Button Snowman Pin

I know he looks a littttttle grubby, and I promise that yours will come out much better.....if you don't have any distractions or make the mistake of using buttons the size of a flea like I did! What was I thinking? Sure,it looked cute laid out there on the table, two little white 2-hole buttons arranged to look like a snowman. But after the glue dried, and I attempted to fashion a top hat from fun foam and tie floss on the hat and it's neck, it wasn't fun anymore :D I suggest using buttons about 1". Other than that.....it's easy, and kids can make these (with the larger buttons,of course!)
You know what would be cute? Sewing them to a metal hair clip for a little girl. I'll have to try that!



It's been a long day, HossFly made the ham rolls, banana split pie and cherry cheese pie. We forgot to boil some eggs for deviled eggs, and I forgot to bake cornbread for Amy's dressing recipe I'm gonna try to make for the first time. If you never had ham rolls, you should give it a try sometime. We make them for the holidays and Super Bowl :D... I think I found the recipe on the Kraft site for cream cheese.


Ham Rolls(spirals)

8 oz. softened cream cheese ( I zap it in the microwave for about 10 or 15 seconds to soften it
1 lb. sliced ham
green onions, sliced

You need to pat dry the ham slices with paper towels( hard work, but so worth it) and spread a very thin layer of cream cheese on the ham slice. Place green onions at one short end, and roll up. Chill them, and then when they firm up, slice them into bite-sized pieces. We use 2 to 2 1/2 lbs of ham slices, and still run out of these. Really great with deviled eggs!

Happy Thanksgiving, Ya'll!

Has anyone ever seen the movie "Home For The Holidays", with Holly Hunter and Robert Downey, Jr. ? That movie is hilarious, and the first time we saw it, it became one of our Thanksgiving traditions. Each time we used to watch it, we'd try to figure out which relative matched what character in the movie. Of course HossFly was Tubby, and I was Adele, but we couldn't decide which character Donivan and Celeste were. We'd change our minds each year. Sometimes Celeste was more like Claudia, and Donivan was more like Tommy......the scene where Tommy tells Claudia to get back in the car but every time she reaches for the door handle, Tommy drives off. Except... it's the hemicuda from Phantasm like the kids always dreamed of owning one day! Oh and I can just picture them telling each other they're a "product of baboon lovin' "!
It isn't the same anymore now that Donivan is gone(10 years after this photo was taken) , but we still watch the movie. In fact, last year HossFly and I drove around for half a day looking for a DVD of it when our tape began to drag. We finally had to come home and order it online.
My daughter still pulls my hair and says "your roots are showing,Claudia".
One of these years that turkey is bound to wind up on top of someone's head, I just know it, and if HossFly builds me a little secret room/pantry in the kitchen to hide in, it'll all be okay.



Products of Baboon Lovin'
Thanksgiving Day 1995
Donivan,Celeste,Kudzu,HossFly

Making Faux Rusty Tin

These shapes were drawn onto cardboard from my Grandson's Capri Sun box. I traced around a star cookie cutter and a gingerbread man cookie cutter. I free-handed a crow. Use a can of red oxide primer to spray the cardboard, then immediately sprinkle with cinnamon. I like to spray a second coat of the red primer, and sprinkle a second coat of cinnamon. Shake off the excess cinnamon and you're done :D This was easy peasy and very fast, and it smells good,too!



Here they are drying. I haven't decided how to finish them off. A piece of jute? A piece of rusty wire? OH! I almost forgot..the crow has a whole clove glued on for his eye. I was gonna make some floral wire and a jingle bell rusty, and hang it around the crow's neck,but I can't find the bells right this second.....and now it's raining so hard! And I also forgot, at the last minute I decided to cut out a wing for the crow :D




I set the crow on an old bedspring, then on top of my paperback pumpkin. Gosh, I really could've made a better pumpkin shape! :D

Ribbon Poinsettias

Aren't these just the sweetest little poinsettias? Here's the link from Wrights Ribbon with directions and photos. This was SO EASY,even though it looks like it would be difficult. I followed the directions on the first one, then I "Kudzu'd" it :D As I sewed it, I thought " why wouldn't floral wire work?" So, the 2nd one is wired, and was easier and faster. Make them any size you want, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I wish I'd had some green ribbon to make leaves.
It says 3 yards ribbon, and I had 2 spools of wire-edged ribbon I got for $1 each, that makes this very inexpensive. I tried wiring the gold beads on with the ribbon, but then I just wired it, and then glued a pile of beads in the center.



Here's how to fold. Don't worry about making them all the same size, they look prettier with different sized petals.




