A bit of winter decor

 

Now that it's almost Valentine's Day,  I'm going to share the smidgen of winter decorating I did.  The area pictured above is the top of a shortish bookcase in a corner of the living room.  Some of these same items were here for Christmas decor, but they are lovely and wintry and so they remain -- the card back center, from our good friend Kristina; the beautiful winter pitcher is by Hallmark and was a thrift store find a couple of years ago; and the little cardinal, for whatever reason, was found in a kitchen drawer at my childhood home.

The crewel picture of a skating boy was made by me in the 1970s; the winter tag was made by me a few years ago; the little house in a jar was made by me from a repurposed candle jar; the blue snowflake made by a crafting friend; and the "January" garland was made by my friend Judy.

Inquiring minds might like a closer look at a couple of things.  Below is the back side of the January/winter tag.  It was my first attempt at tag making and I still love it.

This is the front of the tag.  I repurposed a little snowman charm from a defunct necklace.

This adorable project was so much fun to make.  Find out how I did it here: Winter house in a jar.  I'm still astounded that I was able to pull this project together. 

Top 2 shelves of my winter hutch.

A blurry photo.  It's hard to photograph things in jars.  This one was repurposed from a mason jar with no lid, a figurine from a broken snow globe, and a page from an old hymnal.  The song is "Whiter Than Snow", but that's impossible to see from this photo.

A fun Christmas card from my daughter's family and some of my glitter houses.

"Snow" card made by my friend Judy; a cross stitch made by me

The two oldest grandgirls are now adults, but I've always liked this fun snowman photo of them.  The Fire King "Kimberly" mug just seems to fit with winter decor, and the cabin plate was a thrift store find.

And there is some of my simple winter decorating!

A favorite gift from this Christmas

 

One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was made by two of my granddaughters (Julia - 15 and Arielle - 7) with a bit of help from their mom.  I guess you would call this a luminary, or maybe a candle jar.  Whatever you call it, it is pretty!

Photo at top is not the best picture as it was taken with a flash.  However, I do love the reflected tree lights in the photo.  I took another with my Kindle so will try adding that in also to give you a closer look.   Ah yes, this looks better.

I also took a couple Kindle photos in the daylight to show the details better.

The girls also made these for their music teachers (Julia) and Sunday School teacher (Arielle).  It looks as if they decoupaged sheet music, cut to size, and with a snowflake shape cut out of it,  to a pint mason jar with (probably) Mod Podge.  I haven't asked for the crafting particulars, but they did say that their mom cut the snowflake shapes out for them.  The sheet music is a Christmas carol, as you see: mine is O Come All Ye Faithful.  I think this was probably a sheet music printable, but am not sure.  It's lovely, anyway.  Then a simple jute tie around the top and some sweet red berry pips complete the project.  I love it!

Below is a little video of the jar with a flickering tea light inside.  It looks lovely with a real tea light candle (that's what it came with), but the one I used for the video was a battery operated tea light. 

 Isn't this a sweet project?

A pretty winter decoration

Remember those pretty colander centerpieces I shared from  Thelma’s Days, back before Christmas, where Thelma shared several colander centerpieces she had made?  The Christmasy one I made using Thelma's idea is pictured at top.

At the time, I thought this idea could also be used to make a centerpiece that was "winter" and not just Christmas.  Here is what I came up with:

I put this together as the Christmas tree was being undecorated.  I used some new silver and gray balls bought at Walmart after Christmas,

along with vintage balls in various shades of blue and some silver pine cones which I had on hand, plus various sizes and shapes of snowflakes.   I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out.

Brown paper gingerbread held up with strings

... this project is one of my favorite things!

I made these decorative gingerbread men many years ago, and they are still holding up well.  You can see them peeking out through the plaid bows and fabric trees on the chandelier in the photo above.

It seemed to me that it was time to post a craft project here in my daily December posts.  But what to write about?  I knew I'd written about these on my Christmas blog some time ago,  so I checked to see if I'd posted about them here at my kitchen table.  Apparently not!  So here we go.

