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Happy Weekend

Happy Friday everybody! Apologies for the radio silence over here. A screaming case of hip bursitis landed me bed bound for a few days. I know. Does that sound like fun?

Thanks to doctors who make house calls, four separate injections of steroids into my hip joint, and a steady stream of Judy Garland size servings of muscle relaxers…I am on the road to recovery. Praise God! I’m still not quite “with it” enough to drive or operate machinery or even read a proper book, but I figure I can sputter out a blog post to share the greatest news ever: the Iris Apfel movie. It is here!

I’ll be chilling out in bed with Netflix for a couple more days (viewing recommendations welcome). I’ll see you guys next week!

Grassy Green Egg Cups

by aunt peaches 1 Comment

Every year I try to find new and interesting ways to display Easter eggs. My favorite will always be the old Paskris tree, but there is something to be said for a humble hard-boiled egg that deserves a place of honor. Not that I don’t love a colorful jumble of eggs in a basket, but you know, sometimes you have an egg who deserves a shot at a solo career, up on the mantel with the other treasures.

Paper grass and Easter eggs are old friends, so this just seemed like a natural combo! Best part? They are crazy easy to make.

All you need is an 8.5″ by 3.6″ piece of paper (that’s one third of a standard letter size sheet) with fringes cut 2/3 of the way down. Now fold back the fringes, circle it around a couple of times and dab with glue. Presto! Grass eggs at your service. You can make one to display a single egg, or make a whole bunch and then it will look like you are trying to grow a garden of Easter eggs (don’t act like you aren’t).

As always, this post is brought to you by Paas, America’s favorite Easter tradition. Go see some of the amazing eggs they are cooking up on Facebook (like these fancy eggs I made with their Flashy Foil kit). Yeah, cool huh?!

Happy Monday: Girl Scout Cookies

by aunt peaches 16 Comments

It’s Monday, which is usually the day I round up a bunch of my favorite links from the past week and share here. This week, there is really only one thing on my mind worth talking about: Girl Scout Cookies. Mostly because I don’t have any. This is because, 1. I’m trying to be good and not do things like buying enough cookies to warrant little girls to ask me, “Are you building a fort?” (<<–that really happened) and 2. My so-called-friend who usually tells me when his daughter is selling cookies didn’t tell me (YES I’M LOOKING AT YOU BRENDAN) (AND NO FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES DO NOT COUNT).

Everywhere I go this week, I see people carrying these little over-priced boxes of fudge rippled rainbow happiness. It is maddening. This morning I was driving and I saw a woman with them loaded in her bike basket on her way to work and it occurred to me, for a fleeting moment, that it would not take much effort to knock her bike over with the car. Would I kill her for cookies? No. Of course not. Would I strategically bump the bike thus sending 12 boxes flying out of the basket thus allowing me time to scoop them up and get back in the car before said bike woman was back on her feet? Absolutely. Let’s just take a moment to sit back and admire the strength it took for me to not do that. That’s pretty effing admirable. And yet, despite my admirable restraint, everyone has these cookies BUT ME.

Can you even imagine the horror? The horror. I’m okay with this, but I thought now might be a good time to talk about everything Girl Scout Cookie related that we don’t talk about the rest of the year. It’s a seasonal thing. And people in Canada probably won’t understand so let’s just bundle it all together and get it out of our system, K? K.

And yes, Girl Scout Cookie needs to be in title case. I don’t care if you can’t cite that in the Chicago Manual of Style, some things are just common sense.

Does your dog want too dress up and sell Girl Scout Cookies? Yeah. She does.

Take the quiz: What kind of Girl Scout Cookie are you? PS: I’m a Thin Mint. I knew it!!!

A comprehensive list of beer pairings for Girl Scout Cookies.

Talk about ambition: Congrats to this 11-year-old for hustling her way to selling 18,000 boxes. (Watch the video – Mom looks exhausted).

If you were outside a vintage typewriter shop in Los Altos California last weekend, you could have bought your cookies from Tom Hanks!

Speaking of vintage…interesting fact: In 1942 the Girl Scouts sold calendars instead of cookies because of WWII flour and dairy shortages.

Another fact: for the first 90 days of the year, Girl Scout Cookies are the #1 cookie brand in the USA. Oreos are #1 for the rest of the year.

