Painting Cheap Skulls

 So, we all know I truly love Halloween.  I don't know why, but I really do think about it all year long.  I also am truly cheap.  I hate spending any money on anything!  So, when I spotted some plastic skulls at the dollar store, I picked up two, with no real plan in mind.  Of course they were really cheap looking, solid beige, with no real definition. With a few colors of paint, and some paper towels, I created these:



 Unfortunately, I don't actually have a tutorial, but if there's any interest at all, I'd certainly make one!  In the meantime, I'll describe what I've done here.  I started by blacking out the eye sockets, nose, and jaw area with some black craft paint.  Then I painted the teeth white so they'd have a little bit more contrast (I'm not sure if this step was necessary).  Next I 'aged' the whole thing by applying dark brown craft paint all over the skull and wiping the paint off the raised surfaces with a  paper towel;  this is a very typical patina method.

 At this point, they looked much better and I could have easily stopped there, but I wanted to add some more interest to them:

 I continued to age the skull with some more dark brown and even a little black.  I then used some dark red and black craft paint to make some bloody areas around the eyes and a couple of wound marks.  I used both a wet and dry paper towel to blot them out a bit making them look a little streaked and clotted.  I used some of the blood in the teeth area too which added a great depth to them.



 The last step is to use a very fine brush to make the 'fractures' in the skull with some black craft paint.  Just make some jagged lines that get thinner as they spread out.  I tried to make the skull on the right here look like it'd been smashed with a hammer. and the one on the left like it'd been stabbed with a kitchen knife or maybe chopped with a machete?

 As you can see here, they don't need to be perfect up close, because no one is likely to be studying them this closely.  Use your imagination here, there's so many possibilities!  If you scroll back up to the very first picture you can see there where I used this technique to make the eye socket look a little broken.

Happy Painting,~Nicole

2 Ingredient, Microwave Fudge

Yes, this delicious fudge is made in the microwave with only two ingredients!

Okay, so I have to give props to my mom for this recipe.  I was visiting a little while back and she made this microwave fudge that was so delicious I just had to ask for the recipe.  And she promptly laughed at me.  That's because the recipe said "heat tub of frosting and bag of morsels in microwave safe bowl."  Yep:



Yes, you mix these two ingredients together in a microwave safe bowl, nuke for a minute or so, mix, nuke, mix, continue until smooth.  Then you pour them into a pan to cool.  To make things easier you can grease the pan, or better yet, line it with parchment paper.  Let it cool in the fridge until it's nice and firm (a few hours), then serve it up!

And the absolute best part?  You can pretty much use any flavor tub of frosting and any flavor morsels!

For a traditional fudge flavor use chocolate frosting and milk chocolate morsels.  For a super dark chocolate fudge you can try dark chocolate frosting and dark chocolate morsels.  You can also experiment with white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, etc.

I'm going to try using Ande's mints instead of morsels!  Or maybe make a vanilla fudge and crumble some Oreo's in there.  Oh, this is dangerous.

Happy Fudge Making,
Nicole

First Day of Kindergarten

Oh yes, she's getting big!

Sat on our bench to pose for a picture before walking to the bus stop.

She didn't even think to say good bye, but she sure was saying hello.

After hollering to get her attention, she barely waved, then ran to her seat.

 



Her first day went relatively well.  The only things she remembered well enough to talk to me about was lunch and recess.  Go figure.  I did get that call that every parent dreads, Quinn had wet her pants at recess.  I had done so well keeping my tears in check all day, but this call sent me into full blown alligator tears.  I felt like I failed her. 

 

Lets hope day two goes as well or better than day one!

~Nicole

 

How to NOT Can Tomatoes

I had planned to write a highly motivational piece on how easy it is to can tomatoes.  That didn't happen.  While visiting my grandparents over the weekend I got bushels and bushels of tomatoes. Enough to cover a large portion of my counter 2 or 3 deep:

I used the same method for skinning and dicing/crushing the tomatoes as in my post, here, about freezing tomatoes.  I was very slow at first, but managed to get pretty good at it by the end.

Then I followed the directions that every blog on canning will tell you:
~Start a canning pot boiling
~Sanitize your jars, lids, etc.
~Heat your tomatoes and liquid (juice or plain water)
~Pack tomatoes into jars, pushing down with handle of wooden spoon
~Add acidity (I used lemon juice)
~Add liquid and use spoon again to release air bubbles
~Wipe jar and apply seal and ring
~Put in boiling canning pot..... This is where things went awry

The very first jar I put in broke immediately.  It must have taken me too long to fill the jars and this one cooled because it cracked the second I put it in the boiling water.  So I put the rest in, with no breaking, but the kept tipping over... Probably because my electric burner is a bit smaller than the canning pot so it sort of leaned a bit.  Once I got them all in though, they seemed to stand okay without knocking into each other.  Although I think that two of them did knock at some point, because when I checked on them later there were tomatoes floating around the entire pot and a clearly broken jar just floating around... Yay.

