Man Candy & A Duct Tape Rose Bouquet

Edited: This post originally appeared on:

Thanks Kindra for having me guest post today.

Today I want to show you a less traditional way to celebrate Valentine’s Day with the men in your life. I believe that romance is not just flowers and candy and fancy dinners. Romance is understanding your loved ones and giving them the things that they love.
Enter my version of Valentine’s Candy.
I call it Man Candy.

It started with this old heart box from last year. I saved it thinking I may want to reuse it. I love how forward thinking I am! I probably shouldn’t have kept it in the garage with all the dust from my projects. Whoops!
I put the calculator on the box to give you a feel for how big this sucker is!

I took out Hubs favorite tool and got to work. That’s right, I duct-taped that puppy right up. Manned that heart right up, if you will. I even made a Duct Tape bow. It’s a Manly Bow now, with just a touch of the girl. After I recovered the heart, I used my new Silhouette machine that I won from Be Different, Act Normal to cut out a vinyl saying (Thanks, again, Lorie!). I chose the saying after one of my favorite new songs, Float Away,  from Lindsey Ray. Lindsey’s an up and coming star. If you haven’t checked out her music, do yourself a favor and give her a listen.
I love that girl!

Here’s the Man Candy box ready to be filled:

I know I did good when I was filling up the heart and Buddy came over to see what I was doing. His eyes got really big and he said, “What is this heart of deliciousness? Is it for me?” He was very hopeful. I told him it was for dad and asked him if he thought dad would like it.
He tried to convince me that he would appreciate it far more than his dad would.  Silly boy.

Here’s what made his eyes bug out:

We may or may not have “celebrated” Valentine’s early. Hubs is hoping his man candy box will get a magic refill on the big day. It was a big hit and he was so cute wanting to crack it open that I didn’t have the heart to make him wait 2 weeks for it. If I do refill it on the big day, I will probably include a tie and a tool or camping gadget of some sort. All things Hubs can never get enough of.

To go along with the Man Candy I made Duct Tape Roses.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Colored Duct Tape for flowers

Green Duct Tape for Stems

Floral Wire ( 18 gauge)

Start by cutting your floral wire to whatever length you want it for the flowers. I had a package of 18” wire, so I cut each piece in half.

It’s important to wrap in a kind of upward motion, as this helps the petal open up. You also will want to fold down the edges of the petal to help make it look like a real flower.

For each petal, pull out about 2 inches of tape from the roll and fold  over about 1” – 1.5” of tape.
Next, tear off the petal about 1/4” from the edge. Trim the petal piece to give each petal a rounded edge. The instructions I found on the internet had you folding the pieces to make a point, but the roses don’t look very realistic if you use that method.

The scrunching of the petal is an important step. This helps the petal pull away from the rest of the flower and will help you as you fold the edges of the petal over. In the bottom right picture, you can see how the edge of the last petal is nearly vertical from the upward wrapping motion. Be sure to overlap the edges of the petals to keep it real looking.

After you wrap the base of the stem, you can use a piece of tape the length of the remaining floral wire to cover it and make the entire stem green. I ripped the tape down its length so I was only using half the piece. You don’t need that much tape to cover the wire.

Proudly display your roses in a vase.

Duct Tape roses make great boutonnieres for Prom dates. There are all sorts of colors available these days and a duct tape rose is a forever rose.

Go ahead and think outside the Valentine’s box this year and create something your man will love.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Be Mine Bonanza

 Hey Gals.

I just wanted to remind you about the Be Mine Bonanza hosted by Kindra from 'At Home With K' is starting today and going to February 5!!

It will feature 7 different bloggers with 7 fun and creative Valentine's Day-themed tutorials!

Kindra from At Home with K - Sunday, Jan 30

Gwen from Gwenny Penny - Monday, Jan 31

Tonya from More Prim Than Proper - Tuesday, Feb 1

Michelle from Emerald Cove - Wednesday, Feb 2

Suesan from Frou-FruGal -Thursday, Feb 3

Sarah from All Roads Lead Home - Friday, Feb 4

Heather from Summerstead - Saturday, Feb 5

I hope you'll drop by and check out the projects.

I'll be showing you how to make a manly Valentine's Gift.

 

So Tell Me What You Think…

Gail @My Repurposed Life and MeganDVD @ Beauty in the Attempt are hosting “The Bold and the Beautiful-your blog reviewed.”

I’d love it if you could take a minute to tell me what you like about my blog. What have I gotten right? What do I still need to fix? I like to use big pictures. Is that slowing it down for you? Does it take too long too load? Too busy? Too Plain? Too boring?

