Stabby cake stabby cake, baker's man

So, I have this tendancy to create slightly morbid baked goods.

These were baked for a Christmas get together at my Aunt's house.
These cookies depict a dark place in the mind of every gingerbread man.

It follows that when I see something like this at my local Walmart, that I am going to do something with them.

I made stabby cakes

Red velvet cupcakes(from a box mix-I did the the hard way once, and there is still red splatter all over my kitchen) with cream cheese frosting(from a can-I got lazy)

I made my own blood though! It's about 1/4-1/3 c Herhsey's syrup and most of a little pointy hat gnome bottle of red food coloring.  

It grosses out husbeasties when its dripping from the corners of your mouth.

Also, it is the most realistic fake blood I've ever seen. Texture, color, opacity, perfect.

Pumpkin butter, and things to do with it

My husbeast loves pumpkin pie. I mean, who doesn't. It's a fantastic vesituble for loads of whipped cream.

But he loves the pie itself.

This unnerving love of pumpkin pie transcends the crust, however. He loves all things pumpkin pie-y. Like the Pumkin Spie Latte from Starbucks.

He rarely drinks coffee, but when he does, it's pumpkin flavored.

I was thinking about apple butter a few weeks ago and BANG! it hit me. He would he love pumpkin butter.

To the internet!

I found a recipe here for crock pot pumpkin butter. The crock pot is my go-to cauldron, considering that I have neither the time not setting for a giant black cauldron, suspended from a wooden teepee over an open flame.
 
This is pretty much the recipe and what happened along the way This recipe makes 4 pints+ a little kfc bowl

Pumpkin Butter
2 6-8" Pie Pumpkins
3.5 c brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Juice of 1 small lemon

De-goop pumpkin then cut into easily manageable chunks and roast at 350 degrees until soft(alternately steam or boil)
After cooled remove skin from flesh (I used one of those weird little pumpkin scooping spoon things from a jack o lantern kit)
Puree pumpkin flesh (I had to add a little water to the blender to get mine to do anything useful-may have better luck with a food processer or potato ricer)
Add pumpkin puree, brown sugar, lemon juice and spices to crock pot

Cook on low for 2-3 hours stirring occasonally
Place a spoon or other device under edge of lid to allow steam to escape and cook for another 2-3 hours until proper consistency is reached.
Butter will thicken slightly after cooling.

During cooking, adjust spices to your taste.

Store in airtight container in refrigerator for 2 weeks, freeze for several months. Due to low acidity, canning of pumpkin butter is not recommended, unless you like botulism butter.

*Note-for my pumpkin butter, I originally mashed the pumpkin then cooked everything for about 3 hours, refrigerated overnight, blended the next day then cooked another 2-3 hours, then refrigerated overnight again and cooked another hour or so the final day before transferring to containers.

The instructable has directions for canning the pumpkin butter. The entire internet says not to can pumpkin butter. I don't want to kill people with breakfast spreads, so even though I did follow the canning directions,even processing for 50 minutes, as opposed to the recommended 20, I am still storing mine in the fridge. I brought the KFC bowl of butter to work and tested it with my pH testing apparatus here. The pH is close to a 5. I'm not risking it. 4.6 is inhospitible to botulism.

So now I have 4 pints of pumpkin butter for my husbeast to eat. Now what to do with them...hmmmmm


Excuse the photo-I grabbed these out of his lunch box this morning before he left for work :0)

Pumpkin-Pecan-White Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 1/4 C Flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
3/4 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c pumpkin butter
3/4 c butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 to 1 1/2 c white chocolate chips
1/2 c chopped pecans

Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and pie spice in small bowl
Beat together sugars, butters, and vanilla in larger bowl
Beat in eggs one at a time
Beat in dry ingredients in thirds (else you end up with flour EVERYWHERE)
Mix in chips and pecans

Refrigerate for 20-30 minutes(optional, but the second batch I made was easier to work with using refrigerated dough)
Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet with 2-3" between. These cookies SPREAD so make sure you have good spacing.
 Bake 9-11 minutes until golden brown.
Cool on cookie sheet 2-5 minutes before transferrng to a wire rack.
Eat with Pumkpin Spice Latte, obviously not all at the same time(maybe not so obviously-my husbeastie was thiking about it, but a Starbucks run would have required real pants)

I wish I would run out of thread...

How often will you hear that come out of a beader's mouth (or any needle and thread kind of person's mouth)?

