Meow!

Meow.....I'm feeling catty this morning. Forgive me Dad, if you are reading this from Heaven. I know you said that if I didn't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything at all, so you might want to skip reading this.

Apparently I am old. How that happened is another story for another day, but I blame my sons. One recently turned 33, the other will soon be 35. You do the math....

I am about to talk fashion. Thank goodness we aren't aren't video blogging as I am in an old robe, slippers and my hair is well....it is what it is.

When I was in my late teens/early twenties, huge bell bottom pants were in fashion. The pants were usually hip huggers or jump suits. Hip huggers required wearing body suits that snapped in the crotch. Good lord...even if I still weighed what I did back in those days, I can't imagine the problems body suits or jump suits would cause. I truly am not incontinent, but something happens to me when I combine grocery shopping (which I hate) with cold weather (which I despise) once my feet cross the threshold upon return. I need to use the potty. Immediately. Sometimes I don't get my coat off. Sometimes I strip it off while doing a mincing shuffle to the bathroom. Struggling out of a jumpsuit or undoing snaps in my nether region would not be conducive to remaining cool, calm and dry.

I'm not telling you this to gross anyone out but to show that I was once a slave, somewhat, to fashion trends. I was agile enough then to carry the look. The worst problem I experienced with those huge bell bottoms was driving in sloppy weather when my platform shoes tracked snow and slush onto my vinyl floor mats. In order to keep my hems clean and dry, the legs of my pants had to be pulled up, usually above my knees.

I am happy to see that tights and stockings in whatever form have returned to the world of fashion. Sometimes it just finishes a look in my opinion, to have a little color on your leg, especially if your leg sports a little color of its own in the manner of a blue vein that you'd like to cover. Confining a few fat cells is always beneficial too, but most of all, covering your legs even with sheer nylons provides a wee bit of warmth.

Remember, I despise cold weather despite living in Michigan my entire life. A few years back when my sons' female contemporaries would go to winter weddings and New Years parties looking gorgeous except for their ice cold feet in strappy high heels with bare legs, I knew that fashion should adapt to the climate.

Last night was the Oscar Awards. I did not intend to watch any of it, but it ran long and when I settled in to watch the 11:00 news, I got almost an hour of Oscars. Morning news, of course, had to cover the awards also. I am happy to see glamor back, but I think the dresses are a wee bit too long.

I witnessed Jennifer Lawrence trip on her dress going up the stairs to accept her award. To be fair, a skirt that full would be problematic going upstairs unless you gently hold the skirt up a bit. I didn't see her hands to know if she tried to do this or was unaware of this necessity. (Can we bring back charm schools and elocution lessons?)

A while later, Meryl Streep walked across the stage to present an award. She appeared to be picking at something on her backside. I thought perhaps a mic was bothering her. It was her heel, caught on her dress. I don't have a photo of that but here she is in the gown.

Now for my next catty observation, why the heck is she slouching and what is she looking at while Daniel Day Lewis gives his speech? She is an accomplished, experienced actress for pete's sake. Can't she stand up straight for a few minutes?

 

One last example of a dress a tad too long. Reese Witherspoon looks fantastic...except she is standing on her dress. 

It is time for me to drink my saucer of milk and get dressed. I'll be wearing Lands End jeans, a J.C. Penney sweater, hand knit socks, Clark's clogs and jewelry courtesy of T.H.E. Hubby. I will be warmer than Brandi Glanville (should I know who she is???) and from the looks of that bodice, much more comfortable! 

 

The old Squares (not talking about hubby and me!)

What a cowinky-dink...I was just thinking of Wayland Flowers and Madame who were often on Hollywood Squares, and a friend shared the following with me.

I can't see J.C. Penney without thinking of Madame's pronunciation: Jay-Cee-Pen-Nay!

I'm not sure that the responses were spontaneous back then, but I do remember Peter Marshall and others cracking up to a degree that led the viewers to believe the responses were unrehearsed.

Don't you love the plaid suit?

