Buck Head Wall Art



I covet animal busts. But with price tags for the real kind in the hundreds of dollars, I realize
I'm not going to get one any time soon.

However, I recently read a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Amy at Buffalo Roam HERE. She printed out animal silhouettes, and painted them on cork board for her little guys room. Brilliant idea!

Amy's idea gave me a plan for using a silhouette of an animal head in my home. Not to mention, this was such an easy and fun project, I just wanted to do it!

The Buck Head is free to print out HERE. Or, if you're looking for different silhouettes,
just look for free graphics on Pinterest or Google. There are TONS.

I liked this buck silhouette that Amy linked, so, I printed it out.  I wanted a larger silhouette, but my printer wouldn't allow me to print a larger copy over several pages, so I took the small print and had it blown up at Staples. (The cost was .18 cents!).

I then cut it out, and traced it on a large (24" x 18") canvas.

Easy.

And super fun.

I filled in the traced head with black acrylic paint. I toyed with the idea of making him sparkly, but I'm trying to cut down on glitter...

(Painting is not shown - but in my defense - I got side-tracked because

I brewed pot of coffee, but forgot the coffee. Aaaaargh!)

While waiting for the paint to dry, I sulked a little about the coffee.  Meanwhile, I had the idea to cover the whole canvas with burlap. I checked with Big A, who can be somewhat suspicious of my (sometimes) impulsive ideas, and he actually liked this one! Woot woot!

To keep the burlap in place, I used the staple gun, and stapled the burlap in just four places. I then used hot glue on the back side of the canvas, and glued it all around.

At this point, because I was caffeine deficient, I thought it would be a good idea to use my bare fingers to press the burlap into the hot glue! Umm OW. (I suggest you skip this step, and use something besides your fingers - like an old knife.)

Anyway, it all worked out in the end!

I got a cool new deer head to hang on my wall.

Big A made me another pot of coffee, with coffee in it.

And, my fingers, well, they'll heal.

To hang, I broke a soda tab off of and empty soda and glued it to the center top of the back of the frame.  (Like THIS, only I used glue to attach it to the frame). The canvas is so light you could just use a finishing nail to hang it.

Notes:

•  I notice that there is a strip of the burlap across the deer nose that looks a little darker, or more dense. It's less noticeable in real life, but, I may have to re-do the burlap if my OCD takes over.
• I loved this so much I made one for my sister.
• There is some debate over whether this is a buck or a moose. The free graphic said it was a deer, but my kids say moose. What do you think?

Two Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie

 Two Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie

 

This two layer pumpkin pie is delicious!  I was craving a pumpkin cheesecake, but I wanted to keep it in a pastry crust, like a pumpkin pie.  So, I decided to combine the best of both worlds, and make a pumpkin pie with a cheesecake layer!  This is perfect for the holidays, and easy to make.

NOTE: To make the pie over-the-top good, don't forget to serve with whipped cream!

Serves 8 to 10

Ingredients:

• 1 9-inch (store bought) pastry pie shell, unbaked
  
  For the cheesecake layer:
• 8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
  
  For the pumpkin layer:
• 1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree (plain - not the pie mix)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 cup evaporated milk

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350°.

 

In a mixing bowl, use beater to combine cream cheese, egg, 1/4 cup sugar, and vanilla extract, and beat until light and fluffy.

 

Use the back of a spoon to spread the mixture into the unbaked pastry shell.

 

In a separate bowl, combine the pumpkin puree, 1/2 cup sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Beat in the 2 beaten eggs and the evaporated milk.

 

Pour pumpkin mixture over cream cheese layer. Spread until it is even (if you have to).

 

Bake pumpkin pie at 350° for about 60 minutes, or until set. (After about 20 minutes I had to cover the edge of the pie crust with tin foil so that it wouldn't get too brown.)

 

Cool pumpkin pie thoroughly. Serve with whipped cream or cool whip.

