Fun Monday Part Two

So much for 6 p.m. Here I am at 11. I know a lot of you enjoyed my other crafty stuff, but I really did want to post things I haven't posted before. This is the one I am most proud of:

Girl as a fall fairy circa 2004!

This outfit took me MONTHS! But it was so worth it. I took a Shirley Temple type slip, dyed it brown. For the skirt I sewed about a billion silk leaves on to the bottom of the slip. I pulled all the plastic bits off the leaves and ran the whole thing under a sewing machine with no thought to which way they were laying. Then I took a bazillion fake flowers and hand-sewed them to the bodice. This was the hardest part because it was almost impossible to get the needle through the middle plastic on the flower. In the end, I used the biggest flowers possible and small ones only for the straps and to fill in holes. Also I made little wings out of nylons and wire and decorated them with a Blo-pen. I safety pinned the wings on the back and didn't put flowers where the wings would sort-of hide them.

Finally using my trustee Muppets Big Book of Crafts, I made the pointy hat. I used bonding paper to stick a piece of fabric to a pre-cut piece of cardboard, rolled it up and hot-glue gunned ribbons and decorations to it. Everything I learned about crafts I learned from the Muppets. Here's the hat: Our town has a Halloween parade with contest every year. Girl wone in the under-threes she got a whopping $5 plus candy. As a side note, the parade was held a day or two before Halloween. Though she was fine all day, she woke up that night with a 105 degree (Fahrenheit) temperature. A quick trip to the E.R. told us she had pneumonia. Luckily it was only in one lung. She didn't get to Trick-or-Treat.

Boy's outfit that year was also pretty neat (though overshadowed by his sister's cool threads). He was a wizard. He picked out the fabric. The hats were big that year.

Not to let Boy be out done by his sister, here are the pictures of the Harry Potter costume I made him in 2001. He won a Harry Potter look-alike costume contest that year. The prize was a Harry Potter photo album and a set of bookends that proudly display our books (even though Harry lost his hands).

Harry bookend:
Also I've added a close up of Girl's quilt (I would have done Boy's but he was sleeping with it):

Oh Crap!

Karmyn is hosting and wants to know crafty things we've done.

So yesterday I had a bad day. I was crabby from my period and then I got one mother @#$!er of an insect sting from a strange unknown bug that made my neck swell up like I had inserted three marbles just under my skin. So I forgot all about Fun Monday. Since it is the first time I had participated in months I felt really bad.

Then I remembered that I have often put crafty things on my blog. So if you are a regular reader, sorry this is nothing new but I'd rather recycle then not post anything all day. But I am not able to show you my other crafts until after 6 p.m. Central Daylight Time.

This is the Dorothy Dress I made my daughter this year for Halloween. I used a pattern so I am not that impressed by it.

These next two, however, are pictures of the Velvet Ant costume my son wanted me to make the Halloween before last. It was a bitch and a half to make, especially the head which was done with fabric, thread, duct tape, craft wire, hot glue, and pipe cleaners. The red fabric was terry-cloth like and got little red fuzzies all around the house. But my son LOVED it and still wears the hat every now and again.

This is a witch I made for the hell of it. She flew around on the ceiling fan. She is made of nylon, black fabric, a dowel rod and left over craft wire from the velvet ant costume. Her hat is poster-board with fabric over it and stickers. The hair is embroidery thread. I also sprayed her with glow-in-the dark paint to see if it would work (it didn't).

Finally (just so you don't think I only do Halloween) if you look at the foot of my daughter's bed (under the pink Afghan that someone else made for her) you'll see the purple quilt that I made. I am not a quilt maker and it sucks, but I try and that's about all I can say. I do love the fabric from which it's made.
I'll visit all the Fun Mondays later. If I remember I'll even post my other crafty stuff.

Fun Monday

Today's Fun Monday comes from Amy W. who says:
find something in your closet you are keeping for some ungodly reason take a picture of it and tell us why you are keeping it and how it got that way.

The first is going to make my sister, Meander, mad. It is my bridesmaid dress from her wedding that has been in a blue grocery bag since the day after her wedding (June 26, 2004). The thought was that I would take it to the dry cleaners, and then decide what I was going to do with it. My thoughts were to make it into something else as I only wear pink when my sister gets married and picks pink as her color. I actually felt like a big pink sausage in the dress. But despite moving twice, and going to the dry cleaners many times, it has remained in its blue grocery bag.

