Invasion of the Pumpkin People

Well, here's my most recent Halloween-y project...

You may recall from The Week of Broken Holiday Decor post that I have something of a fancy for those cute vintage-y paper mache pumpkin people. Those and stuff with a candy corn theme pretty much make up my Halloween decor. It's one of those things (like strawberries) that apparently I sort of collect and didn't realize it until I started thinking about how many I had. Here are some of the ones that I could get to to photograph them (the others are in my attic): And, of course, the little guy I just fixed up.Almost all of my Halloween decorations (unlike a lot of my Christmas decorations) are things I purchased, not things I made myself. I'm just always drawn to these paper mache pieces for their nostalgic look, but have had minimal success working with paper mache in the past and I find I have been generally content to forgo that medium in lieu of something else. Case in point: this is my one and only real paper mache project that looked halfway decent. I made it a couple of years ago for my cousin, Anna. Recently, however, I've been challenging myself in other media- making far more than just paintings- and am really enjoying it. Inspired by the pumpkin people I purchased recently, by my relative success with the artificial food sculptures (see One Sweet Thing... post), and by two new bloggy friends: Amelia (who I've mentioned before-she has the candy club) see her work at sweetbfolkart - it's colorful, whimsical, often incorporates sweets (so of course, I think it's fabulous!) and all of her pieces have such personality; they're just cute, cute, cute...go have a look-see!

and

Jenny of thepolkadotpixie- her work is so sweetly nostalgic it'll just make you swoon. Adorable is the only word for it. Literally everything she makes would be perfect in my house-I love it!

*They're both super-talented so check them out.

Anyway, since I had paper-mache on the brain and some paper-clay on hand I began experimenting and eventually kind of got the hang of working with it. I was determined not to give up this time, even if my scupture cracked a little, or water had to be added and the whole piece scrapped over and over again. Finally, many hours (and I do actually mean multiple hours) later I had a finished Halloween paper-clay creation...and I have to say I'm pretty proud of him.

TADA!!!!

It's a little paper clay pumpkin person atop a cupcake! It's doubtful I'll be able to part with him...as he was rather labor-intensive and he goes so well with my other Halloween decor (his cupcake actually coordinates with my former creation, #1 Candy Corn Lane: Remember that? I may have to hold on to them both and display them together. But, now that I'm more confident in my sculpting skills I'll definitely be incorporating more little paper clay figures into my artificial sweet stuff. The prospect of this new product line really excites me... I'll share whatever happens with it next!

Thanks, as always, for visiting! I'll leave you with two inspirational vintage postcards...it's Halloween in August, I suppose!sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi

A Birthday, A Curtain, A Snail

Happy, Happy Wednesday!

Well, yesterday was Josh's birthday so, of course, we celebrated!! I'm big on birthdays so even though we didn't have a real party (just dinner out with a couple of friends) there were still gifts... and cake......which was an interesting conglomeration of baked goods because when I asked him what he'd like for a birthday cake he simply said "something different". Since that's anything but specific, I was at a complete loss. So I ended up going to my favorite bakery and getting one of everything that was cake but different from plain white or chocolate birthday cake!! Since we had company, we actually had someone to take a picture of the two of us...so here we are on Josh's 26th birthday.

And here's us as cupcakes: This is a detail of the card I got for Josh...it was sweet, it played music- and it had cupcakes on it, so I couldn't resist.

Oh and here's a pic of an early birthday present I picked out for me that came in the mail yesterday:These cafe curtains were on sale at Urban Outfitters and I just love them. They're even cuter in person than they were online!! They actually came with a valance that I couldn't get, but I decided I liked this just fine. The fruit, the rickrack...they're adorable! They do need to be ironed a bit...maybe later.

So, even though it was Josh's birthday and I'd have ordered a sunny day for him if it were up to me, it isn't up to me and God decided we needed rain (which we did...our yard is very happy). It's been wet, wet, wet for two days and according to the weather it's only going to get wetter. It is considerably cooler, though and it smells blissfully like summer and rain, which I love. When Gatsby and I went outside this morning the snails were out on the front walk- enjoying the coolness, I suppose? I took a close up of one. I like snails, perhaps only because I don't do much gardening. I understand they can be a pest. But they're pretty cute as pests go, don't you think? Since I was thinking of snails, I listened to Snails by The Format this morning as I was working and decided to add it to my blog for the snails-post day. It's sort of an inherently happy melody, I think. Enjoy!*I'm almost finished with a Halloween project I'm really excited about and pretty proud of- I'll try and post a pic later this afternoon or tomorrow! 'Til then-

sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi

Cupcakes Among Other Things

Once again, I find myself creating a blogpost with no cohesion whatsoever (WHATSOEVER- also a favorite word...add that to the list). Sorry, but that's just the way today was...sort of cohesive-less. Random, again.


