Super late Halloween decor post

While falling down a youtube hole around Halloween last year, I came across this video for this fantastically creepy and classy Halloween decor DIY by Karen Kavett on HGTV Handmade.

I actually went out the next day to get the wreath and as many cheap snakes as I could find.... which turned out to be not much, despite being Halloween season. The craft store only had big expensive ones, and dollarama (the great mecca for plastic, not always 100% anatomically correct animals) only had these weird, jelly snakes that smelled awful. I know buying them online is an option, but the lack of instant gratification of finding more snakes and the usual DIY project procrastination resulted in the parts I had collected being put away for an entire year and ignored.

If a new bid to try and actually do some half done/not done projects to clean up the stashes, I started looking for snakes again this year! I trip to Honest Ed's while killing time one afternoon got a few medium sized ones and the craft store had a multi pack of snakes that nicely rounded out my pile.

All you need is a vine wreath, a 'knot' of snakes and some spray paint.

Step 1) Arrange ALL THE THINGS. I went with Karen's advice and started with the bigger guys and filled out the bare spots with the medium and smaller snakes. With Netflix on in the background, weave all the snakes together and arrange until you're happy with how they're looking. I ended up with a few heads sticking out, which gives it personality.

Hey dude!

Getting there.

No actual snakes were harmed in the making of this wreath. Well maybe, I don't know if the hot glue gun ran one over on the way to the craft store. That would suck if it did, but I can't be held responsible for that.

Hot glue certainly helps, and thankfully didn't melt my jelly snakes (which don't smell nearly as bad a year later!)

Step 2) My wreath didn't have a hanger on the back, but some stiff wire from the stash and a healthy application of hot glue solved that problem.

Step 3) After you prepare a spray painting area so as to not ruin your balcony floor and panels, spray paint the crap out of the entire wreath. Make sure you move it around and get it from all angles, and try to get a second coat to make sure you have good coverage everywhere. Let it dry for a good few hours if you can, but it will smell like paint for a while... and maybe make half of your apartment hallway smell like spray paint. Maybe.

My super sexy spray paint set up. It's outdoors with good ventilation, stop judging.

Before....

During/First pass... 

Almost there...

Step 4) Hang it up and creep people out!

"Why did it have to be snakes?" Because snakes are awesome Dr. Jones. Suck it. Also, the lighting in my hallway sucks balls.

I am super pleased with how this turned out. Having it the one colour makes it kinda subtle, as much as a wreath of snakes can be, and it's creepy enough to be outside the spoopy range for Halloween. Also, this turned out to be the only thing I did for Halloween at home, so an afternoon well spent. I know I used a 50% off coupon on the spray paint, and I might have for the wreath last year, I don't remember, but I think I spent about $35 in total for the whole thing, which ain't bad for something I can creep out guests with for years to come :)

My "why I didn't 'do' Halloween this year" post will be coming up shortly, with a nice little Halloween Easter egg, and here's a bad snake pun to tide you all over.

Let us try this again

Hello from well into 2015.

Many things have changed since the last time I was here, on the blog and IRL. Things are still changing, in IRL and on the blog, so this space will be a bit clunky for a while. Sorry, not sorry.

I'm in a headspace where I'm more inspired to do blog posts. I'm still not good with taking pictures of events, but I've being doing some projects and excursions that at least encourage photos and writing posts. I've also been falling down some late night, binge-the-whole-backlog-in-one-night blogger holes, so I'm re-inspired to write about thrifting, crafts, sewing and adventures. I'll still be writing about cooking and food, but probably not as much. I still love cooking, but trying to document my meal while making it was something I never got used to. That, and I was never happy with how the photos looked. Despite all my training, I'm not the best photographer, and most of my cooking photos further proved the point.

A bit more fiddling is require on the blog side of life, but for now, here's a late Halloween teaser from a craft project I finally got around to doing. I didn't really "do" Halloween this year (to be explained in a further blog post), but I have been meaning to do this project for about a year now, so I'm glad I was able to around to it. Project procrastination at it's best.

Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

Has per usual in these situations, we shall see. We can but try.

2nd post of 2014...

There have been several times in the last few months where I have looked the shortcut to this blog on my dash and thought, "yes, I will write something." That's about as far I get with that.

I've been following a lot of blogs lately, many of which have recently revamped themselves and changed the look of their blogs. Almost every time, I love the change and think "I should go back to mine and do something about it." I then look at my dash shortcut again, and leave it at that.

I've finally started to get back into a groove of cooking and I get a third of the way into a recipe before I think "I should probably get my camera, I can fudge the starter photos..." and then never go back to my desk to get the camera.

It is what it is.

This post took the better part of an entire episode of Project Runway and America's Next Top Model to write. Sorry I'm not sorry.

Life is slowly going into what could actually be described as a normal schedule. I'm now working full time at one job, I got some travel in just as the summer ended and I'm slowly gathering materials for Halloween. I can't complain too much.

I will leave this image from the cottage, and hope to move forward.

In another part of the galaxy...

My goodness it's been a while.

A variety of things have pulled me away from this blog, proper home cooking and making. I don't like to make excuses, but it is what it is. I believe the proper term is that I've been "busy as fuck" lately, physically and mentally. I have desperately been trying to crowbar a life into the little time I have outside my professional working and volunteering life, I guess to a point of being partially uninspired and frustrated at the lack of time. Procrastination and no time are not good bedfellows.