The show got away with a lot of innuendo without using crude words. I miss those days.

Without further ado, here is what she shared:

These great questions and answers are from the days when ' Hollywood Squares' game show responses were spontaneous, not scripted, as they are now. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions.

Q. Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?
A. Paul Lynde: Loneliness!
(The audience laughed so long and so hard it took up almost 15 minutes off the show!) 

 Q. Do female frogs croak?
A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.

Q. If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be?
A. Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it. 
Q. True or False, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years.
A. George Gobel: Boy, it sure seems that way sometimes.  

Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A. Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake.

 Q. According to Cosmopolitan, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think that he is attractive, is it okay to come out and ask him if he's married?
A.. Rose Marie: No wait until morning.
Q. Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
A. Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.

Q. In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say 'I Love You'?
A. Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty..

Q. What are 'Do It,' 'I Can Help,' and 'I Can't Get Enough'?
A. George Gobel: I don't know, but it's coming from the next apartment.

Q. As you grow older, do you tend to gesture more or less with your hands while talking?
A. Rose Marie:You ask me one more growing old question Peter, and I'll give you a gesture you'll never forget.

Q. Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Q. Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during the first year?
A. Charley Weaver: Of course not, I'm too busy growing strawberries.

Q. In bowling, what's a perfect score?
A. Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy.

Q. It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics, what is the other?
A. Paul Lynde: Tape measures.

Q. During a tornado, are you safer in the bedroom or in the closet?
A. Rose Marie: Unfortunately Peter, I'm always safe in the bedroom.

Q. Can boys join the Camp Fire Girls?
A. Marty Allen: Only after lights out.

 Q. When you pat a dog on its head he will wag his tail. What will a goose do?
A. Paul Lynde: Make him bark?

Q. If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
A.. Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.

Q. According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
A. Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army.

Q. It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it?
A. Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn't neglected.

Q. Back in the old days, when Great Grandpa put horseradish on his head, what was he trying to do?
A. George Gobel: Get it in his mouth.



Q. Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
A. Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?

Q. When a couple have a baby, who is responsible for its sex?
A. Charley Weaver: I'll lend him the car, the rest is up to him

Q. Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are they?
A. Charley Weaver: His feet.

Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A. Paul Lynde: Point and laugh .

If you are old enough to remember that era, I hope you enjoyed the walk down memory lane. I'll leave you with one more frequent Square guest who only had one memorable quote:

Coochie! Coochie!

Shoo-shoo-shoo Sugar Town*

Was your Valentine's Day sweet? Mine was. Grandson Colton was here. We played trains. We played in the play house. We napped in my bed which truthfully meant I balanced myself on the edge of our queen sized mattress and wondered how one little person can take up so much room and throw off so much heat.

 

Everyone bought candy for everyone else. Hershey's, Mars, Whitman's and Russell Stover all made money last week. Pepperidge Farm did too, as Goldfish are one of Colton's favorite snacks. I had a strip of blue cardstock that was the same width as the small Goldfish carton, so I wrapped it around the carton, creasing the edges and taped the top shut. The fish were stamped on solid green and on green plaid papers and given air bubbles of green glitter glue.

 

Another thing my grandson loves are the characters from Disney's Cars. I found this idea on a Disney site. The bodies and tires are two layers of cardstock. The tires are glued at the top only and sandwiched between layers of the body. With the bottom open, they are somewhat splayed so they will stand up. The eyes and mouths were printable downloads along with the body and tire patterns. I colored the eyes with Copics. This quick project was a big hit.

 

Lightning McQueen read (on the back) that Colton "auto" be my Valentine. 'Mater's said that he "wheelie" loved Colton.

It is never to early to teach a love of puns, is it?

Colton's mommy got Cherry M&Ms in a tube with a card that had an opening for the tube, and baggies with the remaining M&Ms and rapsberry Kisses. She got them for being berry sweet and always cherry....er, cheery.

My boys are "da bomb" so they each got 3 Rolos wrapped in red with a gold pipe cleaner fuse.

