Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Curiosity, I swear.

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Clayton would like to know if I'm obsessed.  Obsessed with tissue paper art.

I'm not. I just have ideas. Ideas I must try! With every idea that works out, it just makes me want to try out the next one. And the next one.

I did a collage of the cast of Clone Wars. After a bit of frustration and a few experiments, it turned out so good.  Good enough that Ryan thought it was one solid piece of tissue paper.


So that lead me to thinking that maybe I could do a bigger canvas. I'd have to piece it as my printer is only standard size. As you can see, the smallest poster size that my printer would print is too large for the leftover canvasses I had in the basement.  Of course it was.


Ah well, that just meant that I could wrap the picture around the sides of the canvas making it look even more professional.  I measured out and taped off the initial placement of the first square.


A little bit of cursing incurred when the first piece of tissue paper ripped just a smidge when I pulled off the tape.


Considering it's four different pieces (and you can't mess around repositioning with tissue paper and glue) it turned out pretty seamless.


I really like the edges. So it turns out it was a good thing I only had smaller canvasses left.


When I was fooling around in Photobucket, changing the above picture from it's original state to the Fresco effect, I also changed it to the Neon effect.

And then put it on canvas.


Not because I'm obsessed.

It's called curiosity. I have to find out if I can do that crazy idea floating around in my head.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Craft Frustration

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Sometimes I think doing a craft project is one of the most frustratingly annoying things I can do to myself.

Case in point. Yesterday I did a project I had pinned off of Pinterest. It involves sending tissue paper through your printer. I cut my paper the right size, loaded it in, printed the picture no problem, and finished my project without one little frustrating moment.


It looked good. So good that ideas starting flooding through my brain of what I could do next. Collages! Poster size! Oh my!


Today, I started on another canvas. After cutting my paper the wrong size several times, four printer jams wrecking said paper, accidental printing of poster size on to regular paper, and a whole lot of ink on my fingers, my frustration hit an all-time high.


Why no, it's not supposed to have a big white streak in the middle of it. Thanks crinkled paper. At least you didn't jam, I guess.

I finally managed to get this picture to print on the tissue paper without jamming or wrinkling by taping it to a normal piece of paper.


Sure, that seems like a logical solution now. I was worried about how I was going to detach it from the paper without it ripping. And also, I managed to get the tissue paper to print first shot yesterday. Why are some projects so easy to do one day and the next day not a damn thing works the way it should?

Deep breath. Moving on.


The basic idea is to print out your picture on to tissue paper and using Mod Podge, glue it to a canvas creating an really cool canvas picture for mere pennies. Let's not discuss how much ink I wasted today with jammed papers and misprints.

I had to use my edging brush as apparently all of my good crafting brushes have been taken over by children who forget to wash them out. Brush a thin layer of glue onto the canvas. Very carefully place your tissue paper onto the canvas making sure to get it in the right place the first time because it will rip if you attempt to fix it. Ask me how I know. Smooth out air bubbles and wrinkles as best as you can. Now leave it to dry and go sort out those kids who are fighting and screaming.


When the bottom layer of glue is dry, top off the picture with another coat of Mod Podge. Carefully! You don't want to wreck it this close to the finish.


Frame it. Hang it. Admire it.

Wait a day for your frustration level to go down and do it all over again.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Cream Puffs

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If you don't love cream puffs, there's something wrong with you. Seriously, you might want to get it checked out.

This is my mom's recipe. Who knows where it originally came from. Back when we were kids, and she was looking for a "project" to do no doubt, she typed up her recipes into little binders. Three of them. One for her and one for each of her kids so they would know how to at least cook a few things when they moved out. They are filled with type-overs and typos (not the same thing, if you remember anything about the days of typing on a manual typewriter, clumping keys, ribbons of ink and no white-out), shorthand recipes that I have to call her for clarification on and a whole lot of family recipes.

This is one of those.

