They're Going To Be THAT House

I had so much fun making the little candy bars recently that I decided to be proactive for getting ready for Halloween! While a couple of months away, I really want to be able to decorate and get this family ready! My focus this week: THE CANDY!

My inspiration on how much to make comes from a neighbor of ours. Years ago, she took one of those big, plastic cauldrons (the ones that are about a foot and a half or two feet deep and at least a foot and a half across) and FILLED it to the brim with candy for trick-or-treaters! And, she had the good stuff in there! It was a bonanza of chocolate that just made your mouth water upon stepping up to her front porch.

The amazing part of this situation is that this sweet lady would gush over the costumed kids and then SCOOP candy out of the cauldron and into their buckets! I mean, this was a two-handed, use-them-like-a-machine-scoop situation, and each kid received TWO such scoops! I remember being in shock watching this happen, and I still remember the kids just gasping and announcing through their squeals and not-put-together exclamations of joy! We actually had to go back home to deposit that candy before heading out to more houses because the buckets were immediately full! Yeah, for a few years, she was THAT house!

Well, that's what I want for Hal and company, and, to do that, I need to get to work! I've printed a mess of what I've already made (Hershey's, Reese's and KitKats), and I love putting those together because they're really quite easy. But, I wanted a variety which just a few minutes on Pintrest afforded me! Look!

Each wrapper is around a small scrap from the Woodpile stuff to give it some durability. I used different thicknesses depending on the candy. And, the M&Ms and Skittles are crimped on their ends with the pliers to give it the realistic-looking seal! Of course, everything was Tim Holz micro glazed and polyurethaned, too.

I LOVE THESE SO MUCH!

These KitKats are actually Halloween wrappers! I found Reese's Halloween
ones, too. I think I need to get to printing many more of these!

Hal is totally double-fisting the chocolate while
Polly enjoys some newly created Goldfish. 😊

That basket shall be full by the time Halloween rolls around if I have anything to do with it! I hope to find a cool cauldron or pumpkin container. If not, I might just paint this basket black and put fun, orange ribbon and decoration on it. The candy is the most important part, though, and I'm glad to have a jump on it!

I am RIDICULOUSLY excited about these candies!

I also made some Life Saver rolls! Originally, they were going to be for the trick-or-treaters you really kind of wish didn't come to your door, but, as I look at them, they are just as awesome! (No they're not as they're not chocolate, but that's a different debate!)

Anyway, here's how these happened. First, I found some printables on Pintrest. I cut 'em out and gave them the micro glaze treatment:

The directions written by these labels said to put glue on the back of them, then roll them up from the white end creating the product. My problem was not figuring out how to start to roll them tight enough to make the middle solid and maintain a nice, round shape. I also feared my fingers getting sticky and ruining more labels than I would roll. So, I used a toothpick as my solution:

This made rolling them super easy taking just enough care to keep it reasonable straight and tight (enough) on the toothpick.. You can see in the pic that there is a little straggle on the right side where my angle went awry. I take care of that in the next step! This is also when I polyurethaned them. Doing so while the toothpick was still in tact let me paint all the way around because I could lean the toothpick on something upright to dry. These are so small that covering most-but-not-all, letting them dry then flipping them like I do all of the other products would just be a pain. So, I fixed that.

After letting these dry completely, I cut the ends:

Using the saw was way better than using cutters because the sawing helped maintain the roundness of the roll. It is here that I cut into the little paper straggles, too. And, if needed, I sanded the ends with an emery board after cutting.

Now, I've not had a roll of Life Savers for ... I have NO idea how long! But, I remember them having silver wrapping on the ends. So, these needed that, too!

After stirring the paint with a stick, I realized it was probably easier to just swirl the ends of the rolls around on the stick than to be super-accurate with a paint brush. I had a little more control over not using too much paint this way, too. And, if a little paint spilled on to the label, it was easy to wipe off thanks to my best friend polyurethane. Whee!

These are just entirely too cute!

Grandma Laura is enjoying a fruity roll with a Pep O Mint roll on reserve in case her sweetie comes out to stargaze with her!

The only thing that would make this stash better would be to have Wild Cherry rolls in there. Remember those? Oh holy moly, those were the BEST!