Any content ideas you have that you think I should be doing? Hit me with your best shot. I’m a big girl. I can take it.

Thanks for your help.

Fur Child

Meet Brutus, aka Fur Child.

We got Brutus back in 2007 after we moved to Idaho from Ohio. His official name is Brutus, The Buckeye Beagle. Man Child named him. He was homesick and mad that we moved him from his beloved Ohio during his senior year. We thought having a new pet would help everyone adjust to the move.

We’d had to put down our dachshund, Heidi, before we moved. Heidi was the doggy love of my life. She was it for me. She adored me and followed me everywhere. She was a faithful companion during a very difficult time in my life. She’s been gone for 4 years now, and I still miss her.

However, this post is about Dumbas, er, I mean, Brutus. He’s very much a boy’s dog. The woman in his life before he came to us abused him, so he’s not that interested in me. He really is the only dog I’ve ever had that almost has a cat ‘tude. He could care less if pet him or not. He only wants you when he needs something from you. Or you have pizza. Then he’s very interested.

If you have pizza, this is the look he gives you. He’s very intent. He whimpers. His whole body shakes. It’s pretty much doggy crack to him. Brutus has done all the typical dog things. He’s chewed shoes – but only mine. He’s buried dog bones in the yard. In fact, all his Christmas raw hide bones are buried in the snow in the yard. He’s gonna be surprised in the spring to see them all laying on the grass. When he was younger, he was very suspicious of certain things. Check him out on this video. He’s not sure what to make of the boys’ new toy.

 

He pretty much sleeps all day long. On every piece of furniture I own. I’ve given up chasing him off couches. No matter what I do, he just climbs right back up.

 

Buddy loves his dog like no other boy has loved a dog before. He lets the dog sleep in his room – sometimes even shares his bed with him when he feels like lifting Brutus up on the bed. Buddy worries for the day when Brutus’ hip dysplasia gets too bad because he knows we have a long-standing family policy for pets of “Get Better or Go to Iowa” (Our euphamism for being put down. When Hubs left Ohio for Idaho, he took Heidi with him to have her put down. Hubs first stop on the trip was Iowa so we told the kids that Heidi was “Going to Iowa”). I’m not going to go into debt for a dog.

Despite all the annoyances to me, Brutus is a loved member of our family. We put up with his gas. He know that given the chance, he’s gonna get into the trash. Despite the fleas that won’t leave him alone, no matter what remedy we try, he’s a part of our family. He more than filled his original purpose – he helped the kids adjust to a new home, not just once, but three times now.

He’s our Fur Child. No matter what he’s done, you simply can’t stay mad at that face for long.

I’m linking up to DebbieDoos Pet Party.

Thrifty Finds #1

I haven’t posted any of the great finds I’ve discovered lately, so I thought I’d share them with you.

My BFF (we’ll call her Buffy) and I met in Columbus back in November. It’s half way for both of us, so we thought we’d hit up some thrift stores while we were together. Besides being the best friend a girl could hope to have, I also (ba-dum ching) found an amazing chandelier for Buffy’s dining room that she’s been redoing. It was marked at $8 which I convinced Buffy “was a great price, yes it will work, it’ll look great, buy it, buy it”…only to get to the register and have it ring up at 50% off! Cha-Ching. Turns out a friend of hers saw the exact same fixture at the store for $90. See? I AM a great friend to have around.

Anyhoo, while in the same store, I discovered this coffee urn.

I paid $5 for it (who needs those 50% discounts – pfffffft). It’s huge. It is missing the lid, but the spigot works. I used it as a vase this Christmas for a Dr. Suess looking flower arrangement. I found a similar urns on ebay selling for about $250. Score!

Fast forward to yesterday when I was dropping Hubs off at work. On my way home, I spied a sign for an estate sale. I love estate sales. It was still a little early and it was snowing so I figured I’d pretty much have my run of the place. Which was true. Except, when I pulled up to the place, I was a little nervous. It was in one of Mansfield older neighborhoods. Mansfield has some of the most beautiful historical houses I’ve ever seen. The town is full of these gems. However, 99.898% of them are sorely abused. It’s really hard to tell the “I Lived in the Same House for the last 60 Years but Couldn’t Properly Care For It” houses from the “I Just Got Released From the State Penitentary and I’m Setting Up My New Meth Lab” house.

After talking on the phone with Buffy about my reservations in entering one of these houses, I finally figured that luring estate sale enthusiasts to their death with electric green signs was not a typical bad guy move. I hiked up my Big Girl Panties and went on in. I was scared. Buffy was a text message away. Upon entering the home, though, I recognized the folks as the ones who ran the sale where I got my dresser and my chairs. Phew!