Anyway, here we go. We'll let the pictures guide us, shall we?


Because, and only because, I passed a certain thrift store on the way to run other, more necessary, errands this morning and because Hope's Closet was having a sale I stopped at merely two places and did just a wee bit of thrifting today. I came away with some real treasures, in my opinion, and spent less than $5. This isn't all I got, it's just the things I didn't have to wash before I photographed them. This plastic vintage nativity was a coincidental find because I'd just happened upon some just like it on ebay last night. Things like that happen to me all the time.

I also found a bunch of vintage wrapping paper. Some of it's older than others, but they were all fun and I think they'll be great for holiday crafting. The wheels are already turning. This was my favorite. It's paper with a whole holiday alphabet!
Here's the whole collection:
I cleaned the studio this weekend (and the pantry, the fridge, the kitchen cabinet with the glasses in it, the gift closet, and my bedside drawers) and I found this painting I love. It's one I did this past spring and framed in this great vintage frame I painted red specifically for this painting.We visited our friends the other day- the ones with the new baby. We didn't get to stay long. We just wanted to pop in and see how everything was going, chat for a bit, and, you know, sit and look at the baby. I made these sweet little new-baby blue-iced cupcakes. Pretty cute, no?

That's all I've got for now...

So, shoo-bee-doo-bee-doo-bah, Happy Monday to ya!

sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi

The Week of Broken Holiday Decor

Among other things, this week has been the week of broken holiday stuff! I've found three, count them, THREE different holiday decorations (from three different holidays...and I think in three different stores, too!) that were way discounted because they were slightly broken, scuffed, and missing some pieces. Of course, being that I'm soft-hearted when it comes to slightly damaged things, and taking into account the fact that they all perfectly matched my other vintage-style holiday decorations, I salvaged them. I brought them home all swaddled in tissue, then pulled out my paper clay, hot glue, vintage tinsel, crepe paper, and of course, lots of glitter...and I fixed the little darlings right up! They're even better now than they were before, I think. How lucky it was for the both of us that they ended up with me!This chenille pipe-cleaner snowman was marked down because he was a bit disjointed (pun totally intended)- he was unravelling a bit- his head was hanging by just a "thread" and his hat was missing, all but the little black felt brim. Enter: hot glue, tinsel, little paper hat...silver glitter and VIOLA! Good as new!I do really like halloween decor, but try to keep really creepy, scary things out of mine. I stick to a theme of candy corn and pumpkins. I love these paper mache pumpkin people! I have quite a few of them(...I'll do a halloween decorations post when I get them all out). So I scooped this little man up even though his hat was chipped and he was totally missing the end of his wand! I fashioned a brand new star for the wand out of paper clay, added some crepe paper and plenty of glitter for good measure! Ta-da!!The only real problem with this sweet little bunny atop a giant easter egg was his little ears. It appeared he'd been dropped...a couple of times. Not a problem- a little ear repair was simple enough!

So there you have it, a Cinderella story of holiday decor!

Here's wishing you a happy weekend!

sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi

Cherry and Vanilla

The Shades of Inspiration prompt color combo this week is red and white so I've been thinking for the past few days about that theme and the following is what I came up with. I love red and white together...I have a lot of it in my kitchen. It's sort of a nostalgic combination, I think. You may remember these cute polka-dotted napkins from the Tisket, a Tasket post...they were purchased at the church rummage sale.Red and white lollipops in a precious mercury glass fleur de lis mint julep cup. (They're displayed in my living room- I know what you're thinking...but if you'd ever been to my house you'd know lollipops in the living room is totally appropriate).

My favorite t-shirt. It contains three plastic coke bottles...so that's cool.This is the "red shelf" in my breakfast room. I have things in there arranged by color...sort of.This is my absolute favorite page in the August 2008 issue of Romantic Homes. I have a bookmark in it just so I can open and drool over all the adorable things in this kitchen.And this is my other favorite page...told you I have trouble with favorites...This little cupcake plate was a happy find from the clearance shelves at The Cook's Nook (a cute cute cute little cooking store here in Longview).This is also a magazine page...from my new Marie Claire Idees (which my dear friend, Corey, was wonderful enough to get me while in Montreal a couple weeks ago). Every page in this magazine is a favorite, but it was the only one with something completely red and white on it. Last, but not least, since I'd been thinking in terms of red and white for the past few days, I got up today and painted a couple of little cupcake paintings in those two colors...plus some browns and creams. I'll add these to my etsy store soon.

