HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020

It is hard to believe that a new decade begins. I wanted to share the last days of the Christmas season with a photo that shares our 2019 spirit. 

Have a Blessed and Happy New Year!

VBS 2019 IN THE BOOKS

Since it is year end, I wanted to share a few of the Church and School projects.  This posting will show you our VBS(Vacation Bible School) decorations and snacks that my team made. Our theme this year was ROAR.  Our decorating committee is headed up by one amazing woman.  I take charge in the kitchen and have an incredible team helping me make 225 snacks per day for the 5 day week. Sometimes I think I have more fun creating the snack ideas than actually making them.  Once we hit the kitchen that Monday morning, we are busy bees cranking out the snacks.  I try to create snacks with a theme.  This year was absolutely a blast.  ROAR!!!!

Our set decorator is a genius. All the animals are made from scratch. Most of them are dimensional.

 The gorilla was made from furry fabric.

The gorilla hands are made with men's leather gloves.

The elephant was majestic.  He was made out of paper maché. At the end of the week, each child won a ticket if they brought a canned good into VBS.  A raffle was held and one lucky person won the elephant. 

The tom tom drums were made out of 2 laundry baskets.

One of my favorite animals was the origami lion.

The kids walked into the Serengeti hallway.

 


Our set decorator works the most intricate details into her animals.

Elephant skin.  Look at the eye!

The base of the sitting giraffe is a paper copier box.

After our jungle tour, I'm sure you are hungry for snacks!


The first day we always make a snack mix because we have 2 hours to prepare.  Going with the theme of ROAR, animal crackers and gummy jungle animals were mixed in with mini marshmallows, cheese its, pretzel sticks and rice Chex.

Day 2 we made tiger tails.  This was a 2 step process.  We coated the large pretzel rods with orange white chocolate.  After drying, we melted dark chocolate and drizzled it over the pretzels.

I have a smaller team that helps me make 240 cupcakes 2 weeks before.  We freeze them for our cupcake day.  I made green frosting and added a animal cracker to the top of the cupcake. Of course, we have to have animal printed cupcake papers.  The kids LOVE frosting!

Day 4 we made chocolate pudding and added a vanilla wafer and a chocolate animal cracker to the top.

By Friday, we were pretty tired.  To reward my team, I purchased Little Debi zebra cakes to serve for the last day's snack.

All in all, the week went well. 




Next year, we are doing a train theme.  I have all my snacks planned but you will have to wait until next June to see the results.

ADVENT WREATH 2019

This month marks 8 years since My friend Susan began this blog.  I never would have thought that I could keep it up. I am close to 700 postings now.  I thank the Holy Spirit and my sister, Terri for the continued inspiration.

Let’s get to the new post.

With the late Thanksgiving holiday this year, Advent snuck up on me quickly.

As always, I try to use the wooden base that my Dad made for me umpteen years ago. 

I filled my trifle bowl with silvered branches and placed the wreath holder on top.

Since I needed to cover the wooden top, I used a paper doily.

My daughter gave me the idea to fill the trifle bowl with a festive glittered branch. 

For the next three weeks, I will light the candles anticipating the arrival of Baby Jesus.

The second week of Advent was on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The third week of Advent.

And the fourth ad final week of Advent.  Three more days until baby Jesus comes.



PAINTING THE BACK 40 FRAME

I believe that this is one of my more exciting projects.  I purchased this frame back in May.  Since I didn't have a specific place to use it, I just kept it in the garage.  One day, I pulled out my measuring tape and went to my parlor bath.  This was the room that I first stenciled.  It seemed that the frame would fit perfectly but I waited until Mr. Thrifty came home.  He measured and it fit!  Now, I put it in high gear to finish it.  Once painted, I will buy a beveled mirror to place in the frame.


Here is the builder's mirror.

This is the frame that I think I got a great deal on.  However, there was a substantial divot.  A little spackling paste would do the trick.  It's always easier to do small layers at a time so I spackled and sanded three times before I was happy with it.

Once I was happy with the spackling, I sprayed a coat of primer over the damaged area. It is very important to prime because once I started painting the entire frame, the paint might not take without the primer.

I paid for $25.00 for the frame.  It wasn't until I turned the frame over that I saw the original price which was $71.99.  That made me feel even better about my purchase.

At this point, I was anxious to start using the chalk paint when once again I was stopped in my tracks.  The past owner has used a glue gun to secure their painting into the frame.  There was no way the new beveled mirror would lay flat with this surface.  I got a small chisel from the garage and removed all of it.  One extra hour of work would save me frustration later.

Normally glue gun residue is fairly easy to remove.  This--not so much.  

These paint products will be used  to finish the frame. The base will be an elephant color chalk paste.  The raised areas will be accented with the silver gilding paste.(I love this stuff!) The dead flat finishing paste will leave the paint protected without adding a sheen.

I should make a note here and tell you that I thought that this grey paint color was used in the stencil on this bathroom wall.  It wasn't until I painted two coats that I realized that it was NOT the same grey.  However, it is so close that I decided to move forward and continue using the elephant color.  I can live with this.  It compliments the stencil well.

I ended up using 4 coats of the grey paint.  It is such a rich color.

When I started applying the gilding paste, I used it very lightly at first. As I continued, I applied it a bit heavier.

Here is the frame before the gilding wax was applied.

And after....

Finally, the mirrored frame is in place.  I really like how it changed the look of the parlor bath.