Collection Time

I had my first day working at my new job today and it was busy and wonderful. And then this evening two lovely collections have appeared on Artfire including items of mine (oddly with both items placed in the same spot in each one). This was definitely a good day!

A big thanks to SomebodyStopMeVintage and PaintinByFaith!

I Want To Believe

  Curated By: SomebodyStopM...

ArtFire.com

Handmade Soap

Seeing Spots

  Curated By: PaintinByFaith

ArtFire.com

Fine Art Photography

Make your own Muppet!!

For anyone who doesn't already know, I am MAD crazy about the Muppets. They were a huge part of my growing up and the Muppet Show was the only television program that got my parents to make an exception to their "no tv during dinner" rule. I am super excited that there will be a new Muppet movie next fall. And my best friend is just as much of a Muppet geek as I am. So when she had a big birthday recently I knew the perfect gift...

I took her to FAO Shwartz in Manhattan and we made our own Muppet Whatnots!

For anyone who hasn't heard about this, you can go to the toy store and custom design your own Muppet! If you don't live near New York City (which is the only in-store location), you can actually go through the process online and they will ship your Muppet to wherever you are. But I have to say, at least half the fun was being at the store and seeing all the crazy cool decorations and all the extra little Muppety silliness.

So, here's how it works... We walked into the Whatnot Worksop area of the store and after ogling the awesome environment for a while (I took so many photos that I can't possibly post them all here :) we went up to the counter and asked to make Muppets. We each received a booklet with all the choices for bodies, eyes, noses, hair, clothing, etc. as nifty peel-and-stick labels. My friend and I then spent a good while playing with all the stickers and putting together our ideas like paper dolls.

Once we were finally happy with the awesomeness of our proposed Muppets we filled out the checklists and gave them to the very nice folks behind the counter. And being the geeky puppet-making theater types that we are, she and I just hung out and watched as they built them. Most of the face-assembling was done on the counter facing away from us so I couldn't get decent photos of that, but watching them attach the fluffy feather hair was especially amusing. To put it all together, they used that most reliable of crafty must-haves: a hot-glue gun. (who knew, right?)

It only took about 20 minutes from when we turned in our paperwork to when our wonderful new Muppet Whatnots were finally done. And we had a BLAST from start to finish. I'm totally jealous of the really sweet staff who worked on them... Making Muppets all day has to be one of the coolest jobs in the world. They were even cool enough to point out that while extra outfits are for sale, that baby clothes can also often fit them just fine. Now I'll have an extra excuse to look at cute frilly dresses in the baby section of my favorite thrift store.

This is the happy couple (we decided they're a married couple who clearly met a biker rally when her bike ran into mechanical trouble and he was there to lend a hand fixing it. Their anniversary will be the day we made them. Now all we need is names! Feel free to leave me suggestions in the comments!)

And here's us as the even happier proud owners:



Now, my more observant readers may have noticed that the "studio shot" I posted at the top of this post looks a little different, and not just because she's on a white background. Her hair is definitely PINK! No, I did not take her home and dye those feathers a different color.

Here's the story... after we left with our muppets, we headed out to catch up with another friend. While we were showing them off I was looking at her and suddenly realized that I thought I had chosen pink hair. Sure enough, looking through the packet of paperwork that also came with each Muppet (I get to play paper dolls with them as much as I want! Yay!) it was clear that the hair had indeed been done in the wrong color. I wasn't really upset, but these are not inexpensive and I really just wanted it to be the way I had designed. A quick phone call to the store and I was assured that if it was indeed built differently from the sheet I had submitted they would absolutely be willing to correct their mistake. So we headed on back to the store. And since the afore-mentioned hot-glue really isn't removable, they actually made me a whole new muppet. (So if you head to the store to make one yourself, please let me know if you see the blonde bombshell here up on that wall display... and send me a photo!)

