Busy Busy.

     Sorry Folks.  Seems I fell off the blog posting wagon a few potholes in the road back.  Holidays when you have kids, are busy times.  Throw in the no money for gifts for extended family, and you can get even busier!  The week of Thanksgiving break my usually dependable wagon that holds all of us (miraculously) decided it needed a new transmission, so last minute plans were made to change the venue of Thanksgiving dinner for me and my sister to my house.  Since my father was instrumental in making sure our family still had wheels after Thanksgiving, I wanted to at least make a token of my appreciation and have it ready for Christmas break, when we went down to his house for an early Christmas/late Thanksgiving dinner.

     I have been following some crafting blogs in my reader, which before the middle of this year was mostly populated with blogs about gaming.  For any interested, Dollar Store Crafts and One Pretty Thing are the big two I have found most of my ideas from.  Dollar Store Crafts focuses on the inexpensive, and sometimes recycled, end of crafting, where One Pretty Thing aggregates crafts from around the internet and posts them with pictures and links. which makes it so easy to just window shop!

     So, I have the crafting bug.  I found a project I knew I had materials for, and I ran with it.  Have you ever been given a book you knew you weren't going to read?  Here is a great fix for that.

 

     I took my inspiration from here , but I did mine a little different.  I cut the end off the top of a case of oranges, then cut a circle the size of a cd out of the middle.  This was the backing.  I ripped pages out of a Jude Deveraux novel then folded them down to square shape, but did not trim them.  I then rolled the cone shapes, gluing them in place, and worked my way from the outside toward the middle, folding down the cones a little more as I got toward the center, gluing them in with my glue gun.  The final layer of pages I wrapped under the frame, to cover the cardboard.  When the wreath was done, I let it hang around the house forever, then added some spray adhesive and shook some fine glitter over the finished project.  The bow is not needed, and I only put the ornament that is hanging in the empty space behind as an after thought.  Imagine how stunning that would look on a dark colored wall or door!

     Christmas was still weeks away, and hubby was saying how we needed new ornaments.  I found this on the Dollar Store Crafts site, and had to make them!  Working in a kitchen, I come across a lot or recyclable items, and one of them happened to be the tin pans needed for this project.  The dollar store has them in multi-packs for cheap, if you don't have a way to find recyclable ones.  Here is what they turned out to look like, after the kids painted them with my nail polishes and added their own embellishments(template is here).

 

     Not bad! I still have quite a few pans to make more for next years tree.  Unfortunately, we ran out of nail polish (never been the girly type, and I only had 3 bottles!).  Yes, the dollar store carries nail polish, too.  

     That only explains part of my absence.  Over the holidays my house is bursting at the seams with the addition of my step children.  This makes my escape to video game land much more important than updating my blog, for sanity's sake.  Since the Shattering, I have been busy leveling new characters through the new lands, gathering archaeology finds with Delgada, and tending my plants in Wizard 101.  I will end this post with some screenshots of my new characters and Rowan's garden in her new massive fantasy castle, while she tries not to dirty her princess gown and pretty pink shoes!

Bittsee Emptypockets - Priestess

Vessper - Witch under Sylvana's Command

Niranjani - druid in a boat with a hunky Tauren (yum!)

Rowan's Garden - mocking her.

The kitchen.

The Trophy  Room.

The floating graveyard.

The bar.

The sitting area.

The bedroom.

There is a dungeon, several places to enjoy the view, a dueling area, a Doodle Doug video game, and lots of grass and water in this place.  I leave you with the front view, and Rowan telling you to get off her lawn.  Yeah, she's an old lady, at 44.  So, humor her and get off the lawn!