Hubby's card used a stamp that featured the character Tina, made by AI (Art Impressions). The inside stamped greeting read "Of course I love you...who else would put up with me?"

 

Now it is time to concentrate on birthdays again. Hubby catches up to me today (for 5 months I hear about being so much older than he is), followed soon by Colton's and his daddy's birthdays. Throw in a few cousins and a sister-in-law and we'll be eating cake until summer arrives!

 

* (from the post title) Anyone have Nancy Sinatra (or Zooey Deschanel) humming in their head now, singing Sugar Town?

 

Floundering in February

What a fishy post title, eh?

I seem to be floundering (Definition: Struggle mentally; show or feel great confusion: "she floundered, not knowing quite what to say") when it comes to blogging lately.

I've had spurts of being incredibly busy amid bouts of lethargy, with an occasional whopper of a headache waylaying plans to do much of anything that wasn't vital to surviving the day. The headaches are barometer related. I live in a house, not out in the elements, but barometric pressure seeps in through the keyholes I guess.

Not having much to say doesn't make me feel guilty as it once did. Obviously I can say a lot about nothing...and I'm doing that right now! I do feel badly that I've neglected some of my favorite bloggers though. I hope to rectify that this week but today seems to be slipping away from me.

The only thing blog-worthy that I have to share is that I made a cake and mini cupcakes for a great nephew's birthday party yesterday. Josh is 8 now. Every birthday I get the honor of making birthday cakes for him and his sister. They tell me what they'd like and I try to accommodate them. Some times I think they are purposely challenging me but I've managed so far.

What would an 8 year old boy want on his cake this year? I've done football themes twice, a bicycle and a skateboard in recent years. Would it be another sports theme? Yes, sort of. He wanted the Under Armour logo.

Huh?

If you aren't aware, Under Armour is the name of a line of athletic clothing. I don't think I am infringing on any copyrights because the cake was made for personal use.

I wasn't sure how much cake would be needed so I made a chocolate 13x9 cake and yellow mini cupcakes.

Packed and ready to be transported to the party

 

Cupcakes in place and the cake ablaze while we all sang

 

If anyone is wondering how I accomplished this, I found the U A logo online, placed it into a Word document, narrowed the page margins as far as I could go and enlarged the image as much as I could to fit and print in landscape orientation. 

With a crumb coat of frosting on the cake, I placed the cut out logo and traced it with a toothpick, then began filling in the background and sides of the cake with plain butter cream stars. I tinted icing brown for the logo and used a slightly smaller tip. Brown isn't my favorite color to tint icing, but I thought going for the opposite of the cupcakes was a good idea.

The white letters on the cupcakes were done with white candy melts and an alphabet candy mold. The small logos were the same image scaled down to an inch wide and repeated multiple times in Word. I printed the page, placed wax paper over it and piped the logos with the same white candy melts and a small decorator tip.

I've had that alphabet candy mold for decades and it is the most used mold I own. Kids love seeing their name on a cake and being able to eat it. I need to remember to make a few extra letters the next time as siblings and cousins like to at least find the first letter of their name and claim it. There are no E's in Happy Birthday Joshua but he does have a cousin whose name begins with an E, and how could I forget C for my favorite redhead, Colton?

Actually, I didn't forget my grandson. I had plenty of yellow cake batter so I used an old Wilton singles pan in the shape of Winnie the Pooh's head. Colton got this as surprise. Size-wise, I'd say this is about 6" at the widest point, maybe two cupcakes worth of batter.

I don't want to leave you with baited breath, waiting for me to perch my bass on my computer chair and compose another post so I will tell you that I am clamming up for today. Just for the halibut though, tuna in tomorrow and see if I'm still floundering.

 

High fiber food....felt food

Even before the Play House Project I had some felt in my fabric stash. Some was high quality wool felt, some was craft felt off the bolt, and some pieces were rectangles sold in the craft aisle that are pretty thin but often come in fun colors and prints. The cow and Tigger in this post Finger Puppets are examples of those prints.

