Secret Lives By Terry Border

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A creative guy by the name of Terry Border took a concept, what would happen if regular everyday things took on a life of their, and decided to make that happen through art. In his gallery, pictures like the one above takes regular items like a raisin and puts them into a "real life" situation.  Poor elderly "grape" up there surrounded by the youngsters.  Even me at my age, and I'm not that old people, I can relate to that feeling.  LOL!  The gallery is full of other fun and cute pictures.  One of my favorite is a nibbled and kissed on chocolate bar locking himself into a room trying to save his life.  You have to see it to get it, but trust me, its awesome.  In searching for more from Terry, I found a picture not in his gallery on the page from article that I just had to share with you.

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Too cute and funny right?  Of course now this makes me crave a powdered doughnut, and I'm trying to change my lifestyle and diet. *sigh* Someone out there have one for me, ok.  Thanks.  :-)  Oh and in doing a little search I found where you can see more of his art from this set of objects he calls "Bent Objects", I was in luck and found his blog where he shares them.  Awesome.  There's also a main website, but it doesn't look like its recently been updated.  I'd stick with the blog and his Twitter to keep up with him.

But I just had to share his neat work with you all today.  I love how creative he is and I can't wait to go through his blog and see all that he's done.  Yes, I'm excited. :-)  And on that note I will say good bye to you lovely people.  I shall be back soon with another fun crafty find from the net.  Until then, be good and I will talk to you soon.  Bye for now.

Craving fried and powdery baked goods,
Michelle

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter?

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So I’m sure most of us learned as a child to sing a favorite Christmas carol, O Christmas Tree, I’ve heard it in both English and German many of times.  But it seems the years since that song was written that Christmas trees have been changing and getting quite, dare I say it, crafty.  As evident from the picture above of a crafty Christmas tree made out of Mountain Dew cans and topped with a Mountain Dew bottle, Christmas tress are a’changin’.  After seeing this picture I was curious what other crafty Christmas trees were out there so I googled Creative Christmas trees, and boy did I find some unique and creative ones.  And of course I had to come share my findings with you.    Have a look at these cool trees.  Click the “source” links under the pictures to go to the website these trees are hanging out on.

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Plywood tree.  I saw a miniature version of this tree as well.  Pretty cool, and you can actually hang ornaments on them or just leave them as is.

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Christmas ornaments hung on wall in the shape of a Christmas tree.  Love this idea.  Also made me think you could something like this with varying sizes of picture frames.

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This is more for outdoor decorating.  A Christmas tree made out of lighted balls.  Some of the trees made around the world will impress you.

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Get your kids in on the creative fun by having them make a tree and decorations out of Lego.

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A ladder dressed up as a Christmas tree.  Love the idea and even the look of it.  It just seems to fit for some weird reason.

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This is so cool.  It looks like an actual snow covered tree in a house.  Made easily with rolled cotton and snow glitter.

I do hope you’ve checked out the websites these pictures came from because these pictures are only scratching the surface of the cool stuff out there.  I hope, perhaps, that you have gotten some ideas on how to think outside of the…errr…um…tree box, and came up with some ideas on how to make your Christmas a little bit more unique this year.  I’m collecting these ideas to try out when I finally get a place of my own. 

And now that the Christmas season is in full swing, I’m hunting the web for unique and interesting items in the handmade community.  I will be sharing my cool finds with you in the coming days and weeks.  Hopefully you’ll find that thing you’ve always wanted from my searches and reveals.  Fingers crossed tight that you will.    For now I am off.  I’m wayyyy behind on Nanowrimo and I think I want to try typing some tonight.  *Looks at clock.*  Or maybe I’ll get some sleep instead and start catching up tomorrow.    Talk to you lovelies soon.  Be good and crafty until then.  Bye for now.