The second is the tulle from my wedding veil. My dress and the tiara part of my veil were boxed up and preserved. Why am I keeping the tulle, why? I don't know. I am not sure why it needs to be in my closet.

The final item is this ugly dress. It is sheer and purple with a see-through top over it. I didn't like it when I bought it, but I was told I looked cute in it, and I'm horrible at picking dress clothes.
I am sorry but I can't really tell you why these items have stayed even when I've weeded out so many other clothes.

A Day in the Life (a badly drawn pictorial)

For Fun Monday, Enidd says write a post describing a typical day in your life and give us a feel for your life as a whole. enidd encouraged you to make us laugh, make us cry, paint pictures, draw cartoons or even carve vegetables.

I was going to take pictures, but the last few days have been less than typical so here is a badly drawn cartoon, first of my Mondays and Fridays (you may have to click on it to read it):

Then my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays:

Yum, Yum, Eat it up!

This week's Fun Monday was brought to you by Beccy. She's hungry, so she wants to have some recipes. Check her out for the full list of FMers.

My recipe originated at Capay Organic, and I totally thank them because it took a long time to find a manicotti recipe that used fresh (not frozen) spinach. Thanks guys! I keep meaning to check out their other recipes but never get around to it (they have a million).

My entire family LOVES this recipe, from my Grandma right down to my daughter (who normally never wants to eat anything but white soup, oatmeal, and candy). This was my trick recipe to get her to eat some vegetables. I will warn you, this recipe involves A LOT of chopping, so if your the type that hates to chop this recipe will be a pain. So without further ado:

Spinach Manicotti !

(my additions will appear like so)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 can (28 oz.) crushed tomatoes

2 cloves garlic, minced (I generally add an extra clove or two-I love garlic)

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil (The fresh part is important as I've tried it the other way and lost a lot of flavor)

1/3 cup red wine (The cheaper the wine the better I've found)

3/4 teaspoon pepper, divided

1 teaspoon salt, divided

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 container (15 oz.) fat-free ricotta cheese

1 bunch chopped spinach (This ingredient confuses me-I usually use 1 bag of baby spinach I live where the produce sucks so this tends to be fresher than the actual available spinach)

1-1/2 cups shredded fat-free mozzarella cheese, about 6 ounces, divided

2 egg whites

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 lb. manicotti noodles (I like to use giant shells instead, they're easier to fill. I always break the manicotti noodles, but use the manicotti when feeding a bunch of people otherwise you'll need too many pans)

1 onion, finely chopped

(one red pepper-cooked on a stove burner until the skin is black and then remove skin and seeds and dice)

(dash of brown sugar)

(dash of fresh oregano)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat oil in skillet over high heat.

Add onion & garlic; cook until golden. Remove 1/2 of mixture; set aside.

To remaining onion mixture in skillet add tomatoes, wine, basil, 1/2 tsp. salt, & 1/4 tsp. pepper (red pepper, brown sugar, and oregano). Cover; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Simmer, stir often, 20 minutes.

Mix ricotta, 1 cup mozzarella, spinach, Parmesan, egg whites, nutmeg, reserved onion mixture & remaining salt & pepper.

Fill each cooked manicotti noodle with cheese mixture. Place in baking dish; pour sauce over. Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella, cover with foil. Bake 20 minutes. Remove foil; bake until cheese is melted. Serves 7

For those who don't know what manicotti looks like I stole this picture from I Love Pasta. I need to impress upon you that there is A LOT more sauce on mine, and the stuffing is a lot greener from the spinach.

Fun Monday!

Today's Fun Monday comes from Min at Mama Drama. Who doesn't love a challenge like this?

To compose an exceptionally bad opening sentence for any piece of writing (not limited to novels...but not including blog posts) and to include a photograph or brief description of some aspect of that sentence.

After a long, hard day at work, Sarah was looking forward to a relaxing afternoon tending her prizewinning roses; but, just as she settled onto her knees near her Sutter’s Golds, she heard a screech and saw a flash of red, brown, and blue out of the corner of her eye. “Damn it, Lulu!” she screeched in frustration as she threw down her pruning shears, “Stay out of the dogwoods, you know you’re too large to climb them.” She glared fiercely at the three-foot-tall chimpanzee in the Wonder woman bathing suit as it bounced unconcernedly on the tiny tree.

*********************************************************************

If my neighbors heard me this morning, they would have been puzzled. "Come on Girl, look mad at the monkey!"