Day 29- Let us eat cake!

Last Day!!!! I made a cake for us all- my fellow thing-a-dayers and to all of you who followed along on my blog. Thanks! Tomorrow we will resume regular blogcasting.
Here's a link to all my postings this month at the Thing-a-Day blog.

Day 28!!!

Thing-a-Day- I put together a care package to mail to my oldest son. He's a junior in college. Contents-his mail (including a package from a friend in France!), a postcard I made from pics of our last vacation and his horoscope (in Italian, natch), his favorite cookies and a handful of monkeys.

Fern and product endorsement

Today's Thing-a-Day- I re-potted a plant and took 28 pictures of it. I'll be kind and only make you look at two. The pot was purchased at a rummage sale last year($1.00).

I also made these gingerbread cookies. They taste pretty good- if you can get past how healthy they look. I didn't have the energy to roll the dough out and use cookie cutters so I just plopped them by the spoonful on a cookie sheet. I used applesauce in the mix instead of butter and after they cooled I frosted them with a powdered sugar glaze. They smell like Christmas.

Can you see the healthy? It's right there under the frosting.

Finished!

Well- I'm pretty happy with it. My artist muse zoftig Goddess doll. Her eyes and mouth I cut out of a picture (of me!). Today I added a red glitter bra top, a star belly-button, a tiara of leaves and wire, a tattoo on her lower back and a pink streak in her hair! I have her holding three sunflowers to represent my three sons. And I made her holding up a banner that says "Create". But I made it so I can change the banner as needed. She will live on the window sill in my studio and inspire me.

Lemon curd tart

We waste a lot of food around here. It seems like we always have 8 open boxes of cereal. Tim is the only one of us who willingly eats the heel of the bread. We still have candy canes leftover from Christmas. We have four mostly finished 1/2 gallons of ice cream in the freezer. Etc, etc...So sometimes I enjoy the challenge of stretching out the time between visits to the foodstore. I like using up things that might otherwise go to waste, get stale, be thrown away. Today's lunch was made with last Thursday's leftover lasagna noodles and some chicken broth from the freezer. The boys have resigned themselves to finishing up the "plain old" vanilla ice cream. Little leftover chunks of mozzarella and cheddar cheese have been tossed into scrambled eggs. And I found a use for the jar of lemon curd I bought just before Christmas. I don't know why I tossed it in the cart- it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had a leftover pie crust from making potpies a couple weeks ago. I spread that out on a cookie sheet and rolled up the edges. Baked it , then filled it with the lemon curd. Just for fancy- I did the doily/powered sugar trick.
So even if dinner is going to be apple slices with peanut butter, carrot sticks and chicken rice-a-roni, dessert is going to be different and exciting.

Unfinished sculpture on a stick

When I began doing the Thing-a-Day, I thought I would do all different kinds of art. But I've pretty much been sticking with the things that are most comfortable for me- collage, cooking, photography, atcs. Well there is only five days left until the end of February so if I was ever going to try something different now would be the time. I've had this plaster of paris for a while now and I decided to try my hand at a little sculpture. A zoftig type Goddess doll. This is not what she looked like in my head. But I'm still working on her. I hope to finish her tomorrow. She needs a face and I'm a little nervous about my drawing skills with that. She needs a shirt (or does she?). I'm going to make some sort of dangling bead thing for her other hand- or stump really cause I didn't know how to make the hands so I didn't. She has no legs either- she's sculpture on a stick!

Cowbell, movies, garbage picking, Starbucks, Rome

The title pretty much sums it up- today I played the cowbell in our family Rock Band (on X-Box), went to the movies, found a gorgeous shabby chic wire planter in this garbage pile, went out to coffee (for three hours!?!) with a friend and came home to make a quick tag to have something to post on thing-a-day.

Just a link-

I'll add more to this post later But for now-
Read this!
from a homeschool e-mail group.

Funny what you find out there-

So I'm surfing this cool blog called One Million Peace Signs and who do I find?
Click here to find out.
Way Cool!!!
Check out all the posts- Beautiful and inspiring!

A Pile of Peace Cranes

This morning Tim and I went to my Great-Aunt Pauline's funeral. She was 86 and had a long life but these things are always sad. Tim and I stopped for brunch on the way home. I ate too much and came home feeling too tired/drained/full for art. So todays thing-a-day was just folding some more origami peace cranes. My plan is to fold 1000 cranes this year. I folded an even 100 last month. The total for Feb so far is only about 14. I think that's because I'm doing the thing-a-day and trying to do more creative things. For today, the repetitive folding was very relaxing.

What's wrong with stumbling sleepily through life?.