(Like the fancy stars and spotlight focus thingy I used on my photos? Well. I had to, because the only picture I took of the pie was with my iPhone, in a dim room, on a cluttered table... oopsie!)

So what kind of pie are you having for the holidays? What's your favorite? I really like this cheesecake base, and might try replacing the pumpkin with cherry pie filling on the top next... Cherry Pie is my favorite! :)

Sheet Music Tree

 

 

A quick little tutorial to make a sheet music tree!

 

Take two old candle sticks, with candles.

 

 

Go to  here or here to print of sheet music for free.

 

 

 

 

Roll the paper into a cone and tape into place.

 

 

Use two pieces of sheet music, and cut the edges to make it into a tree shape.

 

Gather your supplies - glue gun, glitter, glass beads, anything you have on hand...

 

 

 

Go to town and decorate your little music sheet trees.

 

And then pop them on top of the candle/candle sticks.

 

 

Have fun playing with PicMonkey.

 

 

Easy, fun, and free.

 

(DOH) Christmas Tree, (DOH) Christmas Tree

 

 

 

I'm a little behind in decorating for Christmas. Three weeks ago, I WAS ahead. So far ahead, my family made fun of me. By Thanksgiving I had some garlands up, we had the tree, we'd made an outdoor tree for the front yard. We were moving right along - full steam ahead.

 

(Insert screeching brake noise here. Flu.)

 

Right before I got sick, we brought the tree in, and popped it in the tree stand. This is when we realized the tree was not quite as perfect as it looked in the field. (DOH!) In fact, it was the opposite of perfect. It looked like the entire trunk was crooked. So with some team work, Big A and I managed to tilt the tree just so, and it looked straight.

 

Then we noticed, the one little gap we'd seen in the field, turned into three large gaps, and the one crooked branch turned into seven crooked branches.

 

"Nothing we can do about that now" we said. And so, We Let The Kids Decorate The Tree. (This is important to remember.)

 

We tried to use ornaments to fill in the gaps. We turned a blind eye to the crooked branches.

 

We stood back, with the ornaments hung, and ... realized that despite our tilting the tree just so, we not only had a crooked trunk, our straight alignment, turned out to be not even close the straight.

 

Big A had to lift the tree out of the stand, (with 2/3 of the lights on it, and all of the ornaments), and re-align it. That went well. And by "well", I mean - every swear word I know was muttered by Big A.

 

Let me mention at this time, our bulbs are made of glass. As it turns out, very thin glass. (Big A may have begged me to buy plastic rather than glass bulbs. I may have insisted on glass.)

 

So, as you can imagine this whole Christmas decorating thing has not been going quite as planned.

 

I needed remind myself - when times get tough, the tough...

 

Laugh at others!

 

C'mon! I'm not that bad! Sometimes I feel better about myself my tree, when I can laugh at others (trees).

If you need to feel a little better too, here are a few trees, that make me feel better about my tree.

 

This tree makes me smile! A Londoner put this guy up. He makes my tree look happy. And that makes me happy!

SOURCE

Look at this one. Comparatively, my tree looks positively LUSH. Yay for my tree!

 

This image from Pinterest truly makes me feel better:

Yeah, that's sad. :-( for that tree and :-) for my tree.

And look - this lil tree makes my tree look rod straight:

See? Now I feel better! After all, maybe our tree will be just fine with a little love.


(To order this adorable sign, go to: source)

Now my tree just doesn't look so shabby to me. How about you? How's your tree? How's your decorating coming along?

(NOTE: Sources for the images are noted, otherwise, they are images from Google and Pinterest, and didn't have a source listed. Please also note that I'm not really making fun of any of the above trees. They're all adorable in their own way!)

Getting Ready for Santa

 

Good Morning! Sitting across from my kitchen window feels a little festive now. As you may know, I had a set back in the Christmas decorating department, and I'm trying to play catch-up now.

Yesterday my kitchen window started out like this. (photo from earlier in the year, but you get the idea...)