Another less perky fact: For many years Girl Scout Cookies were made with a controversial ingredient — palm oil. Harvested by major commodity middle-man Cargill, the palm oil used to create Girl Scout Cookies was linked to the destruction of thousands of acres of Indonesian rainforest every year. Good news: after a handful of renegade Girl Scouts recognized the problem (and the whole “make the world a better place” hypocrisy) and demanded change, Girl Scout Cookie adult people listened, made adjustments, and are now are majorly choosy about where they source their ingredients. Way to go, girls!

More good news: Put your zip code in the “Find Cookies” box at the top and it will tell you when a troop near you is selling. This takes out all the serendipitous joy of stumbling into a GSC sale, but this is what it has come to. I have also heard you can buy them online and on Ebay, but you have to go through somebody like you are buying Avon and it’s unnecessarily complicated, which is a lousy way to teach our girls capitalism so I’m keeping it in person.

Thin Mint fan? There are about eleventyseven hundred ways to scratch that itch with recipes you can make at home. Like; this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

There is also a recipe for samoa pie that I may or may not be having for breakfast tomorrow.

And while I’m eating it, I may or may not be watching these lost scenes from Troop Beverly Hills!

Now everybody, get on up. It’s cookie time!

12 DIYs to Try This Weekend

by aunt peaches 4 Comments

Happy Friday, you guys! This weekend I’m throwing open the windows and hunkering down for some much-needed spring cleaning. While I’m elbow deep in that book I told you about, I’m hoping to sneak in some Kimmy Schmidt (have you been watching it? SO FUNNY!) and maybe a DIY project or two. Here are a few projects that got my attention.

1. Faux stained glass 2. Coffee filter Easter baskets 3. Parisian candy display

4. Animal cake toppers 5. Button shamrocks 6. Ballerina Tshirt

7. Homemade charms. 8. Decoupage a cooler 9. Egg topiary

10. Vintage charms 11. Coconut oil hair mask 12. Game of Thrones dragon eggs

Gold Leaf Wooden Bowls

by aunt peaches 4 Comments

My gold-on-wood flatware has started me on a gold-on-wood craze all over the house, starting with these bowls I made last month. Wooden salad bowls are one of those things I grew up with but we rarely used because they needed to be hand washed. Sound familiar? Welp, if that is the case and I have to hand-wash these bowls anyway, why not fancify (<real word) the outside? There was a stack of gold leaf sitting in my craft room for ages, begging to be released into something fabulous. Bonus: they look really good as nest for golden Easter eggs.

I know you were worried about that too.

I find wooden salad bowls at thrift stores all the time, usually untouched (like these) or scraped up pretty badly (not these – but I’ll have another project for those soon!). Most will have some sort of oil finish, so if you do this with the gold leaf, it’s important to use an adhesive that will really stick. I have been using Mona Lisa brand since art school, but you can find other brands all over the place. Normally you can gold leaf with regular white glue, but because of the oil finish on the bowls, I wanted to stick to the real stuff for this project.

Materials

Wooden Bowls
Mona Lisa Gold Leaf Kit (surprisingly not that expensive)
Wide paint brush (best if it’s old/not precious)
Sealer (not pictured). In this case I am using Dishwasher Safe Mod Podge on the outside of the bowl. Even though theses bowls will always be hand-washed, I’ll take extra reinforcement wherever I can get it.

Instructions

1. Brush the bottom half of the bowl with gold leaf adhesive.

2. Let it dry until it turns from milky white to a super sticky clear (around 20 minutes).

3. Pick up gold leaf with clean (dry fingers). I like to tear the whole pack in half to make sheets smaller and easier to handle — your call.

4. Use a brush to smooth out the leaf – it will likely stick to the adhesive VERY easily.

5. Use a lint-free cloth to smooth over the whole bowl.

6. Finish the outside with a sealer. Do NOT cover the inside of the bowl (where the food goes) with any sealer that is not food-safe. Note, “non-toxic” and “food-safe” are not the same thing. Allow bowls to cure one week before using.

The trick to working with gold leaf is to keep expectations low. It’s not for those seeking perfection. Personally, I love that these bowls have blips and bald spots. No two are alike. They make the perfect landscape for my Easter table, or, just an everyday lunch salad.

Man, that is going to be a majorly glamorous salad!

