PFA #1: Hot Glue Snowflakes (and Bunny Slides)

January 16, 2016 | Allison

Okay, I guess I’ll need to explain the title… 😀 PFA stands for “Posts from the Forgotten Abyss” and it’s a new series I’m starting where I drag back a post from long ago that I like, and that no one had really noticed, and repost it, along with a new photo or tidbit so the post is not entirely the same. It’s kind of like Photos from of Old. (Which I will post more of probably in spring.) So! Today’s post I thought seemed appropriate for winter, and since we, sadly, do not have any snow, here’s a way to make your own!

But first, here is the new part of the post: bunny slides! I took some videos of Lily and Willow sliding down a little sliding board that we’ve had for years, and I turned parts of the videos into pictures – they’re so cute and funny!

A pile of fluff is going down!

↓Lily is going to be so mad at me for taking a picture of her in this highly undignified pose. XD

Wasn’t that hilarious? XD Okay, now I am about to transport you back about one year… hang on!

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These really look like snowflakes (well, giant, oversized ones) because of the color of hot glue. They are very easy to make and just take a few supplies. Let’s get started!

You will need:

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Hot glue gun (with hot glue)

Parchment paper

Sharpie (optional)

snowflake pattern to trace (optional)

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There are several different ways to do this. You can either

1. Draw a snowflake directly onto the parchment paper (the sharpie lines will show up on the finished snowflake)

2. Print out a simple snowflake drawing from your computer and place it under the parchment paper

3. Just use hot glue to make a snowflake freehand.

What ever way you do it, the basic idea is to make a snowflake by squirting out hot glue onto parchment paper and letting it dry.

Since it is hot glue, it won’t take long to dry (YAY!). If you want, you can sprinkle some glitter over the snowflake before it dries. When you’re sure the hot glue is dry enough, carefully peel it off the parchment paper. You may need to remove those annoying hot glue strings too.

To activate the cling, turn it upside down in the palm of your hand and run it under water. Gently shake the water off, but don’t dry it off. Press the snowflake to a window.

The water helps it stick to begin with, but even when the water dries, the snowflake stays on. You can also make little swirls, dots, and other snowy doodles to go along with your snowflakes.

Make a whole blizzard!

***Allison***

P. S. You get one point if you remembered the snowflake post. XD What do you think of this new series?

WordCrafters #1, Chapter 1

January 15, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

HOORAY! WordCrafters is finally here! Read on to see the first chapter of WordCrafters #1, and some notes at the bottom of this post. (I also included a picture I took for an illustration for my chapter. Feel free to do that for your part too!)

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Alalia huffed and puffed up the mountain slope, trying to keep the backpack straps on her thin shoulders. Well, no strangers so far. She supposed that hiking wasn’t too bad of a pastime, although it could never compare with reading.

Alalia Marie Celinette was shy – painfully shy, so instead of playing outside or having sleepovers with her friends, she could almost always be found in her cozy reading nook, devouring a delicious book.

Until last night…

“Alalia! Time for supper!” the voice of Alalia’s mom wafted through the kitchen doorway where she was cooking up some vegetable stew for supper. Alalia closed Alice in Wonderland with a sigh. She wished she could go through the looking glass and explore the world beyond.

At dinner that night, Alalia’s dad put down his fork and began a little speech for Alalia.

“Alalia, we know how much you love reading, and reading itself is a good thing, but you have been doing entirely too much reading and not enough other activities lately.” Alalia sighed. They had had this conversation before. “We were thinking of some activities you could do to get outside and play with your friends more often, and here are some things we came up with.” Alalia’s mom brought a rumpled list out of her pocket and began reading: “You could go hiking, horseback riding, sign up for a club or sports…”

Alalia plunked her head on the table. “But I don’t want to do any of those things. I just want to read!”

Her parents gave each other an exasperated glance. “Honey, we just talked about this! How about you just choose one of those activities and try it out for a little while. You won’t have to do them every day – maybe once or twice a week, depending on the activity. Then, if you still really don’t like it, we’ll think about it again.”

