Hit it out of the park!

NOTE: If you're not a baseball fan (Mom), just power through the first paragraph. I wanted to share my inspiration for this project.

Last year was an exciting year for this house full of baseball fans: finally seeing our home team of the Texas Rangers in the World Series. This year, the Rangers have spent a good part of the year leading the AL West, so I'm hoping that means we'll see them in back-to-back World Series games. At the beginning of last week, they were up by 8 games over the Angels, but the series against Boston brought that big lead down considerably. Going into the final weeks of the regular season, I wanted to provide a talisman of sorts to bring the Rangers a little luck to see them into the playoffs again this year. I think it's working: as soon as I put this project up on the mantle, David Murphy hit a 2-run homer. Yea, Murph!

I decided the best venue for me to show a little Rangers love was my "Words for All Seasons" blocks that I made at the Little Blue House (http://thelittlebluehouseblog.blogspot.com/p/lbh-buffet-classes.html). These are 6 wooden blocks of varying heights that are covered with torn pages of an old book (Mod-Podge to adhere, then a little brown ink to further age and distress the paper). The blocks rest on a shelf, and have upholstery nails at the top from which you can hang tags to spell out your sentiment. I create new tags for these about every month to 6 weeks to share a holiday message, display family photos, or personal philosophy.

Here's the finished project. Click the link below the picture for a play-by-play on how I did it.

https://picasaweb.google.com/107274384649999210248/Movies?authkey=Gv1sRgCMif3oe544X4lQE#5646781098009215794

See you in the Post Season!

Jenny

I [Box] San Francisco

For our anniversary this year, Jeff bought us tickets to take a long weekend trip to San Francisco and Napa Valley. We went on my birthday weekend (June 3, write it down), and I'm now getting around to scrapbooking it. Such great memories, I wanted to put these into a format that would showcase what a fantastic time we had.

When I saw that the Little Blue House was offering a buffet class for a travel book and memento box, I thought this would be a perfect way to capture our SF memories (to see the original project from the LBH or to see what other classes they offer, go to: http://thelittlebluehouseblog.blogspot.com/p/lbh-buffet-classes.html). The project features a cigar box with various ephemera on top of it and a book that uses 8.5 x 5.5 envelopes as the base for the pages (a really cool idea that I'm definitely going to use again).

Of course, with me being the persnickety control freak that I am (shout out to you other control freaks), I couldn't do the book or the box exactly like the original at LBH. I customized it to better suit this specific trip, my style, and my abilities. For example, the original features a lot of stamped images, but I don't care much for stamping, and I tend to do a messy job of it--they are always shaky looking and blurred. I also wanted to lose some of the more generic elements about travel and journeys and replace them with elements that focused on San Francisco. I ended up with so much from SF that I couldn't fit the Napa Valley stuff in this book, so look for a Napa project in the near future.

I made a movie/slide show of pictures of the project (click the link below). This is my first time doing this, so if you have suggestions on how to do it better, feel free to comment kindly.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/lwpccH_t2mMZF3FmnCvoVupKZnK_RN_rsXjp28qjDgw?feat=directlink

Peace & love & baseball & wine,

Jen

Well, candy my bacon!

Baking + bacon = oh my goodness!

The latest project was not of the crafting variety. I baked a batch of French toast cupcakes with maple frosting and candied bacon. I'm thinking it could be the next great breakfast food.

Here's how you make this bit of wonderfulness happen:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line 2 muffin tins with cupcake papers. Take a stick of butter out and put it into a bowl to come to room temperature (this will be for the frosting).
2. In a separate bowl, mix together a box of yellow cake mix, 3 eggs, 1 stick of melted butter, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla and butternut extract, 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, and a cup of milk. (I mixed it with a hand mixer of low-medium speed for about 3 minutes.)
3. Fill each muffin paper about 2/3-3/4 full of the batter then place the tins in the oven.
4. Bake for 20 minutes.
5. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and brush the top of each cupcake with pure maple syrup while they are still hot.
6. Let the cupcakes cool.
7. Turn the oven up to 400 degrees.
8. On a cookie sheet, lay out 4 strips of bacon. Let the bacon cook in the oven for about 8 minutes, then remove (you want it to be nearly done). Sprinkle some brown sugar and cinamon onto the top of each strip of bacon and return to the oven for 2-4 minutes. You want the bacon to finish cooking and the sugar to melt and glaze each piece, but you don't want the sugar in there long enough to burn.
9. Remove the bacon from the oven and let the strips rest on a plate to drip away some of the grease. You can use a paper towel, but be aware that pieces of paper towel will likely stick to the sugary bacon. When it's cool, you can chop it into bits to sprinkle on the cupcakes.
10. In the bowl with the stick of now room temperature butter, add 4 cups of powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon  of maple extract, 1 tablespoon of pure maple syrup, and 3 tablespoons of milk. Mix together. If it's too thick for you, add milk a small splash at a time and mix till it is the consistency you like. If it's too thin, add a tablespoon of powdered sugar and mix until it is thick enough.
11. Your cupcakes should be cool enough to frost, so cover them with the frosting, then sprinkle the candied bacon on top of that.