 

I love my little kitchen window. I spend quite a bit time here - with three kids at home I wash a lot of dishes! Plus when I'm on the computer, sitting at the island, it has the perfect view of the woods, where I keep an eye out for deer, turkey, and Big Foot.

 

Since I'm feeling better, I decided it was categorically time to say goodbye to autumn, and get ready for Christmas. It is 8 degrees F outside, so rather than actually go out, I went straight to my basement and went shopping. I was hopeful, but... nothing.

 

So I headed to my next favorite place to rummage - the dining room hutch. Score!  

 

 



When you're 46 36, you have a lot of things hanging around that you might have forgotten about put away for a special occasion. (It's a true fact that I rarely have to go out of my own home to shop.)

These brass candlesticks have never been put out. Mainly because they're boring. And all they needed? A little glitter. In this instance, a thin coat of gold glitter with a light spray of silver glitter.

A quick spray with my new fave - Rustoleum Glitter Spray Paint , and they looked a lot more like Christmas:

 

I hung up some fairy lights, and a little bead and ribbon garland, and this is what my kitchen window looks like in the (very early) morning: 

 



 

 

 And at night:

 

Little by little... And by Christmas Eve I hope the house will be glowing in time for Santa!

Next up is the tree.

(A not to those of you know my obsession - I promise, no more about glitter. I swear!)

An Affair to Remember

Sometimes in life we do things we regret. I know I do. But it's okay, as long as we learn from our mistakes. In the past couple of weeks, I've learned a lesson. 

You see, Big A has been working very long hours, and I've been six ways to Sunday.  I felt sorry for myself, and then, it just happened. I love my husband, but I found myself keeping company with Mr. Influenza. In the beginning, it seemed like it would be fun - a couple of days cuddling on the sofa, some R&R, drinking tea...

But it wasn't fun. Mr. I (as I like to call him) was not fun. He was mean. I had to put on my big-girl boots and say "No more! You get out offa my sofa!"  You see, I realized that Big A is much nicer than Mr. I. And way more fun to cuddle with.

Having learned this valuable lesson, I feel I'm back to my old self now.

Due to that little bump in the road, the problem is that we now have less than 2 weeks until Christmas, and I seem to live in the house where time stood still.

The tree is up. But only some of the lights are on it. (No joke - the lights are missing from the entire 1/3 bottom of the tree).

Icicles hang from the roof line of our house, but nothing else does.

The presents are hidden in the basement, but nothing is wrapped.

You get the idea.

I did, however, find a little something I wanted to share. If you find yourself in a similar situation, and you need a little Christmas décor help - this spray paint is awesome!

It gives anything a pretty festive glow - and paint the heck out of anything in your way!

It goes on very light and leaves behind a sparkly, shiny finish.  



 

(If you click on the picture you can see how pretty it looks! In this instance, I sprayed an old grapevine wreath. In fact, I sprayed 3 of them. They're so sparkly but still natural looking.)

 

In general, I'm actually loving the natural look of things around here. I'm almost glad I took up with Mr. I, and was forced to keep it simple. Almost.

 

In the meantime, I'm getting this in silver too, and inviting Christmas in!

 

(This isn't a paid post, I just love this stuff!) What have you found lately that makes your décor festive?

A Little Christmas Garland

 

I KNOW! Most people wait until after Thanksgiving before they decorate for Christmas, but I just can't help myself!

Not only have we strung some lights on the front porch - we built an outdoor Christmas tree for our front yard (tutorial here), we put a small artificial tree in the kitchen, I made a couple of wreaths, AND I made a couple of easy garlands.

I won't bore you with all of the details, but I will show you my favorite garland. Cuz it's so easy and cute.

The garland I like the best is simple. I found a box of 36 x 2" gold ornaments at Big Lots for $4. I took a roll of twine and just threaded the ornaments on. Every 6 inches I knotted the twine just to keep the ornaments from moving around too much.

(If you want to make something similar, I had to put a dab of hot glue on the end of the twine,
and twist it, to keep it from fraying when I threaded it through. Yes, it burns a little, but who needs finger prints?)