Here's a close-up of how to wire or sew the inside edges. If you want to add beads as you go, you'd have to insert a bead in between each fold of ribbon.


Here's another look at how it's wired.



Mine came out a little uneven when I sewed it, but it's still a pretty poinsettia.



This is how it came out when I wired it. I glued the pile of gold beads in the center, the glue is still wet :D LOLLLLLLLL... I left the wire tails on in case I need to wire it to a gift, but if you don't need to worry about that, cut them off after you twist them tightly.

Now go make some poinsettias or some snowflakes!

It's going to be a tight budget Christmas, we'll have to put more effort into wrapping the gift beautifully this year!


You know, this might make a sweet little corsage for the kids to make Mom or Grandma this year :D OH! Or, a sweet little hair bow! Just wire it to a barrette :D Use different types of ribbon and make different sizes.

Kudzu

No No No Noooooooooo! My Freezer Died!

We decided it would be best to take our 22+lb. turkey out of the freezer today. That's when we found that EVERYTHING in there had thawed out! Our 12 lb. turkey for frying, some shrimp gumbo put up for a chilly day, not to mention the vegetables, the crock pot meal thingies......all of it. When did this happen? *insert dirty word here* *and here* * and here,too* After checking the smaller turkey we found out it still had ice crystals in it, so guess what we're having for dinner today? Will we wind up in the emergency room with botulism or ptomaine or ..or...*another dirty word* The big turkey went into the fridge for inspection later. It took us many many trips to the grocery store to find one that big, it gets harder every year.
HossFly and I had a little chat about when we were kids, and we had turkey for a week after Thanksgiving. I come from a family of 8, he has 14 brothers and sisters. Did our parents buy 50 lb. turkeys? There certainly wasn't any soup or pot pie! Did turkeys have smaller bones back then? Are todays turkeys bulked up with huge bones and less meat?? We ate turkey til it came out of our ears, breakfast lunch and dinner. There was plenty of turkey. Now, our turkey might make 2 meals, plus a pot of turkey noodle soup.
I haven't found out yet if my freezer died or is just protesting. I'm hoping that it's just an electrical thing, and needs to be re-set. We have a lot of power surges and outages here in the middle of nowhere. But that doesn't help with the stuff that was in it. I'm sitting here bitching about the freezer, and meanwhile that shrimp is fermenting...

So Sweet-Necktie Angels

Someone on Garden web showed these last year. I kept the idea in the back of my mind and finally made some. This is the link that was shown to me. I used the narrow end of the tie, and used a measuring tape to cut them out, and got to making angels! Here's a tip,though...cut the part for the knotted hands a little longer, then tie the knot and cut it if you have to. I cut 4 angels out at once, and all the hands were too short. I had some vintage crochet pieces for the large angel wings, and for the small I used some lace I had stiffened in glue/water mix and sprinkled with glitter. These are SO SWEET! Next large angels, I'll stiffen the lace for the wings on them,too. I didn't sew anything, I glued it all together.



Ok, I don't know why I'm all of a sudden painting heart shaped mouths, but I gotta stop that! It's not becoming to little angels!




You can make yours neater than these, I know you can :D LOL

The small ones would be so cute for a pin on your sweater or coat!

Rusty Bedsprings

Do you have any of those rusty coils? I've been seeing things made out of these for years, and I knew I had some out in the woods. I finally got up the courage( because I had a dog by my side! it sure helps,lol!) grabbed my handy dandy bolt cutters, and went out there and cut some out. I was gonna use wooden beads, but I don't know where I put those this week, so I made do with some styrofoam balls. I decided to cover it with papier mache , and made some with glue and water and newspaper bits. Also because I didn't know what else to use, I made little carrot noses out of it,too. After they dried I painted them white. I made 3, and let my grandson use 2. He wanted to make a brother and sister...isn't that sweet?? We took the carrot noses and used an orange marker on them, they actually came out great! He used baby socks for little hats on his snow people, and since he wanted them to have earmuffs, he used pom poms for that, and added pom poms to the top of the hat. We added buttons down the front of the springs for decoration, and dabbed a little white paint on the coils. The scarves are made from pieces of neckties. You see how neatly the eyes and mouths came out? We cheated, and used my black glass headed straight pins for those!
About that rusty metal tree topper........ok, I cheated on that,too....it's poster board cut into the shape of a heart :D Add a little red oxide spray primer, and sprinkle on some cinnamon,spray some more,sprinkle more cinnamon... and you have instant rusty tin. I made 2 of them and glued them together, except for leaving a small opening to set it on the rusty bedspring. It looks pretty cool, pretty authentic!


Aiden's Snow Family



My Snow Man


Faux Rusty Tree Topper