How to Make a Diaper Cake for Dummies

My boss and his girlfriend are expecting their little man any day now and he put on his own kind of baby shower called "Beer & Diaper" Party. The more manly way of saying it is "Holy shit, I'm going to be a dad, let's get drunk."

The purpose of the party is for just gentlemen to attend bearing an absurd amount of alcohol and diapers. Which is brilliant because think of how many diapers you're going to go through. Since Davis was invited to the party, I knew I had to send him with a more interesting way than just a boring box of diapers.

The new thing to do now a days is when your friends are punching out babies, is to make a diaper cake. I had no idea how to make it so I thought I would improvise so I dragged Davis to come to Michael's & Dollarama to see what I could find. All of the supplies I got was for under $20 (not including the diapers, who knew that shit was so expensive? Literally.)

Here's what you'll need:

- Diapers (kind of a key component to a diaper cake)
- Ribbons (amount of ribbon will vary depending on how big your cake will be)
- Canvases 3 different sizes (used as a base to go under the diapers)
- Elastics (to hold the diapers together)
- Baby blankets (to wrap around the canvas for decoration)
- Hot glue gun
- Some kind of decoration to go on the top of the cake (optional)
- Chalk board & white pen to use for as a sign (optional)

Here's how to make it:

1. Cover the canvases with the baby blankets/paper:
I was super lazy and taped the blanket underneath the canvas. I didn't want to staple it in case they actually wanted to use the blankets.

2. Get your roll on:
This was the most time consuming part. Davis and I sat rolling a bajillion diapers in groups of four and then wrapping an elastic about an inch - inch & a half up from the bottom. Ensure that the ugly part of the diaper is faced inward so the outside of the cake is all smooth.

3. Make it look pretty:
Place the diapers that are in groups of four on top of the blanket covered canvas and adjust as necessary for it to look aesthetically pleasing.

Repeat steps 1-3 until you have a full 3 tier cake. 

4. Get your glue on:
Hot glue gun a few spots of the exposed elastics and go over it with a ribbon of your choice. This adds a nice finish to the cake and covers up the ugly elastics. I tried EVERYTHING to get the ribbon to stick to the diapers/elastics and hot glue gunning was the best thing I came up with so I will probably use that technique from now on.

5. Cake Topper:
Finish it off nicely with a decoration or a stuffy. My boss is huge into soccer and his "Beer & Diaper" party was right around Christmas so I thought a soccer ornament was fitting for the occasion.

6. Make a sign:
I wanted to congratulate the expecting couple with a cute chalkboard & white penned sign. The chalkboard came in a pack of 4 from Michael's and I bought a white pen from there as well.

When I originally did my own research online to find the easiest way to do a diaper cake, everything was made to be out so complicated. I hope this breaks things down for you and realize that you can use as many things as you'd like for a fun project like this.

Use this as a guideline and explore more of your own creativity and see what kind of stuff you come up with! I think you'll be surprised with how imaginative you can get!

-melissa xo

How To Make Sure Your Cat & Dog Don't Kill Each Other

January 24th 2013, I got the cutest Black Lab mix and named him Luke (after the TY beanie baby, of course). He's a fun, loving, energetic dog that is too smart for his own good. I lived at my parents at the time I got Luke and had a real sense of what it's going to be like having children when I was constantly waking up in the middle of the night to a needy puppy. We jokingly coined him as having "Only Child Syndrome" because the attention always had to be on him. And when I say 'jokingly' we were soon to realize it was actually true. When it came time to move out with Davis, we had always said we would enjoy our time with Luke before we got a cat (since that was something we always wanted to do). However; almost a month of living together, the opportunity to have a cat came up.

September 11th 2014, an email was sent around the office asking if anyone wanted a rescue kitten. The litter had been spayed and neutered, microchipped and had all their shots. Better yet, they were free. I forwarded Davis the email and he got back to me right away and said no, we should wait a while longer before we got a kitten. I only begged once or twice (or a hundred times I can't remember) and then he called me up and said, "okay, let's get it!" That day by lunch hour, I whipped over to Petland, picked up the cat and worked from home in our office with the door closed and a scared little kitty walking around. We named her Pickles.

Baby Steps

Luke quickly realized that there was another pet living in our house and was constantly trying to break into our office to see what was going on. We gave him a few days to adjust to the smell coming behind the door until he no longer got curious. We then started exchanging smells more intensely by giving Pickles blanket to Luke, and Luke's blanket to Pickles. Needless to say, I was kind of scared when Luke started shredding up her blanket. 