As I sit here over some surprisingly awesome homemade pizza (I need to steal the homemade pesto recipe that my roommate made for our St. Patrick's Day dinner party, it's really awesome. Yep, something else that was not chronicled), I'm slowly coming back to the life I want, and why I bothered with a blog in the first place. Now, I just have keep that momentum going and actually cook, make and document those previous two things.

There is hope yet.


Despite the busy, I did get a few pictures from my week off in between contracts. By a few, I mean the same shot out of our hotel window the night we arrived and the next morning. I spent most of the weekend at Blue Mountain sitting in a hot tub and the pool at our hotel while my friends narrowly missed trees. I was thoroughly relaxed by the time we left on Sunday.

 Hey guys!

Merry Christmas from the slightly darker than usual Tdot.

A very Merry Christmas and I wish you power and heat for the new year.

Not that snowy by much of the rest of the country's standards, but pretty snowy for Tdot in comparison to the last 4 to 5 years

It's the official Toronto holiday greeting now. Things are a bit nuts here with the snow storm from two weekends ago and the ice storm of this past weekend. Power was knocked out on Saturday night for large portions of the city, and many people still don't have power or heat on Christmas day. Many Toronto Hydro workers gave up their own Christmas to try and get more of the city back up in time for Christmas. Happy thoughts everyone, and hug your local Hydro worker.

The Dinosaurs weren't too happy about the current weather either.

All of my family got very, very lucky and never really lost power. I had some flickers on the Saturday night, but woke up to a working alarm clock. Both of my work places still had power this week as well, which was a mixed blessing. I spent most of the early week entertaining friends to keep them warm. Today was the quiet family Christmas, and I was so happy to have a quiet, sleep-in, stuff your face day. It started with a great, quick recipe I found recently on Freutcake for eggnog french toast. I love eggnog and french toast, so this was going to go well regardless.

5 ingredient Eggnog French Toast
Stolen from Freutcake
Serves 4-6

1 1/2 cups of eggnog
5 large eggs
2 tbls of sugar
6-8 slices of brioche or challah bread, 1/2 inch thick. I used challah bread, and the inherent sweetness of it totally works.
8 tbls of unsalted butter, ish.

-Whisk the eggnog, eggs and sugar thoroughly in a bowl. I'd recommend whisking the eggs and sugar together first and then whisking in the eggnog. And whisk those suckers in a bowl, then pour them into a shallow baking dish.

 Noggey eggs.

-Soak bread slices for about 10 minutes or until completely saturated. The slices are super heavy when they're a soaked, so be careful when pulling them out to go into the frying pan that they don't pull apart.
(If doing all the slices in one go, preheat your oven to 200C and have a wire rack on top of a baking tray in there. After you fry up the slices, plonk them in the oven to keep warm while you're doing the rest of them.)
-Using about a tbls of butter per slice of bread, melt the butter in a medium heat pan. Fry each side until golden, about 2 to 3 minutes.

Fry it up.

 Melted butter works for a topping too.

 I'm sure this would have tasted even more amazing had I remembered to get some maple syrup prior to today, eg when all the shops were closed, but whatevs. Pretty awesome breakfast.

Merry Christmas y'all!

Celebrating the end of Halloween with snow in November.

Yep, I can post regularly to this blog. Totally.

Despite my insane new schedule (Huzzah for employment!), Halloween was a success! I finished the costume in time and managed to wear it out tot 2 parties! I'm so glad there was a second Halloween party I could go to, I spent to much damn time building that costume.

Everybody remember the stupid, sexy Little Red Riding Hood costume and the awesome T-shirt design from Threadless of "Little Red?" It all culminated in one bad Little Red, who didn't need no Lumberjack to kill that wolf.

Hello ROM camel.

He was warm at least, in death.

I'm quite pleased with how ex-Fluffy came out, even with all the issues he has. I was sewing up his butt by hand about 2 hours before we left for the ROM's Friday Night Live Halloween party, and thankfully I owned everything else already for the costume. I also learned some entertaining things about using fun fur, including that I really should have done some basting stitches along my fur and lining. There was a point around one of the paws where the lining had ridden up do far along the fun fur that I was short by about 6 inches. Also, despite being really careful and using the proper technique for cutting fun fur, there is STILL fun fur all over my apartment. 

1. Ex-Fluffy was made from scratch. I used a few weeks worth of grocery flyers to draft a pattern for all of his pieces. I also spent a fair bit of time looking at wolf stats on wikipedia and pictures of real wolf hides to work out the dimensions and basic shape. Loosely speaking, ex-Fluffy is about the same size as an adult grey wolf. Anatomically wonky, but more or less correct length wise.

Bits and pieces in No Frills' flyers.

2. Cutting the pieces out resulted in some solid blisters along my thumb from the slow, careful cutting that the fun fur required. And my knees were mildly ruined by the amount of floor action I had from tracing this pattern out. Worth it though.

 Trace, cut, repeat.

3. As I mentioned before, sewing ex-Fluffy together was a learning experience. Generally speaking it went very, very well, especially considering I haven't used a machine in a long, long time. It helps that my machine is really awesome.

The tail and ears were hand sewn into the body and head. While annoying, it did create nice seams that needed minimal combing to make then invisible.

4. This awkward bathroom selfie was done about a week after Halloween, when I had time and energy. When posed, this is was the hood looked like with it's slightly uneven ears.

However, when left to it's own devices, the hood proved to be a little too big..

All in all, I am super thrilled with this costume. Ex-Fluffy turned out great, and provided an extra source of warmth on the windy walk home, the dress and petticoat worked out really well to round out the costume, and I received several compliments from people at both parties. Now we just have to find a use for him... other than a wolf skin rug over the foozeball table.