More fun with power tools

So much for anonymity

Over the summer I saw an idea for a  monogram photo collage on pinterest which was perfect for brightening up an empty corner of a kid's room.  With hundreds of free photo print credits at an online retailer (long story involving my bargain-hunting brother), it was a matter of minutes to get a stack of photos ordered, but it took until after Christmas (but before the broken arm!) for me to find time to work on this project.

I'd initially planned on just making a large "J", but with so many photos and a 2'X4' sheet of MDF, it seemed the best way to use up the space was to go with the whole name.


To make one like it, you'll need:

--1/4" medium density fiberboard
--photos (in b&w or sepia)
--modge podge or white glue
--sandpaper
--paint (black or dark brown)
--jigsaw & drill

I started out letting John pick his favorite font for his name.  The fastest way for me to get the letters right next to each other was to print it out and then fold the paper - I'm sure there's a more involved way to manipulate the text and print it out just right, but it wasn't worth figuring out for me.

To help me enlarge the name, I divided each letter roughly into halves, then sketched out a similar grid on the MDF.  Chalk is a nice forgiving medium for this task, followed by sharpie after you're satisfied with the result of your sketching.

If, like me, you are using antiquated (i.e. older than me) tools and a jerry-rigged set-up on clementine crates, then the easiest way to cut around all the bends and sharp corners is to drill holes ( a 1/2" wood boring bit is nice for this) at all the sharp corners or interior cuts, and then go dot-to-dot with the jigsaw:

The dots don't have to be followed sequentially or unidirectionally - the easiest way to handle an inside corner is to come at it from opposite directions.

Having the recipient there to help hold the MDF steady is a nice bonus

After the name is all cut out give it a light sanding and paint the edges your desired colour.  (If you are concerned about the MDF off-gasing, a coat of paint over the entire exposed surface of the board will help with that.)  Then comes the fun part of gluing on your photos.  I used modge-podge, but a thin even layer of white glue should work as well.  I didn't take pictures of the process, but what worked for me was to lay the photos over the name, then crease them by pressing your finger along the edge of the MDF - this will give you a nice bend in the photopaper that you can cut along.  Glue on your photos, let it dry, and if you want you can give the edges  another light sanding to distress it.

It seemed like a good idea at the time



Life Imitates Art

Yesterday Little Brother was poring over a playmobil catalog and commented "Look, Mom, this boy fell off his bike and broke his arm."  I was mildly concerned that he was so traumatized as to be projecting his own life onto an advertisement, until I looked closer and saw that our life is now indeed mirroring a playmobil scenario.

Last week, the Eldest and the Ninja managed to, with a bike, a scooter, and a tow rope, give the Ninja a compound supracondylar fracture of the humerus.  The Ninja stayed incredibly collected and calm through the whole ordeal, while the Eldest, who had cajoled his brother into this adventure (complete with a guarantee of payment if he got hurt) and who felt responsible for disregarding Dad's express orders against tying ropes to bikes, was near hysterical with grief.  Which all makes the Eldest sound worse than he deserves.  He has a soft heart and a strong conscience to balance out his harebrained ideas.  Privately Dad and I call him the Instigator... and he's also the one all the little kids flock to, because he is the most exciting playmate.

The Ninja is the contemplative, deliberate one in the family, the one who often lives in his own mind in a world governed by logic.  The risks he takes are, if misinformed, at least calculated (hence the request for a guarantee).  Once, when he was 3, and not believing me when I told him that he couldn't tell by looking at it whether the stove was hot, he watched for me to turn off the stove, and then, when I was busy with his brother, went to deliberately test it.  I had no idea until he didn't come when called to do his chores, and going to look for him I found him running his fingers under cold water in the upstairs bathroom, tears streaming down his face and crying defiantly, "I don't want to tell you what I was doing," which turned soon enough into "Mommy, why was it still hot after you turned it off?"  And so I found myself, while assuaging his wounded pride and bandaging his blistered fingers, trying to explain thermal conductivity to a 3-year-old. 

With such different personalities in the house, coexistence is not always a peaceful thing, and so often I am called in to arbitrate irreconcilable disputes.  Which may explain why I could be calm at the scene of the accident and through the ambulance ride, in the ER, and at Radiology, but narrowly escaped bursting into tears when the Ninja asked to talk to the Eldest on the phone through a pain- and narcotic-clouded haze, and said, "I forgive you.  I forgive you.  I'm all right.  No, it doesn't hurt too much."

We are home now, held together with a few pins, plaster splint, and the closeness of a shared trial.  A little frailer, a little more aware of our fragility, but oh, so much stronger for it all.

Next time I'm sticking with cupcakes

In which our heroine forays into the realm of cake pops.