Yawning from looking at the little yawn emoticon,
Michelle

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween to all of your freaks and ghouls out there!    I hope you are all playing it safe and having a fun time tonight.  I’m doing my usual Halloween thing of spending the night in.  It’s raining something horrible out there so I don’t think there were any trick-or-treaters out tonight.  My friend even took her kids to the mall because we got hit with one of the coldest and wettest Halloweens in a long time. I remember Halloweens just a few years back where you had to wear short sleeve shirts because it was hot an muggy.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the cold, but the wind and rain make it extra brrrrrrr.  So I hope you are staying warm tonight if your neck of the woods is unseasonably cold too tonight.

Right now I am currently counting down the hours to the start of Nanorwrimo.  I am being a Nano Rebel this year by not writing a novel.  I’m going to be finishing up a script for the photostory I’ve been trying to finish for a long time now.  I think my time of Nanowrimo is coming to an end.  I don’t know if I’ll be doing it next year.  I do cherish the crazed writing during November, I just think I want to start making that an everyday thing than just a one month thing, so I don’t know about future Nanos.  But this year is my first as a Rebel and I’m kind of excited about it.  I don’t want to write a novel just to write a novel and waste time on something I’ll hate, so I will write the script which will hopefully help me write my story and get it done so I can start taking pictures in December and start putting it up next year.  Fingers crossed.

As for other things I am doing right now, I’m focusing on my health right now.  There are a lot of things I need to get done by the end of the year.  I have something I am dreading coming up in 28 days, and I don’t really want to talk about it right now because I’m that nervous about it.  It’s really silly to be nervous about it, but when I explain it…on the 28th or 29th of next month, then I’m sure it will be clearer why I dreaded it.  I’m working on inventory for my shop.  I finally found a place to put my shop.  I think that was another problem for me, where to put my shop, but I found a nice place for it to be that a lot of other doll sellers are on so it works.  And well, I guess that’s about it right now.  So the goals for the end of the month is to work on the immediate health issues at hand, get through that situation I’m dreading at the end of next month, and get the shop open.  I know I won’t make the Christmas rush with my shop, but that’s ok, as long as I get it open.  Oh, and yes I am still working on emails, comments, etc., etc. etc., you get the point.  I’m working on all that.  Now that some stress has been taken off of me with my parents health either doing better or being looked at, my mom still worries me some with her heart issues, I’m getting a little more calmer and I can focus better.  I’m hoping this next month will be busy and productive for me.  I’m ending this year on a good note, no matter what.  And NO Michelle, that isn’t jinxing it for you by saying it aloud.   

And on that crazy note, I will bring this post to a close.  I will talk to you lovelies soon.  Be good until then.  Bye for now. 

Realizing she needs to get up and exercise some of this candy off,
Michelle

Homemade Butterfingers

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Ok, so about a month ago I found this recipe online for homemade Butterfingers.  Supposedly candy corn, peanut better, and compound chocolate make for a spot-on replica of the crunchy peanut butter treat.  So I was super excited to try my hand at making it.  So I got a two pound bag of candy corn…you only need a pound for one batch, a 18 oz. jar of JIF honey peanut butter…you only need 16 oz. but I used the whole jar, and compound chocolate…I couldn’t find any at the store I was at but knew you could make some from chocolate chips.  So with my ingredients in hand I set out to make the most awesome treat in the world…or so I thought.  What’s to follow is my experience with the recipe and what I learned about it. 

So first of all, I had a big two pound bag of candy corn.  Nothing wrong with that right?  Except that the candy corn was for Halloween…as in trick-or-treating.  What does that mean?  The candy corn came divided into individual baggies.  I needed a pound for my recipe.  So I had to sit there and cut the baggies open to get a pound.  If you are doing this recipe, be sure to get the bag from the regular candy section. It’s just a bag of candy corn.  You tear it open and you are good to go.  It took forever to get a pound of candy corn from those baggies.

So next I put the candy corn in the microwave for a minute.  Stirred.  In for 15 seconds.  Stirred.  in for 15 seconds.  Stirred.  In for 15 seconds.  Stirred.  You’re getting the idea right?  Now when you stir it be sure to fully stir because I think some of the candy was cooking on the bottom but not getting stirred and got a little hard.  But yeah, so that took a little while but I got it melted, but it was quickly cooling on me, so I had to hurry and get the peanut better into the bowl.  This lead to lesson learning two.