So Alalia had thought it over for a while, and then decided to try hiking, because hiking was probably the best of those choices for avoiding strangers. Now here she was, dragging herself up Mount Minley – and she hadn’t met any strangers so far!

Soon, Alalia came to a sharp turn in the path, and was faced with a decision. Right, left, or take the shortcut? Hmm… I think the shortcut. The shortcut passed close to the edge of the mountain, which gave Alalia the jitters, but she stopped and took in the view anyway.

She had decided to bring her camera along, in case walking got boring. Just then a beautiful brown spotted butterfly flew past Alalia. Alalia whipped out her camera and followed the butterfly’s path with her lens. Finally, she saw it come to rest on a pretty green vine below the path where she was standing. Then Alalia saw something else – there were dozens of little sky blue butterflies also flitting around the vine. Alalia just had to get a picture of them!

She stumbled down from the path and approached the vine. It was dark green with red berries, kind of like holly, and it trailed down over several large boulders. As she watched the butterflies, the breeze blew the vines away from the boulder, and revealed a dark hole – it looked like an unexplored cave!

Although Alalia had never been the adventurous sort, she loved caves, and as she was prepared with a flashlight, food, and water, she decided to at least peek into the cave. Who knew but that she would discover a beautiful cavern – that would be worth writing her own story about!

She cautiously stepped inside and beamed her light around the cave. It was pretty tiny – Alalia had to stoop to fit inside – but it looked like it opened up ahead. Alalia tromped on further into the cave until she reached a dead end. But Alalia could see a little ray of light peeking in from behind the wall. She touched the wall, which felt surprisingly like vines, and to her astonishment, it gave way! Alalia pushed the vines out of the way, and stepped out into a brilliant green light.

She blinked and looked around. This place was not Mount Minley. This place wasn’t even her city. This place was an entirely different world!

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Gaaaah! I want to write more, but I must leave a cliffhanger for the next person to finish! It’s probably a good idea for each person to end their chapter with a cliffhanger so that the other person has a good place to start. According to the list, it is Misty’s turn to write the next part! Here is the whole randomized list. (Well, I randomized it with all of the writers in the list and then realized that I would have to rearrange it a little bit so that I would start and Josie would end like we had planned.)

Allison
Misty
CutePolarBear
Nicole
Addy
Clara
Suzy
Loren
Hayley
Rebekah
Megan
Chaespeedreader
AG Dolls and Fun
Mallory
Anonymous A.
Josie

So there you have it! You can also see the list on my WordCrafters page, where I will also update the story as new parts are added to it. I can’t wait to read the finished story – thanks for entering, everyone!

***Allison***

Photography Tidbits

January 12, 2016 | Allison

Over the weeks, I inevitably collect some random photos that don’t ever make it into regular posts, which is why I make this kind of post! Enjoy the random photo-ness. 🙂

I cut the end off of an orange to slice it, like normal, and found this cute little orange-face grinning back at me!

Here is a picture I edited with my camera with the “Painting” setting. (Click on any individual picture in a collage to enlarge it.)

Before…

After

I got these animal pictures when we went to the Science Museum with our friends recently.

-Allison (room, science museum) 037 (1280x960)

-Allison (room, science museum) 036 (1280x960)

-Allison (room, science museum) 038 (1280x960)

More funny food! This guy is made from Swiss cheese, crackers, applesauce (for the pupils), and a pickled onion. XD

My little sister swinging. 🙂

Mushrooms!

And Coffee Bean’s eye. (A moment of silence for Coffee Bean. *sniff*)

I hope you enjoyed the “random assorted flavors of Allison’s photography!” 🙂

***Allison***

I Opened My Etsy Shop!!

January 11, 2016July 3, 2020 | Allison

***Update: I’ve now replaced my old shop with The Color Box Studio, which you can see here.***

YES, I DID! I’m so excited, as you can probably tell from the two exclamation points in the title (I hardly ever use more than one exclamation point. :)). Click here to view my new Etsy shop, WeeLittleCrafts, or click on the image below!

So far I only have six listings, but I have made more things, I just haven’t taken pictures of them yet. So look for more! Here are a few of the things for sale so far:

A cute little miniature woodland animal set,

A pretty bead and coil necklace,

A few adorable pencil pals,

And a cute lil’ puppy necklace.