A blue angry bird after taking a nose dive into the red candy melts.

 My first mistake was in thinking that I could attempt cake pops, without a dry run, starting at 10pm the night before the birthday, after a day spent assembling furniture for Baby Girl's room (so many of my fiascos seem to center around furniture purchases) and trying to find her floor again in time for the party the next day.

The Eldest is turning 11, and having heard me mention the Angry Bird cake pops I'd seen online, asked me to bring those in to school for his birthday.  I looked at the recipe - cake crumbs and a tub of frosting dipped in candy melts, how hard could it be?  Never mind that the only dipping I've ever done is into a chocolate fountain... I had confidence and to spare.



Maybe I should have suspected things were headed south when I tasted the unholy mix.  I had a very moist white cake... and it tasted like raw cake batter.  Which might be ok if you're a cake batter person.  I am not.

Then there was trying to get these balls of dough to stick to the lollipop sticks (tip:  dip the end of the stick in candy melts and let harden before sticking it into the dough ball and freezing it.  Don't know why it helps, but it does).  Maybe I got too generous with the pops - they were a good 1.5" across, and kept falling off the sticks.

No matter, I got the hang of it, and had a half dozen blue birds cooling in a block of styrofoam when they toppled over into the red candy coating.  It was about 1am by then, I was running out of steam and starting to panic.

White chocolate chip eyes, trimmed candy corn beak, black frosting details, feathers from melted candy piped onto waxed paper and cooled. And a skull fracture.

Made more red birds ... then looked over at the blues to notice their heads had all cracked.  Did the candy coating shrink when it cooled, or did the dough expand as it warmed?  I didn't know and didn't care to find out.  It would have to do.

To add insult to injury, though, the dough started extruding out of little holes in the candy coating (think of toothpaste in a tube), looking for all the world like the birds were pooping tapeworms on each other.  Yeah, you really needed that simile.

Well, I am used to cleaning up messes, so I pulled off the tapeworms and called it good.  And then went to deal with my other task of the evening, editing a 16-page computer vision grant proposal due in the morning.  While Baby Girl had a croup attack.  At about 5am I thought seriously of taking her to the ER (no, it was not epiglottitis, but I was convinced it was - I am not my rational best at that hour) but was fortunately too tired to actually follow through on that.  (She's fine, thanks).

The kids actually like the way the pops taste (they got to eat all the outtakes) so it's not a total failure:  I made a treat they want to eat but which I am not even tempted to touch.  And they are kinda cute, if you don't look too closely.

Thank heavens for Norwegian dairy farmers

Norwegians may be debating the cause of their national butter shortage (yesterday on NPR I heard it blamed on miscalculated over-exporting to the US), but no-one is arguing that you can just substitute margarine.  Because you can't.

Ginger Snaps

 

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup molasses

2 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

Sugar for rolling

Cream butter and sugar well.  Beat in egg.  Mix in molasses. 

Stir flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt together and add to above mixture.  Mix well.  Shape into 1 inch balls.  Roll balls in sugar and place on baking sheet.  Bake in oven preheated to 350 F for 10-12 minutes.  Makes 6 dozen.
(from Jean Pare's Company's Coming: Cookies)

You also can't just eat one of these things.  The Man of the House calls them Ginger Crack because of their addictive qualities.  One secret to good cookies, besides the butter:  high quality ginger (and cinnamon, but mostly the ginger).  Someday I'm going to get around to trying to make these with fresh grated ginger.

And for an extra fancy touch, dip half in melted white chocolate, place on waxed paper, and chill to set.

Decked

I love having a candy-apple-red front door.  Especially at Christmas.

Last night a friend came over with her daughters for some emergency help with dress alterations for a school concert, and while I pinned and stitched, she gave my wreath a makeover.  I'd had the ribbon on hand for three years, picked up at an after Christmas clearance for mere pennies.  And she didn't just make a new bow, this artist friend, with her draping and tucking, made a statement.  I mean, just look at the old bow - faded, bedraggled old thing:
 

 It was one of those things I didn't even bother to put on my to-do list since there wasn't a hope of getting to it.  And I am so absurdly happy with it that I had to blog about it, another thing there isn't room on the list for.  But the family packages got mailed out yesterday, the cookies for tomorrow's "family traditions" party are baked and cooling, and I am going to indulge myself in a little sitting back and enjoying the season. 

We always put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving - ostensibly to get as early a start on the Christmas season as is decent, but really, it's the one chance we have to do it, since weekends in December are always jam-packed with activities.  I am usually eager to deck the halls, but this year, with my newly minted garland, I was a bit reluctant to put Thanksgiving away.  But the kids couldn't wait, and so by evening's end, the tree was trimmed,

the stockings were hung,

and every possible spot was draped with mistletoe for lots of kissing.

