Things of today.... or what to do with a day off.

I got the day off work!!!
got up good and early........ er.... um.... if you consider 9:30 am early.
:)


I'm making some delicious whole wheat - flax seed - sunflower seed bread.

Whole wheat bread recipe

Here is the recipe I used.... and altered.

I replaced 3/4 cup of white flour for ground flax seed.
I added 1/4 cup of molasses.
I added 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds.
YUM!!!

We've put ourselves on a budget....... been spending WAY too much on groceries. We figure we'll save a few bucks by making our own bread two or three times a week. It's not even that hard or time consuming and it smells sooooooo good!!!

We are also trying to loose weight. Halloween always leaves us with a few more pounds on the rump roast than we need. I'm also still dealing with body changes after the gallbladder loss and the quitting of smoking. I'm getting round!
The bread baking might not be helping us lose weight.
:/

Fully baked delicious bread! Seriously, I wish you guys could smell this!

I know I should wait till meal time but I just can't.
Sooooooooo good!

I have pointed out my blue mylar nails of the previous week. I do love me the stiletto shape.

I tried to get a close up of the thumbso you can see the sparklie mylar, sea shells and gold leaf embedded in there but it came out blurry. I need to put some surface paint on these ones soon.

Here is the first Christmas Fascinator. I got the blingie festiveness from Michaels craft store and put it all together with E6000 jewlery glue. It's on a hair clip so I can wear it in my hair or on my work coat as a brooch.

Roses Added.

Here are the roses and veining I add3d to the blue mylar and seashell with gold leaf nails.

The nails are built out of gel and the flowers are sculpted from acrylic liquid and powder. Each petal seems to intersects the previous row at about the same spot in each flower. I think they look almost like the seashell flowers in Asian art..... or like goldfish scales.

It's the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
Remembrance day.
Just wanted to take a second and say thanks.

Transitional Nails.

I have removed all traces of Halloween art from my nails.

I used gels to encase some pretty mylar, seashells and gold leaf flakes.

I think they look icy. Like the weather. I want to put some white veins or scales into these ones. We'll see what happens, I'm too busy visiting right now.
Maybe tomorrow.

The Mom Bird!

Here is Maggs Making Grandma have eyebrows and eyelashes. Maggs is the expert on these things in our house.

Mom is gluing on the bottom beak.

and now the top one.

There you go then. A side view of the beak on.

Mom adding some feathery goodness to the edge of the beak.

The whole shabang!
Mom looks great in my stuff.

This shows how we did the pumpkins with depth. Poke holes into the pumpkin to mark the pattern then scrape away the skin layer inside the pattern. We created depth by putting a light inside the pumpkin and scraping away flesh to create lighter and darker areas.

Halloween bread. I burnt the tops of the white loaves because we got a surprise Halloween visitor!
Auntie Shelley rang the back doorbell dressed as a gray dragon princess!
Best Halloween EVER!!!

Pumpkin Carving Day!!!

We carve jack o lanterns every year on the day before Halloween, or Devil's Night.
This year it is taking almost the whole day. We carve a bit then rest, then carve a bit then eat....

Here are the pumpkins so far.

This is Mom's pumpkin so far. It's freakin' me out a bit!
She doesn't like it and has started another. I hope she finishes this one I think it's gonna be pretty cool.

This is Mr. Jimmy's Cy kin. He is cheerful.
I think James is going to define the eye with a bit more carving once he can put a light in there and see things better.

Here is the start of Maggie's Kitty Kin. She'll be back to carve more once it's darker outside.

Here is my Nosferatu pumpkin. Doesn't look very good without some light in there.
I got the idea from this fantastic site called
Zombie Pumpkins
They have some pretty skilled pattern makers over there.
I added depth with multi layer cutting.

Here he is with the sunlight shining through him. I need to define things a bit more, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

PolymerCAFE Magazine Update

YEAY!!!!

I received my copy of PolymerCAFE Magazine today!!!

It's BEAUTIFUL!!!

and not just because my Angel graces the front cover!
This magazine has the BEST step by step pictures for technique that I have ever seen in any publication. I am completley thrilled to have been included in the long list of amazing artisans who have graced the pages of this magazine.

Grab yourself a copy and let me know what you think.

:D

Halloweenie Nails?

Ok....... so I'll try harder next time.
:(

Halloween Decorating..... very late this year!

Mom and I did a big Halloween decoration push today.
We've been busy with other things and we are about two weeks behind. Usually the place has been gussied up for weeks by now.

We used hot glue to stick styrofoam skeleton parts to the front yard tree. Then we added a plastic cape and a sword........ he kind of looks like he might be a ring wraith.
:D

Here is the house so far. There will be more closer to the big night.

Mom got some plastic skull head decorations from the dollar store. We cut out the eye socket parts and put red plastic in there and wrapped it around the front porch light.


A little table vignette. The candelabra has a little purple sparkle spider in a black sparkle web. We have to carve the pumpkins yet and add the giant bowl of candy.

Porris Bentspine is all ready for the festivities. He is holding a Hubbard squash that will be soup soon. It will be replaced by a Jack o Lantern and he will probably be moved to the lawn.
I apologize once again for the blurry pictures, I'm still having problems with the camera.

Chocolate Cockroaches.

These little cockroaches are a delicious addition to your Halloween treat table, and they are so easy to make. Plus they kind of went with my costume, birds love to crunch on bugs!

I cut up some no name grape licorice strings into 6 cm lengths and set them in threes on a parchment lined baking sheet. Let them curl so two point back and one points forward.

Then I melted some big bars of Presidents Choice chocolate in a double boiler and spooned a small dollop onto the middle of the licorice strings.
Now it looks like a body and legs.

Here Maggs is helping by dropping a mini Rolo head onto the front of each critter and a Presidents Choice praline onto the back of each one to make the body and closed up wings.
They were pretty delicious!

Candy Corn Nails!

I've seen several versions of candy corn nails online. I loved them all.
Here is my version. I used ibd's soak off colours Paradise collection with my white for the candy corn base. The black mini stiletto nails are left over from my weekend Old Crow costume.

10 days and 23 hours till the Haunting begins!!!!!!

BWAH HA HA HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHA HA
(maniacal laughter)