Christmas Ornaments

I love to make Christmas ornaments!  Actually, most of the time I spend hours and hours looking for new ideas and instructions for making ornaments, and never get around to actually making them.  But I have managed to make a few, and I love them.  Some of my favorites are just super easy polymer clay ornaments made with Sculpey clay and cookie cutters!  You can marble different colors together like the angels in the photo, or you can use acrylic paint to decorate them.  I also like to use Sharpie markers to decorate them too.  The red star ornaments were painted with red acrylic paint and accented with silver Sharpie.  I wrote a lens for Squidoo on how to make them.  You can check it out here.  These are great ornaments for kids to make too since they are so easy.  And of course if you have more time and artistic ability, you can make polymer clay ornaments as fancy as you want! 

My parents still have many of the homemade ornaments my brothers and I made when we were kids. Most of them are made from construction paper, so I'm not sure how well they're holding up.  I'm going to have to get some pictures of those when I go see my parents this week!  Maybe I'll even recreate some of them.  I think that would be fun, and it would be nice to be able to make the memories last just a little bit longer for the ones that are on their last leg. 

Mellow Yellow Monday

Photos taken at Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, SC. 

Remove Treadmill - Insert Christmas Tree. (Some Assembly Required.)

So I finally got around to getting my Christmas Tree up today.  Wheee!  I'd have had it up earlier this week, but I had to move my treadmill into another room.  Last year DH and I went to Hawaii in December, so we didn't bother to decorate for Christmas, and I didn't need to move the treadmill until this year.  To be honest, I've been meaning to move it for MONTHS now, but I was too lazy.  And of course it was a HUGE ordeal to get it moved.  It's a Sole F80 Treadmill and I love it.  It folds up to save space, and has wheels so you can roll it.  But it weighs a bajillion pounds and only rolls on hard floors - it just sinks into deep carpet and takes too much effort to try to move.  But either way, I wanted to put it in my spare room (office/craft room/storage room/exercise room) and finally had enough incentive to get it moved.  But of course it had to be difficult.  It was too wide to get through the door so we had to take it apart.  Then we realize the deck is still too wide to get through the door without picking it up and turning it on its side.  Have I mentioned that it is quite a heavy machine?  Luckily I know two very strong burly-type people who always seem to get called upon to help people move.  There was no way DH and I were going to be able to move it by ourselves!  So my friend Sam and his nephew Thomas came over to help my DH and between the three of them, they were finally able to wrangle it into the spare room.  It was no help that it was nearly impossible to turn it onto its side without the deck folding up.  Luckily I was able to help by coming up with the idea to use ratchet straps to hold the deck down so it wouldn't keep sliding up.  See, I'm not entirely useless.  :) 
So now I finally have the treadmill in my "exercise" room.  (Maybe I'll actually use it now!)  AND I finally have my Christmas tree up.  It's so pretty!  I love Christmas decorations.  All the pretty, sparkley lights and shiny ornaments...  I'm so glad to finally have them up that I'm not even upset that I have a few big scratches and one gouge in my floors now.  They were covered up fairly well with my trusty Crayola crayons.  If you've ever got scratches in your wood or laminate floors or your wood furniture, don't bother buying those wax pencils to cover the scratches.  Crayola works just as well! 

PhotoHunt: Curved

I took this picture in Covington, KY in September.  This fence surrounds a pretty little park right on the river.  I thought of it right away when I got to this week's theme, Curved.  :)

PhotoHunt

Brussels Sprouts - Friend or Foe?

When I was a kid I hated Brussels sprouts.  With a passion.  I couldn't get myself to eat them without gagging.  I tried everything to mask the flavor, including taking a mouthful of tea or juice (or whatever I was drinking) before putting one in my mouth in the hopes that I wouldn't be able to taste it.  No luck.  I also used to sneak them into my napkin and throw them away.  I think the trick I used most often to get out of having to eat them is to leave the table to "use the restroom" with a mouthful of Brussels sprouts and spit them out into the toilet and flush them.  That way my mom thought I ate them, and I only had to endure the horrific flavor for the length of time it took me to get to the bathroom.  Luckily we had a small house, and I was quite motivated to move swiftly.  It was a great mystery to me how my older brother could actually like them.  He actually loved them - they were his favorite vegetable!  Freak.  I know my mom thought I was being melodramatic when I exclaimed my disfavor with this foul Brassicaceae. But I swear I died a little inside every time I was faced with a plate of those things.

Yet for some inconceivable reason, this year I kept seeing pictures of them and thinking they looked tasty.  I remembered how gross they were when I was a kid, so I don't know what made me think I could stomach them now.  Then again, I hated spinach when I was a little too, and I like it now.  So I convinced myself to try them - to give them one last shot.  I bought the Green Giant package with the butter sauce.  Butter makes everything better, right?  I figured since they were baby Brussels sprouts they might be less bitter.  I was really hesitant to actually consume one of these things once they were cooked, but I was brave.  And I liked it!  I didn't just think it was okay, I actually LIKED it.  I wanted MORE.  It was a vegetable miracle!  And now I have bought them (and EATEN them!) two more times.  Even my DH likes them.  Hooray for maturing taste buds!  I wonder what else I hated as a kid that I might actually like now?  Liver, maybe?  ...Nah!

First photo found here.

Second photo found here.

A Run-In with the Claus

I went for a walk around the neighborhood last night, and Santa was parading through on a fire engine, tossing candy to the kids lined up along the street sides.  I say parading, but this wasn't an actual parade.  It was about 8pm, and it was just a couple fire engines with police car escorts.  I guess they must announce this on the radio and TV and in the newspapers, because these people all were expecting it and were out in force to see Santa.  I was even the recipient of a candy-toss, but whatever it was they tossed to me slipped right through the sewer drain.  They couldn't have done it that smoothly if they'd tried.  Maybe that was Santa's way of telling me to keep my fluffy bum moving and that I don't need any candy.  *sniff*

They do this every year around here, but I can't remember ever seeing this in any other place. Does Santa "come to town" where you live (other than in parades)?


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Wordless Wednesday: Waianapanapa Beach State Park (Maui, Hawaii)

My favorite place on earth!