 

 

Nearer Christmas (or at least after Thanksgiving) I may "bling up" this little garland a little, but for now I like the rustic look. 

 

 

And, now that Thanksgiving is only a day away, it's safe to say I'll be decorating quite a bit more this coming weekend. Especially since we're all going out to the woods to get a tree on Sunday, AND, more importantly, Big A bought some Egg Nog!

 

It's a rule that you decorate for Christmas if you have egg nog in the house, isn't it? That's what I thought.

 

What about you? Have you started decorating for Christmas yet? 

Making an Outdoor Christmas Tree



 

Our front yard of full of trees. It's beautiful, but at Christmas time, there's one glaring omission - not one pine tree to wrap in lights. Last year we decided to try and wrap a couple of the maple tree trunks with lights. It looked kinda cool. But we wanted a more traditional look.

(Planting a pine tree isn't an option because we like the look of the yard exactly as it is the rest of the year.) 

So we had the great idea to build a tree. (Reeeeaaal traditional, I know!) Oh, we were well aware that this could be a total waste of time, but we like to live on the edge.

Off to Home Depot.

We didn't have a list or a plan. We talked about ideas in the truck. That was our plan.

After walking around Home Depot aimlessly for a while, here's what we bought:

4 x 1/2" x 10' of conduit pipe (these are super fun to carry around in Home Depot - I didn't look back to see the carnage left behind..)
1 x Conduit T or Junction Connector
3 x 1/2" x 2" Re-rods
Zip Ties
A Twinkle Light Star
Twinkling Icicle Lights - we got the kind with random twinkling so it looks like they're shimmering. Here's a link if you're interested!

Celebrations Lighting V84B4112 Shimmering Icicle Light 100

Looks like a tree already, huh? Can you see it yet? Me either.

We needed the pipe bender. (We spent 45 minutes searching our basement for this thing! If you're looking for yours - look on the table in plain sight - that's were it will be.)

It was sunny, but frigid outside, so we were working fast! The whole project (not including searching for the pipe bender) took about an hour.

The first thing we did, was use the pipe bender to bend the conduit about 66 degrees, so that it would fit into the T and taper down to the ground.

 

Once the pipe was bent, we put it into the T and tightened the screws. This is what the top of the "tree" looked like:

 



 

 

It's about 8" across at the top, but don't worry, it's 10 feet tall so it looks pretty pointed once it's lit.

 

To keep the frame secure we used 3 re-rods which Big A sledge hammered into the dirt. This is where the blood came in. Poor Big A sledged hammered his finger! We then fit the conduit pipe onto the re-rods.

 

 

We wrapped the icicle lights around the tree frame at 6" intervals. We secured the lights with about a million zip ties. This took FOREVER. (Maybe it was only half an hour, but at this point our feet and fingers were frozen.) 

 

 

Once the lights were on, we put the star on top. This proved a little tricky. We drilled a hole in the top of the T and put a tine of the star in the hole, but it was too wobbly. Solution - silver duct tape the "you know what" out of it!

Done.

The actual frame cost about $20. (The lights, star and extension cords are worth about $100 extra).

 

It looks tiny in this photo, but it's actually 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide at the base. All in all we were pretty pleased with ourselves. We might have high-fived. In fact, we might build a couple of smaller trees to keep it company.

 

Fabric Garland



Big A and I have been working on a rather large project. In fact, it measures 10 feet tall. It's led to quite a few swear words, some maniacal laughter, and blood. Despite all of that, in the end, we won!

But I can't show you that yet. I need a couple of days grace period to get all the pictures up and, quite frankly, to have Big A to sit down and tell me the real names of the tools and parts we used. Otherwise, my post would give you a tool/parts list like this:

Bendy Thing
Nuts
Poles
Metal Slicer

See what I mean? We need him.

SO, until tomorrow, I am going to show you one little thing I've been working on. ("Working on" may be too strong of a phrase - perhaps I should say "puttering with".)