From Eden's blog-

You are 10:02 a.m.

You are breakfasty, like a pile of pancakes on a Sunday morning that have just the right amount of syrup, so every bite is sweet perfection and not a soppy mess. You are a glass of orange juice that's cool, refreshing, and not overly pulpy. You are the time of day that's just right for turning the pages of a newspaper, flipping through channels, or clicking around online to get a sense of how the world changed during the night. You don't want to stumble sleepily through life, so you make a real effort to wake your brain up and get it thinking. You feel inspired to accomplish things (whether it's checking something off your to-do list or changing the world), but there's plenty of time for making things happen later in the day. First, pancakes.

Like this quiz? Send it to a friend.

12% of the people who took this quiz got the same evaluation.

Art ?....or Ammo?

Today Griffin made a pyramid snow sculpture he calls "Art?.... or Ammo?". And I took pictures for my thing-a-day. Griffin and Riley both got snowball makers for a Christmas present and finally we've had enough snow so they can use them. It was very good packing snow.
About a month ago Tim was outside raking leaves and a woman came up to him and gave him a card with a picture inside. She had taken a lovely picture of our house with the fall foliage around it, printed it out and dropped it off as a gift. Tim talked to her for a minute or two and she left. So today I look out my kitchen window and see someone taking pictures in my yard. I go outside and meet MariaNella. She came here from Italy 30 years ago as a young bride. She lives three blocks away. She loves taking pictures and from what she showed me on her digital camera she has a rare talent. Her family had an apartment on the French Riviera when she was growing up. Her father owned a hardware store. She displayed her photographs at the library here in Brick two years ago. We spoke for a little while as the snow turned to rain. I invited her in but she had to go. She said she would come back though. I made her so happy when I told her I took 20+ pictures of yesterday's lasagna ingredients. She held my hand and told me we were "muy simpatico" . MariaNella- you made my day.

Cooking 101

Thing for today- crafting the perfect lasagna.

You really can't have too much cheese

Layers

The noodle....as art.

Plain roll-ups for the boy who is offended by the very thought of veggies.

More atcs...before and after

Before- ad from magazine

After- art trading card

Bonus atc-

Thing-a-day

Orthodontist, bowling, hippos, etc.....

Orthodontist appt+ library+ homeschool bowling+ foodstore+ Target+ making pizzas = no time for thing-a-day.
I am posting the pizza pic over at the T-a-D blog. Culinary arts- that counts. And those cupcakes -now they are a work of art! We bought those at the bakery to celebrate Riley bowling two strikes in a row. And if he didn't- we would have thought up something else. As if anyone really needs a reason to buy purple hippo cupcakes.

Day 18

Thing-a-Day...... An A.T.C. card. I used a copy of a baby picture of my Mom. Her name is Elaine- hence the E sticker. I added some bits of a paper doily, words cut from a book and a little flower die cut.
Tim's off from work today- I woke up too early, went back to bed at 9am- and slept 'til noon! Yay for me! We had to get two new tires for the van today.... :0( ... Griffin and Riley are playing Halo, Tim's playing Age of Empires and I'm playing in my studio. I feel a little guilty about staying inside on such a mild day but it's nice just to putter about. We have a busy week coming up so it's good to have a day to just chill. We're still handwashing the dishes but I'm checking Craig's list for a free (and local) dishwasher. Later, Tim and Riley need to practice for their guitar lesson and I'm making pancakes for dinner. Tonight- I get to watch this goodness I taped off the tv last night.
I love long weekends!

Scrappin' Sunday

Today I went to my friend Laura's house for a little scrapbooking party. Thing-a-Day for today- several scrapbook pages. Laura set up tables for us to work on and made us a delicious lunch.
The bottom pic is the work of my sister JoAnne (scrapbooker extraordinare).

Day 16.....Flower Power

Today I arranged the flowers Tim gave me for Valentine's Day. The bottom pic- just for fun I made the world's smallest flower arrangement- note the penny used as a saucer.

?

Mandalas

Thing-a-day- Mandalas
Today we went to see a sand Mandala that Tibetan Buddhist Monks had made at John's school (The College of New Jersey). We were able to see the mandala and listen to the Monks speak about it, the symbolism, the process. Then they did the ceremony of sweeping it up. We marched in procession to the lake and watched as they poured the sand into the water.
" To Tibetan Buddhists sweeping up the sand symbolizes the impermanence of existence. Pouring the sand into water dispersed the healing energies of the mandala throughout the world."
The bottom pic is the Mandalas Griffin, Riley and I made this morning. I'm hoping to post a video of the ceremony later tonight or tomorrow. Link to more info about Mandalas.