Christmas Time Progress Goes Boink

This holiday season, I found myself in need of more ornaments for our tree and so decided to whip up some some classic salt dough decorations.  Aside from being super easy to do, the real inspiration for this project came from my parents.  When they were first married, my mom made a bunch of salt dough ornaments to decorate their tree with most of which she still has and continues to use.  It's a nice thought that years from now, BJ and I can decorate our tree with ornaments we've had since our first year of marriage. 

Anyways, salt dough is a simple, cheap recipe and easy for anyone to do.  Lots of people probably made it as kids for some school project.  For this batch of ornaments, I decided to make possibly the coolest thing I've ever made.  At least the top five.  I give you....Calvin & Hobbes Snowmen Ornaments. 

After making the salt dough and rolling it out, I found three random kitchen objects that I could use to create the snowmen.  I ended up using a cake decorating tip, some blue plastic thing that came with my cake decorating kit, and the metal tin thing that votive candles come in.  I am super fancy.  Once I had the snowmen shape pressed into the dough I mostly carefully used a knife to cut everything out.

 

Be sure to poke holes in the tops of the ornaments so they can be strung later for hanging.  Since I planned on adding tiny stick arms after they were painted, I also added holes to the side of the snowmen.  To smooth out the edges or any lines made from drawing these shapes out, use a finger and water to gently even everything out.  Now, whether you chose to use your own finger or one that you have laying around is up to you.

 

I baked my salt dough ornaments at 250 degrees for two hours.  They weren't quite dry at this point so after the two hours was up I turned off the oven and left them in overnight.  Okay, so I actually left them in the oven for a couple of days but I can't be expected to remember everything that I'm doing.

 

Once everything was dry, I painted the ornaments using acrylic paint.  Also, notice anything missing between the picture above and the one below?  Yea, somewhere along the way my two headed snowman disappeared. The most embarrassing part of this is that I didn't even notice one had gone missing until I was editing the pictures for this post.  I have to assume that one of the cats, dirty little thieves that they are, snagged it when I wasn't looking.  It's pretty impressive that it didn't break when it hit the ground too.  Of course, it seems odd that there is no sign of it so there's also a very good chance the two headed snowman is lost somewhere in my craft room.  I keep trying to clean the place but it just won't take.

 

 

After I painted the faces on, I also sprayed these with several layers of a clear sealant with a flat finish.  This was a tip from my mom whose salt dough ornaments look like they were painted yesterday so I definitely recommend taking this extra step.  Once the sealant dried and the fumes cleared, I used E-6000 craft glue and some salvaged stick clipping I took from this decorative thing we have in our hallway.  Just one of those standard sticks & stones in a giant vase ornamental thing that everyone eventually has a version of in their homes.

 

I think the headless snowman may be my favorite.  He just looks so surprised that he's holding his own head.  The hanging snowmen is the runner up though since I got to learn how to make a tiny noose.  I love learning new things.

 

Salt Dough Recipe

2 Cups flour

1 Cup table salt

1 Cup water

Mix flour and salt together in a bowl.  Slowly mix in water kneading together with hands.  Knead mixture together until a solid dough forms.  Roll dough out onto counter to a thickness of 1/4 and inch or smaller.  Use cookie cutters, knives, and other various objects to create fun shapes.  Bake in oven at 250 degrees for several hours.  Also helps to forget about ornaments (after the oven had been shut off) for several days to allow further drying.  Helps to dust counters, rolling pins, hands, cookie cutters or anything else that may touch the dough with flour.  That shit is sticky.

From Desperation Comes Greatness

On Wednesday, the husband made a ton of super tasty burgers for dinner.  I got to take a break from the kitchen while he cooked and did the majority of the dishes.  It was awesome.   

Cut to two days later and we have no hamburger buns or any other bread in the house but still have an abundance of leftover burgers.  Me, being a complete genius, came up with a delicious solution.    

And they shall call it BUGERITO!!!  

 

1.  Spread thin layer of butter on a flour tortilla
2.  On the non-buttered side, place a slice of cheddar cheese and a leftover burger
3.  Fold tortilla around burger and crisp up both sides in a hot pan
4. Nom, nom, nom*

*Recommended dipping sauce is ketchup and Tapatio.

Bucket of Poison

So along with the hundreds of hobbies that I already have, recently I added beer brewing to the mix.  I don't have any pictures of this process yet but imagine me and my friend Amanda drinking in my kitchen while attempting to make a brew without all the necessary tools while my husband and our friends are playing Magic and speaking in a nerd language incomprehensible to either of us. 