A few weeks ago, I made a fabric scrap valance (tutorial HERE) for our double doors to the back yard. I really loved the look of it:

 

But then I decided I didn't like the rigidity of the tension rod with the rustic look of the fabric. So I strung all of the fabric strips onto jute twine and re-hung it as a banner.

Much better! I prefer the garland. What do you think?

Tomorrow I'll be back to post about our larger adventure! Until then! Julia

HEAVEN is a Lobster Dinner

With three kids at home we eat a lot of spaghetti and meatballs, tacos, meatloaf, and mac 'n cheese. That's fine most of the time, but Big A and I crave grown-up food, and we LOVE seafood. Our picky eaters don't allow us that freedom very often, however, once in a great while we grab some scallops, or fish, and occasionally, a couple of lobsters for ourselves. The kids don't complain as long as we get them a pizza.

Last night we happened to have a rare night at home with no kids. Is it pathetic that we sped to the grocery store to pick up a couple of lobsters? I guess you could say we're both a little tired of meatloaf.

I grew up going to Maine with my family in the summers, and I cook lobsters the way my parents taught me. Boil. Serve with hot butter and a squeeze of fresh lemon. There's something about the flavor of lobster with the butter, and getting all messy. It's just fun, and it tastes like heaven.

But before we get to cooking, you have to pick out your lobsters.

When I buy live lobsters, I want them to be right around 1 1/2 lbs. These are the perfect size in my humble opinion. Also, if you're buying them, be sure the lobster is lively. You don't want a lobster who's not moving around - that means he's not doing too well.

(B T Dubs, you need to buy your lobsters the day you are going to cook them.)

When I get them home, I keep them right in the bag, and just pop them in the fridge. The cold of the fridge will make them a little sedated, so they shouldn't run around too much.

When ready to cook, fill a large stock pot with water. If you live by the coast, you can use fresh sea water.  I don't, so I add salt to the water - a lot of it. I used about 1/2 cup salt to my large stock pot. Place over high heat and bring to a rolling boil.

When the water was almost boiling, I got the lobsters out of their bag. Our cat was so curious about the lobster - so Big A put him down for the cat to see. Too gross?

Once done playing, we got down to business.  (Big A thinks this next picture is morbid. And he's kinda right.)

Plunge the lobsters head first into the water and put the lid on. Be careful not to get splashed with the hot water. Once they're in the water, reduce the heat so that the water wont boil over, but so that it's still boiling. If it boils over, it gets very messy - trust me, I do it every time!

(A Note - Big A will not put the lobsters in the pot. I get it. It seems kind of mean, but, I will do anything for food. Still if your squeamish - lobsters truly don't scream. Any noise is just a little air escaping from under their shells. Apparently they don't feel pain - they do not have complex brains, just nerve bundles.)

For 1 1/2 lb lobster I boil them for 20 minutes. NOTE - most cooking charts advise a lot shorter cooking time, but I find 20 minutes is perfect. Mine were not tough or rubbery. 



Once the time is up, your lobsters will be bright red. Use tongs to pull the lobsters out and place them in a colander in the sink. Let them drain and cool for about 10 minutes.

While the lobsters cool, melt about half a stick of butter for two people. Add the juice of a quarter of a fresh lemon to the melted butter. (To your taste).

I serve the lobster on a plate with a little side dish of butter for each person. I personally only eat the claws, knuckles and tail. I don't bother with the little legs. There is some meat in them, but it takes the patience of a saint to get it out.

If you want to see how to get the lobster meat out of the shell, check out this quick video:

How To Eat Lobster Without Looking Like a Fool

Easy huh? 

What to serve with lobster? Uh, we just had butter with lemon. I don't like any other food to distract me from the taste of the lobster. However, it wouldn't be wrong to have salt potatoes and a simple side salad. (It also wouldn't be wrong to have blueberry pie with whipped cream after your lobster.)

I'm dying to know - do you like lobster? If you had a night alone, and didn't have to make kid-friendly food, what would you run out to the store for?