These cupcakes are soooo good but super sweet and rich. I haven't calculated the calories or Weight Watchers points yet (I don't think I want to know), but am kind of glad that I can't eat more than one at a time. If you aren't a bacon eater, you could candy a blackberry or raspberry to put on top, but, seriously, just eat the bacon.

I'll return another day to tell more stories from the salted, cured trails of happiness.

Jenny

Not so heavy metal

This week I bought a Groupon to take a class at Ten Seconds Studio. The class is for basics of metal working, like embossing, stamping, etc., and includes a kit of all the basic tools needed. Awesome! If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out the How To videos on the Ten Seconds Studio site at: http://www.tensecondsstudio.com/index.html

I've only worked with metal a couple of times in classes at the Little Blue House, so I don't really have much of anything in the way of tools, and very limited knowledge, so I'm really looking forward to this class. Just like everything else I do, I decided that the only way to approach this was with a fair amount of research (no spreadsheet yet, although I did start a list that could turn into a spreadsheet). For my initial research, I've been watching the Taco Tuesday videos the TSS women make, and they are possibly the most entertaining craft videos I've ever seen. The videos infused me with a great sense of overconfidence in my abilities, and were even funnier with a glass of wine. Note to self: Watching craft videos and drinking wine at 1 in the morning will lead to overconfidence in one's abilities.

With Jeff and Brandon off visiting the relatives in Virginia for the week, I had free time on my hands like I never have, so I ran out to Hobby Lobby, bought some metal, a paper stump (hee hee, stump; what a fun word), and a couple of glass jars with silver lids. The plan was to replace my old cotton ball and cotton swab holders in my bathroom. Armed with makeshift tools, a sheet of metal, two jars, and the overconfidence, here's what I was able to do.

I didn't want to buy too many new tools, since my class at Ten Seconds Studio includes a tool kit to take home. Instead of a refiner, I used a bamboo knitting needle. Instead of a thick mat, I used this foam piercing mat. I don't have a metal eraser tool to smooth out the metal (and any mistakes I make), so I used a Pental click eraser pen. Not pictured here (because it's clear & didn't show up well) is a border mold.

 Tools Used, Real and Makeshift

I cut the metal sheet down to a 2" x 8.5" strip. I used the knitting needle to score a line 3.25 inches from either side, leaving me a 2" square in the middle of the strip. In that middle section of the strip, I used the knitting needle to write backwards the words "Q-Tips" and "Cotton." I flipped the strip around so the words were no longer backwards, then used the knitting needle to trace along the outsides of the letters to refine the words.

Words - Embossed, Refined, & Antiqued

After adding the words, I used the border mold and paper stump (heh) to form the embossed print on the metal. I used the knitting needle to trace the outside edges of the embossing and refine the embossing further to make it stand out. I flipped the strip back over to the back side and used the paper stump to color in where the embossing was, to further puff out the metal. At this point, I could have used some spackle on the back side of the strip to fill in the embossed images, but I didn't feel like messing with spackle. I'll probably regret that short cut later.

Borders - Embossed, Refined, & Antiqued 

The last thing I did to the strips before putting them onto the jars was to antique them a bit. I used black acrylic paint, rubbing it over front side of the strip, then wiping it off with a paper towel. This left behind bits of the black paint along all the embossed edges of the words and border. After I finished antique the finish, I slapped a few strips of metal tape on the back of the strips, affixed them to the jars, then burnished the edges of the strips.

Finished Project, in Place on the Counter 

I think it's actually taken me longer to write about this and load the pictures than it did to do the project. Can't wait to see what I can do after I take the class and get the proper tools!

P.S. No injuries!

Jen

What the heck am I doing now?

The last time I tried blogging, I was pregnant and the word "blog" was still "web log." Now that unborn child that made me puke like it was my newfound religion is 13 and starting the 8th grade next week. My vocabulary has been shortened to half-words, acronyms, and various forms of smileys. As a professional writer, this should be distressing, but I am, frankly, relieved to be able to end any conversation with gtg :-).

All my little crafty friends (meaning they create craft objects, not that they are sly) seem to have blogs to share their stuff, so I'm giving this a try again as a way to share info about and photos of the projects I'm working on. I'm sure people will be happy to stop receiving picture texts from me saying "Look what I just made! Can you believe that??" Now they will receive texts saying, "Go look at my blog and see the picture of my project." Hard to believe I'm not more popular.

I am, at best, a reluctant crafter. Very unsure of my skills and certain that I am going to suffer a severe crafting injury. So far I've only gotten a bad case of scrapper's thumb, a swollen and tender thumb and tendons caused by extreme gripping of paper and an X-acto knife. I traded the knife for a good paper trimmer, took some anti-inflammatory, and that first injury is just fine. I'm picking up new skills, but am sooooo slow. I kind of like the slow pace I move at when I'm crafting--the rest of my life seems to scoot along so fast I'm sure I'm missing some good scenary on the way.

So, there's my first post. Going forward, I'll post some projects, some info on techniques I've just learned, info on products I'm discovering (and yes, it's like Columbus discovering the "new" world where thousands of people lived for thousands of years before his arrival), and random thoughts. I'm no Jack Handy, but, really, who is?

gtg
:-)