From here! I have some Fall and Halloween fabric pulled from my stash to make sure the porch pillows are appropriately festive! I also have a mess of food things I printed and have already primed with the micro glaze to make! And, that doesn't even begin to cover the INSIDE ideas I keep having!

SO. MANY. GOOD. THINGS! I'll check back in with the next installment soon!

It's the Little Things

It's no surprise that I figured out another project to begin before getting the one in progress to "completion." (Like they're ever really complete? Yeah, that's not the point of the house!) That being said, this past week, I: still gathered some new supplies for the garden spaces which I will "plant" soon; imagined a few, new garden areas, and made a couple of more pillows to don the porch chairs:

Hey, I'm getting pretty good at this!

I love these little lightening bugs! Ahhh ...

Oh, but that's not all!! While imagining new garden spaces, I decided to dive into the project of making foods for the family because they must be starving by now.

From flower gardens to grocery items. 'Makes sense, right ? (Um, no ... I just got distracted and excited!)

With the garden project still strewn all over my work space, I cleared enough room, via the scooting-it-over method, to get the family some grub!

I started out on the Jennifer's Printables site where I gathered a number of items. Here's how the process went down if you are so inclined although I wouldn't be surprised if there's an easier way to do this:

1. I copied the image I wanted as a picture (and, yes, it's free and encouraged to do so!)
2. The image was then dropped into a PowerPoint slide where I took a stab at sizing the item. This was a little tricky because the measurements provided for the image on PowerPoint include the tabs of the image. So, honestly, I did some good, close guessing.
3. After fitting a bunch of items on a page, I printed them on both card stock and regular paper (you'll see why).
4. This is the step where I resized and reprinted as needed. *sigh*
5. I usually got the desired size on the second try, and, then, it was time to cut the patterns! Learn from me: one of these images is correctly cut, and one is not. Can you figure it out?

Yeah, the one on the right wins! I originally "saw" the white boxes as white space to be removed. But, when that happens, there are no tabs to use for gluing sides together. Whoopsie.

6. While leaving the white spaces in place, cut on their lines to allow for folding but not removing.
7. The easiest way to fold these little suckers - use the card stock print - is to use a straight edge on the line, and fold over it.
8. Dry-run the folding to make sure everything fits as needed.
9. Glue as best as possible. 😊

On occasion, I did cut the little white tab away when the folding and gluing just made it clear that the tab was not needed or otherwise in the way. But, don't do that until you know.

One step I took but I've not seen on other sites is to use the Tim Holz micro glaze over the image. This keeps the ink from smearing if it gets wet. And, with the intention to use a coat of polyurethane on these, this step matters.

This was my first run of products. Ta-Da!!

This is where the printed image on regular paper came in. You can see the vegetable thins looks a little tattered and worn, and that, for me and my amateur status, seems to come from over-working the paper while folding and getting it together. But, I could fix it by cutting out just the parts of the pattern I needed from the regular paper (also micro glazed) and gluing it over the product. Poly the whole thing, and the product is ready!

But, wait, there's more!

So, my friend Cindy checked out my creations and noted that she thought they'd be even more awesome with a little weight in them rather than being light, empty boxes. While I heard her, I'm certain my mind in that moment pushed her idea away because not only had I already sealed what you see above, but I also wasn't loving the idea of another step in the process. However, I couldn't push away the fact that I thought it was a great idea. So, the next day, I took my friend vegetable thins and decided to slice open the top to see how easy it would be to get little pieces of wood in these boxes while also resealing it to still look good.

Wouldn't you know that it worked really well! I have a whole box of wood scraps that I bought at Hobby Lobby in their Woodpile collection, which I have used for books and picture frames, so those pieces made it easier as they can be cut with regular scissors. I so badly wanted to cuss at Cindy in my head while reworking these, but the idea really helps in both stability and durability. Who wants these smashed after taking time to make them? Not I ... So, Cindy and I remain friends while I went for it to create some more goodies!

I'm super-proud of the Domino sugar bag because it's a box printable that I made into a bag. This, along with the brown sugar and chip bags, are just created with regular computer paper to more resemble the real things. The Fritos bag actually holds these wood scraps ...