These ornaments are simple and fun, so I thought others might like to try them as well.

You will need:

* Brown paper bag or a roll of brown kraft paper
* Pencil
* Gingerbread man cookie cutter (optional)
* Polyester fiberfill
* Sewing machine (threaded with color thread of your choice; white, tan, brown, or even red would work)
* Pins
* Thread and needle
* Scissors
* Dimensional squeeze-bottle paints in white, black (or dark brown)  and red

1. First draw (or trace, using the cookie cutter) two gingerbread man shapes for each ornament on the brown paper.  Cut out the shapes.

2. Pin the 2 shapes together and machine-sew most of the way around them, leaving room to poke in some fiberfill.  You don't want them too puffy; just use enough to give them a little dimension.

3. After adding the fiberfill, finish sewing the rest of the way around the shape.  Be sure to backstitch at the beginning and end of your stitching.

4. Thread a needle and add a hanging loop to the top of the gingerbread man by piercing it with the needle, going through both layers.  Trim to size desired and knot ends of thread together at the top.

5. Add eyes, smile, buttons, white "icing" trim and a little red heart if desired, using dimensional paint.

6. Allow paint to dry before hanging the ornament wherever you'd like.

These cute gingerbread men could be used in numerous ways.  If you eliminate the strings (or even if you don't), they would look cute piled in a bowl, maybe with a few real or faux apples and a few evergreen sprigs.

They can be hung from a chandelier as I have often done.  They would look really nice hung in the panes of a window, perhaps with a sprig of evergreen or holly or a red bow tied at the top.  You could use them to trim an indoor wreath or tie them to a wrapped gift.  And of course you could always hang them on the Christmas tree.

Have fun with this idea!

Our trip to the Great North Woods, Part 4

Today I will post about the Tuesday and Wednesday of our trip.  There was some rain on these days and we spent a lot of time indoors.  So we didn't get a lot of photos on these quieter indoor days.

Tuesday morning we went for a walk on the road where the cabin is located.  It wasn't raining at that point and we thought it could be the best chance we would have for a walk.  Below is a photo I took on Beach Road during a visit to Back Lake in late October 2017.  See the blue heron?

Our friend Charlotte had invited us over to her cabin for lunch on Tuesday.  The photo below is from 2017.  It's always a delight to spend time with Charlotte, and she is such a great cook!  She served a delicious lunch as always.

Again, I got no pictures, but I do have these fairly nice Kindle photos of Charlotte's fall flower garden from a previous year.  I'm always surprised at how well her flowers do right into the fall.  She must have just the right location!

As we were leaving her cabin, the rain began.

It was a cozy afternoon and evening in Cabin 3.  Mr. T had brought a large supply of kindling and wood.  We'd also brought along plenty of amusements, from crafts to games to reading materials, DVDs and a jigsaw puzzle.  We had heard rain was predicted for the week, and it rained very hard Tuesday night.

Our Nevada daughter had sent one of these Vintage Baseball Games to her dad for his birthday earlier in September, so we gave that a try.  It turned out to be a really fun game.  So handy for traveling since it comes in a little tin!

Wednesday morning the rain had slackened, but it was still "dripping", as one of our daughters used to say.  We spent a cozy morning in the cabin.  We watched Anne of Green Gables (from a set of DVDs we had brought with us), during which I worked steadily at crafting a bunch of mailing envelopes from repurposed calendar pages.  These envelopes have turned out to be the perfect size for mailing out vintage sewing patterns that are ordered from my Etsy shop.

 These are examples of mailers I have made in the past, but some were exactly the same as these.  It's a fun and satisfying project, as I can't bear to waste the gorgeous calendars.

 This was an easy project to bring along when I packed for our getaway.

After a late lunch, we decided to try going for a hike here.

However, the trails were very wet from the previous night's rain.  We did go along one for quite a way, but it was much wetter than we liked.  One interesting thing we noticed is that the "bog bridges" across boggy areas of the trail were covered over with chicken wire.  What a great idea to provide traction on the wet wood and leaves on these bridges!

