Edible Geekery: Lunch for Twelve

There was so much to love about the Twelfth Doctor's first episode! So good ♥ I'm going to have to make a bento lunch about it :) The day before Deep Breath aired, I participated in a Doctor Who themed bento blog hop, with my lunch blog, BentOnBetterLunches, but since I didn't watch any of the leaked episodes, my bentos were not based on anything from Series 8. My bentos were inspired by one of the Eleventh Doctor's adventures, back in Series 5 ...

Want to see more of my Vincent and the Doctor lunches? They're packed in PlanetBoxes, in case you're wondering about those shiny lunchboxes :) Click the collage above or the TARDIS below to visit my bento blog, BentOnBetterLunches, or pin either for visiting later. You don't want to miss out on any of the edible geekery from the other 10 Whovians in the Lunch for Twelve blog hop...  there's Rose Tyler bacon, and an Ood made of food, need I say more?

Edible Geekery : Bento for Kidlet

I have some of the most amazingly talented & creative friends, some of whom also write blogs that entertain & inspire me. Let me tell you about one of them. Jenn is the super mama of a brilliant boy known on her blog as Kidlet. For the past 7 years, Jenn has packed bento lunches for Kidlet's eating pleasure & blogged them for our viewing pleasure. Kidlet & his mama are best buddies & are both nerdy in the awesomest way! Jenn's also a real artist who can draw things that look like the things they are meant to be - colour me jealous! Jenn rules. Here are only a few of the heaps of reasons why :)

Jenn made this collage for Fish Fingers & Custard Day last year, these are just some of her Doctor Who bentos! Visit Bento for Kidlet to see them all!

This image links to the Doctor Who posts at Bento for Kidlet.

 

Reason she's an awesome mom #137: She threw Kidlet a Doctor Who themed 13th birthday party & all the foods pertained to the program. Clever!  The pic only shows half of it, click it to go to her post. Then you can see the TARDIS cake :)

This image links to the party post at Bento for Kidlet.

Another reason I heart Jenn: she's also super kind & generous. She's never even met my little guys but she's sent them big boxes of Kidlet's hand-me-downs, and even decorated the packages with stuff I love :) This big box that my little pumpkinhead is trying to bring in the house was covered in Doctor Who stickers - Daleks & TARDISes & Eleven, such fun!

And check this one out. She covered it in drawings & quotes she knew I'd love. Seriously, who does this sort of thing?! Someone awesome, that's who :)

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So many edible geekery reasons! If I were to show only the best of Jenn's bentos I'd still basically be reposting her whole blog, because they're pretty much all my favourite :)  So I made myself pick just 4 more examples of her edible geekery inspired by other fandoms for which we share a love:  Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Sherlock, & Harry Potter.

 

 

These images links to their respective posts at Bento for Kidlet.

And it's not just lunch she excels at & posts on Bento For Kidlet. She also makes deliciously nerdy baked goods & treats :) Like Mr Flibble cupcakes inspired by another of our faves, Red Dwarf, and TARDIS mini banana bread loaves! And regular not so nerdy recipes full of delicious flavour. Visit Bento for Kidlet, you'll find your own reasons to love it!  :)

Party Like A Time Lord

♥♥ If you landed here while searching for timey-wimey party ideas, don't miss the link to my friend's awesome party post full of fantastic food & more, at the end of this post :)

When my Bella asked for a Doctor Who party for her 10th birthday I was thrilled!  Too bad she didn't want the whole party to be Who themed - she wanted a sleepover with a movie, manicures, & Wii Dance - but hey, she did want Whovian decorations & a TARDIS cake, yay!

Of course I wasted no time ordering TARDIS lights from ThinkGeek, several sets in fact - and we strung a set across our front porch right away :)

Doctor Who partyware was not to be found, so Mia Bella made the invitations herself:

We also made the loot bags, with blue bags, paper, a glue stick & silver Sharpie .

We strung another set of TARDIS lights across a cabinet in the living room, and arranged the goody bags on top of it. I ♥ those lights so much!

We covered the living room ceiling with 3 dozen helium-filled balloons in TARDIS blue, silver, & gold, and I found square party plates and arranged them like TARDIS window panes on the blue dining room tablecoth - Bella thought that was super cute :) 

 

So that's was it for decor, and as I don't have permission to put the guests photos online, I'll skip the party pics and get right to the cake! It's no secret that I am neither a baker nor a cake decorator, so Bella didn't have great expectations - but I did my best, and though the icing was messy, it didn't turn out too bad...

OK so it didn't turn out too good, either, ha!  But it did taste good - and most importantly, my birthday girl Bella loved it... just look at her smile ♥  

Notice her TARDIS blue nails with sparkly white tips - freshly painted by one of her girlfriends :) They had a great time, and my girl loved her birthday party. She said she wanted to have the same theme the next year...

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And she did!  We made the invitations ourselves again, but this time we added text to a picture and ordered prints online from a local 1 hour photo processing. We invited her whole class of 25 kids, and they were done in 15 minutes, for less than $3 - fantastic!

Since her 11th birthday party was at the local community pool, there was no decorating allowed, but we did make some Whovian cupcakes :)

Oops, looks like I exterminated the Daleks when I cropped the photo :)

OK, so a bakery baked & frosted those cupcakes. As if I could make such a perfect swirl of frosting! But I did make the chocolate Weeping Angels, K-9s, Sontarans, TARDISes, Daleks, & Cybermen they are topped with!

TARDIS shaped Doctor Who chocolate mold from Lakeland (UK)

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As promised, here's a party post full of Whovian awesomeness:  Robot Squirrel & the Monkeys' Timey Wimey 6th Birthday! I am in love with this idea: a tablecloth Cassandra for the kids to moisturize with spray bottles of water, absolutely brilliant!

