Hats: It's Costume Making Time Again

I have already finished the hats that will go with our Halloween costumes this year.

I'm going to be Mary Poppins. I found the hat at a vintage store in downtown Gainesville and added flowers from the dollar store.



Blaze has decided to be a steampunk cowboy.

Our favorite inspiration pictures for this costume are these:


(http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=735557&gsub=98256)


The movie version of Wild Wild West wasn't very good, but Will Smith's look for the video was awesome.


(http://www.arcanetimes.com/?p=399)

Blaze was really excited by the idea of a Tesla Ranger, enforcing the laws of science and fighting the robot menace in the wired West. So, last night after he went to bed, I made a special hatband for his cowboy hat.



The gears are a way for him to count coup, each one was taken from a robot he destroyed.

Dragon*Con Scrapbooking

I was very resistant to getting a digital camera years ago when my family first suggested it, because I was afraid I would never get "hard" copies of any of the pictures and in time they would all be lost. I wasn't completely wrong. I certainly have fewer printed pictures now, although I take more photographs. The only thing that motivates me to have prints made, is Blaze's scrapbook.

I started making copies of photographs and doing scrapbooking, because I wanted to make sure that my children had childhood pictures they could take with them when they grew up and left home. I have very few pictures from my childhood, because my mother was very protective of family photos and would not allow me to put very many into my own photo album. Even when, as a teenager, I was taking pictures on family vacations with my own camera, I was not allowed to keep the prints. For me, scrapbooking is a reaction to that. The memories of special events we have shared, do not belong to me alone.

It's taken me awhile, but I finally made up some scrapbook pages of pictures from Dragon*Con for Blaze.

A Dynamite Toy Storage Idea

We are still trying to find ways to replace all the black plastic cauldrons that we have been using for toy storage in Blaze's room (left over from the Harry Potter theme that no longer exists). DH found this antique dynamite case (circa 1910-1930) on eBay.







We cleaned the box really well and I even sanded the inside a little. Then DH made some beeswax furniture finish and rubbed it into the wood.



The beeswax finish is made by mixing 1 part melted beeswax (use a double boiler) and 6 parts mineral oil. It should have a consistency similar to Vaseline. It can be stored in a sealed container for several months, without refrigeration. It is also edible, so it can be used to treat wooden bowls and platters.

We decided to use the dynamite box for the Lincoln Logs, because they were the most dynamite shaped toys Blaze has.

The wood finish really brightened up the color of the wood.

Chai Mousse in Chocolate Tea Cups

I think this would be wonderful for a tea party or a Willy Wonka themed party.




Making chocolate tea cups is fun and simple. It starts with covering a large cookie sheet with parchment paper and blowing up a dozen dollar store water balloons (just with air, not water).




Next finely chop 4 cups of milk chocolate (for nicest texture, the thick chunks or bars of chocolate work best for melting). Melt three cups of the chocolate in a double boiler. Once it is completely melted, remove from heat and stir in remaining cup of chocolate. Stir until it is all melted and glossy. Dip each balloon into the melted chocolate, covering the lower half of the balloon. Set the balloons on the parchment paper to cool and harden.



Set the balloon covered cookie sheet in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

While the chocolate on the balloons is setting up, use any left over melted chocolate to make tea cup handle shapes on a separate sheet of parchment. Refrigerate.



Then, here comes the fun part, with a pair of scissors, snip the top of each balloon to let the air out. Once it has deflated, it should be easy to remove the balloon from the chocolate shell.

Attach the handles to the cups by using just a little melted chocolate as "glue". Place the cups back in the refrigerator until ready to serve.


Chai Mousse

One pint of heavy whipping cream (whipped and chilled)

3/4 Cup cold water

1 envelope of unflavored gelatin

1 Cup Big Train brand instant spiced chai (if you live in Florida, this is available at Fresh Market)



Place cold water in a small sauce pan and sprinkle gelatin over the water. Let it sit for 5 minutes. Add chai powder. Turn heat on under the gelatin water (med.) and begin heating, while stirring constantly. When it is hot, but not yet simmering, remove the pan from the heat. Let it cool for 10-15 minutes, stir occasionally. Slowly add half of the chilled whipped cream to the chai mixture, stirring gently. A spoonful at a time, fold the chai mixture into the whipped cream that is still in the bowl. Chill for about an hour, stirring occasionally . Serve in a chocolate tea cup (or in a china tea cup). Garnish with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Piratical Lunch

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

I haven't really talked like a pirate much today, but I did dress like one to go to school, and made Blaze a pirate themed lunch that included a hard-boiled egg skull and a cheese pirate on a bed of carrot coins.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Arrr! Monday be Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey.

I just finished decorating the tinsel tree in Blaze's room with pirate decorations. Puppets make great tree toppers.

A Little Filler

We have now reached that part of the party where I show you a poor quality film from my vacation.

A very small sample of the Abney Park concert at Dragon*Con.



The camera bounces around a lot, because the whole floor was bouncing, as excited fans jumped up and down to the music.