I like the quilt I'm working on, but I just kinda want to be done with it...I can't just put it aside. I need to finish it!! Why? Because I may have bought fabric for two more...And because I just, well, I just can't concentrate on my beads.

I started a bracelet, but I didn't enjoy it, so I listlessly dropped it back into the beading kit and said meh.

I need something to kick start my beading.

I've also been sadly, sorely, neglecting my poor little blog (and my bloggy friends!) Quilting is just so friggin slow! I can show you the 3 or 4 blocks I've finished since the last post, but they kinda look like the ones in the last post...

I secretly hope I wil run out of the thread I'm using to quilt this quilt. It's glow-in-the dark and I have only found it at Joann's and there isn't one near me.

If I run out of thread, I can start something else, right? :)

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at trader vic's

His hair was perfect.

The same could mot be said about mine. I tried out a new conditioner, Loreal's new Everstrong Hydrating sulfate free conditioner, to be precise. The shampoo is great. The conditioner turned my hair into a bird's nest. Half a bottle of detangler later...

Anyway.

I haven't heard anything else about the situation in my previous email. We've recovered 230k of the 480k I had miscalculated. It's something...

Today I'm posting pictures of my quilt so far. I've pieced all but one of the star blocks and quilted a "filler" block. I've quilted 4 of the stars as well.

What do you think?

Marvin had to investigate...He has recently decided that if I'm doing something, he should be sitting in the middle of it. It's very difficult to turn pages in books with a catbutt in the way...If I have a quilt block in the hoop, he feels the need to curl up on it if I set it down somewhere.


I'm thinking of filling the filler blocks with different Hallowe'eny type song lyrics. Or just weird lyrics. Or maybe some Hallowe'en clip art outlines. My backstitching needs some work, but I like it (and it glows in the dark)


This is the back of one of the quilted star blocks. My quilting stitches need more practice to be more even, but I have lots of blocks to go to perfect them.


No beading this week-I just haven't had time. But I really feel like I'm getting somewhere with the PE preparation. I finished a whole book of practise problems that was put out by the same people who administer the test. Out of the 80 questions therein, I missed 16, but I have learned why I missed those 16, and can now correctly solve them. I'm also nearly halfway through another study guide, which had thousands of problems in it.

I have to keep asking myself, did I know all this stuff at one point? Holy Crap I've forgotten a LOT.

Happy Anniversary

One year (and 2 days ago) I married the man who has got to be the most wonderful husbeast ever :) That's right, we were married on Hallowe'en.

Our wedding party had to be coaxed from mountains, forests, fire, the sea, the moon, well everywhere really. Lucky for me, fae-folk are bribable!

I went a little wild with the mod podge-and spider rings. They made their way into my centerpieces, table decorations, my grandma's hair, onto fingers, everywhere. I even found two in my hair this year on Halloween.




This is the guest book that I made from a clearance rack Lisa Frank journal, a paper towel, craft foam, gold leaf, purple paint and copious mod podge-here's the tutorial

I did most of the decorations myself, which was quite insane. I thought I had overdone it on the glittered whatnot, but I guess not, as I haven't a single skull left, and they were all the rage at Target and other stores this year. These guys were painted or mod podged and glittered. Use superfine glitter or else they end up looking like Fred in the front row-kinda mossy...

Look Cake! My cousin did the cake-if it shows up blue, thats not right, its a really really vibrant purple. We have the top layer in our fridge, but had to leave home before we got to eat our anniversary bite. If it's stil good when we get home, we'll definitely have a piece.

This was what we used to cut the cake on said day-just some ribbon and hot glue, and spiders...


The centerpieces were an adventure-I bought 4-6 stores out of daisies, and eventually had to add in purple ones because I just couldn't find enough white. There were glitter spiders in the arrangement of flowers and leaves(which is a floral foam hemisphere)and under the flowers in the vase with black tulle. Goodwill is an amazing resource for cheap vases-we found 13 that very nearly matched at our local goodwill. A quick run in the dishwasher and we were all set. Didn't get to keep a centerpiece though-I guess thats good :)



Even our invites were coated in spiders and daisies-no glitter though. This was the back of our RSVP postcard


If you've read through all that, I guess you get to see the grand finale-where Mr Spyder and I live happily ever after-with the giant wings of doom

If anyone wants tutorials for anything, let me know. I know they're a little late for this Hallowe'en, but come on, who doesn't need a little year round spooky?