Cruising around Pinterest boards, I saw felt food and knew I had to make some for Colton. Thank goodness I have a grandchild...not just for the joy he brings to Papa and me....but to give me a reasonable excuse to make things a 60 year old woman doesn't need but wants.

The bread is white felt with three layers of very thin batting between the top and bottom. The crust is a strip of beige felt. Even layers without batting are double layers of felt for stability. They just plain look better with a little body. The blanket stitch (applique stitch) is done with perle cotton. The pink circle is baloney, the solid rectangle is supposed to be American cheese (old, discolored cheese?), the red is a tomato slice with stitches for seeds rather than beads (which I considered then dismissed) and hopefully the Swiss cheese is obvious.

Same slices of bread here, untoasted with a fried egg and three slices of bacon.

 Not an eggs for breakfast type? How about some pancakes?

One of my grandson's favorite foods came next, pizza! He might not choose dark brown mushrooms and sliced black olives along with the mozzarella and pepperoni, but I am the chef here!

So far, the food has mostly been healthy stuff. I started the next day's creations healthy with the orange and strawberries, but where did that donut come from?

Uh-oh...more snack food and sweets! A chocolate chip cookie, a sandwich cookie (which might be replaced by a larger one...unless this is supposed to be a tiny Oreo) and a bag of chips.

You really need to eat your veggies, even if they do look a little odd. Here we have an ear of corn, some green beans, a spear of asparagus and some broccoli.

Would you like fries with your grilled hamburger (note the grill lines)? I put your pickle slices on the side.

Let's end with a chocolate candy bar. I've slipped it out of the wrapper for you.

Or would you prefer something cold, like an ice cream cone with a cherry on top?

I am having a ridiculous amount of fun making these things! I have used many sites as inspiration. If you're interested in making some felt food, google "felt food" and look at both web matches and image matches. These will get you started:

http://www.skiptomylou.org/2011/05/24/felt-food/

http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2010/04/short-order-cook.html

http://americanfeltandcraft.wordpress.com/category/felt-food/free-felt-food-tutorials-and-patterns/

http://helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com/p/felt-food-tutorials.html

An update on the Play House: I think Papa (grandpa) is in competition with Gigi (yours truly) to be the most popular grandparent. His creation, the swing set won't be used again for a few months due to weather, but he still tweaks things here for Colton. He added a "tap light", a battery operated light designed for closets and areas without an electrical outlet, to the underside of the card table in the play house. Colton now has a ceiling light fixture that he can turn on and off!

Hurry Spring!

And by Spring, I mean warm weather, not Spring as an official season but with snow still falling.

Carry on. You know I will.

A Friday groaner

 Hooray! It is February first! Time to say Rabbit! Rabbit! for good luck.

January was a very trying month but things are looking up. I do appreciate each and every day, but I can't lie....I am glad that we are inching closer to spring and  better yet, Summer!

Since I am not currently feeling puny, you know that punny has probably returned. You've been forewarned.

Once in a land far, far away there lived a group of people called Trids. The Trids were happy except for the huge ogre that lived on the mountain. The ogre would periodically terrorize the Trids.

The Trids tired of the ogre and sought to reason with him. They thought one of their religious leaders would be a good intermediary. So a group of Trids and their minister went up the mountain and before they could even say one word the ogre kicked them down the mountain. Not being dismayed the Trids thought that maybe the ogre was Catholic, so they sent another delegation, this time led by the local priest. But alas, as they approached the ogre he once again kicked them all down the mountain.

The Trids were upset until they thought that perhaps the ogre was Jewish. Unfortunately, no Trids were Jewish, so they wrote to the people of another land and asked them to send a Rabbi to help them with the ogre. The Rabbi arrived and led a delegation of Trids up the mountain. The ogre saw them coming and kicked all of them, except for the Rabbi, down the mountain. The Rabbi, having been told of the previous expeditions, wondered why he alone had not been kicked down the mountain, so he asked the ogre. The ogre laughed and replied:

"Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids!"