Tools we were missing: steeping bags, long metal spoon, enough ice or freezer packs to cool the pot down, and also a cooking thermometer.  It was like trying to brew beer as a pilgrim.  I now know how my ancestors suffered.

Luckily, my parents only live a few streets away so I was able to borrow a candy thermometer from them which worked fine.  I didn't know about the metal spoon part before I left their house so we were out of luck on that one.  By the time that information came up I was already three beers deep. 

Anyways, there's a step in beer brewing where the pot of everything that been boiling for over an hour needs to have the temperature dropped down below 75 degrees (the closer to 60 degrees the better I believe) so that the yeast can be added.  We barely had any ice in our freezer so my friend smartly grabbed a reusable freezer pack to put directly in the pot of beer to cool it down quicker.  Worked like a charm.

Cut to a week later when I'm using the same freezer pack in my lunch bag and discover that it has a leak in it.  So, potentially, I have a giant bucket of poisoned freezer pack goo beer sitting in the closet of my sewing room.  Considering this batch was meant to end up as Christmas presents neither one of us were too pleased.  The only thing I can do now is wait a couple weeks and check on the beer to see if it looks okay.  The yeast will go fucking crazy if anything nonsanitized is in it so it will be pretty clear whether or not the batch turned out drinkable.   

Poison or beer?

However, we find solice in the fact that if the batch is ruined we can blame my mom.  I did steal the freezer pack from her.  Thanks a lot Mama Kuff.

Double Nerd Coasters

During my daily search of Pinterest, I came across these cool Scrabble tile coasters.

                               

                                                      Source: intimateweddings.com via Megan on Pinterest

I actually had spare Scrabble tiles on hand from when I turned a batch of them into fridge magnets.  We hadn't been using them since we moved into the house so I figured I might as well repurpose them into something more useable.  Unfortunately, this also meant I had to pry the magnets off the backs of a bunch of stupid Scrabble tiles.  Me having constantly stocked up on fabric in the past meant I, of course, had spare felt on hand to use as the backings on the coasters.  The only other things I needed were Mod Podge and glue which luckily I also had.  So the total price of this project was $0.  Super sweet.

 

Once all the magnets (stupid magnets broke my nail) had been removed, I laid the tiles out in five by five squares.  This only gave me three coasters so I'll have to hit up a thrift store for an old Scrabble board so I can make a few more.  If the coasters are examined a touch more closely, you'll see that a word is hidden in each one.  The first has Cthulu for my H.P. Lovecraft loving husband, Bad Wolf in the second for a nice Doctor Who reference, and finally Johnson in the third since that's our last name.   

 

These were easy enough to make.  Just use a crafting glue or super glue to attach each tile to the felt backing.  Careful if using super glue though, a bit of it leaked through my felt pieces.  Not enough to do any damage but still something to watch out for.  

Once I had all the tiles glued down, I also tilted the tiles so I could run a line of glue down the edges to add a bit more stability to the whole thing.  After letting it dry for a good 20 minutes, I trimmed the excess felt off and got to work on waterproofing these for coaster use.

Whenever working with Mod Podge, I like using a small sponge brush.  It seems to leave a smoother finish and allows for super thin coats to be put down.  I've found that doing multiple coats of Mod Podge that are really, really thin creates a better end product.  On previous projects when I got overzealous with the application, the final coat always seemed to be tacky no matter how long it dried.  Maybe that's just me though, if there's a better way please let me know.  

After a couple hours of Mod Podging and drying I had created three super cool coasters.  At least, I think they're pretty cool.  I think the Bad Wolf one is my favorite but I'm a sucker for anything Doctor Who related.

 

A nice action shot of a coaster in use.  Absolutely going to round up more Scrabble tiles to work with.  I was thinking another cool project using these tiles would be to cover the bottom of a square or rectangular serving tray.  They could even be laid out to mimic an actual Scrabble game and use the back side of the tile to fill in the blank spots.        

Ha, ass.

Starting Fresh

Let's get this started.  Had an old blog that lasted about five months before moving on to one whose title I could pronounce correctly.  Plus, it gave me an excuse to make a stuffed felt koala (see blog header) and who doesn't need more of those.
 
Figured, if I was going to make this change, now would be the time to do it while my old blog views were averaging two people a day.  To the folks over in Germany, India, Australia, and other places who read my old blog, I love you.  Even if you only came across my site from doing a Google search for a snow owl.  I know that deep in your heart you really wanted to see snarky posts about me spray painting a bunch of shit.