Isn't that the greatest thing! Those are some lucky little Monkeys!

Doctor Who Christmas Tree - New Ornaments!

This year our tree got some new handpainted Doctor Who inspired ornaments with some very unique personalizations & mash-ups, one for each of my 5 little Whovians - Christmas gifts from my childhood bestie Kathy! They are the wee balls on ribbon loops below 

I'm really touched by these beautiful gifts! She did her research; she tailored them to each sproutlet's interests and looked up elements from the shows and even watched some to get the details right - and she did!  So thoughtful & talented* ♥

On the left, for my biggest boy Beanstalk, she painted a Zombie Doctor! And on the right, for my middle girl Sydney Bean, Hello Kitty Doctor, ha!  

Another turn of the Zombie ball shows the Zombie TARDIS,  and this time, on the right, an Angry Birds Red Bird Dalek for my 9 year old Pickle :)  

On the bottom of the Zombie Who ornament, one of Dr. Simeon's Snowmen! At first I thought it was Jack Skellington, because Beanstalk's name is Jack, & I love the Nightmare Before Christmas - but on second look I recognized it :)  Then on the right is the flip side of Pickle's Angry Bird ornament, with a White Bird Doctor!  

Next, she painted K-9 for my youngest, Birdie, and the Berserker pendant from the Sarah Jane Adventures for 11 year old Bella. The detail is perfect, I'm so impressed!  

Another angle of K-9, and Sprout's Hello Kitty Doctor again, with his (her?) TARDIS  

They're personalized too! Birdie's K-9 has her name, Kate, in the Zodiac Wheel from the Sarah Jane Adventures. Jack the Beanstalk has a bloody name above his Snowman, Sydney Bean has hearts on the flip side of her Hello Kitty ball, and Angus (Pickle) has a wee green pig evading the Angry Bird Dalek. And Mia Bella has the pretty purple Sarah Jane Adventures logo & jumbled numbers & letters from the title sequence.

These are all the pics I took this year - between the blur that was Christmas morning with 5 little ones, having company for the Doctor Who Christmas Special, then leaving for Christmas part 2 with the family in Canada the next day, I didn't think to take any until I was un-decorating! We didn't Who-ify the whole tree this year anyways, just the section in the photo. The sproutlets wanted some other characters & Christmassy stuff on there - kids! ;)

Oh, I did get this cute snapshot of my Sydney Bean playing with the Weeping Angel tree topper when we were decorating. She just loves that thing! She's a big fan of the sinister statues - she even requested an Angel themed school lunch (see it on my bento blog).

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! 

Now, only 9 months to wait for a new Who episode...

* My talented friend Kathy also painted a gorgeous Van Gogh-style TARDIS in the starry sky ornament that she gave us last year.

DIY Weeping Angel Tree Topper

Happy Christmas in July! Thanks to a nudge from a reader, I'm finally getting around to sharing how I made my Weeping Angel tree topper. It's not a true replica of the sinister statues from Doctor Who, but there's no question what it is...

I've wanted a Weeping Angel statue ever since I first saw Blink. I'd really love a life size one made of stone for my front garden, but as that's not realistic, I decided to settle for a small one to put on top of our Christmas tree. Having neither the sculpting talent nor the desire to create one from scratch, I set out to repurpose a lovely (& inexpensive) non-threatening angel tree topper I bought from a department store.

You will need:

• An angel tree topper. Make sure the arms and hands are poseable!  
• Stone textured spray paint. I used 2 cans of Krylon Make It Stone!
• Clear sealer. I used Krylon Make It Last Spray Sealer
• Paper or drop sheet for spraying against - it's messy stuff!
• A ventilated but not windy place to spray, and leave to dry for hours

Since it was actually nearing Christmas when I started my project, there were many angel tree toppers in the department store. I chose one of the plainest, since I'd be cutting all her ribbons and beads off anyways. I bought Krylon Make It Stone! Black Granite textured spray paint because that was the closest to gray the store had.

I also looked for an angel with sculpted rather than real hair, thinking it might be easier to cover with the spray. And I tried to find one with solid wings but they were all feathered. Solid would have made much less mess - when I cut that fluff off it flew everywhere! Like the down of a thistle ;)

 

STEP 1: Remove and cut off all the angel's embellishments, including tinsel & wing fluff. Trim the dress sleeves to the shoulders if possible. 

Poor trimmed angel. I bent her arms into the weeping position.

STEP 2: Place trimmed angel on covered work surface and follow paint directions to give it a light even coating of textured paint. I used my driveway covered with paper, but underestimated how far the mist would fly, and now have a lighter stone outline of the paper. I'm sure it will fade eventually...

I realized I'd need to bend the angel's arms back out to be able to paint them. So... 

Step 3. Give arms an all-over coat before carefully bending them into "weeping" position while paint is still tacky. Continue spraying until completely covered.

Step 4: Allow to dry in a well-ventilated but not windy place, for about 4 hours. I set mine on my covered porch. 

Step 5. Once the paint has dried, trim any straggly feathers from the wings. Give it another coat and allow to dry another 4 hours.

Step 6. Set angel atop something to allow you to spray right to the bottom and in the folds of the skirt. I used an empty coffee can. Give it another good layer of spray paint and allow to dry. Continue until you are happy with the coverage.

Step 7: After the final coat has dried, give it a light coating of clear sealer if you wish.

All done! Now don't take your eyes off it!

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Click the pic to see how my Angel looked atop my Doctor Who Christmas Tree: