Pumpkins for the Mantle

After great success with decoupaging foam pumpkins for church decorations, I decided to make some for myself. I waited until Michael’s had the carvable pumpkins at 50% off, and then I bought several in sizes that would fit on my mantle. 

I looked for autumn-friendly quilter’s prints at several stores until I found the colors I was looking for at Hancock Fabrics. No oranges and reds for me! I wanted to stick to the greens and yellows of my home decor, but I found only greens and browns. I decided that would work just fine.

The process was the same for these pumpkins: a coat of primer (this time I used gesso), tearing the fabric into strips and applying to the pumpkins using Mod Podge, and a final coat of clear sealer. Easy, easy. 

 A large pumpkin in a green print, and a smaller pumpkin in a tiny dark brown print.

On the left side of the mantel, a large pumpkin in the reverse print as the green print, and a smaller pumpkin in a smaller green vining print. 

 A few small china pumpkins are scattered throughout.

 This shows the scale of larger pumpkin to the smaller pumpkin better.

 Large green print up close.

One candlestick has a bit of leftover trim from the pumpkins we made for church.

Sparklers

I made Fourth of July Sparklers for a treat at the symphony orchestra outdoor concert tonight. Easy, easy treat to make. You will need:

A 10-oz bag of pretzel rods (I used Snyder’s of Hanover)

A tub of white icing

3 bottles of patriotic sprinkles (1.75 oz)

Cover a rimmed baking sheet with waxed paper or parchment paper. Break the pretzel rods in half, if desired. Empty a bottle of sprinkles onto a plate. Open the icing tub, remove the seal, and nuke icing about 15-20 seconds. Stir well. 

Dip the broken end of each pretzel in the tub down to the bottom, remove, and allow to drip back in the container. Roll the icing portion in the sprinkles. Place on the waxed paper. Repeat with remaining pretzel halves. When complete, chill in the refrigerator an hour or so.

You can do all the little broken pieces in the bag too. 

You can keep the pretzels whole if you want, but they don’t have the same sweet/salty balance. We liked them better broken in half.

Little Easter Flags

Browsing on Pinterest today, I found some cute little muslin flags. I don’t know how they made them, but it gave me inspiration to make my own little muslin flags for an Easter centerpiece.

First I had to hunt up my yards of muslin fabric….somewhere in this house. Found. In a box in the garage. Then I pulled out bamboo skewers, the drawer of rubber stamps, Martha Stewart craft paint, and fabric glue.

I guessed at the size to cut the flags, and later, when I measured them, it turned out that they are 3″x5″, just the size of an index card. I cut 30 of them.

I spread one short edge of the muslin pieces with fabric glue, about 1/2″ in, then I put a skewer near the edge and rolled the fabric over it. Pressed down to make it stick well, and repeated with all the flags.

Those took only a moment to dry so I was off to the fun part: decorating the faces.

I used a brayer to “ink” my stamps with paint, and stamp the center of each flag with a design. When they dried, I mimicked the design on the other side of most of the flags. Turns out, not all my stamps were mirror image, so the two designs front to back didn’t always line up well. With sunlight hitting them, the mis-match shows clearly. So I stopped doing the reverse when they didn’t match up.

I found that it was much easier to match up the front and back when I used clear stamps, and not so easy when I used foam stamps. I love those clear stamps!

I put them in a few of my vintage milk bottles for display.

Decorating for Easter II

I don’t go all out with Easter decorations around my house, but I do like to add a little bit of vintage look to the dining room buffet.

I began with an embroidered cloth I purchased in Paris 10 years ago. Then I layered on fun decorations I’ve collected over the years. Above is a chick pulling an egg cart, holding a filigree egg. It was from TJ Maxx, if I remember correctly.

Under the dome is real paper grass and three old pompom chicks. One was always in my Easter basket when I was a child. I remember having it when I was three years old.

A wood Easter sign from Hob Lob two years ago.

Cute chick egg cups, also from Paris, with painted wooden eggs in the cup sections. The eggs I purchased many years ago at Michael’s; they were painted a shiny white. This year I rubbed them up with a sanding sponge, then I painted them pale blue with Martha Stewart’s craft paint. I might speckle them with a bit of brown, but maybe not. I haven’t decided.

In the black flower bucket I created an Easter tree with crape myrtle branches, sprayed white. Decorated eggs hang from it. It doesn’t photograph well, so it’s not shown.

I’m linking to Met Monday at BNOTP.

Decorating for Easter

The ladies Aesthetics Team at church spent the afternoon decorating the church for Easter today. We dragged out two huge tubs of silk floral supplies and then we sorted through them, looking for spring-like colors. After grouping like with like, we made bundles of each group, then wrapped them in brown paper. We gathered up assorted tin pails and buckets and plopped the paper-wrapped bundles inside.

Gathered together on the narthex table, under a large mirror, it looks like a French flower market. Very festive and springy!

A Valentine Dinner

I always try to make a heart-themed dinner for Valentine’s Day, but the day almost escaped me this year. Somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 this afternoon I realized what day it was, and that I needed to get busy.

My usual approach is to make a heart-shaped meatloaf, but we were all out of raw ground beef. So I thought a bit and came up with this menu:

Shepherd’s Pie
Tossed Salad
Berry Cobbler a la Mode

The Shepherd’s Pie is made with leftover beef roast, leftover potatoes (turned into mashed potatoes for the top “crust”), carrots, peas, and gravy from leftover stock. At the last minute I sprinkled paprika through a heart cookie cutter to garnish the top.

For the tossed salad, I added artichoke hearts and sliced beets cut into hearts with a tiny cookie cutter.

The berry cobbler was made with raspberries, the only fruit I had in the freezer. I baked it in my heart pan, and then we used up the last few tablespoons of vanilla ice cream in the freezer.

I also dropped a few drops of red food coloring into our water pitcher to make every bit of our meal festive.

I decorated the other family members’ place settings with a red heart topped with a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup (their favorite).

Valentine Hearts

I often arrive at the party late, or rather, I arrive at the home decor ideas “party” late. Case in point: I decided just this week that I would like to have a few mercury glass hearts to tuck into the faux snow inside a cloche. But I don’t have any mercury glass hearts, so I had to go shopping. That’s where my idea-lateness becomes a problem: there are no hearts out there in shoppingville, let alone mercury glass hearts.

I looked and looked in vain, and then I happened to glance in a bin of very out of season miscellaneous leftovers at Ikea. There I saw a box of six bronzy-goldy plastic hearts! I snatched them up even though they had nothing to do with mercury or with glass. At least they were heart shapes.

At home, I got out five cans of spray paint: bright shiny silver; duller silver; shiny gold; white; and black. First I sprayed several coats of the two silvers at once, with a can in each hand (try it, it takes some coordination to do it). Then I misted on the black by holding the can at shoulder height and spraying downward to the hearts laying on the floor. I followed that with a light dusting of white done the same way, and finally, a mist of gold. (Click on above photo to see detail.)

Now they are at home in the big cloche on my sideboard. I think I may add small bows to those loops at the top of each heart.

Sweetest Day Bunting

Last week the thrift store had 75% off all their clothes. Since most clothes are priced at $1, that made them only 25c each. What a deal!

I can’t seem to ever find clothes that I could wear at the thrift store, but I can find clothes that I could craft with. That day, I found 25 pieces of clothing in several color schemes, to cut up for strings of pennants (or bunting).

I planned out a patriotic theme with the red, white, and blue:

And a spring theme of greens and yellows:

Thirdly, I created a pink theme for Valentine’s Day:The pink theme is the one I focused on finishing, since V-Day is just around the corner.

I was able to cut out all the pennant shapes from all the clothes. Most pieces of clothing gave me 8-10 pennant shapes. Some, being extra large, gave me up to 15 shapes!
I have more than enough for myself, and some to share too.

Cookie Tree

We celebrate the Professor’s Swedish heritage every year at Christmastime by having a Santa Lucia dinner. This year we celebrated the feast on Christmas Eve. Our menu always includes Swedish meatballs, a seafood dish, lingonberries, and flatbread. The other many dishes vary from year to year. This year, I set out trays of assorted cookies for dessert, and the showpiece was a towering cookie tree.

Sometime during this past summer in my garage sale ramblings I had found a set of graduated cookie cutters for making the tree, and I thought Santa Lucia was a great time to try it out. It worked beautifully: the recipes for the sugar cookie dough and the glaze used for icing the layers were very tasty.

Christmas Morn

Emmanuel, God is with us.