Justin was out of town on a field trip for the last three days, so I was all on my own for a few nights! Or rather, I should say it was just the three of us.



Poor Indy. That bunny has been tormenting him.

While I usually launch into super-productive mode on the nights Justin is away, I was a bit preoccupied with MySims to get much done. (Luckily I've almost 'beat' the game by getting everything possible, there will not be much reason to play after that) But I did make a point to tackle one "been meaning to" task each night.

The first night I decided to cover the armrests on my work chair.


The armrests have been held together with duct tape for years. The tape shifts over time, gets sticky, and is super annoying until I apply another layer. I just recently realized that fabric might solve this problem, and after 2 1/2 hours of handstitching (yikes) I am so happy to have this done! I think they turned out pretty cute as well.

The next night's project was not so time consuming. I finally pulled the decorations off of our large book shelf and took the time to arrange everything. The shelves house quite a few of my pieces from ceramics class and are actually pretty light on books.



Let's see, what all did I make on those shelves? On the top shelf are some candles stacked up, and a plate in the back right. Down from that we have the tortoise & hare incense burner, then the terra cotta sculpture below that (next to Justin's Teacher of the Year eagle trophy). And on the bottom shelf is a somewhat ugly bottle (the top & bottom look great apart from one another, but I don't think they quite work together).

This design was custom ordered by three siblings who wanted to get matching tattoos. The design was to be formed using the first letter of each of their names ~ M, N, and D. The chose the design above, tribal lettering in a unity symbol, but I prefered another one of the sketches I sent them ~



In this design the letters surround a larger letter T, for their common last name. The shape reminds me of a sheild, or even a mask, I love the way it came out.

And here are the things that didn't work out so well for the party!

The plan was to make two large Piranha Plants using styrofoam balls for the heads, styrofoam rods for the stem, green craft foam leaves and green flower pots for the pipes (you saw one on the table in the previous post). We were going to use the pots as chip bowls for the tables.

I had seen some of these made with a wedge cut out for the mouth and little teeth added in. But when we got home with only an hour to spare before the party, I opted for the nearly-closed-mouth variety with some little painted teeth.



Unfortunately, the paint would not dry quick enough for me to finish them. Even though acrylic usually dries right away, the styrofoam soaks in so much of it, and it was still leaving little dots of paint on my hands hours later. These are currently unfinished still, but I'm definitely planning on finishing them later on (after we left the store we realized those styrofoam balls were $11 each! Ridiculous.)

Speaking of paint that wouldn't dry...



That was going to be a ginormous chain chomp (purely for decoration). We bought a giant rubber ball, black spray paint, and silver pipecleaners to form the chain. The paint, however, is still not dry, even a week later. There must have been some weird chemical reaction going on there, I don't know what happened!

Here is a little folded prototype I did of Andross' head. He is not a character I recognized, but I saw him as I was going through the Smash Bros. site and knew right away I could make him. Maybe one day, Andross!



I was planning on making a larger version from posterboard, with colored paper behind the eyes and mouth, and paper squares shooting out of his mouth held by wire (click on the link up there if you want to know why). But considering he wasn't even a character in the game (just an assist trophy), he wasn't top priority.

And lastly, we made some hideous cupcakes.

This was one of the few things I had planned for the girls to play around with while the guys played game after game. They were supposed to turn out something like this (cut bottom off cupcake & flip over), but red/green with white spots like little Mario mushrooms. We could not find white candies *anywhere*, even in the midst of the Easter pastels! Then the piped frosting we bought ended up super drippy, nothing was cooperating.

We were pretty embarassed by the ugly, but the boys did not seem to mind.



I had also picked up some slice & bake cookies to decorate like Pokeballs, but there was already way too much food to bother. I tried it out on one of the cupcakes for fun (stupid drippy icing & lack of white candies!)



Now I can finally get to all of those other posts I've been wanting to make! ;)

While most of the big decorations we planned fell through,
we did manage to throw together a nice array of themed food!!

Star candy dish and fireballs ~


Yoshi egg veggie dip with toad shrooms ~


Star cheese ~




Lakitu's spinies (porcupine meatballs) ~


Peach "Power" Punch ~


Falco (hot) wings ~


A few things that did not get in the pics ~
the wall behind the table with more print outs of the main game characters
a poster Justin got from the stradegy guide
a "Zelda" sword from the dollar store that makes "schwing" noises
a few more Yoshi eggs
gold coins scattered around on the tables
cupcakes, which I'll be showing with the failures
(which I'll be posting next)
and I think that was everything!