Ok, so this hot mucky orange mess in your bowl is starting to cool no sooner that microwave turns off.  You have got to get that peanut better stirred in and then put it all in a pan to fully cool.  But like I said, this stuff is already cooling. This is where I made my big mistake I think.  When I pulled the candy corn out and placed it on a tray on the counter I had to open the peanut butter…as in take off the top and pull off the protective seal, and scoop it out and into the candy corn blob.  I stirred every time I got a little something in, but this stuff was cooling fast.  By the time I was done the stuff at the bottom was hard as a rock and I gave up fully blending so I wouldn’t end up with a rock in the bowl.  So I quickly scooped it into a parchment paper lined 8x8 pan.  Now what I quickly learned was that I should have scooped the peanut butter out into a separate bowl and have it waiting with a spatula to quickly scoop into the candy corn the second it comes out.

So I put the mess into a parchment lined 8x8 pan and put it into the fridge.  I believe this was mistake number 3.  Why? Because when I pulled it back out it was super hard to cut.  I think if it would have been allowed to harden at room temperature it would have been easy to cut and not have crumbled like mine did.  But after some hard work, and yes a little bit of sweat, I got it cut into some chunks.  Now it was time for chocolate.

Ok, so I couldn’t find almond bark or melting chips at the store I was at, so I had to pick up an alternative that I wasn’t to happy using, but it was the next best thing.  Chocolate chips.  Yes, like the kind you put in chocolate chip cookies.  So you’d think I would just melt them and coat my candy with it right?  Wrong.  Seems chocolate chips are too dense when melted.  It needs some fat in there to make it flow more.  Enter vegetable shortening.  Yes, we are talking about the Crisco here people.  Ok so here’s the recipe of how to make compound chocolate out Hershey’s chocolate chips.  Ok, so for every cup of chocolate chips you have, you add a tablespoon of shortening to the mix.  I used two cups of chocolate chips, roughly the whole 12 oz. bag, and two tablespoons of shortening.  I pop that into the microwave and microwave it for 40 seconds and then stir.  Then I put it in for 20 seconds and stirred.  20 seconds then stirred.  20 seconds then stirred.  You get the idea here again right?  Good.  So once it was melted I realized that I hadn’t cut the peanut butter mix beforehand, another thing I would suggest.  So I thought I could do it quickly.  As stated above, it took a while.  Well once I got it cut I was worried the chocolate would be hard again, but oddly enough it wasn’t.  It was still smooth and flowing…something I must admit freaked me out a bit.  Makes you wonder what that stuff does in the ol’ arteries.  But I digress.  Moving on.

So here I had my nice homemade compound chocolate.  I had two mini racks of yet to be coated Butterfinger bars.  So I started pouring the chocolate over the bars.  Mistake number 4.  Dip it people.  Your chocolate will go farther.  I didn’t realize that until I got done with the first rack.  The second rack I dipped as best I could in what was left of the chocolate…I was not making another batch.  For the most part things got covered, on top.  The bottoms of most of them were basically bare.  So dipping surely is the best way to stretch your chocolate and get full coverage.

