Teapot Tuesday: Jingle All The Way

This week's featured teapot racer is named "Jingle" and was driven by Pheona Novas at the Renninger's Steampunk Industrial Show on Oct. 17, 2015.



Practicing before the big race:

I Hope Everyone Had a Wonderful Christmas!

We had a very nice, relaxing holiday.

I did no cooking at all today, but instead put out a table full of snacks this morning, that people could graze on whenever they wanted. 

We unwrapped presents and then spent the rest of the day enjoying our gifts and started catching up on episodes of Dr. Who that we'd missed.





We finished our day by taking a walk around the neighborhood to look at the full moon. It was foggy, but the moon still shown through in that hazy way that they like to show in old horror movies. It was 80 degrees during the day and still very warm tonight. Blaze wore the headlamp he got in his Christmas stocking and discovered that if he set it on the red light setting, he could look at toads in the grass without scaring them away. 

Teapot Tuesday: Post-Apocalyptic Teapot Racer

I said I was going to take a holiday break from doing teapot racing related things and just focus on the Steampunk Christmas Facebook page and getting things ready for my family's Christmas, but there was this remote controlled car sitting in there, completely un-modified...

Blaze picked out this RC car as my husband's birthday gift, so that he could compete in our first teapot race, back in October.  When it was time for the race, nothing had been done to the car.

It took a long time for DH to admit that he was never going to do anything with the car and that I could have it, but once he did, I wanted to work on it. I had actually had ideas for it from the very beginning.

This is what it looked like fresh out of the box:





I removed all of the decals except for the ones that look like windows.

I painted over the dull gray car with metallic model paint and added brown paint "mud" splatters.

Here is what I have, so far:











I haven't come up with a good name for this racer, yet.

This Year's Christmas Crackers

Firstly, my new batch of cheesy jokes:



I found these chocolates in the specialty foods section of Marshall's for $3.99.



The paper crowns are all the same this year and are made out of printed tissue paper that I purchased last year at World Market.



The prizes inside the crackers are from the dollar store and a clearance display at Party City.





This wrapping paper was meant to be.
Somehow, after wrapping presents, I had exactly the amount of wrapping paper leftover to wrap these three Christmas crackers.

Thomasville, Georgia Victorian Christmas

I've been so busy with Blaze's school work and Christmas prep, that I didn't get these pictures posted last week.

December 11, we drove up to Thomasville for their Victorian Christmas Festival.





The world's biggest rocking horse:

Our Very Festive Weekend

This past weekend was filled with holiday cheer!
Saturday we purchased a Christmas tree and went to Tallahassee's Winter Festival.















Candy cane making demonstration:



There were multiple stages with entertainment:





The night-time parade is always pretty:







I don't know exactly how this picture happened, but I really like it:



Sunday (yesterday) was Blaze's 15th birthday, as well as the day we decorated the Christmas tree.

Teapot Tuesday: Featured Teapot Racers: Mad Racer and Mad Racer #2

This week I am featuring the mother and son teapot racers Kat and Draiden Cain and their creations, Mad Racer and Mad Racer #2.





These were the spookiest looking entries in the Oct. 17th races, but the skull theme was perfect for this pair of pirates.

The first of the two racers to try the course was Mad Racer, but it was not to be. This was one of those cars that just wouldn't budge on the rough grass. Kat Cain doesn't give up easily, though. She tried over and over to get her racer to move. This was her final attempt:



The grass was no problem for Mad Racer #2. This fast little car took off right away. The problem was that it seemed to have a mind of its own. It wanted to spin and do wheelies, but wasn't easy to steer. Small pirates don't have to play by all the rules and he cleverly finished the course just in the nick of time.



He ended up winning the medal for "Best Course Completion".