Why do we have to have the best idea
at the same time we have a million other things to do?

There has been a long standing agreement that all of the college guys would get together the weekend after Smash Brothers Brawl came out, and that means party at our house Saturday! Well, Justin made the mistake of mentioning that we could make some SB themed food... immediately my crafting brain is in ecstatic overdrive. A themed party?? Yes, please! (SB is made up of the main nintendo characters, so there is so much you can do)

And then we stepped back and looked at all of the things we have coming up now through Sunday ~ yikes. We have no kids to drive to clubs/classes, our schedules are pretty open most of the time. But it seems everything is jammed into the next few days ~

Tonight we need to make batch after batch of cookies and brownies that will be sold as a school fundraiser tomorrow. Friday we really need to do cleaning for guests, and hopefully get some more pictures hung & things arranged around the apartment. Saturday morning there is a meeting, followed by the get-together (and people spending the night). And on Sunday we have church, then a membership meeting, then small group, which we need to bring a casserole for. And I am probably forgetting something! How did all of this get thrown on the same weekend?

But...
I am not going to let this stop the festivities.
There will be a themed party!
There will be lots of pictures of all of the cute food and decorations.
It will get done somehow!!

Then again, I don't want to run myself ragged so that I can't even enjoy myself when our friends arrive. We will have to take it one step at a time and scale things down if necessary. Even if we only have time to make one plate of nintendo themed cookies, that is better than no nintendo cookies at all!

I'm not much of a New Year's resolution maker. I am always setting & refining goals for myself, for the present & future. But I do want to take that feeling of a fresh start with me throughout this year.

Instead of relying on my growing list of things I'd like to get done at some point in the future, I'm going to pull things from that list and make a smaller to-do list at the start of each month. I do work so much better with a deadline, and I'm hoping this will give me the nudge I need to get those things finished before the end of the month.

Things are going very well so far. I managed to finish up one huge project before the start of the year, so I didn't even have to add it to the list! My database for work ~



For years I've been tracking all of my orders & customers in 3-ring binders. I did also have a database where I tracked one-time customers (just a list of names & what they ordered) & more information for return customers (addresses, hem lengths, etc.). And while that worked pretty well when I made fewer, but more expensive items, it was too much to keep up with when I started making ambigrams.

I created a database to track all of the customer and product information in one place. It was a little awkward at first to switch over to the new system, but it felt normal in no time. But what really took forever was pulling out the old binders and entering all of the old information from the last 4 years!

The data entry was very slow at first, but started speeding up a litte because of the return customers. Finally I got down to about 100 one-time customers, and I spent time just moving their information over. I was able to fly through the last two years of orders in a few days. It is such a relief to have all of that out of the way and to know that everything is up-to-date. (Now I just have the fear of my computer crashing! I need to find some way to back everything up)


I have a few things up my sleeve for January, but they are in progress. One thing I want to do a lot of this year is blog give-a-ways, so expect one before the end of the month. (Yay!) I have way too many creations sitting around my work room that need a good home.

I have seen a lot of bloggers that were thrilled to get past 2007. I have to say, it was a pretty good year for us, at least financially. We are finally getting past the days of living payment to payment, had a little extra cash sitting around, and are starting to make some big dents this year in our debt from college. But I am ready to do as much as I can to make this year even better!

The bad luck continued last night as I went to buy a temperature control for my soldering iron. They had none at Hobby Lobby, even though I swear I've seen them there before, so it looks like I will have to order one online.

I picked up some canvas stretchers while I was there to build a few screens for screenprinting. I pulled out the organza fabric, scissors, staple gun & duct tape and went to work. And three staples in, I ran out. I assumed the gun had come with an extra pack of staples, but found nothing when I checked my tool box.

Justin asked me what the crafting planet is, and if it is in retrograde.
Today I am hoping to break the curse!


Today I also bring you new pictures of the giftbags, which I took with the lightbox. The results turned out pretty well, even though the reflective surfaces of the background papers were a little bit of a challenge.

All of the backgrounds are wrapping paper I bought on sale last year at Hobby Lobby. The set is just beautiful ~ a red spiral print, red with silver dots, and silver stripes. The red bag was a bit lost against the red paper, so I changed it to a green on the computer.







I was quite pleased that I only had to take one set of pictures for both the CD & DVD sized bag. Most of the shots feature the top of the bag, and I simply re-sized the full view pictures. You can see the pics of the bags open, and with the tags tied on, at my Etsy shop.