... so, if you shake the bag, you hear the chips. The other potato chip bags, as well as the sugar bags, are stuffed with paper napkin to create shape. I like the stuffed chip bags more than the Fritos, but they all work.

In the picture, you can also see the animal cracker box. I made two of those and love the little string handles!

In the picture's foreground is a cake box that I really had to fight to get to stand up. I tried twice to create this box, and it did not want to stand. I *think* I finally got it where it will, but if it becomes a problem, My Girl said to consider it from the bargain shelf of beat-up or otherwise old products. Should that become the case, I'm going to create a "clearance" sticker for it and call it good.

Another note from the picture is that, if you look at the baking soda box, it looks like it's coming open on one end. That was accidental as something went awry in the process. But, as I looked at it, it could only remind me of my own baking soda box where the cardboard spout always looks wonky, and I was endeared to its realism. 😌

A couple of my other favorite products are the candy bars! They, too, are only printed on regular paper so they are more "wrapper"-like. I took really small pieces, much like those used for the Fritos bag, for their centers. They are crazy-easy to make as I just smear the non-printed side with glue, stick the wood piece in the proper place, and roll the wrapper around it. I hold the ends tight to not only seal them but to also give the overall piece some shape, and, voila !! Oh, and, yes, they get a coat of poly which really makes them realistic!

Polly and Hal are enjoying their snacks amidst the beauty of their garden space:

She likes savory; he likes sweet.

And, up on the sunroof, the girls get to add to their tea party treats:

Veggie thins and animal crackers are on
their way!

I think I'll be sticking with the garden and the foods for a little while because I can then avoid the trim work I have waiting there's just so much to do! I also want to build a little shelf for some of the foods because it seems some of the products come from Sams in their family and bulk sizes 😅 More updates after a little more progress!

How This Garden Grew!

After last weekend's patio success, I just couldn't let the rest of the yard go unfinished! So, for the last week, I've been landscaping!!

I started collecting foliage and flowers mostly from the Dollar Store right when the Spring flowers came out. There are other stems from sales elsewhere, too, such as JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby. I finally broke out the box in which they've been stored!

The first thing I did was sort and cut them off of their main stems. This made it easier to see the whole array of options! I did set aside a number of the leaves from the stems, and I'm SO glad I did (you'll see!). I really wasn't sure what I'd do with them since they are too massive to use in terms of scale, but I didn't want to just toss the green. Just in case.

After sorting, and not having any real plan, I just started figuring it out! I quickly realized that I needed to utilize something in order to stick the plants in the dirt-covered styrofoam. Toothpicks didn't work consistently depending on whether or not they hit a clump of glue. So, I found my pins and the very random roll of floral tape I had on hand (who just happens to have that on hand?!). I simply rolled floral tape around a stem and pin, while holding them together, leaving just enough pin at the bottom to stick into the styrofoam:

You can see in the picture the head of the pin under the tape about a third of the way down the stem. You can also see I wasn't even neat about this process, and it all turned out great, so don't sweat perfection on this especially if you're going to plant a lush garden where things overlap. Oh, and that very, long pin was cut down with wire cutters. This was one of the first flowers I created, and I hadn't yet bothered to find the shorter pins. And, I didn't really know what I was doing.

Here's another flower for which I actually made some leaves out of the greenery that I set aside:

I cut the little strips for leaves, then I adhered them with the Quick Grip glue. I wanted to make sure these pins were a little more covered as these flowers are front and center in the garden.

Among the first creations is my riff on a butterfly bush:

I absolutely love that thing! It is comprised of 7 or 8 purple stems that I placed one by one in the ground. So, the bush isn't a unit, but it looks like one. I just kept adding to it until it looked right.

Here's a tour of garden and a few how-to's!

Look closely! There's a bunny in there. 😊

These little bushes are in the model train section of Hobby
Lobby and Michaels. I cut the stems down because they are
sold as trees. Then, I shoved a pin through the stems to stick
them in the mulch.

Aren't the little yellow flowers scrumptious? The hubs really likes marigolds in our own gardens, and I certainly love the yellow pops of color, so I had been on the lookout for something to satisfy this vision. I figured out how to make these quite by accident. I had a stem that looked like this:

I got this at JoAnn's in their new Fall selection, fyi. I picked it up for the spectacular clumping of yellow even though it wasn't in the form I wanted. After getting it home, I was just kind of picking at it trying to figure out if I should cut each clump and glue them together in a bunch when I realized the flowers are on a single piece of fabric that I could unwind from the stem!