Have you ever heard of Holiday Specs?  They're cheap plastic holographic lenses that transform lightsources into fun shapes.  A local grocery chain mailed us a snowman pair years ago, and they've become a holiday tradition: on Friday night, we light the house and run outside in our pj's in the dark, to look at the house through our magic spectacles.  They've gotten a bit beaten up over the years, but still manage to make our minilights look like snowmen.

Little Brother with his spectacles on.

A little bit of love for the Dining Room

My dining room is a work in progress.  We've been in the house for over 4 years, but there is nothing on the walls, no window treatments, nothing but a table and chairs and an incongruously fabulous chandelier I got for the cost of shipping it across the country by Greyhound ($60).  We only eat there a few times a month when we have company; mostly it is a place littered with homework, crayon drawings, and my most recent crafting excesses.  It seems that after painting the room and finding the table on craigslist and hauling it home, I ran out of steam.  For 4 years.

But this year, inspired by a friend's dinner in the woods, I thought I'd try to dress up the room a little for Thanksgiving. I loved the garland they made, so with some borrowed circle punches (thank you, Jenn!) and some fall colored cardstock, I made enough garland to criss cross the room, loop up the stairs, over the archway and backyard sliders ... yeah, it's a little addicting. And it brought some lovely color into a room that is, well, pretty much entirely Behr's Harvest Brown.

Then, because the table, which started out a lovely vintage trestle from Bavaria, is starting to show the effects of 4 children and a careless crafter, I thought I'd make a tablecloth and some napkins from some fabric I picked up years ago (for another dead-in-the-water project of making slip covers for the green velvet chairs.  It was easier to make peace with green velvet than get around to white slipcovers.  Circle garland, however, I can do - anyone want to trade me some slipcovers for a few hundred yards of garland?  ;) Bet they'd be cute in Christmas colours...) 

But back to the table linens.  I don't like to hem, so I thought I'd go for a fringed look, and found some good ideas here.  But rather than try to cut square napkins along the grain with a ruler and rotary cutter, I measured along the edge to the desired width (19" worked well), then pulled a single thread out, which left a neat line to cut by:

Then I pulled off enough of the strands to make a 3/8" fringe, and stitched along the edge to lock it in:

An easy enough project to start and finish in a day, so I could start setting my table a day early for the big feast (instead of leaving it to the kids while I'm pulling the turkey out of the oven, as has been our "tradition" so far).  Not bad for a last minute effort, don't you think?

(The candle ring and napkin ties were made last year - it was a good year for acorns - but never used because I had no napkins.  I'll put up a tutorial for them sometime soon, when I make  up a couple more).

Turkey Sugar Cookies

Albuquerque was a turkey, and he's feathered and he's fine...

I've had this turkey cookie cutter for years, and have never used it - Thanksgiving is sort of taken over by pie, so who has time for cookies?  But for 5's preschool party today they had a sign-up that included cookies, and tomorrow night at their Thanksgiving program his class will be dressed up as turkeys (and singing, among other songs, the Albuquerque Turkey song), so this was too perfect an opportunity to pass up.

There are many variations of the soft, white, "Lofthouse" sugar cookie recipe... and here at Peppermint Plum is one that tastes great and has simple measurements (no 3/4 tsp here!)  There are some gorgeous cookies on Pinterest frosted with royal icing... (which I won't link to because last time I wandered onto Pinterest I lost all the time I gained in falling back) ... but I do agree with Tammy that royal icing sort of ruins a sugar cookie.  When you eat a lofthouse cookie, at least half the reason you're flirting with diabetic coma is for that pile of buttercream frosting.

So here is the buttercream version of those feathered turkeys, not quite so picture perfect, but much easier, and much more tasty.  The recipe for the frosting is the same, except for the brown I added a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder.  I'm not crazy about the results (sugar cookie icing should taste of vanilla and almond, to me), but it was easier than brown food coloring, and seemed like a good idea at the time.  Besides, the kids like it.

 

Before adding cocoa to the buttercream, make a few pouches of colored frosting for the feathers and details. You'll need a lot less than you think you need... for 3 dozen cookies, I used 1.5X recipe of frosting, and had way too much colored frosting left over. A couple of tablespoons of each color is plenty.  Then snip a hole in the corner of your ziploc bag... and start small, you can always cut it bigger.

Pipe a few lines of color onto your chocolate-frosting-smeared bird.  You can add a beak, eye, wattle, and foot if you like.

Then draw a toothpick through the frosting to give it a feathered look.

And Albuquerque is now ready to strut his way to the preschool party.  If you let them harden off a bit overnight, the frosting will dry enough to let you stack them on a plate without too much damage to the details.