December 2009 – My Little Country

What else to do when the days get short, cold, and dreary but to whip out the glue gun, glitter, and yarn? Yes, I’ve gotten crafty in the country! I find that my mood greatly improves just by gluing, glittering, or baking something. This week’s crafts include a candy wreath, lampshade, dog sweater, and a mystery craft, which I will reveal soon!

THE CANDY WREATH

So super easy to make! I bought 2 – 3# bags of hard candy @ Dollar General for about 6 bucks. The hanger was free and the ribbon was a dollar for 9 yards at Wal Mart. I am going to post the how-to video, but may I say first that I deviated from the instructions (what a shock!) and did not clip off the ‘hanger’ part of the hanger (why create extra work???) and just simply did no wire cutting and used the ‘hanger’ part to hang up the wreath. My wreath came out looking more like an oval shape, but what do you expect when you have 6 pounds of candy hanging on a little wire? Oh well, it’s still tasty.

My Candy Wreath

Fun for all ages! Plus you get to eat the leftovers!

RE-COVERING A LAMPSHADE

I took the girl’s lamp and re-vamped it for my 1950s look. I got the chenille bedspread out of the trash (some poor creature had tossed it out not thinking about all that CRAFTING you can do with it), so it was free, and the lamp was my Mamaw’s, I think, and really all I purchased was the shade and the ball fringe (WallyWorld). I am posting a video so you can see how I did this. I did tuck the fabric back up into the shade on the edges (should have trimmed it more, but oh well), and lastly I hot glued the ball fringe on the inside of the shade. Originally the shade was just a plain white number, but somehow it got a greasy stain on it, and I am kinda glad that it DID, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have thought to re-cover it.

This was so super easy and fun to do. I have now officially fallen in love with spray adhesive. For the record, I used Elmer’s spray adhesive, but 3M’s Super 77 is awesome stuff, I just didn’t have that much cash on me!

Well, that’s it for this go-round! More crafts will be revealed later this week! Stay tuned!

Well, it’s December 4th, and we’re finally, officially going to have our first ‘hard’ freeze around here. Goodbye Brandywine tomatoes. Goodbye my Romas and Sweet Cherry 100s who are still producing. Bye, bye big, lush basil. Ugh.

I was going to name this post “Check out my Hooters”, but I haven’t gotten pictures of them yet. Stay tuned for the madness and mayhem. Just kidding. Well, about the madness and mayhem, anyway.

In farmhouse news, I’m ripping apart the interior of ye olde farmhouse and re-arranging things more to my liking. Now that we’ve been here over a year, I know what I’ll use and where it serves me best. So, I’ve been “Martha”-ing it up all day today and I only got to 3 rooms. Oh well. Feels good to get rid of clutter. Sorry I don’t have current pics, but my camera is dead today. I re-re-arranged the pantry, making a ‘maid’s’ corner (yes, that is me). I love it! Will get photos soon.

In farm news, today I lost my last female duck. I let her out this morning, and by midday, she was gone. Just disappeared. I am almost certain it was a hawk, and well….I’m pretty pissed about it. I LOVE duck eggs to bake with. Sigh. But, here’s some pretty happy news…I took 2 of her eggs and put them underneath a setting hen, and both are developing! Funny thing: I just was researching this phenomenon (chickens hatching duck eggs) and I found this quote: ” One good breed of chicken to consider to hatch your ducks is called the Silkie.” Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing! I have my fingers crossed that they’ll hatch into two beautiful little females. I will keep you updated on that. At any rate, this spring, I will be adding some more female ducks to the farm as well as female geese. Did you know that ducks are actually as efficient, if not more so, at laying eggs than chickens? The eggs are also much richer. Because my ducks do not eat funky stuff in a pond, their eggs do not have any weird, off flavors. Anyway, I’m down to 2 geese and Mr. Duck.

Well, time to go sit in front of my fireplace, finish my coffee and work on some crafts! Hooters coming soon!

Afterthought: I want to add some pics I snapped of the Christmas tree in our kitchen! Enjoy!