Saturday Night...

...was an impromptu-ish craft night at Arthur's sister's house.

It had been rainy and cold all day, and I had been out dashing around here and there, to deliver some liquids to a housebound Puffs Plus user, lunch with a friend, an afternoon movie (in the house) and a little run by the local hardware for a special gift for my kitchen (as it was sorely neglected during the holiday rush) then a dash and grab to collect Arthur and a drive out to countryside for some heavy duty creating...

Well, after a good dinner of course.

Of course.

Our first project, while waiting for dinner to bake up, was a fleece blanket for Arthur to take home...I've seen these made, and haven't done them myself, so I was interested in trying it. Super easy...and really cute in the end (of course, the dark brown fleece with embroidered dandelions against a wonderful turquoise was a great color combo...Arthur knows how to pick them)



Then onto his own design and creation: Hazelnut balls. We first wrapped styrofoam balls in aluminum foil (this is so if you want to spray paint them later, the styrofoam doesn't melt from the spray paint...I mean, you could use styrofoam that you could spray paint to begin with, but we couldn't find any...) And then, we hot glued the hazelnuts to the balls, starting in the center and then working around the center in a circle until the entire ball was covered.

I have a few small gaps in mine...it's not as easy as it looks, I mean, there was several times I had to stop and look for a certain sized nut, so as not to have a huge gap...

I also did not spray paint mine, as we didn't have any spray paint, and I kind of like the natural look. Arthur says they look really great in metallic colors...I can imagine they would.

They are quite heavy when you get done...and apparently when the nuts dry out a bit, they make great rattles.

Ah...nut ball rattles.

Mine also has a few strings of hot glue that I still need to pick off. I also hot glued my fingers to various things, including themselves a couple of times...and then burned them. So that was fun.

If only we were using super glue...

I could have a hazelnut ball hand.

(and yes, I am chuckling to myself everytime I use the phrase hazelnut balls...)

(because I'm 12)


Then onto glitter tinsel holiday trees...which Arthur had never made personally but apparently ran a craft class at one point and exclaimed, "if 12 year old girls can do it...so can we!!" (I mean, seeing as the two of us were already giggling about the phrase hazelnut balls, I for one felt pretty confident)




For this project, you start with a styrofoam cone, and then some garland. We happened to score on all this garland after Christmas at Target for 75% off...and paid something like .75 cents for it. Arthur said they look great in maribu as well...

So, you start by hot gluing the end of your garland to the bottom of the cone, and to your finger... (oh, wait...that was just me...plus, the addition of one or more of your fingers tends to make this project a little bulky) and then wind the garland up the cone, stopping to glue it ever so often...and the trick here is to hold the garland in place (or it will come loose and rip the green off your cone, and also giving you yet another opportunity to glue something to your fingers) ...Of course, it's really up to you...for instance, with all of the nuts that I glued to my hand during the hazelnut ball craft, the tinsel did lend a bit more festive air (and to be fair, it covered up the burn marks)


I used silver and red...and it kind of goes with the Valentine-ish theme I got going on the mantle, although, I think it will soon find it's place to the Christmas box, as I have never heard of a Traditional Festive Valentine's Day Tree (notice the attractive strings of hot glue on this also...There's something you've got to be able to use those for right? A festive Holiday spiderweb of some sort perhaps?)

Hey...I figure I just got a jump on next year's handmade holiday decorating!!

(yay me.)





At the end of the night, we finished by making little fleece throws for our cats. We're all owned by cats...and with that comes the problem of fur on the furniture, not to mention the perfect place for the cats to snuggle up during the cold winter months, and they all seem to like a fleecy place to lay their weary heads (cause they do so much during the day)

Meena loved hers, I put it in the bed on top of the covers and she curled up on it all night...all happy. At least I won't get too much fur on the bed, and these being washable are really a great idea for chairs and the backs of couches and whatnot...I think anyway.

Arthur's sister is quite an accomplished crafter and quilter (which I did not know) and she runs a craft class for her church...Arthur is a landscape architect, so he is mucho creative with plants and organic materials, and is always working on some fabulous display for work...I'm not sure how I fit in there, but I'm pretty creative in my own right. It was a good last night with Arthur for sure.

Arthur left early this morning. I am sad. We're not in constant contact during our times apart, and it's always hard for me when he goes, because I realize how much I miss not having him close and how very lucky I am to have him in my life. We said good-bye on the phone. It was a 2 minute conversation at best...I had to get off before I started sobbing (I did that alone instead) and I'm not sure how he felt...but, the last time we said good-bye in person, we were both a little weepy. Of course, I know we both have our own lives we've carved out for ourselves, and I know I'll see him again soon, as our 20 year high school reunion is coming up this year...but, it's just filling up those hours in between.

Maybe peeling the hot glue strands from my projects...

and from my fingers...

That's a start.