Tales of a Bad (Overconfident) Daughter

A tale of woe. A tale of overconfidence. A tale of yet again saying “how hard can it be?” only to find out that I should have read up on it a little more.

So. I saw this beautiful tutorial over at Kleas. Felted beads…so easy that the preschoolers were able to do them. I thought, this is great, these are gorgeous, I will make these for my mom, who always wears interesting necklaces to coordinate with her outfits.

Such is my confidence in my fiber-wrangling abilities, that I waited until Mother’s Day morning before starting this project. My friend Kristin came over to help (I also consider her a specialist in wool control). She made the puffs.

I wetted and rolled a puff with a tad of soap. Ok, maybe too much soap. I labored alone in the kitchen, whining and wheedling that this was taking longer than I thought it would, and that the snakes weren’t felting properly. And that jeez, this is not working! Kristin felt certain that I was doing it wrong, so she came to the rescue:

She had no more luck than I did. Our snakes never did get firm enough; one felt hollow in the middle and the other had a permanent slit up the side.

When we cut the beads up, they were not as pretty as I had hoped. Worse, they started falling apart almost immediately. I am not as talented as the preschoolers at that other blog!!

I ended up giving my mom a baggie full of vaguely bead-looking fuzz stuff. Happy Mother’s Day from your not-so-talented daughter.

Zach kept teasing me that I should have glued them and some gold-painted macaroni to a piece of construction paper and told her the Boogedy made it for her.

My mother, bless her heart, oohed and aahed and tried to think of ways to salvage them and still use them.

A good mom praises a good effort.

Easter Recap

Forgot to post these pics earlier…

On Easter Sunday I got up and made a lemon cake with cream cheese frosting, coconut flakes, whopper eggs, and some kind of gross edible easter grass. This was more sugary and less “whole food” than I usually do (especially considering I used box mixes), but the end result sure was pretty!

I went early to my sister’s house to play Liar’s Dice (Perudo) with my niece and nephews. I did some trash-talking about how I was going to kick some butt and take no prisoners, etc. But I wasn’t there for the warm up rounds and my family is merciless:

I lost all my dice and was completely out of the game on my second turn.

So, I gave up and put the Boogedy down for a nap, fell asleep myself, and didn’t wake up until the lasagna came out of the oven and the garlic bread needed cutting. A yummy meal!

I will have to whollop those nephews at dice another time. mwah ha ha. One can’t be a dice-shark without a humiliating loss to make your naivete more believable!

Ginger-Pumpkin Spice Chiffon Pie

This really should be better than it is. It was a three-day process to make these pies.

Monday, I baked two sugar pie pumpkins that I got at the farmer’s market.

Tuesday, I scraped them out and pureed the flesh with a hand-blender. I also made the pie crust…by Sort Of following this Cooks Illustrated recipe for vodka pie crust (meaning I altered so much that it was absurd to think it would work). I’ve tasted this crust before; my sister-in-law Natalie made a peach pie last year that was the best I’ve ever had.

I tried to make a 1.5 recipe (not a straight double), and my math may have been off. I substituted half of the flour with homeground whole wheat that I made that day using the kitchenaid attachment. I used coconut oil (solid at cool room temp). I failed to chill it. The dough was sticky wet and I ended up adding lots more white flour. Wet and pasty before I ever added the vodka.

Wednesday, I added the vodka/water to the chilled crumbles. I rolled out a sample and baked it up with cinnamon sugar and it was yummy. Nice and crisp. So I formed my crusts (the dough didn’t hold together great and I had a few tears) and put them in the freezer.

Then I stirred up the pie filling Kind Of following this “old-fashioned” recipe (we’re trying to cut out canned stuff, so I was avoiding evap. milk). I substituted the sugar for honey and molasses, mixed. I cut some of the milk to account for this extra moisture. I used too much molasses. I used eggs from our chickens, and milk from a local dairy. I baked them forever in order for that light custard to gel.

This pie should be GREAT. It was more like a fluffy-light, OVERLY spiced gingerbread souffle in a crust. But Pretty. It IS pretty. and tasty enough when served with a whole pile of lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Here you can see it’s homely stepsister in the background.

Chompers and Watchers

Cool: This craft project is hilarious! Thanks so much to BitterBetty for her creativity, a great blog, and for this excellent tutorial. Here are pics of the assembly line:

And photos of more creepy plants. The orchids “watch” the front door. The chomper guards the water fountain.

Dissapointing: I invited 5 people to my little craft party on Sunday, and everybody but my mom cancelled. Tis the season, I know. Fall means everybody gets sick. The way I usually structure these get-togethers is to have everyone pay a small (like $5) materials fee to offset the costs. So after my mom gave me $7 (she’s a good tipper), it meant I spent 23 bucks on styrofoam, paint, pipe cleaners, my first glue gun, silly vampire teeth, etc. About $18 More than I would have with my tight budget, if I’d known it was just going to be us.

I spent tons of time shopping for this project, and hours ahead of time pre-painting everything. Zim’s is going out of business, so I saved $$). I was really looking forward to social time with my friends around the hot glue gun, and potluck snackies. I don’t like sounding whiny, but making 36 chompers practically by myself was exhausting. Mom and I only finished two “watchers”.

Oh well. More chompers for me. Anybody have any pointers on making craft parties successful?