I also made some matching gift tags to include with the bags ~

I love throwing together soups for lunch, pulling together random things we have on hand. I picked up some barley for the first time, specifically for soup making ~ I was very excited to see a new by-the-pound section of nuts & grains at our Ingles.

I started by cooking the barley for 2 hours & draining. Then I added broth, italian seasoning, chopped carrots & celery, and some sliced almonds to finish it off. It turned out so good! And it seems like a creamy soup, even though I only used broth, which I suppose is because of the starch from the barley.


The only problem with making up your own soups is when they turn out so-so, and you've got quite a few servings to suffer through or dispense of. There was a while there when none of my creations were turning out so good, which turned me off of soups for a while. I'm pretty sure broccoli or black-eyed peas were to blame.


I finally snapped a shot of our Chicken Pot Pie, which you can find the recipe for in My Recipe Book, linked on the sidebar. It evolved from the Campbell's recipe you can find on any can of Cream of Potato soup, but I replaced the Bisquick topping with crescent rolls for a tastier crust. And of course, I have to add garlic to most anything.



And lastly, we have boiled peanuts ~ a southern favorite!


Anyone here who has not tried them before? I *love* them.
We've tried making them on the stove with no success, but last time we made them in the crockpot and it was much easier & tastier. This time they went into the crockpot again, but did not turn out as well. We are guessing the peanuts have something to do with it. Perhaps fresher is better? I'll have to experiment a little more to find out.

To make them fill up your crockpot with raw peanuts and water, and add in quite a bit of salt. Cook on High for at least 15 hours, the longer the better. The nuts should be very soft & moist when ready.


Well, Justin is out tonight, playing bass at our old music minister's new church. Which is nice, because he has missed playing since our church stopped meeting (and I've missed singing!) Whenever is out for the night, I seem to get so much done!

I've knocked off everything I wanted to get done today, and had time to make a home-made lightbox for taking photos (Directions courtesy of Strobist). I have yet to try it out, but I cut some strips of the Christmas wrapping paper I bought on sale last year to serve as backdrops for the fabric gift bags. The paper wanted to curl badly, so I re-rolled them and are letting them sit for a while before I can do anything with them. Hopefully I will get some good shots!

Last week we made the yearly trip to our local craft fair (at Roselawn). The first few years we were enchanted by the crafts and inspected each booth thoroughly. Then we realized that they are the same booths & same crafts each year... and we quickly lost interest in everything but the prospect of greasy festival foods.



There are a few artists that we really like, so in our quick walk-through we have to stop to see their new work. Most notable are a few ceramic artists. (I didn't want to take any close-up shots, I know how some people bring cameras just to steal ideas)



Wait, is that an *actual* tent? Haha! I can't decide if this is a good idea (eyecatcher), or a bad idea (claustrophobia).

Here is something else I had not seen before ~ seasoning packets!
All sorts of flavors (garlic & onion, lobster, roasted tomato), most of which were to be mixed with sour cream to make dips, and a few sweet flavors (chocolate, tiramasu) to be mixed with cream cheese. Each with a sample mixed up.

What a great idea! Easy to transport, will keep for a long time, and very unique. Unfortunently, we had only brought enough cash for food, and the packets were on the pricey side at $4 (for a 16 oz. sour cream, which you also have to pay for). Maybe next year!




Last night a few friends came over for dinner. We made chicken divan and I tried out charaxinae's focaccia bread, and they brought assorted cakes for dessert. Calories were not counted yesterday! I thought it might be odd to snap pictures of our food with guests over, but I did take a picture of the left over focaccia.



(The recipe is on a locked entry, so I'll have to post it soon) The dough is mixed in the breadmaker, then baked in the oven. It is full of chopped red onions & lots of herbs ~ I *love* those purple & green shades.

Unfortunently, I have a low tolerance for onion fumes. When I tried to mix the chopped onions into the dough, I had tears pouring down my face so bad that I couldn't even keep my eyes open. Justin came to the rescue, blotting me with tissues. Lit candles are supposed to help with the fumes, so I got him to bring one in the room. And while I've never noticed a big difference when I've tried this before, as soon as he set it down, I had no more problems!


Fans of The Office (American version) ~ get ye to a Target! They have all sorts of magnets, pens, pencils, post-its, etc. in the $1 section! We went a little crazy. I also found this great set of tiny alphabet stamps, and I know how pricey a set can be at the craft store! They are about 3/8" square.