Rather than hike any further, we decided to head for the nearest town with a grocery store.  We were having people over for coffee the next afternoon, and needed to pick up some decaf.  We got a few other necessities as well, and also located a Walgreen's where we could get a new camera card.  Ours was filled up!

We had seen the view above not long before we reached the trailhead.  The Connecticut River was racing through a tunnel of glorious fall foliage, pretty even on an overcast late afternoon. But I knew my Kindle would never do it justice.  We had to wait until the return trip, with the replacement camera card in place, to get this photo.

It was another quiet, cozy evening on Wednesday night.  I can't even remember for sure what we ate for supper that night, but I can tell you that it would have been quick and easy.  That's definitely my cooking style on a getaway!

To be continued ... The last installment will cover Thursday and Friday.  Stay tuned!

This 'n' that in the kitchen

I had a few kitchen experiments that turned out well in the past week or so, and just wanted to share them.  I love it when an idea to use up a leftover (or solve some other similar problem) works out well!

I'd mentioned that last Sunday was our corn roast at church.  We ended up bringing some of the leftover corn home, and I reheated it to serve alongside a couple of different meals -- wrap sandwiches and turkey burgers, if I remember right.  I had a couple ears left over after that,  and decided to cut the corn off the cob and put it in this Hearty Butternut Squash Soup. 

In that same soup, I also used up a few more leftovers: a quart of chicken broth, frozen from the last time I cooked chicken breasts in the crockpot; and instead of using fresh sliced peppers and chopped onions, I used dibs and dabs of frozen ones I had on hand.  I changed the recipe up a lot; used frozen pureed squash, left out the beans, and cut the quantities down a good bit.  The soup turned out fantastic and fed us for several meals. 

And then there was the leftover blueberry sauce.  I mentioned in my Friday five that our dear friends Sam and Jenn and their boys had joined us for supper last Sunday. Mr. T had made waffles, and I made this

BERRY SAUCE FOR PANCAKES OR WAFFLES

1/2 cup sugar
1 Tblsp. cornstarch
1/3 cup water
2 cups blueberries, raspberries, OR cut-up strawberries

Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a 2-quart saucepan. Gradually stir in the water. Add the fruit and bring mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Serve warm. Makes about 2 cups.

I had made a batch of blueberry sauce and one of strawberry.  Nearly a pint of the blueberry one was left.   Not wanting it to mold,  I cast about for a way to use it.  We also had in the fridge a cup or two of fresh blueberries that a landowner on a logging job had given to my hubby.  I mixed them with the sauce, put it in the bottom of a pie pan, and made this

DOWN EAST BLUEBERRY COBBLER
3 cups blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. grated lemon zest (optional but yummy)
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tblsp. butter
-----------------
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tblsp. sugar
2 Tblsp. cold butter
1/3 cup cream or evaporated milk

Heat oven to 425º. In a bowl, toss the berries with the next four ingredients (sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla). Place the mixture into a 9-inch glass or ceramic pie plate. Cut the butter into pieces and scatter over the berries.

Sift the 1 cup flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together into a mixing bowl. Cut in the 2 Tblsp. butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the cream and stir with a fork until the dough comes together. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface; knead 30 seconds or so. Roll the dough into a round slightly smaller than your pie plate and about 1/4 inch thick. Place the dough over the berries in the pie plate and cut several deep slashes in the top.

Bake the cobbler at 425º for 20-25 minutes, until the crust is golden and the fruit is tender. Cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

Serves 4.

This experiment turned out to be absolutely delicious.  I had made this cobbler in the past but I would have had no idea it could turn out so well using the blueberry sauce.

(I left out the sugar in the blueberry part, and also omitted the lemon component because I had put lime juice in the sauce.  I also didn't put the vanilla in with the blueberries, but put it in the topping instead.  I did dot the filling with the butter, though.)

So last week I bought some strawberries at the supermarket.  I had no real idea how I was going to use them, but the price was great,  so I bought 2 boxes.  Of course you know that I didn't get to use them right away.  So I ended up tossing maybe a cup of them, and then decided I would try that cobbler recipe again using diced strawberries instead of blueberries.

This time I did use the sugar, and I think a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch would have been a good idea as well.  I also mixed in about a half cup of strawberry sauce that was left from the waffle buffet.  Again, I left out the lemon zest and juice, since I had put lemon juice in the sauce -- and again, I put the vanilla in the topping rather than the filling.

This also came out very good, though not as good as the blueberry one.  It tastes like warm strawberry shortcake in a pie plate, which is not a bad thing.

And then lastly for my kitchen escapades, a recipe I've blogged about before:   I made one of these S’mores Pizzas to take to a get-together on Saturday.  As you read the post (if you click over), you will see that the recipe actually makes two, but I decided to make just one because I didn't want any leftovers.  What was I thinking?

Photo from  Five Heart Home

These are so good and always a hit, but the reception of this dessert on this occasion had to set some kind of a record.  (To simplify serving at the picnic, I had cut the pizza at home, using a sharp knife dipped frequently in hot water to preserve the look of the marshmallows.  It worked really well.)

The serving table was pretty crowded with food, so I waited until everyone had been through the food line at least once before bringing out this pizza.  Well.  I am not in any way exaggerating when I say that within 3 minutes of placing this on the table, there was nothing left but crumbs.

Lesson learned.  Next time I'll bring two.

Those are my recent kitchen adventures.  What have you been cooking and/or baking lately?

December 30 -- Making little boxes out of used Christmas cards

Here is one more project using cards.  These are fun!

Most people have probably seen those little boxes made from Christmas cards. These are the easiest directions I have ever found. Most of the instructions I've seen involve a lot of folding and drawing of complicated lines, etc. These are actually easy!

The boxes can obviously be made from any greeting card, not just Christmas ones. These make great little gift boxes or can be used to hold office or craft supplies like paper clips, tacks, push pins, beads, etc. Christmas ones can be hung on the tree or piled beneath a miniature tree, where they look adorable.  One creative person used them to decorate a wreath, as I saw in an old magazine (photo below), but obviously this would need to be an indoor wreath to protect the boxes from dampness.

As you look over your stash of old cards, it will quickly become clear to you that not every card will work for this.  It needs to be either an allover design or perhaps something floral, like the poinsettia and mistletoe cards I chose.  (If you don't have any suitable cards and want to try this anyway, then simply use any cards you like and then wrap the finished boxes in wrapping paper.)

Here's what you do:

1. Cut apart a greeting card along the fold, separating the front from the back.

2. Start with the back part of the card. Using a ruler, draw lines from corner to corner on the unprinted side of the card to form an X. The center is where the two lines of the X meet.

3. Fold up each of the four sides of the card to meet the center of the X. Crease the folds well.

4. Open the card back up to reveal the creases you've made. Now, holding the card vertically, carefully cut on the two vertical crease lines at the top and bottom of the card, just to the point where they intersect with the nearest horizontal crease.

5. Fold in the tabs you just created by following step 4. You can now see how this is going to form a box. Tape the tabs inside the box. (You may find that each end of the box -- the part between the tabs -- stands up a bit higher than the rest of the box. If this happens, it is not a problem. You can simply fold the excess down inside, over the tabs, and tape it in place. Or, if you prefer, you can simply trim off the excess card before taping.) You have just made the bottom of the box!

6. Now, repeat steps 2 through 5 with the front part of the card, which will make the top of your box.

7. Obviously, this produces a box top and bottom which are exactly the same size, which sometimes means that the cover doesn't go on too easily. Usually, if you just squeeze the sides of the box gently, the cover will go on just fine.

These directions look far more complicated than the process actually is. I've made loads of these boxes with kids over the years, and it really is easy enough for even a 5-year-old to do with some guidance and maybe a bit of help with the creasing. So have fun with these cute little boxes!

 

December 29 -- Making gift tags from your old Christmas cards

Christmas cards are so beautiful!  I simply love them.  As I continue cleaning out my childhood home, I am discovering afresh that this was also my mother's opinion.  She bought many, she sent many, and she certainly saved many, both new and used.  I am also discovering that many, many people love and collect vintage Christmas cards, and I have the Etsy sales to prove it.  I also have a good-sized vintage card collection of my own.

Yet I find that I simply cannot keep all of the cards which we receive.  I do keep them in a basket for a year, hope springing eternal that one year I will actually follow through on pulling out a card at supper each evening to pray for the person who sent it.  After that year is up, the cards are fair game to be repurposed in other ways.   One of the most obvious and easy ways to use your old Christmas cards is to make gift tags from them. There are a couple of ways to do this.

Sometimes you can use the entire front of a card as a tag, if it has enough blank space to write the to/from information. These are especially nice for family members -- for example, you might have a card front that says "Merry Christmas to a Dear Granddaughter." This is a natural to paste to the top of your granddaughter's Christmas present. These can add a real decorative element to a package wrapped in a solid color like red, green, blue, silver, etc.

The other way is to cut shapes from your old cards to make tags. You can make simple shapes like rectangles, squares or circles. Current, Inc. sells a set of tag templates which work very nicely and has quite an assortment of shapes. A book of children's Christmas stencils would also work well. Once you have cut your shapes you can punch a hole in each one and add some red, green or metallic string to make a hanging tag. 

You could even embellish your tags with glitter, touches of paint, bits of ribbon, or other embellishments, if you are so minded.   Of course, many cards are already well glittered!

What if your family doesn't receive a lot of cards but you'd still like to do this project?  Easy -- just let friends or relatives know you would be happy to take used cards off their hands.  I promise you will have all the cards you will ever need!

This simple project is a fun way to keep your kids busy during Christmas break -- and I personally find that doing a project like this, even all by myself, is very relaxing and a great stress reliever.  There is nothing like cutting and pasting, for me.

Have fun with this idea!

Simple summer crafting

This will be a post short on words but heavy on pictures -- and mostly scans, at that.  But I have managed some very simple crafting these past few weeks and wanted to share.

At top is my most recent Crocheted Scalloped Hot Mat.  The ombre is called Buttercream and I think it is so pretty.  The light blue edge is called Aquamarine.

Last month I shared pictures of the wrap skirts I made for my granddaughter Julia's American Girl dolls, using a pattern from You Can Make This.  Julia actually took photos of the dolls modeling the reversible skirt with the two different shirts, so I'm sharing those here.

I've also crocheted a couple of necklaces from this pattern:   Trellis Necklace Tutorial.  I hope to make at least one more.  They are so easy and quick to make, once you have cut the yarn to length.

Multicolored

Green-blue

You can read my post about the first ones I made here: Pretty Crocheted Necklaces.

And I've made quite a few mailing envelopes from calendar pages.  You can find a tutorial for those here: handmade bubble mailers.  The ones I have been making are not for fragile items, so I've been eliminating the bubble wrap from those.  Skipping the step of adding in the bubble wrap makes the process go much faster.  I am just showing a couple of the mailers I've made.

The calendar covers are sturdy enough to make mailers without reinforcement, but for the inside calendar pages I cover them with clear contact paper to make them stronger and more weather proof.

This is what mailer #1 looks like on the back.

 

And this is what mailer #2 looks like on the back.

 I've also started making some envelopes approximately 5x7 inches from the calendar page pieces left over from each mailer.  These Gooseberry Patch calendars are too pretty to throw any of the pages away!

And then this past weekend while on an overnight mini-vacation, I managed to complete an embroidered tea towel while relaxing on the shore of Otter Lake.

The design is a freebie from Bird Brain Designs.  So much fun!

The folded tea towel

I folded this one a bit differently to show the striped edge.  Isn't it pretty?  This was made from the dish toweling fabric that one cuts to the desired length and then hems.

There's my simple summer crafting in a nutshell.  Hope others have enjoyed this as much as I have!