BOO!

Even more flowers and some buttons

Hurricane Irene cupcakes

Hurricane irene cupcakes

More flowers!

I 'm making friends with my droid and am loving it. It's so much easier to manage pics, which seem as good as my digital camera.

duct tape

ribbon petals, sequin center.

Ruffled fabric and button center. On a clutch.  Clutch pattern from Noodlehead . I added my own flower.

Fabric flowers.

Sharing the Love

Etsy is organizing donations of valentine cards for Citymeals-on-Wheels .  Here's mine so far.  Anyone can join in the fun.Click on the Special Delivery button in the sidebar to participate.

Snow Day Cinnamon Buns

There's nothing like a batch of sweet dough to teach you the value of patience.  The recipe will say "let rise for one hour."  But it's not just about time.  The dough has to be in a warm cozy spot. So you might have to make one. Put the dough on the top rack in your oven and put a pan of hot tap water in the bottom rack.  Cover the dough with a dish towel. Close the door.  Be patient.  Roll out the dough, spread the filling, roll it up, slice. They start looking like this.

And you want to throw them in the oven so you can be gobbling gooeyness in no time.  But you put them back in their cozy spot in the oven with new hot tap water , throw the dishtowel over them and close the door. Wait until they look like this:

Bake for twenty minutes and they should look like this:

Drizzle with icing, and suddenly teenagers (who can hear icing being drizzled from miles away) will descend upon those beauties. So you had better be quick with the camera. Or maybe the taser.

Potato PoTAHto

Why spend time and energy on something that will be torn to shreds you might ask?  Not exactly sure. But it was a lot of fun. And it did involve recycling. It was sort of therapeutic. When you know something is going to be destroyed you feel more free to be creative. And I take great pleasure in hearing my sister say in mock disgust, "Really? you made the freaking wrapping paper?"  Only she didn't say "freaking".

 Here we go...

Cut your tater as straight as possible.

If you don't have a craft knife handy, or you are having the kids help, pull the eraser out of a pencil and..

pinch with pliers.Carve with the pinched end. 

Apply craft or poster paint with foam brush.

Stamp once or twice. or whatever you like. Repeat as necessary.

Have fun.

Experiment.

Play around with color and pattern.

I used newsprint and newspaper. I painted a light layer of paint on some of the newspaper and some were left plain. I forgot to take pictures of the presents I wrapped. *sigh.* I also covered some coffee cans which I used for cookie tins. They came out really cool. My coworkers were as excited about the paper as they were with the cookies!

This is my first ever post, so comments and questions are encouraged.