The others seemed to work okay, and sealed quite well.  Of course now I'm extremely worried that I did something horribly wrong and they'll all spoil before we get to use them.  What a terrible waste that would be.

And I'm sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for the horribly photographic evidence; I was far too distraught to think about anything other than all the hard work I'd put into peeling and dicing the tomatoes just to throw them down the drain *sigh*

Have you had a bad experience with canning?  Do you know what I did wrong?  Do you just want to laugh at me?
~Nicole

Please, Meijer, tell me it isn't so!

Dear Meijer,
 If you know me, then you know I'm a pretty big coupon clipper.  I'm no extremist like you see on tv, but I do love a good coupon, especially a doubled one!  That's why I loved Meijer.  They doubled coupons up to $1 which was always so helpful in keeping grocery costs down.  I just learned the other day that Starting on 8/25/13 they are going to stop doubling any and all coupons.  BUMMER!  They say they're going to be working on their mPerks program (which if you don't have, you should get) but that hardly makes up for a good doubled coupon in my opinion.  We'll see how much they improve it.

I do have to admit though, that this month hasn't been too bad as far as mPerks go.  So far, I've got a free gallon of milk, free peanut butter, a dozen free eggs, and $5 off any $25 purchase.  I don't know if they can keep it up like this, but it's the only way I can see myself continuing to frequent their stores.  Sorry, Meijer.

Your once-upon-a-time very loyal customer,
~Nicole

Freezer "Crushed" Tomatoes

These were extremely easy.  Seriously.  And freezing them means that I don't have to mess with canning, because honestly, it kind of scares me.  The plus side is that (as I have done here) you can do this in small batches as you gather a few extra tomatoes from your garden, or in my case, your grandparent's garden ;) 

Though it's very easy, getting the skin off is the most time consuming part.  Here's the trick though.

Start by making a small "X" or simply poking a knife in the bottom of your tomatoes.

 

Dunk them into a large pot of boiling water, just a few at a time.  Within a minute the skin should split from where you broke the skin. 

When skin breaks, remove them from boiling water immediately and submerge them in ice water to draw the skin back even farther.

 

Gently peel back the skins, cut out the stems, and squeeze or scoop our seeds and juice.  As you can imagine, this is an extremely messy task.  That's why I recommend doing this part over a colander in the sink to catch anything that slips out of your hands.

Use your hands or a knife to crush or cut the tomato flesh into small pieces in the colander.  This helps to eliminate some excess juice.

Then scoop your tomatoes into a baggie and label and date them.  Easy as pie.  Another trick is to lie them out flat like this in your freezer.  They'll stack better and thaw quicker.

(**Update: Check out my related post on How NOT to Can Tomatoes**)

Enjoy the flavor of sun ripened tomatoes all year round.
~Nicole

Tonto and The Lone Ranger

I've finally decided on (some) of the costumes for the family.  Hooray.  I'm going to be Tonto, and Ronan will be The Lone Ranger!  I'm going to follow Johnny Depp's 2013 version relatively closely, albeit a female version.  I threw together a 5 minute sketch to visualize what I'm thinking:

Since Depp played Tonto bare-chested, I needed some coverage.  I have a brown overbust corset that has beautiful stripes I think would suit this costume well.  I'll need to make or find some sort of beaded chest piece like Depp wore in the movie to help a bit with the coverage also.  I'm not sure if I'll try to wear some sort of shirt or not, I suppose it will depend on the weather; last year was so miserably cold I almost wish I hadn't gone out at all!  Keep your fingers crossed for some warmer weather.

Oops, got off topic.  Back to it:  I'll need some feathers and beads and such for my hair, bandanna, bracelets, and belts.  I'm not sure if I want to stick with the pants (like Depp's character wore) or go with a skirt?  I think some nice flouncy fringed pants would look great with a pair of knee high, fringed, red moccasins. 

My cousin, Amanda, of Amazing Moments, does unbelievably amazing face and body painting, so I'm relying on her to give me a hand with the face paint, and some of the tattooing/war paint.  Right Amanda? ............Right?

Oh... and I need to find a dead bird.  wtf.