Here’s what I scored yesterday:

Bird Bath Cardinal - $1.00 He has a clamp underneath him so he can sit on the edge of a bird bath.

Vintage Clothes Pin Bag - $3.00 This baby was used. I thought it’d make a cute pillow. But then I discovered these:

 

I got the whole box for $2. They look right at home, don’t they?

Since we were the only people in the house, I got to telling the sellers what I did with the dresser. They remembered how beat up it was and the man said, “Have you looked in the basement yet? That seems like your kind of stuff.” Oh, Sweet Mother Lode! He didn’t even know. I think I nearly wet myself in my excitement. The metal and the tools and the dust. Oh My! I had almost reached my budget limit, so I had to pass over the vintage fan because I wasn’t $20 in love with it.  But that scale there? I definitely was sporting a $10 love for it. It cleaned up very nicely. Those little glass love birds were $3 each and needed to fly home to my nest.

I also scored these folding rulers for $1 each. They are framing my grandmother-in-law’s vintage paint-by-number paintings she did. I’ve been looking for a way to frame these and I kind of like this solution.

 

My favorite find of the day, however, was this Vintage Sign Maker’s kit. It was just sitting on a table in the box. The lid was closed. Being the curious gal that I am, I lifted the lid. Boy, am I glad that I did. It was $25, which slowed me down for a few seconds. I quickly accepted the fact that if I left this behind, I’d be mad at myself for a good, long time. Perhaps, forever.

It has all the upper- and lower- case letters. It has all the numbers. The “And” and the “For” stamps are a flourished word with a swoosh under them. Take a closer look at the top row. Those are all various flourishes, swooshes, flowers. Here’s the label:

 

You can see that someone stamped the Zero in the bottom, left corner, and the upper-case “N” in the middle of the label. I’ve tried using the stamps. You get a pretty rough image. The rubber is so old, it’s all cracked and makes poor image. But it is still seriously cool and I love it, but I honestly have no idea what I’ll do with it. Take a look at the stamp pad. It has a metal lid.

There’s even an old tube of paint and a very tiny, thin paint brush. It’s ridiculous how happy this kit makes me. I don’t even know why. It just does.

I used a majority of these things to decorate my buffet with a winter theme. I went more masculine in the feel because I have a house of “men.” I know my sons are technically “boys” but when they tower over you and sound manly, it’s hard to keep thinking of them as boys.

Recognize that pumpkin? Yeah, that’s the Liberace Pumpkin. He’s still holding his own. I check him every few days to see if he’s starting to rot, but he’s still pretty solid. I love him so much that I’m holding on to him ‘till the bitter end. It also looks like I need to glue the bowl with the red hots onto the candle base. That’s looking kind of precarious. Um, I may need to dust, too, but don’t judge, ‘kay?

See that antler, I discovered that in our basement the other day while helping Hubs find some camping gear. Hubs said, “What do you want with that?” and then he immediately said, “Oh  yeah. Decorating with antlers is big right now.” See why I love that man? He totally gets it, even if he doesn’t really want to get it.

The Cheese Dome Cloche (à la House of Hepworths) should technically be listed here too. It’s a $1.91 find from the local Goodwill store. The candle base was $.25. I glued them together and painted it with ORB. However, I used my embossing technique – piping style – to write on the edge of the cloche. It says, “These are a few of my favorite things.” I want to hit the embossing with some silver Rub ‘n Buff but I keep forgetting to pick some up.

After we got back from watching True Grit last night and I pointed out how “manly” the buffet was looking, Hubs went and added his spurs to this vignette. I put them in the cloche.

Here’s the whole look, only it now has spurs on it. Spurs. Real cowboy spurs bought from a real cowboy when Hubs was living in Blackfoot, Idaho. The things we do for our men.

I’d add it all up for you but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of “I’d rather not know.” However, if I amortize the cost over the last few months of thrifting, I guess it’s in the range of “Eh, I can deal with it and it’s way cheaper than therapy.”

How To Hyperlink Pictures in Blogger

I was helping someone learn some computer stuff the other day and the woman asked me, "How did you learn to do all of this?"

I started learning how to use a computer when I was in 10th grade...in 1980. My math teacher (I was a year ahead of my grade in math) had purchased a brand new TRS 80 computer from Radio Shack.

Picture Resource

I had to teach myself how to write BASIC code and after I created a program I saved it on the tape recorder. I wrote a program for a game that is similar to Yahtzee, but much simpler. I was very proud of myself.