Colored Clothespins from Leftover Egg Dye

by aunt peaches 6 Comments

I am a late-life clothespin convert. We spent many years apart, but now I can’t get enough of them. Literally. Every time I see a big pack of them at the store (usually for under a dollar) I just get them because I know I will use them for everything but laundry. Craft projects. In the office. In the pantry. In the basement. On my fridge…everywhere. And while there is nothing wrong with a humble wooden clothespin, I like to dress them up with a bit of dye.

Now, can you think of a time of year when you have small quantites of dye laying around with nothing to do?

Oh yeah. Hello, Easter eggs!

And hey now – if you use food-safe dye, you can use the clips on food. Here I used those teensy clothespins as drink markers. Make a bunch in different colors and clip them onto glasses before your next party – now everyone will be able to spot their drink in the crowd. Works just as well on wine glasses as it does on red plastic cups. They also work great on paper plates and double as a nifty way to keep paper napkins in place when it comes to eating outdoors.

You can also use them in place of those chip clips that people pay good money for. Seriously, why pay $2 for a single chip clip when you can buy 80 clothespins for that same price? Stop the madness!

Want to make a batch for yourself?

After you are done dyeing the eggs, let the clothespins soak in the dye. Ten minutes will give you a pale pastels, while overnight will give a brighter, more vivid hue (just be careful if you buy clothespins with non-galvinized hinges as they may rust if you leave them for too long (but this is usually not a problem).)

Lay them out to dry on a paper towel to dry, and whamo! You’re in business. Not a bad way to double up on that leftover Easter egg dye, huh?

Do you have any interesting ways you like to use clothespins? Let me know. I would love to hear!

This post is brought to you by Paas, America’s favorite Easter tradition. Be sure to check them out on Facebook and see all the other cool things you can do with Paas!

Happy Monday: Women, Pickles and Adventures in Crayons

by aunt peaches 7 Comments

Happy Monday everyone! Here are a few distractions to keep you busy through the week.

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The gray hair trend. It’s real, and it’s happening!

This man was body shamed and now thousands of women (including some major celebrities) want to throw him a party. MORE OF THIS PLEASE!

The one Dutch word you need to know.

Don’t you love it when celebrities embrace the F word?

Naught, naughty: McCalls sewing patterns behaving badly.

Meet the young woman who made it on to Forbe’s list of self-made billionaires by doing something helpful for all of us.

Eight of history’s greatest cat ladies.

And great news: we’ll never drink alone again. It’s here! Wine for cats!

I know at least five people who read this post, bought the book, and now owe me a cocktail. Your’e welcome.

Here is something I always wondered; Why do sandwiches come with pickles? Shout out to all the ass-nasty pieces of pickle juice soaked buns I have tossed out over the years. RIP

Dresses made from crayons. Unbelievable! Of course, as soon as I saw all those orange crayons stacked up I needed to youtube this old video from Sesame street.

You can smell the paraffin through the screen!

Doodling: Aluminum Notebook Covers

by aunt peaches 10 Comments

Last week I was on the phone and got caught without a pen. That’s not unusual in the computer age but it make strings difficult for compulsive doodlers like me. Hard up for something to fidget with, I started picking at a glob of dried glue on the cover of my notebook and a small scrap of tin foil leftover from the previous evening’s dinner. I’m not sure where the idea hit me, but it somehow it became very obvious very quickly that the glue and the foil want dot hang out. A couple of brain synapses later…boom!

There was a roll of aluminum tape left over in my cupboard from these garden markers a couple of years ago. You look this stuff and assume it’s silver duct tape, but it’s not; it’s a thin ribbon of aluminum sheeting with an adhesive backing. It’s probably meant to use in contraction (you’ll find it at the hardware store for about $5) but by gosh it’s nifty for craft supplies!

With that in mind, I decided to take my notebook doodle to the next level…

Materials
Notebooks (binders would work great here too)
White Glue (I’m always a fan of Tacky Glue, especially the fast-dry variety)
Permanent markers or alcohol ink (water-based markers will not work here)

1. Doodle away in glue.
2. Let it dry.
3. Cover with strips of aluminum tape.
4. Use the tips of the markers to burnish the tape into the glue, drawing up the ridges of glue.
5. Keep going.
6. Enjoy

This was one of those projects that I like well enough, but I feel like it’s only the beginning. I’ll bet this could be an awesome base formula for all kinds of nifty things (read: I smell jewelry). Can you think of another nifty place to use this technique? Let me know!