The busy week continues with mom's birthday, a non-craft fair, possible trip to the doctor, church clean-up day, car repair shop, visiting more friends, and who knows what else!

Yesterday I spent 6 1/2 hours working on the new look for Phunky Monkey Threads. That time was spent solely on creating the graphics and layout for the pages (most of the information on the front page was added today). ~ Here is a sneak preview!

The new front page ~
http://www.phunkymonkeythreads.com/index2.php

And the base for the rest of the pages ~
http://www.phunkymonkeythreads.com/new_page_base.php


I know, it seems like I should have been able to do much more than that, working that long. But I am such a perfectionist, & I bring it on myself. Every color, every bit has to be *perfect*. (BTW ~ let me know if anything looks weird, or if any colors clash!)

Also, I build all of my websites simply by typing out the code into Notebook, then copy & paste the code to my webhost & load the page to see what changes I need to make. I know it is not the most effecient way to do it, and that there are html editors out there, but I have just self-taught myself along the way, learning new codes as I need them, and haven't played with an editor before.

My hope now is that I can move over the information pretty quickly. But, I do want to re-arrange & re-write sections as I go, aiming the site more towards custom orders. This is going to take a while!

I have been busy with ambigrams the last few days.
Here are the last few designs ~

"Justin and Lauren" Ambigram - created for a framed gift.


"Savannah" Ambigram and "Drew" Ambigram -
created for tattoo designs and for framed gifts.





Lately my nails have been quite dazzling. I don't know what brought on the idea, but I put on a clear coat of nail polish and dipped my nails in iridescent glitter. (I don't think the larger pieces of glitter would stick as well, so make sure to use super fine glitter) This kind is silver, but sparkles in all shades of the rainbow ~ lovely.



How to ~
The glitter I used was in a small ziplock bag, as it came from a kit. I would definently recommend using a bag. Do one nail at a time, first coating it with polish. Then place your finger in the bag, against the table, and shift the bag to slide the glitter over your nail. This way you get very little extra glitter on your finger, and don't get any under your nails! Dust off the extra glitter with a tissue, over a trash can. It really only takes a few seconds per nail (and will not leave glitter all over your house).

You can leave it like that, or put another clear coat over the top. Double layering the glitter makes it even more dramatic. Even without the top coat the glitter is stuck very well, but it is prone to scratching off easily without the top coat. The coat does seem to dull the sparkle slightly (but I also don't have actual clear polish).

Justin and I went to two stores to pick out a board game, and came home with nothing (Granted, they did have a few good ones that we already have). As we discussed the lack of fun games, we began talking about how we should create our own. I know Justin was not serious, but I think it is something we could do, and it would be fun to work on together ~ if I can get him over the 'I don't want our friends to feel obligated to play a boring game we created' mentality.

We talked all about why we like certain games, what we would want a game to have. We really like word games (Boggle, Scattegories, Taboo) and we were able to come up with a general idea for a game (that would actually involve pieces we already have from other games).


I was curious to hear from some other people...

What are your favorite board games?
What do you like about them?
Would you rather play with 2 people, 4 people, 8?
Do you dislike games that have long periods of silence,
where you are filling in your answers (like Scattegories or Boggle)?

(The game doesn't specifically have to have a board,
it could have cards or a score pad or something along those lines)

(I am happy to have married into such a kooky family...)
My husband's uncle is turning 60, swears he doesn't want a party, and is going to be on a month-long trip during his birthday. So his family decided to throw him a non-party. What is a non-party you ask?

They are going to sneak into his house and make it look like they had a party there... party hats, streamers, cake crumbs, confetti... Then, they are going to leave photos "from the party" laying around the house.

They made a life-size cardboard cut-out of him (which they played limbo with), as well as some masks, and took posed party pictures with him. They also sent some high-resolution pictures to the non-local family and friends so they could print or photoshop the pictures and show up at the party themselves!

I thought this was such a funny idea, and would be great for anyone out of town on their birthday. I was also impressed how it lets family and friends from all over participate in a way we would not normally be able to.


( My contribution )

I feel like I have been working on 100 things lately,
but have been really bad about taking pictures & updating ;)

I've decided I want to make more animal appliques for Phunky Monkey ~ I have been really uninspired for appliques lately, and have just left them off a lot of things. When I do pick one, it seems like I'm just choosing between a flower, shroom, word... I should let my love of animals show ;) (if there is an applique you'd like to see, don't be shy about suggesting something either!)