Who knew?! Ta-Da!!

From there, ran a line of Quick Grip glue along the bottom edge and rolled it up as best I could. Because it had been so tightly wound around the stem, that sucker kept wanting to roll up on itself making rolling it the way I wanted it to go with wet glue tricky. I think the unevenness of the rolling is what actually makes these so lovely, though! But, it also caused the base with the glue to try and pull away from itself before it was dry, so, I took care of that:

Take that! SMUSH!

Because Quick Grip dries SO fast, pinching the bottoms together literally took under a minute for each bunch to stay together. And, again, I stuck a pin through the middle of the flowers down through the base to adhere them in the garden.

Another favorite piece of mine is that fabulous hosta! That was inspired by finding this bunch at Hobby Lobby:

To get the pieces ready, I pulled apart and cut down the leaves to the size I wanted. As well, I made a little, square styrofoam base:

Round the edges and corners to help give
the plant a great shape!

You can see I found all kinds of pins at this point! And, for this particular project, I used the smaller, plain pins in the foreground because I knew they could be hidden the easiest.

The next step was to prepare the leaves. I wanted to do them all at once so I could make progress faster on the plant once I got started! That meant putting a pin through the plastic vein from behind:

I could pull the leaf back a little off of the
vein to make it easier to see where I was
sticking.

Once they were ready, I ran a bead of Quick Grip on the outside of the base and got to sticking!

I wanted the glue there as I didn't trust the pins to stay put in the base. The glue was great because the leaves mashed up against it not only sticking to it but also creating a really nice look. Here's the outcome before placement!

I definitely want to make more of these, but they are pretty labor intensive. So, they'll be collected, if you will!

The other plant creation from the greenery stash is Hal's gift to Polly. You guessed it: The big planter got some attention!

A little styrofoam in the base, and we
are ready to plant!

The leaves are ones I pulled off of one of the stems in the what-am-I-going-to-do-with-these stash. I cut stems I liked down to the size I wanted, and I sandwiched a piece between two leaves:

It holds together with a line of Quick Grip on the stem itself. After letting that dry on just one leaf, I then spread Tacky Glue all over that leaf, and then I placed another leaf on top to create the "sandwich." If you look really close on the bottom left side of the pictured leaf, you can see where the leaves join. None of them fit together perfectly, and I honestly thought I would end up trimming them to cut away any "extra" unaligned leaf. As it turns out, it looks great as-is! Topped with some floral moss, and it's just perfect! It's inspired by banana trees:

Polly is super-happy:

Here's the other end of the patio area:

The little pots with the singular flowers strewn about are actually buttons! My Girl put a string of them in my Easter basket knowing I'd want to do some planting in the house! I had a little bag of wooden pots from an antique store that I picked up at some point which were perfect for housing these little gems!

Another touch I'd like to share is the gazebo! I found this in the fairy garden section at Michaels on clearance a few weeks ago:

I dressed it up with some vine I found in the wedding section at Hobby Lobby and wine glass stem charms I found at a garage sale, all six for a quarter. It's like it was meant to be:

The gazebo is tucked at the back of the wrap-around porch which is the perfect spot for it! It looks lovely with the popsicle lights glowing!

The gazebo needs a few things to light it up. I suspect some glow-in-the-dark jars will be a part of that equation! I need to build a little table to go in there, too. So many things to create!

Aren't those popsicle lights the greatest, by the way?! They actually went up before "they" got to work planting:

Oh, one more thing. I made some outdoor pillows for the porch chairs:

I did them by hand, and I'm not the best hand sewer because I clearly don't care to be. But, they worked out. The home owners aren't complaining.

So, that's where it's all at so far! While it could sit as-is and look fabulous, I'm sure I'll have more creations to plant soon. That table full of lovely possibilities just calls out to me!! I need to contain it now, though, because the kitty discovered it about an hour ago. The freedom of it sitting out was very fun while it lasted!

Here are two more looks!

More to come!