 Me, circa 1980, Sedro Woolley, Washington

It started me off on a course of being able to sit down on a computer and try to figure out what it does and how to make it do what I want it to do. While I'm no computer expert, I have a better than average understanding of how to use a computer and it's served me well throughout my life.

I'm still pretty new to blogging, but like most computer challenges, I've jumped in and tried to figure out what things work and see how to do things.

I thought I'd share with you one of the tricks I've learned, that maybe you'd like to know. I made a video to show you how to hyperlink your blog photos. This allows you to link a photo so when you click on it, you'll be redirected to a new blog post or page. If you click on the picture of the computer, above, I've hyperlinked it the picture source.

I redid the tutorial several  times and this is the best take, but I still "um" a lot and pretty much sound like a complete dork.

Still, I hope it helps you learn something new.

After you've hyperlinked your picture, if you want the link to open up in a new tab, you'll have to do a tweak in your post to make that happen. When you're in the Edit Post Screen in blogger, look for "Edit HTML" tab in the top right above your edit box.

When you click on this link, you'll be taken to the post, but you'll see all the HTML code for the post.

Make sure your cursor is after the last quotation mark " for the href and before the closing > sign. With your cursor in that spot, type a space and then type in target="_blank" in that spot. Click on the compose button to go back to the regular edit screen. Hit the Publish Post button and your hyperlinked picture will now open in a new tab. Voila! You're in business.

I hope you find this Tech Tip useful. If there's something you'd like to know how to do, just shoot me an email or leave me a comment and I'd be happy to teach you how to do it.

Be Warned...This Will Happen to You!

Do you have children? Are they still toddling around the house getting into things they shouldn't? Do they jump up on the dining room table and yell, "Spider Alert! SPIDER Alert! SPIDER ALERT!" at the top of their lungs until you come kill the spider for them (the one that's long gone by the time you get there)?

 Do you at times tire of little kids who need your time and attention every waking second? Perhaps you have one of those kids that seems attached to you with an invisible umbilical cord, that can only be out of your sight before so long before they come running back to check on you, just to make sure you're still there.

Perhaps there are days you secretly wish they'd hurry up and grow up. Won't it be wonderful for when they are older and can do (fill-in-the-blank) all by themselves, you wonder? Think of all the freedom you'll have to craft, paint, decorate, sew, WHATEVER without a little helper to assist you and ask for a play-by-play of your creative process.

Do you find that you define part of yourself by your motherhood role? I'm a mother of young children? I have toddlers? My kids are....? Is this how you see yourself?

If so, you might want to make sure you add some other definitions in there along the way. While being a mother is the very best part of my life, it's not the ONLY part of my life. And those toddlers? The ones that suck every waking minute of our lives and turn our focus on them? You know what happens? They grow up! That's what happens. Usually when you're not paying attention. 

Before you know it,  they're getting bigger and experiencing new things.

They may not need you as often as they once did. You no longer telegraph secret love messages with hand squeezes as you cross the street. They don't need you to hold your hand any more (at least, not for safety reasons).

Their interests expand and they start to have a life beyond your circle of influence.

One day, you're going on school field trips to the zoo and to parks and such. The next thing you know, they are exploring caves and hiking in the mountains.

Life may throw you a curve ball or two along the way. You may discover that this child of yours has an acute, gangrenous appendix and you have to leave him in the hands of strangers to trust that they can fix him and make him all better.

Soon enough, though, he's back in action, being all adventurous, folding his exceptionally long arms and legs into a tiny derby car so he can race down hills or going taking off on week-long canoe trips in upstate New York.

 Stranger still are the days when you realize that you no longer have the height advantage.

Your "baby" now has a bit of a 'stache and he's grown 3 inches in six months, and his voice is deeper and TODAY, he's a teenager.

A really wonderful, completely perfect in every way, so proud to be call him Son, teenager.

I'm not sure how it snuck up on me like it did. It never really seemed all that fast in the moment. I guess it's time I stop thinking of myself as a mom of "kids". I have teenagers and adult children. I'm even a half-empty nester. 

Here's the thing...enjoy whatever stage you are in with your kids. Raising toddlers is hard. There's no doubt about that one. But as they get bigger, so do their problems and challenges in life. Teenagers and adult children need you more than you'd ever guess, but they need you in a different way than they did as toddlers.

Once they hit those teenage years, it seems like you've just hit the warp speed button and time flies past. I know I still have five + years, at the minimum, of having kids in my home. But five years goes pretty darn fast and I hope to squeeze every last morsel of joy and fun and love out of those years.

Happy Birthday, Kiddo! I love you so much. You are a true joy in my life. Thanks for being such a great person and son.