Click on the link above to see even more items!

SQUEEE! XD 😀 XD

***Allison***

P. S. Maddy started an Etsy shop that sells her photography. It’s really pretty – you should check it out!

Jinx the Cat’s Rabbity Adventure

January 10, 2016 | Allison

Hello, readers! The other day Jinx, our cat, had an adventure that he would like to tell you about. Jinx’s words will be in bold type and mine will be like normal. At the end of Jinx’s story I will be back with a few notes and pictures. But now I will hand it over to Jinx… (Be prepared for a lot of words – Jinx can be rather long-winded sometimes. XD)

Greetings, readers of Allison’s blog! Allison has allowed me, Jinx the cat, to do a guest post on her blog. For this particular post, I shall be telling you about a rather trying adventure I had the other day.

But first, I must tell you a little bit about myself. I am the grand and only feline of Allison’s household, Coffee Bean the cat having only recently passed away. (I will not here discuss in detail my views of the aforesaid Coffee Bean, but let it suffice to say that I bear no great burden of sorrow in now being the supreme ruler of the house.) It seems I will have to describe myself a bit, as Allison did not take a truly good picture of me by myself. I am a sleek, handsome, highly dignified black cat, if I do say so myself. Most generally, I pass my days in reclining in high estate wherever I please, drinking delicious draughts of sweet water from FaussEt, and trying to communicate to my humans all of my complicated needs through desperate meows, purrs, and sometimes – I am sorry to say – a few scratches in dire emergencies. They hardly ever listen to me, I am afraid, but ah… that is the life of a cat.

Now. My adventure began one day when Megan, one of the more trying of my humans, carried me out to the rabbit cage against my wishes. Do you know my views on rabbits? No, I suppose not. I shall inform you. I do not like them – they are simply fluffy vermin who always seem to have a nervous twitch about the nose – that’s what I say. Anyway, Megan carried me out, and I was forced to keep company with these disgusting creatures. At first I ~~hid in a corner~~ tried to keep my clean and polished self away from these creatures. But the air was cold, and I was at last forced to take refuge against the frigid air in the… I hate to say it, but the rabbits’ cage.

With my superior night vision, I could see inside the dark cage which was covered in a blanket. There were (I nearly shuddered with disgust) three rabbits already inside! They went by the names of Diamond, Lily, and Olaf. And as if the situation wasn’t already bad enough, another rabbit soon entered the scene – the extraordinarily fluffy Willow. She is the worst of them. I cannot for the life of me see how the humans like such a disheveled monster as Willow is, but… humans are very strange creatures.

But as I have a stout heart and a strong mind, I concluded to make the best of the circumstances. The one good thing I can say about rabbits is that they are very warming creatures. As I reclined among them, my poor numbed paws grew warm again, my ears began to thaw, and my whiskers lost some of their brittleness. In a few moments, I was actually enjoying my stay in the cage. (But only for the warmth, you understand.) After a bit, Olaf the rabbit approached me and snuggled up close. I tried not to be squeamish, and instead I focused on the extra warmth Olaf brought with him.

Even thought the humans were squealing over how “adorable” I was, I could not help feeling a bit sleepy with all of the warmth inside the cage. In fact, I nearly drifted off to sleep a few times.

I waited out the minutes until it was finally time to return to the comfortable house. The humans wanted to leave me in the cage, but the Mother human said that it would not be wise, as she didn’t trust me with the rabbits so close at hand. Of all the nerve! The humans should know by now that I have much too refined a taste to eat inferior rabbit meat! Anyway, Allison came out to take me inside, and was surprised that I resisted her grasp. I suppose she thought that I was actually enjoying the rabbits company. On the contrary, the only reason I resisted was that I was somewhat afraid that the vicious dog they call Maggie was outside the rabbit pen, waiting to destroy me the moment Allison should step outside. Maggie was actually in the kennel, but how was I to know? Finally Allison brought me inside, and ever since I have been trying to recuperate from that horrible adventure by sleeping twice as much on warm, comfortable chairs and sofas.