Finally the day came when we could open the door and let Luke go in her room to see her. When we opened the door to the office, Luke came barrelling in and she ran straight up her cat condo and let our a huge warning hiss. To our great surprise, Luke backed off, ran to the other side of the room up to Davis and whined and cried and hid behind him. We couldn't believe what we just witnessed. This cute little kitten had just scared off a 85 pound hunting dog. 

We let Luke go into her room a few times a day for a few minutes until eventually we would be in there for an hour or so with no incidents of swatting, hissing or someone running out of the room with their tail between their legs.

Luke is absolutely terrified in this video.

After about a month of them living in different areas of the house and their meetings were becoming more social than destructive, we were finally able to let her out of her room to roam the whole house on her own. 

The first night out on her own she slept in the bed with us and the dog, and needless to say the rest was history and they have been best friends ever since. And when I say best friends, I actually mean best friends and cannot be separated. Can't believe how lucky we got with how well these two get along. Their friendship is better than we anticipated and it's incredible to see two different species get along so well.

This was the first time I caught them cuddling together

Luke no longer sleeps in his dog bed and has no problem with it

Sometimes you just need a cuddle buddy

She just loves him so much

Our little babies

He even lets her drink out of his dishes

Best ways to introduce a new pet coming into the house:

We believe that we took the necessary steps to make sure it was a smooth transition and although each animal is completely different with their temperaments it's something that can be corrected.

1. Give the new pet their own space and area. When you get a new pet, give them their own "safe haven". It doesn't have to be big and they need to have boundaries to get used to their new surroundings.

2. Exchange scents and smells. We put Luke's towel that we use to dry him off when he came inside in her room where she would get familiar with his smell and we used Pickles "baby blanket" for Luke to smell/destroy. Also to our surprise, they allowed each other to smell each others butts (gross, I know.)

3. Do a few meetings a day. After they get used to each others smell, allow them in the same room for shorts periods of time and gradually do it for a longer amount of time.

4. Correct bad behaviour. Our biggest concern was Luke chasing Pickles if she ran away. If she would leave the room quickly and Luke would follow, Davis and I would correct him and if he wouldn't chase her when she left the room we would reward him for being a good dog!

5. Let them hash it out. I constantly wanted to intercept when I could tell someone was getting annoyed of the other (often times it was Luke being annoying). I soon realized that she just needed to put Luke in his place by showing him what she does not like and she did this by giving him a little swat or bonk on the head.

6. Give equal attention. As I mentioned before, Luke had only child syndrome and would freak out if we were in her room too long. When we came out of her room we would make sure we spent some time with him as well when we came out.

I hope you have peaceful harmony in your house with your pets and that they get along as well as our fur babies do!

-melissa xo

How to Make Ugly Christmas Sweaters

The History of the Melvis Christmas Photos

For those of you know who Davis and I, we thoroughly enjoy embarrassing ourselves on social media with the insane ideas we come up with. Every year around the Holiday season, everyone always asks... "When are you guys doing your Christmas Photos?" And we never let our audience down.

We origniated this annual event in 2011 with the initial idea of wearing ugly Christmas sweaters and going to Sears. The following year we wanted to broaden our options a little more and got more creative.

Every year, we have made it our mission to always set the bar higher. Our goal is to wear different outfits, experiment different concepts, and with different photographers. The only thing that stays the same in these photos is the hairy caterpillar on Davis' upper lip which is a mandatory accessory for these photos.

But the question we get asked the most... Is how do we make our ugly Christmas sweaters???

How to Make an Ugly Sweater

The sweaters that are in the 2012 & 2013 photos are hand made. I went to Value Village and bought us sweaters that fit us nicely and then completely butchered them as best as I could. I then went to Dollarama (which is probably my favourite store in the entire universe) and bought the ugliest Christmas decorations I could find and hot glue gunned them to the outsides of the sweater. As you may have noticed, there are battery packed lights attached to the sweater as well which are tapped on the insides of the sweaters on the sides (back & front). Before I put the decorations on the outside of the sweater, I flipped it inside out and lined the sweater with the lights (cut out little holes for the bulbs to pop through) and then secured it down with tape. I didn't hot glue gun it since it would melt the plastic. Flip is back inside out, and you have the brightest ugly Christmas sweater at the party! From experience, my sweater creations have boosted confidence on my art skills and has provided me with free drinks since it's so damn cool.

2011 Christmas Photos
Photo Cred: Courtesy of Sears... way too expensive, don't go there.

2012 Christmas Photos
Photo Cred: Taylor Cullen - Studio Eleven Photography

2013 Christmas Photos
Photo Cred: Ben Perrin - BTP Photography

2014 Christmas Photos
Photo Cred: Erik Allan

Now that I have spilled the beans on how EASY it is to make these sweaters, I encourage you to top mine and make your own!

-melissa xo