CREAM PUFFS
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 cup boiling water
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 4 eggs, room temperature
Directions:  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper or grease them.
  • In a medium saucepan, combine the butter and boiling water.
  • Over medium-low heat, bring to a boil and then gradually add the 1 cup of flour and the salt.
  • Beat vigorously until mixture leaves the sides of the pan.
  • Remove from heat and cool slightly.
  • Add the unbeaten eggs, one at a time, and beat this mixture until glossy.
  • Drop batter from spoon onto cookie sheet, mounding into a circle with a little swirl on top.
  • Space approx 2" apart.
  • Bake for 30-40 minutes. Allow to cool away from drafts on wire racks.
  • Cut in half and fill with whip cream and fruit.
  • Eat! and then eat another one! For quality control purposes of course.
You can also pipe these into eclair shapes or pipe whipping cream (or pudding if that's your thing) right into the middle of them. Or dust them with icing sugar. Or eat them just the way they are, like Blade does!


TIPS
  • You can just grease your cookie sheet with Pam etc. but use parchment paper if you have it. And if you haven't discovered the joys of parchment paper yet, go to the store and get some! Can you say zero sticking and zero clean-up?
  • It says to gradually add the flour, but I have to tell you, after the first initial small dump of flour, I just tossed the rest in. I was concentrating on beating vigorously with my spoon!
  • You will definitely be able to tell when the mixture 'leaves the side of the pan'. I was a bit worried about knowing but you can't mistake it.
  • When you add the eggs, the mixture looks gloopy initially. Just keep stirring until it combines before you add the next one.  Bet your arm is tired by now though!
  • If you forgot to put your eggs out on the counter so they would be room temp, just put them in a bowl of really warm water for a few minutes. That will warm them up enough.
  • Mine only took 30 minutes to bake. I did both paper and oiling to see the difference. The oiled pan produced puffs with a crispier bottom initially but I don't know as you could tell the difference once they cooled. I prefer the paper though, no washing to do.
  • No one cares that your puffs might turn out wonky looking if you think you didn't swirl just right. They'll be too busy eating them to worry about it.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Nerd Alert

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Yesterday I managed to leave the house. Yes, that's right. I actually showered before 2 p.m!

I changed my driver's license and took off the requirement for glasses. Only two months later! But hey, it was nice to actually be able to pass the test at the DMV.

I made the bank appointment, deposited some money (and took out some..I think I may have defeated the point there), went into RD and did some grocery shopping, AND I actually managed to renew Rodeo's dog license before they sent out a nasty letter from the dog catcher!

The lady from the town office looked at the tag number as she was handing it to me and said "#414".

I said "Should be 404. Dog Not Found. Can I have #404?!"

Good thing she laughed. Okay, it took her a second to figure out what the hell I was talking about, but still.


I think I may need to get out of the house more often and away from my computer!

Friday, January 6, 2012

It's that time again.

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Time to fire up the old Moving Sale site.  I have to say I'm pretty darn excited, nervous, antsy, impatient about this move!

I'm wishing it was June already, but also thinking "holy crap it's only 4 months until we list and 2 more months until we could actually move".  I'm also thinking "holy crap we have a lot of stuff in this house that needs to go!"

So I've re-opened  http://sweetmovingsale.blogspot.com/

You can find a tab leading you to it on the top of the Sweet Happen's page.

I'll be adding a whole bunch of items as we go along. I just need to take pictures of it all still! 

So come on over, and buy our stuff!   You know it's all in good condition or else I would have just tossed it!!

I'm off to go clean and photograph.  Right after I charge my camera's batteries.

Whoo hooo!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

How far did we get?

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Hard to believe it's a new year and time to write a new 2012 To Do List.

But how far did we get on our 2011 To Do List?   Only three items didn't get crossed off.
  • 11.  Pay off vacation.  Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. We'll just call that a lofty unrealistic goal of Karrie's.
  • 26. Make a necklace holder.   Although my necklaces still randomly fall to the floor (because they are all hanging on the tiny little knobs that sticks out from our shelf organizer in a big clumpy mess), I just never seemed to get around to making anything.
  • 28. Make Storm's painted shirts.   To make matters worse on this list item, I actually bought the freezer paper, the fabric paint, the applicators AND the shirts, and I still didn't get it done. No excuses on this one.
That's only three out of 32 that didn't get done though! That's pretty damn good.

We finally got rid of our beat up carpet and got some lush new pretty stuff:


I said good-bye to my baby:


Made a new desk with my Dad's help. I miss that man.


Did quite a lot of painting and fixing.



    

Most of which will help in some way for our 2012 goals which include selling and moving!

Picture me on 10 cups of coffee and all the kid's Christmas chocolate. That's how excited I am.

Hey, if you're going to leave that chocolate unattended, I'm going to eat it. Just saying.