Random Thoughts

 Random Thoughts

1. Can you make instant pudding with chocolate milk?  
2. IF you can make instant pudding with chocolate milk, how does that effect the flavor? Say if it was pistachio pudding and you used chocolate milk, would that make it a chocolate covered pistachio?
3. If possession is nine tenths of the law, how does that applies to exorcisms 
4. My grandmother was right, the older you get, the more sympathy cards you need. 
5. Everyone might need a zipper bag, tote bag or a zippered tote bag.
6. How do we know that Kool Aid isn’t just Fun Dip without the sugar?
7. How different would the street view look without telephone poles?
8. If we didn’t have telephone poles and phone lines, where would the birds perch?
9. The stinkier the cat food, the more likely my cats will love it.
10. What if this reality is some other reality’s fan fiction? 
11. Can you eat the same thing for Breakfast and Second Breakfast if you were a hobbit?

Coaster Turned Cat Toy

 My cats aren’t spoiled. 

You can stop laughing now.  I know my cats are spoiled. It can’t be helped.  I am pretty sure it is in my genetic makeup to spoil cats. 

You might ask why I brought up my cats being spoiled.  It is because I am going to tell you about turning a coaster into a cat toy. Or a perhaps this a just another tale of craft adaptability to prevent a Pinterest fail. 

On Pinterest I found the idea for really cute cat coasters made out of extra fabric and quilt batting.  (Website for pattern is www.sewverycrafty.com) While we have nice coasters in our living room, I thought the cat coasters would be nice for the upstairs. The weather is getting warmer and cold drinks tend to sweat. I would like to have cold drinks in the sewing room with out worrying about messing up the wood.

The instructions for this pattern are easy to follow. They even provide a template for the coasters.  I did not download the template. I thought that I would be brilliant and eyeball it. After all it is just a cat head shape.  This is were it could almost be considered a fail. 

My recommend is to download the template. While I don’t think mine turned out terrible. I do think that the end product was supposed to be bigger.  Due to the size of my cat coaster, (or would it be called a kitten coaster?) I thought it would make the perfect cat toy for my feline friends. 

Instead of sewing the coaster shut, I shoved it full of catnip. And then when I thought I couldn’t get any more catnip in it, I used a chopstick to makes sure there was catnip in the ears and compress the catnip in the toy. I then sewed the side shut. 

While Dib was interested while I was making the toy, once it was complete he wandered off to cause chaos in other areas of the house.  I presented the toy to Nami to see if she had any interest.  While she didn’t attack me, she didn’t really want to get up from her nap either.  Iggins is the one that had the most interest, and that might be due to him being the most awake during prime time nap time. It may also be due to him thinking that anything orange belongs to him, since he is orange. It really is hard to tell.

Long story short, is I would recommend using this pattern to make cute cat toys, but adding a step of filling it with cat nip. It is a cute toy and is easily customizable based on your fabric pattern choices. 

Love Notes

 Often things are not as bad as they seem.  

It is all a matter of perspective. I was reminded of this when I tried a recipe out of The Baking with Kim Joy cookbook. Kim Joy was a contestant on The Great British Bake-off who makes ridiculously cute eats. Most of them are almost too cute to want to eat.  I was gifted her cookbook recipe for Christmas and used Mother’s Day as an excuse to try something out of. 

This is what  I was trying to make.

This is what they looked like coming out of the oven.

This is what they looked liked iced.

The entire time making them I was nervous. I am admittedly more of a cook than a baker. Baking is really precise with measurements and if you don’t follow it exactly then the chemical reactions in the bake will be off and it won’t turn out right.  Cooking is more forgiving. If you screw too terribly cover it in cheese or gravy.  Many things have been fixed with cheese, gravy or both. (This is where my theory on the creation of Poutine is pretty sound.) 

While I agonized over how imperfect the bake was and how Paul Hollywood would hate it, I forgot something very important.  These treats were not for Paul Hollywood. They were for my mother in law. My mother in law didn’t see how shaky my icing was, or how imperfect the envelopes were shaped. She saw how much effort my husband and I put into making them for her. We did everything from making the jelly from scratch to rolling the short bread to keeping the cats from tasting them.  It was an adventure that I was able to have with my husband for a beloved member of the family that appreciated our efforts.  

Sometimes you have to step back take a breathe and give yourself a break.  It is about perspective and the hardest  view to change is your own.  Often things are not as bad as they seem. 

Cat Aprons

 I made aprons.  They do not fit my cats.  

I want it to be noted that my cats were not at all helpful in trying on aprons. They were not thrilled about any of the colors or patterns available to them. They in fact would rather play with the apron strings, then to actually wear an apron.