It was an awesome concert but not such an awesome video. So why am I posting it, you might ask. Well, my creative energies this past week have all been taken up by the school and can be seen here, but I have this strange competition with myself. On my blogger dashboard, I like my personal blog to always be on top, but that only happens if that is the most resent one to have a new post. Thank you for baring with my silliness! Now go watch a better Abney Park video on YouTube (there are many).

The Picnic Basket Gets a Makeover

Only a couples days before Dragon*Con, I found out that I was invited to show my picnic quilt at the Steampunk Exhibition. I decided it would be fun to set up a picnic scene on the floor of the exhibition, but when I looked at the picnic basket, it just looked too plain. With so little time (school had also just started that week), I should have left well enough alone, but I have trouble doing that. So, using a pattern that was really meant for embroidery from Urban Threads, I traced a design onto the lid of the basket. Then I used the wood burning tool to go over the traced lines (which, by the way, were not as clear as they should have been). I was really unhappy with the results. The design looked sloppy. The apartment and I smelled like a campfire.



I noticed some rough edges caused by the burning, so I got out a piece of sandpaper to rub at them, and scratched the basket lid pretty bad. I could undo the scratch, so I just put scratches all over the lid to give it a more worn, rugged look. I hated it! There are no close pictures of it at that point, because I was so unhappy with it.

As you can see, I stuffed it into the back corner of my display to make it less obvious.



I have finally had time to fix it.

Over the weekend I sanded it down.



I went over all the lines in the design with the Dremel, which did a far better job than the wood burner. Then refinished it with red mahogany wood finish and clear polyurethane.



It's not perfect, but I'm much happier with it now. I had never used the Dremel for wood engraving like this before and now that I kind of know what I'm doing, I want to try more.


For more about the picnic basket click here.

Another Dollhouse Attempt

If you've been following this blog for awhile, you know that quite awhile ago I found a dollhouse kit at a resale shop and started trying to put it together. I failed. The directions were in English, but were microscopically written and made no sense to me. So, I gave up.

Just recently, I had considered throwing the kit away, since I'm positive I have lost some of the pieces. Then I was given this half finished dollhouse.



It didn't come with any extra pieces, but I'm hoping the kit I already have will help me finish this house. This shouldn't be as difficult, since the hard part of the construction is done already.

So, here we go again...

New Soccer Program

I was not much of a fan of reality this week. School was very stressful and Blaze and I had to jump right in without catching up on any of our missed sleep from last weekend. Having a day off from work has greatly improved my outlook on life. I was able to sleep late, we're all caught up on laundry, Blaze had a fun time playing soccer and frisbee this evening, and we're going bowling tomorrow.

Tonight was the first time that Noah's Endeavor has had soccer here in Gainesville. Many of the Gainesville parents had complained about having to drive out to Jonesville in Friday night rush hour traffic, to get our children to soccer practice. The time and location of these practices are really much better for us.

The Other Costumes of Dragon*Con 2011

Not all the the people who descended on Atlanta last week end were steampunks. Here is a small sampling of the other costumes.

More Dragon*Con Steampunk 2011

Yesterday, I only posted my pre-parade pictures because photobucket stopped cooperating in the middle of downloading my pictures. So, make yourself comfortable, here come the rest.





Abney Park put on a fantastic concert at midnight on Saturday. I'm sure someone out there has better pictures of it than I do.





Blaze not only managed to stay awake for the show, but it was hard to get him to settle down and go to sleep when we got back to the hotel around 2 a.m., because he was so excited.

The Steampunk Exhibition on Sunday afternoon:















He was really a very good prop














If anyone doubted the growing popularity of steampunk, just look at this crowd. Every few minutes, announcements had to be made asking people not to loiter for too long, because the room had reached capacity and more people were waiting to get in.



A short break for dinner:



Then back to the Westin Hotel for the Guiness Book of World Record attempt for most people in steampunk costumes.

Getting ready to go stand in line


Standing in line


Not everyone who showed up was deemed steampunk enough to enter the ballroom for the count. Oddly enough, the members of Abney Park were turned away, even though they were in costume, because they had no mechanical gadgets with them and Guiness had set that as one of the rules for being steampunk. In hindsight, I wished we had all walked out, in solidarity with them at that point. Being part of a rebellion would have been more fun than the long tedious attempt to get us all into straight rows to be counted in the ballroom. There were no lines marked on the floor to help with this procedure, so a woman on the balcony yelled instructions at us for quite awhile. Blaze's lack of sleep finally caught up to him several minutes into this. He looked up at me and said, "If we don't win, I'm going to cry." Then the tears started pouring. It was very hard for him to get himself back under control again. In the end, we did beat out the previous record, set by Comic Con.



The huge panoramic picture of the entire world record setting group can be found here:
http://gigapan.org/gigapans/86450/

Each individual can be zoomed in on, just like Google Earth. Blaze and I are in the second row (Blaze is smiling. I wish I had smiled at the right time).

The Pirates and Time Travelers Ball:





Monday we returned home, despite being lost in Atlanta for two hours and then having to drive through Tropical Storm Lee to get here.

Blaze's new Abney Park poster has already replaced Harry Potter on his bedroom wall.