I’m sorry about all of the high and mighty language, but Jinx is rather proud of himself, as you can see. And another thing: I’m not totally sure that he was telling the truth when he said that he only enjoyed being in the cage for warmth. For one thing, it wasn’t even that cold – not nearly enough to numb his dainty paws at least – and for another thing, I have some pictures as proof that Jinx seems to have got along quite well with the rabbits – especially Olaf. Feel free to browse the evidence. (Mouse over the pictures to see any captions.)

The bunnies are very curious about this stranger.

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 001 (1280x960)

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 005 (1280x960)

I love this picture! So cute!

Was that not cute and convincing proof of Jinx’s enjoyment? (Well, at least some of the time.) It looks like he downright made friends with the rabbits! And since poor Olaf hardly ever gets a photoshoot, here is a mini one just for him. (Scroll over the pictures to see any captions, and click the pictures to enlarge.)

What is that strange, clicking machine doing in front of my face?

Black and white, day and night, Jinx and Olaf.

I love this picture too – Olaf’s eye looks like a pretty glass marble.

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 010 (1280x960)

Wow! I have written over ONE THOUSAND words for this post! That might be a record… In other news, I’m almost ready to open my Etsy shop! 😀 😀 😀 I might open it tomorrow, but I’m not sure. I’ll do a post about it when it’s ready. Have a lovely Sunday afternoon!

***Allison***

Room Makeover!

January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 | Allison

For Christmas, Megan and I asked for some home décor items and Hobby Lobby gift cards (I ♥ Hobby Lobby!)so we could redecorate our room. (We share a bedroom.) We decided to theme it with birds. We did get some décor items and several Hobby Lobby gift cards, so we did redecorate our room! And so I shall show you a tour of our newly decorated room. Do come in!

One of my favorite new decorations are these beautiful birds-on-a-wire wall decals that I got from Hobby Lobby.

It came with a few mirrored birds as well as a bunch of bird silhouettes. (Ack! ‘Silhouette’ is really hard to spell. XD) It was fun to take pictures of the mirrored birds.

Since there were so many of the silhouettes, I scattered a few around the room in different places.

You know how wall decals come in a sticker sheet? I found a way to get double the amount of stickers, at least as long as there is an outline around the sticker. You just peel of the real sticker, in my case the bird silhouette, and cut around the remaining outline on the sticker sheet. Here is a picture where I first took off the silhouette sticker of the cut out bird, then the bird out of the sticker sheet, and peeled off the thin black outline.

The downside is that the outlines are hard to apply because they are so flimsy, but once you get them up, they look nice:

Here are some more pretty decals I got at Hobby Lobby. We put these in one corner of our “book nook.”

We have started collecting bird figurines for our shelf. We also made these neat clay transfers. You basically print out a picture (it works best to use a laser printer), smooth it out onto a sheet of clay, and bake it between two ceramic tiles.

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 034 (1280x960) — My parents gave me the bird jewelry holder for Christmas, and the bird picture for a long-ago birthday present. 🙂

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 026 (1280x960) — My collection: I got the pretty peacock candle holder for a birthday, and I made the stuffed owl, the transferred bluebird, and the clay swan. For the clay swan, I transferred a swan image onto a polymer clay oval, traced over the lines with thin logs of purple clay, and added clay embellishments and flowers.

And I guess we’re done now. I hope you enjoyed it! Do you like Hobby Lobby? (Hint: the answer is YES! XP)

***Allison***

A Winter Walk (Without Snow)

January 6, 2016February 14, 2016 | Allison

Yep, we went on a walk around our farm the other day with our friends, and sadly enough, there was no snow. 😦 The last couple of years we’ve had really early snow (at least for us), like in October and November, but this winter there has been nothing but a puny little flurry. 😦 Anyway, I still got some pretty pictures, whether there was snow or not, so here goes!

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Some of the trees on our farm have huge bracket fungi on them.

These are dried Jimson-weed pods. They have quite the thorny complexion, don’t they? In summer, Jimson-weed has a sort of morning glory like flower. A note here: Jimson weed is actually poisonous, so don’t go around stuffing it into your mouths – not that anyone would want to. XD

A simple twig looks pretty up close.

