways. Along one edge take a darning needle and thread it with black yarn or heavy duty thread. Then starting at one end, thread it through back and forth all along the one edge gathering the fabric as you go. After you have reached the other end, pull it tight until the gathered area fits around the childs neck and shoulders comfortably and secure and tie off thread or yarn.

2. Attach shoelaces to each side of neck so that they can be tied in front to stop your "robe" from falling off. If you don't have a sewing machine, pinning them in place will be good enough. Hem any raw edges (if you like) with iron on hemming tape.

3.To finish the look, dress your child in his regular school pants and shirt or polo, put on the Gryffindor tie. To add authenticity, you may want to print a picture off the internet of the Hogwarts Crest and attach to the robe as well! If you have time, knit a quick scarf (see my directions on How to make a Cozy Knitted Scarf) in Gryffindor colours to add to the look. Spray your childs hair with orange hair spray and see Ron Weasley appear before you. Don't forget to take your "stick branch" wand.
For Harry Potter, make a pair of cardboard spectacles and draw a scar with an eyeliner pencil. For Harry's quidditch look, omit the tie and make your robe with burgundy fabric. Trade his wand for a broomstick.
Same could be done for Hermione, but no need for hair spray or spectacles.