The staff were totally sweet and apologetic and even gave us both very cool 50th anniversary pins as an extra little "we're sorry you had to come all the way back in". The fact that those pins were handed to us by a very cute blue muppet just made it all the more awesome. I have to give lots of extra credit for such creative customer service skills.

A Collection Suited to the Summer Sun

My smiling sun necklace is included in this really lovely collection on Artfire. I know it brightened up my day!

Here Comes the Sun

  Curated By: WindysDesigns

ArtFire.com

Handmade Gifts

Lavender Crafts!

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am not so great with gardening. So I'm very lucky to have a husband with a green thumb who indulges me when I say things like "I wonder if lavender would grow in our yard?" in a offhand way. He planted two of them last year, one on either side of the entrance to our shed. And then other than watering, we both just kinda let them do their thing. They've bloomed pretty well and make that little spot smell lovely.

Yesterday he came into the kitchen with an armful of cut flowers after deciding it was time to prune them. So now I have a great deal of yummy smelling flowers to make something crafty out of!

For my first trick I sorted all the stems (and picked out the bits of grass and other random plants) and bundled them up for drying.

Any of the ones that were too short or broken off I snipped right at the blooms and scattered them on a paper towel so those will dry out too and I can use them for sachets or potpourri.

I'll definitely be putting together a few sachets and giving them to friends (My sister-in-law's baby shower is coming up soon and I can certainly toss one in with her gifts for an nice little extra handmade touch) I'm also thinking of making myself a nice lavender eye pillow, they sound pretty darn simple from the online tutorials I've come across like this one from Make It Do

Anyone else have lavender crafts they suggest I try? Even if I don't get to all of them with this batch of flowers I do hope to have blooms in our yard for years to come.

A Baby Bird Update

Just wanted to post a quick update on the little cardinal chick that was such an adventure for me yesterday morning. He seems happy and healthy back home in his nest. Here's a new photo, almost as blurry as the last one but easier to decipher (And don't go judging my photo skills! You try taking a picture blind with your hand up a tree :)

And just to show I can in fact take less blurry photos of pretty birds... here is the proud papa cardinal who has been flitting about our yard all season.

UPDATE part two:

So, the little cardinal chick I've been helping out seems to be a little bit of a daredevil. This morning my dogs again discovered him sitting on the ground, tho' this time being hovered over by the mama bird. (He may have been down there for a while in the early morning hours.) Of course, Frankie went lunging after the protective, frantically flapping mama bird and he ended up with the little chick in his mouth... but he's got such an overbite that he doesn't seem to have done any real damage other than slobbering all over it.

I once again put on my trusty garden gloves and deposited the little fella back into the nest. And a few hours later he seems to be back to his old tricks... he's now hopping up onto the branches outside the nest probably thinking he's ready for another attempt at learning to fly. I hope he gets that part figured out soon!

Back to the nest with you little bird!

This morning when I let my dogs out into the yard, they found a little baby bird that had fallen from a nest. It was alive and didn't seem to be injured (it was just still way too little and un-fully-featherd so there was no way it was going to fly on its own yet, so I hurried the dogs away from it and got them back inside to see if hopefully the mama bird would come rescue it.

But after a short time I checked again. It was still there and I got too worried to just do nothing. When I was a kid, there were all kinds of stories about how if you touch a baby bird the mama bird won't take care of it anymore because it somehow smells like a human... But a quick google search pretty much debunked that story for me so I decided to take action and at least try to save this chick the best way I could, by getting it back where it belonged.

Luckily for me (and for the bird too) the nest it fell from was in a large bush, not a tall tree. I was able to find it pretty easily (located quite logically pretty close to "right above where the bird ended up on the ground") and it didn't seem too far if I stood on my tiptoes. So after putting on my heavy gardening gloves I gingerly picked the little one up and was thankfully able to reach in far enough to get it back into the nest. I went back in the house for my camera and got a kinda blurry shot of its head barely peeking out of the top edge of the little nest.