I popped my Butterfingers into the fridge for about an hour to set.  I pulled them out and went to try one.  Mistake number 5.  People, when you are messing with candy or sticky stuff in general, coat whatever surface you are using in cooking spray or some cooking oil of some kind because it will stick otherwise.  I had chunks pull off in my hand but then leave the bottoms of the chunks attached to the rack.  *Shaking my head.*  So I grabbed a flipper and scraped off the bars as best I could.  Once off, I finally got the try the fruits of my labor.  Final thoughts?  The peanut better part tastes shockingly like the Butterfinger peanut butter, but it was more soft and chewy than hard and crunchy.  The product as a whole?  Yeah with the chocolate I wasn’t tasting Butterfinger, even though my friend swears it did taste like it.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t Butterfinger.  I still have a ton left in the fridge and I planned to give it a second try tomorrow since it will have had some time to “age”, and then see if maybe I can taste Butterfinger.  As it stands right now I don’t see myself making this recipe again.  It just wasn’t what I expected.  So now I have tons of peanut butter, chocolate chips and candy corn sitting around.  Humm, well the candy corn is in baggies so I can eat those as a little sugar kick…which I really don’t need after my visit with the dentist the other day.  As for the chocolate, there’s always uses for chocolate, so I’m not worried about it sitting around for too long.  And the peanut butter is destined for good ol’ fashion pb&j’s.  Yum.  But all-in-all I’d call this experiment a mixed success. I got what I started out to make…well…sort of, and it doesn’t taste bad just not really like Butterfinger.  So while it’s not 100% what I wanted it wasn’t 100% what I didn’t want.  So we will loosely call this a success. 

So, tell me what you think.  Still want to try your own Butterfingers?  Have you already done it?   What did it taste like?  Did you use something different from me to get the taste you got?  Please share, I’d love to know.  Maybe with the right encouragement I’ll be willing to give it another try…next year. 

And on that note I will bring the post to close.  It’s just after…4 a.m.!!!  What am I still doing up?!?   I wanted to craft in the morning!!!  I guess that’s not happening.  Oh well, early afternoon crafting is just as fun.  Hope all of you have a great and crafty weekend and I will talk to you soon.  Be good until then.  Bye for now.

Yawning and stretching,
Michelle

Something Like Summer

So while I should have been busy crafting today, I realized a book my sister loaned to me 2 weeks ago on my Nook was about to expire, so I had to finish it tonight. I just finished it and I must say I was impressed.  The book is called Something Like Summer, and it was a rather interesting read.

It’s a romance novel about two teenage boys, Ben and Tim, who meet one summer due to Ben’s crush on the mysterious new guy in town Tim.  Something happen that lead to Ben and Tim being together.  They had a hot and steamy love affair, but some issues caused them to have to split up.  What follows is 10 years of life, love, and chance meetings.  Some really sad things happen along the way that leads to a bittersweet ending.  I wouldn’t say this book was destined to be one of the great classics of our time, but it was a rather good read.

Some parts I felt were rushed in the story, but it flow non-stop so that was good.  The author, Jay Bell who is a gay man himself, told the story in such a way that you didn’t view the story as “a love story between two guys” but more as “a love story between two people”.  I will warn you now, some of the sex scenes are written in a slightly graphic way, but nothing to raunchy…nothing worse than what you’d find in your male/female romance novels.

But I think anyone could relate to this story.  Young love, first love, and even a love triangle, which is what our main characters find themselves in after a while.  So if you are into romance novels, pick this story up.  I really think you will like it.

Sadly though, in reading the book it has gotten to late to craft, so I guess I will watch some things online and call it a day and make better use of my time tomorrow.  Not that today was a total loss.  I got to spend time with a friend and finish a good book.  Win/win?  I’d say so.    Talk to you all later.  Be good until then.  Bye for now.

Dreaming about what tomorrow will bring,
Michelle

This Is Halloween

As the creepy  and cool holiday of Halloween nears, a lot of people are letting their creepy and cool sides hang out.  From cool decorations and costumes to awesome…Halloween lights?  Humm, I understand lights for Christmas, but Halloween?  I’d never seen a big Halloween light display, until today that is.  Seems this family Riverside, CA really likes Halloween.  On their Youtube channel they have videos dating back to 2008 of their Halloween extravaganzas.  Here’s their light show for this year.  It’s pretty awesome.

I Encourage You To Drop It Like It’s Hot Today

Hey guys and gals!  After coming off a somber weekend that, for me personally, is going to lead into a stressful week, I thought perhaps we all need a quick laugh and an interesting way to start the day and week on.  Herein comes the part where I will now encourage you to drop it like it’s hot.