So, I'm about finished with a brown bear dress, and today I'll be working on this bag ~



For a long time I've been collecting fortunes (from cookies) to pair up with photos for a scrapbook/albulm type of thing. There are so many fortunes that are really funny when you use them as a caption for the right photo. I finally collected enough to match about 30 or 35 pictures, then I bought a box of cookies to match up the remaining few. I ended up with 40 pages (one picture and fortune per page).

Unfortunently, a lot of these would not be funny to other people (other than our friends), without me having to explain what is happening, who the person is, etc. So without much explanation, here are a few ~
( 4 pages ahead... )


I had small pieces of paper left over from cutting the pages for the albulm. I've been wanting to try making a book for a while now, so I finally it out. I learned a lot of things and will make some changes next time, so look forward to seeing some nicer books in the future. I would like to make these for letterboxing. I'm not really sure what I will do with this book and it's black paper, but I do have silver sharpies, so I'll probably just jot notes in it.

( black page book )

Will all of the earring I've been making lately, I either needed to make a few more tiers for my CD earring holder, or else make something new. I opted for the frame display.

There have been a few of these posted on craftgrrl lately ~ like this & this one. I had actually seen something like this a long time ago & saved the pic, but I can't find it at all. I believe it was a black frame with a lime green back (or perhaps just the wall color) & you could not really see how the earrings were hung, probably clear fishing line. It looked more like a piece of artwork than a display.

( So, I tried going classy. With basically no budget. )

And here are the results!

For a larger view, where you can see the earrings better, click here.

I thought I had one spot left, until I walked downstairs & saw my rubix cube earrings! So, I am not allowed to make any more earrings for a while. All of the earrings on there are ones that I have made, other than the Dr.Pepper cans (2nd on top). I have some other ones, but these are the ones I wear all of the time.

I tried to put the red streaks in my hair this morning, but they hardly showed up at all. At least I have a nice reddish tint thrown in there now. I used the same brand & color I've used before with great results... it was called Loreal Romantiques, but now it is Loreal Preference. I think they might have changed the formula when they changed the name, so I am sad that I wasted the money.

I was having such a hard time trying to do anything with my hair yesterday & was getting upset, but I found a hair community that gave me some good advice. Today I styled it right away & was pretty pleased with the results. I'm still going to try for red streaks, but it will be a while.

So, it's not much of a change, but I did it myself, and you can see how "well" red streaks worked out. I think I'm getting a little better/more comfortable with taking pics of myself as well. ;)
( head shots )

Here are two things I made a while ago, but waited a long time to take pics...

( Spiral Tree Clay Tin )

( Spiral Star Box )

The craftgrrls keep posting earring holders that are made out of records ~ I really like the idea, but it is just way too big for me... and I would feel bad about wrecking a record. Even if I hated it someone else might love it!

So I came up with a CD earring holder :D


I only used one for now, to hold my favorite earrings, but you can easily hang a stack of them. For a picture of what that might look like, and more information on how I made it, check out my craftgrrl post ~
http://community.livejournal.com/craftgrrl/7870403.html

I heard a loud "clank!" from downstairs and I knew that I had caught the mouse right away. :) Even though I am upstairs, across the house, and had the tv on I could still hear it. I knew it would be very loud! I grabbed the camera and ran downstairs. I knew there was a small risk that the trap could have caught his tail if something went wrong so I was a little worried for him as I turned the corner. When I first looked, I thought I had killed him, because he was on the side where the trap had fallen and was not moving so I thought it had caught his head. But then he moved and I was delighted to see such a cute little mouse!!



I mean, *very* cute. It was hard to get a pic of his face from the curve of the glass pan. I couldn't help but think of the Maple Town toys I played with when I was little. I draped a dishcloth over the glass pan so that he would not feel so exposed and scared and could settle down with his snack until we let him go.

Sept. 2 '05 ~ 12 Star Knotted Spheres Instructions


I originally posted this link because so many girls were making the tiny folded stars and it seemed similar. It looked pretty cool but I had so many other crafts going on that I had little interest in making one. But after the girl posted the above picture of one she had made, I got hooked and made a handfull of these little balls. (& they do make great ornaments!)

The directions are a little hard to figure out at first, but only because they seem to add a few unnecessary steps to help you know where to fold. If you ignore those you will be fine, and will soon see a pattern developing so that you won't need the directions anymore. My first ball I made from magazine paper strips, and I think it did help to make it larger first. Then I moved onto the curling ribbon. Oh ~ and they are very cute if you make the stars out of one color, and then link them together with another ~ the second color shows through in little accents here and there.