DIY Paskris Easter Tree

by aunt peaches 14 Comments

There are a lot of old world traditions in Europe that never took off in America; castles, soccer, the metric system, public healthcare. Five years ago nobody in Arizona knew what Nutella was and now they smear it on burritos. Because that is what we do best, America, we take old timey European favorites and Pump Up the Jam.

And that’s the way I feel about Easter. I like to take one of the oldest European customs — the Scandinavian paskris tree — and take it to new heights!

If you go to a grocery store in Sweden right about now, you’ll see these feathered branches for sale next to the carnations and potted plants. It’s a thing. And yeah, we can be jealous. The tradition comes from tying feathers and shiny bobbles on to the ends of barren branches as a way to usher in spring (and possibly promote growth, depending on the tree). Come this time of year, folks get so hard up for color and vitality they get sick of waiting on Mother Nature and decide to DIY it. So that is what we are doing here — making our own paskris Easter trees.

Good news: They double as excellent egg displays.

Extra good news: They are easy to make!

Materials

1. Branches in a vase. Make sure to weigh the vase down with stones or sand.
2. Feathers. You can buy them individually, or just yank some extras out of feather boa.
3. White glue. Anything will do, but the thick stuff won’t drip and that’s a big bonus.

Just get a little white glue on the branch and wrap the feather around it. The great thing about feathers is that they stick to anything. I mean, anything.

As Easter trees are one of Europe’s favorite traditions, this post is brought to you by Paas, America’s favorite Easter tradition.

Man oh man, we love a good dye tablet, don’t we? Hey, did you know Paas is taken from the Dutch term for Easter? That is why I used my leftover Paas dye to make tulips. See what I did there? Dutch. Tulips. Tradition. Easter. It’s the circle of life!

Happy Easter!

Monet’s Lily Pad Gift Boxes

by aunt peaches 5 Comments

They say you have never truly lived until you have been to Paris. Welp, I am behind schedule! And although I have been fortunate enough to visit France on a few occasions, I have never seen Paris beyond the airport. Sad violin, right? Lucky me (or should I say, lucky us)…Michael’s is hosting a contest for a trip of a lifetime to Paris. As part of campaign, they asked a few of us to create projects inspired by the location. It probably would have been much easier to go with a crafty version of an icon like Eiffel Tower or L’Arc de Triomphe, but honestly, if I was on my way to Paris I know the very first place I would want to go: ~~a bakery~~ Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, and the subject of so many of his gorgeous paintings.

I think the piece of art I ever saw as a kid and thought, “Now that is good!” was one of his many water lily paintings, and although my taste has expanded a bit over the years, I’ll always have a soft spot for his style of painting — an abundance of dashes and systematic-like color rhythms. Gorgeous! For this project I thought it might be fun to break it down to something super simple using everyday items you’ll find at your local craft store (Michael’s, of course).

Materials

White gift boxes. Michaels sells this set of four for $9.99 and it’s slightly textured which makes a great base for gripping paint. You could use anything as a base, but beware of those shiny white gift boxes as the plastic coating can be tricky with water-based paints.

Variety of blue and green craft paint. Mark Montano recently turned me on to Deco Art paints and I am a new fan for a number of reasons, but mostly the color saturation. If you really want to go hardcore Monet on these there is one color in particular that I love: Bluegrass Green.

Monet was notoriously picky about mixing paint pigments, greens in particular. And although he used thousands of shades in his work, when I think of Giverny, I think of the green-teal colors on the house, specifically chosen to amplify the living greenery around the home. When people say “Paris Green” I believe what they are really talking about is Giverny green, but that is a matter of opinion. Bottom line: Bluegrass Green is a winner!

Layers of paint are easy to build when you don’t think about it too much. Just a base of blue followed by big blobs of Bluegrass Green, followed by streaks of white and lime green as well. Top it off with a big white flower and you are good to go! These lily pads were made from coffee filters, but I did a magnolia made from paper plates a few years ago that would work very nicely as well.

So, who wants to go to Paris? Now is your chance! Create your own Parisian-inspired art, floral, baking or paper crafting project and uploading a photo to www.paris.michaels.com through March 31, 2015. You can also share your project on social using #SpringtimeInParis

* What do you win? A four-night trip for two to Paris, 1,000 euros, a VIP tour of the Louvre, private classes including sketching, floral arranging, baking and more!

* If you need a little Paris inspiration to get you started, take a look at some of the Springtime in Paris projects on Michaels.com.

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