And guess what? He (or she) is going to grow up to be a cardinal! I know because now the mama cardinal has come back and is sitting on the nest protecting him (or her) from the rain that has started to fall this afternoon. Don't you just love a happy ending?

Broadway Baby!

I am thrilled that Spider Man Bring in the Dark finally had its official opening last night. Not just because I'm a theater geek, or because the saga of the technical problems the show was facing made it a fabulous train-wreck story to follow in the media... I am most excited because one of my close friends worked on the show and also designed the opening night gown for one of the producers. As such, she was able to design her own incredible outfit for the red carpet and asked me to design jewelry to go with it.

She built an amazing red dress and then hand-beaded a spider's web across it. She even made a masquerade mask to go with it. (And honestly, you'd be shocked at how quickly she was able to do it all... this woman has amazed me with her costuming talents and utterly shocked me more than once with her ability to invent beautiful clothes practically at the drop of a hat. But I digress.) So we talked through some design ideas and eventually settled on a Y shaped red-and-black design with gold accents that complemented the plunging neckline of her gown.

And she's just let me know that a photo of her wearing my necklace at the after party for the show is the FRONT PAGE IMAGE of Broadway.com's Spider Man coverage!! Click on the screenshot below to go to the site and see it full size, along with all the other great pics of what looks like a really fun evening of celebration.

I mean seriously, how cool is she? I'm really lucky to have such lovely and talented friends.

Mint Cake with Lemon Icing

I'm not much of a gardener. But one thing I've found I can grow really well is mint. I know, I know, it has nothing to do with me, mint is a hardy weed that pretty much seems to thrive anywhere. Well the patch behind our backyard shed (where the lawnmower can't quite fit easily) seemed the perfect spot to put some in last year and now it has exploded in three kinds of delicious smelling minty goodness!

I wanted to make a dessert for the BBQ at my mother-in-law's house this weekend, and I knew we'd be having grilled shrimp and lobster salad in addition to the usual burgers and such. So I raced to the internets searching for recipes that would be sweet but light and made with fresh mint... and I found lost of things using a few sprigs of mint for a garnish, and a TON of chocolate-mint desserts. (I don't know about you, but I really don't want chocolate after seafood.) But then I stumbled across this amazingly simple recipe for candied mint leaves, and that got me thinking.

So I took a classic white cake recipe and tweaked it slightly to include both some fresh mint and some mint extract (and a tiny touch of green food coloring) and then I was off and running.

Here's the adapted recipe for anyone else out there looking for a really lovely sweet minty dessert perfect for serving after those lighter summer meals:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 large egg whites
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon mint extract
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint leaves
3 or more drops of green food coloring (optional)

2 (9-inch) diameter cake pans, buttered and bottoms lined with parchment or waxed paper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Wash the mint leaves thoroughly and dry them off with a paper towel I used about 8 medium sized leaves for this part, and used more to make candied mint as a garnish. Chop them up very finely with a knife. Because I don't own a food processor, I just put the chopped up mint into a blender with the sugar and pulsed it on high a few times to grind up and mix the mint in completely.

2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and the minty sugar together for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy.

3. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

4. In a small bowl Combine egg whites, milk, vanilla extract and mint extract. If you want to add a few drops of green food coloring, mix it in here.

5. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to butter mixture then add half the milk mixture. Continue to alternate adding to the mix, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Scrape the bowl and beaters often.

6. Pour the batter into prepared pans and smooth the top with a metal spatula.

7. Bake the cakes in the middle rack of your oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

8. Cool in the pans on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then turn out onto the rack, remove paper and let cool completely before frosting.

You can finish your mint cake with simple white frosting, or chocolate if you don't have the "will this go with seafood" dilemma that I was facing. But I frosted it with delicious lemon buttercream frosting and it was perfect, like having summer lemonade with mint sprigs in it. Adding the candied mint as a cute and tasty garnish also helped disguise the fact that I am SO not talented at making pretty frosting.