The trouble with toggles

I have the worst trouble with toggles. Really, I do. It seems like the bar is always to long and/or the ring is too small. Well, unless the bar is too short and the ring is too big. This happens nearly as frequently.

You see, I made this bracelet over the weekend. The design was inspired by Charlene's 1-2-3 bracelet. I like the bracelet, and may wear it.


I really made the bracelet so I could make the toggle. In my head, it worked out perfectly. There was a square toggle ring to connecting to a bar with cubezoidal ends.


I stitched and attached and well, the flingin-flangin bar was too flingin-flangin long and I had to mush the ring to get it through at all. Stupid toggles. There really is no happy medium for me.



In other news, I worked on my husbeast's halloween costume. He is going as Poseidon, God of the seas. I'm going as Medusa. More on this story later...

I also very nearly bought a lobster costume for the cat beast. Pretty sure Marvin would not have a approved.

I'm still out here...somewhere...

Work has been absolutely nuts lately! I've quite literally been burning the midnight oil...seriously I was up til 1145 last night working on this:


This is an Autocad drawing of an area of our marsh. These take between 2-3 hours to complete, depending on whether the contour drawing program decides to work correctly(it didn't yesterday) and keep track of 30 large pieces of earthmoving equipment, and who is in them, and what they did, are doing, and will be doing tomorrow. And keep our dirt moving far enough ahead of the planters...and make sure the surveyors are on track. And play with the cat-beast.

I take pride in creating these drawings. I really think they are beautiful when they are done. :)


I have spent a moment here and there doing crafty things. For example, I made another necklace for a co-worker, in the colors of his football team. And then I wire-wrapped a shark's tooth and applied it to a necklace for our superintentant whilst doing laundry the other day.

I also made one of two Cubeys from a kit by Charlene over at More than Somewhat. She does awesome beadwork, let me tell you!

I have also scrounged up a few moments here and there to start sewing things together and making a few of these


They will eventually meet up with their friends and become a quilt. Hand piecing gives me a small sense of pride. This one I plan to do mostly by hand. Hand cut, hand pieced, hand quilted. I think it will be handy :) And the corners may not match up exactly. I think that is more due to cutting than sewing, though.



Also, I heart Hallowe'en fabrics with spiders with googly eyes. Especially if the fabric includes glitter.


Really, I am a sucker for glitter and spiders. They were in my centerpieces at my wedding last Hallowe'en.


And on the tables


I think one or two ended up in my grandma's hair by the end of the evening:)

Creepy, crawly, and... romanitic?

Today's from the vault were my wedding favors. I made a hundred of these little gals! This also meant I got to make several guilt free trips to the bead store for leg beads! :-D

Beaded Spiders


Materials:
15mm(ish) round bead
7-8 mm round bead
10mm long bugle beads (BB)
Size 11/0 seed beads (SB)
Size 24 wire (craft wire or floral wire)
Head Pin
Round nose pliers
Wire Nippers


Instructions:
1. String onto wire: SB, BB, SB, BB, SB, BB, SB, BB, BB, SB, BB, SB, BB, SB, BB, SB

2. Make a 2-coil wrap at the end of the wire using your round nose pliers

3. Leaving approximately 5mm, make another wrap at the other end of your beads.
*note-you need the 5mm slack on the strung beads to attach them to the body! *

4. Cut wire from the spool. The segment should look similar to that below


5. Repeat for another 8BB string


6. Repeat using 6BB and 10BB, see below


7. Thread the 8mm bead onto the head pin.
*note-depending on the size of the bead hole, you may need to string a seed bead first to keep it on the pin.*

8. Center an 8BB wire on the head pin below the 8mm bead

9. Wrap once around the head pin

10. Repeat with the remaining leg segments in the following order 6BB, 8BB, 10BB


11. String the 15MM bead onto the headpin, snugging right up against the legs and head.

12. Form a wrapped loop at the end of the head pin
*Note-your legs will slant a little bit due to snugging them up against the head, this should happen! It’s just hard to show in a computer doodle


13. Gently curve the first and second legs forward and down on each side, and 3 and 4 back and down on each side. If your legs are floppy, make your feet wraps a little tighter and they should stiffen up!

14. Attach a piece of monofilament to your new friend’s hiney loop and hang somewhere she can scare houseguests! Or put her in a pot in your cupboard so she can scare your significant other! Or hang her from the rearview mirror in your car! Or on your desk at work! Or do as I did, and stick them in a box of M&Ms and give them away as wedding favors!