This is a very tiny, shriveled persimmon. We have a little persimmon tree on our farm that annually gives about four dried up fruits which are almost always to high to reach. Once we actually got to taste one, and it must not have been ripe because, boy was that bitter! It made your mouth dry up like a cotton ball. Blech! But then for Christmas Eve supper we found two “real” persimmons at the grocery store, and those were actually pretty good! They tasted kind of like a mild, sweet melon or something. Plus they were about ten times bigger and plumper than any of our persimmons. XD Have you ever had a persimmon?

One of our friends. 🙂

Group picture!

I took a picture of Maggie running and it turned out really funny!

We walked up a wet gravel road, and Maggie left cute pawprints behind her. I edited this picture on my camera so you can see them better.

We went into a woods, and Maggie must have sniffed out some creature or other, because she started furiously digging under a rotting stump. She dug a hole so big that her whole head went practically underground! It was really funny, and we stayed there watching her for a long time. But she never caught anything. XP

And last but not least, we took this walk when my sister Megan (center)first got her new camera, and my little sister (left) and my friend (right)were watching her work it. I edited this picture (as you can see!) on my camera with the “Painting” setting. Doesn’t it look neat?

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and picture from a winter walk! Which picture was your favorite?

***Allison***

P. S. Don’t worry, I will do more Photos from of Old posts, but I’m saving them for a little later because the next ones are from springtime.

P. P. S. Wow! I seem to be doing a lot of P. S.’s on my posts lately, don’t I? 😀

A Super Simple Salad: Iceberg Lettuce Wedges

January 4, 2016January 4, 2016 | Allison

Once when we went to a restaurant on a vacation, some of my family ordered lettuce wedges as appetizers, and they were SO GOOD! Those had blue cheese dressing and bacon on, I think. The other day I thought, “Why couldn’t we make those ourselves?” So I did! And they were yummy! They were also really simple because they only took three ingredients. So… here’s the “recipe,” although it’s so simple it can hardly be called a recipe.

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Ingredients:

1 iceberg lettuce head

crumbled, cooked bacon

blue cheese dressing (Note: Caesar dressing is also delicious if you don’t like blue cheese – I prefer Caesar to blue cheese myself. And my little sister wanted Ranch dressing on hers. 😀 )

Peel off the first couple of outer lettuce leaves, and slice the iceberg lettuce into six equal wedges. (I actually made seven wedges since we have seven people in our family.)
Place each wedge on a separate plate, and drizzle generously with dressing. Sprinkle crumbled bacon on top. And EAT!

Don’t they look delicious?

Let me tell you the story of the bacon bits. We got them in our stockings from our grandparents, because my cousin REALLY loves bacon, and she wanted bacon bits for Christmas. So my grandparents made us all some. XD It was a good stocking stuffer to me! 😀 XD

***Allison***

P. S. No more blog snow… 😥 😥

My ATC Collection

January 3, 2016November 12, 2018 | Allison

If you don’t know what ATCs are, you can read about them here. My family and friends and I enjoy making ATCs, and I just recently got a really nice pack of ATC holders and a binder to display them in. They look beautiful altogether, like a scrapbook, and they are much easier to see and trade. So get ready to see a LOT of ATCs! (I’ve traded with at least 25 different people so far, including several adults! I’ll bet to some people that doesn’t sound like a lot, but for me it is!)

If you like a certain one, you can tell me in the comments and I’ll tell you who it was made by and what the title is, because sometimes the title is the funniest part! Most of the ATCs in the first three pictures were made by me.

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These three ATCs below are “mix-it” ATCs my friends and I made, where you can trade different ATCs to make funny, mixed-up creatures.

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Here are my “special” ATCs. I try to keep at least one ATC from everyone I’ve traded with. So the ATCs below are either my favorite one or two cards from each person I’ve traded with, or the only card I have from them. Oh, I just have to tell you something: the first two ATCs are by my dad (the first one is a sort of riddle – try to figure out what it says!) and the really good leaf painting in the third picture is my mom’s. Aren’t they good?!

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