New Life for Old Candles

The heat and humidity returned on the Summer Solstice back in June, so it was primarily an indoor-day for me, although I did get my Vitamin D on for about a half hour when the breeze was still cool.  But alas, I started to roast so I went into the craft room and things got a little sparkly.

My mom continues to purge her house of things and is giving me the right of first refusal on everything she's getting rid of, so I snagged a couple of big white pillar candles from the thrift shop pile.  My first idea was to stick rhinestones on one of them but.....nah.  Instead, I broke out the bag of cool sequins, beads and pins.

My measuring skills are sad, at best, so I ended up eyeballing the design, so the rows aren't perfectly lined up. This was the point at which I thought this particular candle was done.  It was missing something, but what?

Ah! That's MUCH better!!

Wasn't sure what to do with the taller one, then I remember the pretty, fibrous paper stashed away and decided to Mod Podge pieces of it onto the candle.

I know, what a mess, right?

All done!

These are votives that I decorated with wax pens, specially made for drawing on candles, and also pinned sequins on the right.

Oh the Cruel Irony

It really sucks to be a jewelry fanatic, but allergic to metal.  Even hypoallergenic metal makes me break out.  Surgical steel.  Silver.  I don't wear gold.  A couple of years ago, I spent days changing all my earring hooks to plastic ones.

One of the jewelry casualties is my collection of sparkly bracelets that I purchased in the early and mid 00s when they were super popular at gift shops, in sets of 3.  I wore them every day to work, coordinating the different colours to match my tops and necklaces.  I remember the turning point being my trip to Victoria in 2007.  I was wearing my jewelry and started getting itchy.  My earlobes were driving me crazy and I had an itchy, red raised rope of a welt around my wrist where the bracelets were.   This was the same trip when I  also developed solar urticaria (basically an allergy to the sun).  After I got back to Washington, I laid off the jewelry for a couple of weeks and then put them on again.  Well, the earrings were taken out on the way to work and the bracelets shortly thereafter.  I don't wear jewelry much anymore, unfortunately.  It's gotten to the point where I've had to coat the back of any metal pendant with clear nail polish and it still doesn't work all the time.  

These bracelets need to be seen, dammit!  They are so pretty!!  I had an extra styrafoam cone left from the button tree project, so I painted black glitter paint on it, which took 2 days to dry.  Then I started stacking the bracelets onto the cone.  I was going to use glue to adhere them, but I just didn't want to permanently commit them to the cone (in the off chance I can use the bracelets again), so I used pins instead.

My craft assistants.  "Mama seems to have it under control...time for a nap!"

And here's the finished product.  I ended up restringing the top 5 bracelets to make them smaller to fit.  But it was missing something.  What to do for the top?

I posted the above picture on Facebook and mentioned my need to put something on the top.  Once again, one of my friends came through with the brilliant, and unbelievably OBVIOUS suggestion of using a big marble!  This just goes to show you how I sometimes can't see the forest for the trees, but other people can.

So I dug into my marble collection to see what would look good.  After a lot of 'nahs', I found one that was the right size, and kind of represented the jewels of the bracelets.  I glued it in place and then surrounded it with multi-coloured rhinestones.  Another win!

Walk on the Canal, #3

Decided to try a different section of the service road at Herring Run.  Instead of walking east towards the Sagamore Bridge, I walked west, between the 2 bridges.

Pretty flowers still blooming.

The dragonflies were huge.  And none of them would land for me to get a good pic.

Looking east.

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End of the Herring Run.

Herring Run

Walking west.

This is a very pretty wall which appears to have been painted not too long ago by AmeriCorps Cape Cod.

I love the little lobster and tiny ninja turtles!

Then I came upon this wall, covered with seagulls, which are also painted on the path.

I did about a mile and a half and it started to get uncomfortably warm so I turned around and headed back.

Stormy Day

We had a very stormy day at the end of June, which, fortunately, ushered out a period of very hot & humid weather we'd had the week earlier.  The skies grew dark by 10:00 a.m. and I had to shut down my computer as the thunder and lightning started.  Pepper and Sagan were keyed into it, so I tried to do my best to act like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, even though I don't like thunderstorms either.  It was the perfect opportunity to finally clean the fridge and give the kitchen a good cleaning too.  And vacuum.  And dust.  Both puppies stayed glued to me and were somewhat underfoot as I was back and forth to the sink as it stormed outside.

It was raining so hard that water leaked over the top of the kitchen a/c unit, hence the towels.

After I finished cleaning by about Noon, I logged back onto the internet, only to hear more storms headed into the area, so off went the computer again.  I tried to watch TV, but Bean and Boo were so terrified that they were trying to climb on me, whilst panting and drooling.  I thought about heading into my craft room but the last time we had thunderbumpers, they were jockeying for positions under the craft table, which wasn't optimum and I knew would be difficult, at best, for me to craft with them under the table.  I'd thought about colouring, but I was too busy trying to keep them out of my lap, so that wouldn't work either.  At this point, there was a very bright flash and immediately thereafter, a thunderclap so loud and so long that all the window crystals rattled against the windows.  It scared the crap out of me, and it sent Boo and Bea right over the edge.  I remembered that I had Rescue Remedy  so I put some on biscuits and gave them to the pups, in the hopes that it would work.  

I decided to cook, since that would keep me busy and keep them from climbing on me.  I made my new fave chicken recipe, (which doesn't include the vanilla icing also seen in this photo).

Spread mayo on boneless chicken breast tenders.

Cover them in panko bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

I cook them for 25 minutes in the NuWave Oven.  I assume the cooking time would be the same in a conventional oven.

While the chicken cooked, I also mixed up a batch of Suddenly [Pasta] Salad.

Added my own veggies to the pasta and dressing mix.  Yum!

While all that stuff was cooking, I also decided to make funfetti cake.  I split the batter between a cupcake tin and a small cake pan.

The thunderstorm finally moved on and the rain was stopping too.  Pepper went into the livingroom to have a snooze, but Sagan was still assisting as my Sous Chef.

"Kiss the Cook"

YUMMMMMMM!!!!!  I like my chicken nice n crispy!

A delicious late lunch!!!  I added some feta cheese to the pasta salad on my plate, but not to the main batch in the fridge because Russell's not a huge fan of cheese and I want him to be able to eat it too!

And for dessert.......cupcakes!!!  (Left a few unfrosted for my honey bunny).

Have I mentioned how much I love being a domestic goddess and stay at home "wife"?