Oh- and today began with Josh's perfect pancakes...so it's been a very good day.
Here's wishing you a perfect-pancake kind of day!

sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi

Marmalade Skies

I have difficulty pinning down favorites. I always hate to say something or another is a favorite on the chance I think of something or discover something later that is more a favorite. This leads to me not being able to claim a favorite song, a favorite movie, a favorite food, a favorite color...you get the idea. I just like too much! It seems such a shame to stick yourself with just one favorite something. When it comes to favorite words, however, I can say with reasonable certainty that if MARMALADE isn't my favorite word, it's definitely in the top three to five(probably somewhere near LULLABY and NEVERTHELESS). Eitherway, I bought a new jar of orange marmalade today (which always makes my think of Paddington...you know, the bear) and just that $2 jar labeled "Sweet Orange Marmalade" made me really happy! I also recently found this white cup/jar at a thrift store for 50 cents. I couldn't help buying it because it was so random and all it had printed on it were these bold black letters spelling out "marmalade".Did you know that marmalade doesn't necessarily have to be orange? It is generally made of citrus fruits like lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits, but in my research I even found recipes for tomato marmalade and carrot marmalade!! Click here for more marmalade info: marmalade
Other interesting marmalade trivia: there was/is a band called Marmalade, a Marmalade Cafe with several locations in California, and even a marmalade festival! Here's a link to Marmalade Ink who offers an adorable collection of photo greetings, and you can click here to read about the most expensive marmalade!

Wondering what you can do with marmalade other than spread it on toast? Well, then, here's a marmalade cake recipe, marmalade biscuit recipe, and marmalade sauce recipe. Or, just make a peanut butter and marmalade (that's what I had for lunch) or banana and marmalade sandwich (that's what I would've had for lunch had I remembered to buy bananas)...yum! :) So, there's my Thursday musing on marmalade. Go get some, you won't be sorry!

Oh and the title? In case you've forgotten or flat out don't recognize it, that's a shout out to John Lennon- it's from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- you know, tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

Thanks for stopping by and reading today...orange you glad you did?

sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi

A Window Seat and Spumoni Cupcakes

First, a couple more random things...
Jelly Belly makes candles! They smell just like their jelly beans. I got this one, Juicy Pear, at Wal-Mart yesterday. It's soy wax and has a lead-free wick. A truly sweet discovery!And victory at last! Sweet B's candy of the month is Boston Baked Beans and it took me forever to find some, but VOILA! Here they are...and they were yummy!

So here is the project I promised before and afters of yesterday. I got this bench at aforementioned favorite antique store, Betty's, for $10. I looked it over entirely before buying it and surmised that though there was some cracking in the decorative woven stuff around the edge and general paint flaking, etc. just from age, the wood itself was great. No water damage or splitting...so I brought it home and in just a couple hours after lunch I completely transformed it! There are four layers of material on the cushion, but I got it on sale for $1 a yard so altogether the fabric only cost $3. I've been wanting a window seat in the bay window in my breakfast room since we moved into this house. When I brought this home I originally intended it to go under the middle window, but once I got it in to the room I decided I liked it better under the chalkboard. So it's sort of a window seat against the wall!Finally, I have a new dinner idea! We had friends over last night and I served calzones, sauce, salad, marinated cucumbers, and spumoni cupcakes. It was all so easy, I have to share.
For the calzones you'll need:
Pillsbury refrigerated pizza dough
Ricotta cheese
Italian blend shredded cheese
pepperoni/ham/sausage/olives...you know, stuffing stuff...your choice
fresh mozzarella
parmesan cheese
All you do is roll out the pizza dough, cut it into squares (each roll of dough will make about four good-sized calzones), and fill it with some ricotta cheese, fresh mozzarella, meat and veggies, and the shredded cheese. Then fold up the corners to make a little bundle and sprinkle the top with parmesan cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on top. I serve my calzones on a plate with a big spoonful of sauce for dipping. For sauce: put one can of Rotel in your food processor and blend until pretty smooth, then mix it with a jar of pizza sauce. Heat and serve.
A couple of hours before dinner, slice your cucumbers (two large or three small) and put them in a bowl with one 8 oz bottle of zesty italian dressing. Serve chilled.
Then to top off this easy Italian meal...Spumoni cupcakes! You'll need vanilla cupcakes with vanilla or cream cheese icing. Top with chocolate shavings, chunks, or chocolate chips, chopped pistachios and a cherry! In case you're wondering, spumoni is actually traditionally a molded ice-cream dessert that incorporates these three flavors- chocolate, cherry, and pistachio. These cupcakes are a sweet, pretty, simple take on that theme! I love the colors!

Buon Appetito!

sweetly, happily, and artfully yours,

randi