It is times like these, that make me thankful that several of my friends have cute tiny spawn. The failure for cat aprons (that the cats insist they never wanted in the first place) is a victory for small humans.  Several small humans in my hemisphere have been gift with aprons.  The cats are relieved.

Truth:  This was a Pinterest experiment. Nowhere in the instructions does it say it can be used for cats.  In fact the pattern that I used was called “Ann Kelle - Childs Apron Tutorial”. There is nothing that pattern that specifies this can be used for fur children, but also there is nothing specifies that this cannot be used for fur children.  If you are sewing inclined, I would recommend this pattern. It was easy to follow and turned out well for tiny humans.

Cemetery Picnic

What do you pack for a picnic at a cemetery?

Okay.  I should probably back up. For Mother’s Day, I took my mother to a cemetery for a picnic. This is not a hint to my mother that she has one foot in the grave and not a me being dramatic and exaggerating the truth.  The truth is, I did take my mother to a cemetery.  The cemetery in question is about an hour away and is the cemetery that hold the remains of the first generation of our family in America.  Pretty exciting stuff if you are interested in family history/ genealogy.  Since the cemetery is about an hour a way, it makes sense to bring a picnic and refreshment, which bring me back to my original question. 

What do you pack for a picnic at a cemetery?

Do you go full funeral meal and bring cold salads and finger food? Do you liven it up and play off a Halloween theme? Do keep it to traditional picnic food? These questions rolled around in my head, until I did a mash up of all three.

Cemetery Picnic Menu

Chicken Salad on Onion Rolls with Cheese and Tomato

Deviled Eggs

Marinated Mushrooms

Mozzarella and Tomato

Strawberries

Dirt Cups. (Chocolate Pudding with crushed Oreo’s and Gummy Worms)

What would you pack for your picnic?

Album Art Appreciation

 There was a great mental debate on writing about my Mother’s Day plans and in the end I have decided to hold off and write about it at a later date. Mostly because I don’t want to provide any spoilers to my mother and mother in law.   Instead I will talk about something that both my mother, mother in law and myself have in common and that is art appreciation. 

My husband is a connoisseur of vinyl records. It is his hobby and he is constantly on the hunt for new music. He has a talent for finding obscure and often very interesting records. While not all the records are to my musical taste, some of the art on the album covers is remarkable.   Below are 11 gems from the record collection that I think have interesting album jackets.

1. Monomyth - Exo - This is amazing because not only is the jacket a space trip, the inside is fascinating to look at.
2. Comacozer- Binbeal - I love how psychedelic this is. 
3. Orphans of Doom - I am not going to lie, I picked this one because of the octopus.  The flowers and octopus is beautiful to me.
4. Alunah - Amber &Gold - I feel like this one could be the cover to several fantasy novels. It reminds me of a fallen angel in the garden of eden with the apples and wings. 
5. Book of Worms - Remythologizer - This is the exact type of fantasy novel that I would have bee drawn to. The more you look at it the more details you see. 
6. The Pilgrim - Walking into the Forest - This reminded me of the sort of folk music that I enjoy. 
7. Slift - Ummon - This is another amazing one that the out side of the jacket is just as interesting as the inside of the jacket. 
8. The Well - Pagan Science - This I would expect to see in a museum. 
9. Waveshaper- Artifact - I love how retro and futuristic it is. I makes me think of an 80’s set in what they thought the future would look like.
10. Turned to Stone Volume 2- Masamune and Maramasa- Howling Giant- Sergeant Thunderhoof -  There is so much going on in this.  The more you look at it, the more details you see.
11. The Greasy Gills- The Spring Collection - This album cracked me up. It made me laugh.

Filling the Bag

My mother gave me a box of zippers. I have been practicing by making zipper bags. After about a dozen bags, I needed to come up with a purpose for the bags. I cannot keep giving away the random bags. 

I decided to make some of the bags into a To Go Kit. Or as my husband has called it a The Girl Kit. (In truth my husband did back peddle beautifully and renamed it The Non Gender Specific Kit.)

The idea behind the kit is to keep it in the car and use it when needed. It isn’t a first aid kit.  

Here is what is in the kit so far:

1. Hand Sanitizer
2. Allen Wrench (hex key)
3. Bands Aids
4. Alcohol Wipes
5. Lint Roller
6. Floss
7. Tooth Paste
8. Bobby Pins
9. Sunblock
10. Hand Lotion
11. Face Mask
12. Magnifying glass
13. Nail File
14. Sole Savers
15. Hot Chocolate
16. Vanity Kit (cotton balls and cotton swabs)
17. Pads/ Tampons
18. Face Mask
19. Shampoo
20. Makeup wipe
21. Safety Pins 

Other than a cup of tea, is there anything that you think is missing in this kit?