Mini Bouquet and Technicolor Valentine Tag

So I've been pretty bad about posting to this blog it seems, but at least I'm keeping up with the creating. Here are a couple things that I made over the past few days.

The first thing is this little valentines tag. Which if I keept making valentines themed stuff I really don't know what I'll do with it all because I'm going to have more than I can possibly give to one person. This of course was made with a heart shaped craft punch. The coloured paper is from a sheet showing a sample of different origami papers you could buy. You can't really tell from the picture, but the hearts are raised with 1/8" quilling paper, so they are not sitting flat on the tag

This bouquet was also made with a heart craft punch, although it was a smaller one. The bouquet itself is about 10 cm long from the bottom to the tip of the longest piece of "grass". This took a while to make because I had to wait for the glue to dry enough. I actually made 3 more of the heart flowers that I didn't include in the bouquet. The little white flowers weren't nearly so time-consuming to make and I just simply crinkled up some white cardstock. Hopefully you don't think that they look all that bad. I tied it all together with a little piece of black embroidery floss and glue.

Papercraft heart

I went searching the internet for a papercraft heart and for the most part came up empty handed so I went about designing my own (yay for Inkscape). I made this one out of some scrap paper since I really wasn't sure if my design would even fit together, and have since managed to mangle my work, but at least I managed to get a picture of it before I did so. I mean to make another one later out of stronger paper.

Day 8: Metroid Complete

So I spent a lot of time yesterday sewing together the metroid plushie and finished it this morning. As promised, here is a picture of the little guy. I think he's trying to eat my lamp but finding the plastic a little hard to digest.

I also busted out the slow cooker and made some pork chops in it yesterday. They were nice and tender (completely unlike the tough unchewable ones my parents made when I was a kid -- sorry mom & dad) and there's still leftovers for tonight. I probably should have taken a picture to share them, but I have to admit that they aren't all that pretty to look at.

In case you wanted to try making your own pork chops in the slow cooker, the recipe I used was modified from this one here at all recipes.

• 6 boneless pork chops
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Arrange the pork chops in the bottom of your slow cooker. Mix together all of the remaining ingredients to combine the sauce. Pour the sauce over the pork chops.
2. Cook on low for 6 hours.
   

Day 6: Metroid plushie start

Today I've started work on a metroid plushie (pattern can be found here). I cut out all the pieces and sewed together the fangs. This will be the second one I'll have made. I have to say that they're cute furry warm things for being based off of terrifying video game creatures. I'll post pictures later after it's finished.

Day 5: Banana nut muffins

Today's creation is a tasty treat. I made these muffins and then ate a couple for lunch almost right out of the oven. Delicious!

The recipe for these came from page 636 of Joy of Cooking I just threw in the remainder of some chocolate chips that I had on hand and added a smidgen extra vanilla because I could.

So if you want to make these yourself, preheat your oven to 375 F. In a bowl, mix together:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour or wheat bran
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking sodea
1/4 teaspooon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg

and then stir in:

2/3 cup chopped walnuts

and in another large bowl whisk together:

1 large egg
3/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 1/3 cup ripe bananas (2 or 3)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla

Add the flour mixture to the liquid ingredients and fold until just moistened. Divide the batter into the muffin cups. and bake for 14-16 minutes.

Days 1-4: The Beginning

So I had this idea on the weekend while wondering what to fill my weekdays with, since I have a current problem of unemployment. I decided I wanted to make a thing a day (real or digital), or at least make notable progress on a multi-day project. Then I thought maybe I'd blog about it; not so much to contribute to the blogging world (I'm a terrible writer and I know it) but to keep a record for myself. But maybe if you're reading this, you'll be interested in what happens. While I was good about creating something in the past few days, I didn't really follow up with the blogging part of it. Allow me to present the items from days 1-4.

Day 1: A mini-takeout box that I decorated with a butterfly craft punch. The paper that I punched was actually a flyer that was laying around. I thought it had some nice colours.

Day 2: A fractal image made in apophysis. So this one isn't all that exciting I must admit, but at least it's something.

Day 3: Here is a teddy bear model made in Google Sketchup. I played around with Google sketchup for a bit but the finer points still elude me. I think it'll be a while before I ever make anything of note with that program. Or maybe I just suck at 3d-modeling.

Day 4: This blog! I have to say that trying to find a URL name that wasn't taken was driving me insane.

And that's all for today.