Cooking, Making and Baking

By late October, I was trying to catch up on my neverending list of projects to do while also taking advantage of sunny weather, although it was starting to cool off pretty fast, and then we had our first Nor'easter.  These are mini bottles with coloured water (with a drop of glycerin), with the corks glued in.  I don't think I'm going to put labels on them cause they are so pretty.

I made the jar with the blobbies in the spring but I had to wait till coloured lights showed back up in the stores.  I put 2 sets of battery operated LED lights inside.  There is a setting to make them just stay on steady, or flashing.  This pic was taken on the flashing setting.

And these are the lights on steady.

One of my friends posted a recipe for tortellini soup. I actually had all the ingredients in the house and was really hungry so whipped it up in about a half hour. I used a bit too much spinach, but it's really, really good. So simple. 

And then this happened:  triple chip drops of deliciousness.  

I totally forgot that I'd purchased a mini Halloween shrine kit last year.  I was digging for something else and unearthed it so of course I had to work on it right away.  I had to assemble the box and it came with the spider web topper, bat and skulls.  I sponged paint on the bat and skulls and added the rhinestone eyes. Then I added the paper in the background with a key that I steampunked a bit.  Finally, I added the larger gears in each corner, cathedral 'doors' and the chains were the last part.

Initially I was gonna go a different way with the inside, but that would've required a trip to the craft store in a terrible rain storm so I made due with what I had and it still came out pretty good.

I also forgot I bought these starfish so I stuck a piece of beach glass in the center and wrapped wire around them.

Some have a combo of copper, silver and gold.

And one just has the wire on the top part of the star.  Mostly cause I got lazy and didn't feel like wrapping another one, as I'd already done about 7.

I also decided to try that thing where you cut out a pattern in black paper and use it over your camera lens.  I really don't know what I'm doing, but the lights didn't come out looking like the witches' hat I cut into the paper, other than creating a filter for the lens in kind of that shape. 

Out of focus, the lights do take on a sort-of hat shape.

Next, I got a bunch of Christmas balls at the dollar store to try this wreath project.  They came in tubes of 15 and 24.  Quite a few years ago, much like Joan Crawford, I banished the wire hangers from our house, but I actually found ONE and only one, buried in the back of the closet.  It was a little hard to bend it into a decent circle shape, but the project went pretty quickly.  I should have taken the time to glue on all the ball caps because they have a tendency to pop off, but this was just a test prototype anyway.  It takes about 80 or more balls, medium and small size.

I also tried growing Borax crystals on a pipe cleaner.  I let it soak in the solution for almost 24 hours.  Came out great!  

I have a feeling that November is going to fly by as fast as the rest of 2014 has!