So yes people, grab your beverage of choice, mine would be water, and just get down with your funky self.  Don’t worry about who may be watching.  If they laugh, they are only jealous of your sweet moves.  Drop it, lock it, pop it, do whatever the heck you want with it, just as long as you are moving and having fun.  Life’s a party and we are all born to dance to the swingin’ tunes that are playing.  So no matter what is going to happen this week, known or unknown, just slap on a smile and drop it like it’s hot.  Perhaps your willing to just be free and enjoy life will be contagious and persuade someone else to join in on the fun, which in my book would be awesome.    So what are you waiting for?  Get out there and shake it!  And have an awesome Monday and beginning to your week. 

Drop it like it’s hotttt, drop it like it’s hotttt…

  See you guys in the next post.  Be good until then.  Bye for now. 

Shaking her groove thing all over town,
Michelle

Script Frenzy 2011, that’s a wrap!

Yes ladies and gentleman, with mere hours to spare, I finished my first Script Frenzy!  It was fun.  I wasn’t stressed about it like I usually am with NaNoWriMo, which is changing and that upsets me some, but that is another story.  But yeah, done done and more done.  Anddd out of it I got 21 episodes written out.  So did I finish writing them all?  Yeah right.  LOLLL!!!  But it’s a dent and the story is quickly coming together for me.  I think working on the story brought it back to life for me and I think I’ll be able to knock out the rest fairly easy…if I sit my butt down and do it.  Then take the pictures, and then upload it and I’ll be done with that story and can move on to my next one.  Pretty cool.

Well now I am off to try to write out some scheduling for May.  Everything I planned to do in April didn’t happen because I had that “I’ll get to it” mentality and never did.  So next month is going to be planned.  I have a lot to prepare for.  If you want to keep up with any of that stuff feel free to hope on over to The Mouse Pad, that I’ve chosen to be more of a craft/lifestyle blog and just keep The House of Mouse my doll and toy related blog.  Oh speaking of dolls, I got two dolls yesterday that I want to show you guys.  They are Target exclusives and I wanted them both for characters in my new doll story I will be doing.  I got them now because they are exclusives, will be gone soon, and are so cool.  I’ll try to take a picture of them later.  I want to find a good light source so you can see an interesting comparison.  Ok, gonna go.  Hope you all have a wonderful last day of April.  Remember about your rabbits in the morning.    Bye for now. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

One Man Disney Movie

Ok, one last one for tonight.  I was watching Jackson Pearce’s live show tonight and she mentioned the One Man Disney Movie and someone put a link in the chat and I went to go watch it.  Awesome, awesome, awesomeeeeee.  If you like Disney movies or just great singing from a very entertaining guy then this is a must see!  Enjoy!

Ok, now seriously, I’m off to watch that movie.  Night. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Avenue Q

So if you can’t tell I’ve been spending a lot of time watching stuff online.  Today I decided to tackle a recording of Avenue Q.  Not the best recording of it, but you get the idea of what’s going on.  So I thought I’d share it with you all.  Enjoy.

Talk to you all soon.  I have some interesting posts coming up soon.  Just need to sit down to write them.  Stay tuned.    Be good until then and bye for now. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Thanks a lot John.

Ok, so the wonderful John who writes “From the Brain of John”, drew the coolest comic that was based around the song “So Much Better” from the Broadway musical “Legally Blonde – The Musical”.  Well I surfed around Youtube to find out more about the musical and found out that MTV aired the whole play back in 2007.  Well you know it had to be online, right?  Well I went and searched it out and found it and watched it last night even though I was dead tired.  I enjoyed it and plan to watch it again.  So in a way to share with you and have a place to store the link for each viewing, I give you “Legally Blonde – The Musicial”.  Thank John for this awesomeness because without him I doubt I would have searched out the play and found this awesomeness.  So enjoy and sing along! 

Part 1-

 

Part 2-

Now I think I will watch Avenue Q and an old movie I want to watch first before I post about it.  Enjoy Elle Woods and her friends. 

Loves ya,
Mouse