Sunday, December 16, 2018

Star Wars Opening Crawl Vinyl Project





One of our friends showed us a picture of a basement stairwell with an opening crawl someone had done, and we decided to do our own take on it.  No I do not plan to sell these, nor do I own an Etsy store.  I made these on my Silhouette Cameo 3 with fonts I found online.  I am not a Silhouette pro by any means so we learned as we went.

We cut the vinyl in 8 different sections on 12" wide oracal 651 vinyl.  "A long time ago" was obviously it's own cut as it's blue vinyl.  The Star Wars logo was it's own, and then crawl itself we divided into 4 line sections to cut.  Our area to apply was about 7 feet tall by 3 feet wide. 

Weeding took quite awhile, we cut the vinyl while painting so we could flatten it out under heavy things so it would be easier to transfer.  We let the paint sit about a week after the last coat before applying the vinyl.  I do use the roller feeder by Silhouette to make cutting longer sections of vinyl easier.

The creation details:
- The Star Wars Title I found a font called "SF Distant Galaxy" that had it already made up as an extension of the font.  I believe I did the "offset" tool in Silhouette to get it where it would be just the outline (I could weed the inside of "Star Wars").  As it comes in the font it would not be the outline.
 - The yellow crawl text we used "News Gothic" size 144.
- A long time ago we did Arial Narrow in size 75, and I discovered character spacing while doing this (after I'd dealt with trying to space out the other text) and upped that to 160% to get it how we wanted it to look.
- After applying our daughter talked us into doing the star field and that helps distract the eye from the fact our application isn't 100% straight (nor are our walls).   That was just white paint on a small brush.
- I did not distort the text at all (I saw some pre-made wall decals where it decreased text size).  We thought walking down stairs was the equivalent to the scroll.  ;) 

That's it.  I do not own the rights to the text, we are just Star Wars fans.  Thought I would share our project for other families looking for something unique.  










Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Cherry Tomato Pizza Margherita

My latest #freesample challenge from Kroger was utilizing their new Simple Truth Organic Thin and Crispy Vegan pizza crust.  I had just bought Thanksgiving salad staples when the notice of the romaine lettuce recall came out, so I was left with some cherry tomatoes I wasn't sure what to do with. Decided I was in the mood for some Margherita pizza as a Thanksgiving appetizer during the Lions game. I will also make a basic cheese pizza with the second crust for my kids to have, since they aren't a huge fan of tomatoes. Problem solved.  Fulfill my challenge and use up the tomatoes :)

I am going to modify this Epicurious recipe, I will report back on how it goes!  

Ingredients
1 Simple Truth Organic Classic Thin and Crispy Pizza crust
1 Tbsp Olive Oil 1 12oz container cherry tomatoes, cleaned
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/3 cup chopped Simple Truth Organic fresh basil
balsamic vinegar for drizzling when serving.  

Directions
Preheat oven to 400.  Place pizza crust on a baking sheet.
Heat large skillet over high heat 2 minutes. Add oil, then tomatoes; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté until tomatoes are charred and beginning to break down, about 5 minutes.
Transfer to large bowl. Mix in garlic, fennel, and crushed red pepper. Using back of fork, crush tomatoes in bowl, leaving large chunks intact. Season mixture with salt and pepper.
Toss cheese and chopped basil in medium bowl. Sprinkle cheese mixture evenly over crust, right up to border.
Spoon on tomato mixture in dollops, leaving some cheese uncovered.
Bake pizza for 12 minutes or until cheese is melted and starting to brown and bubble. Loosen pizza with slide onto board. Garnish with basil leaves and drizzle balsamic over top. Cut into squares for serving.

Here it is before going in the oven!

Turned out great!   Would do it again for appetizers.  Very crispy. 

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Trying out a new BBQ sauce

Resurrecting this blog to give a shout out to Kroger for adding me to their MyMagazine Sharing Network. I got a free sample of their Kentucky Bourbon BBQ sauce. They recommended Spatchcocking a whole chicken, but since we prefer white meat I decided to just give it a try on boneless skinless chicken breasts. I paired it with the oven roasted broccoli we like to make, just broccoli crowns chopped with lemon olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper roasted at 425 for 25 min. Along with crispy oven fries. Just slice up 2 russets into fries with pam and season salt. Bake @ 400 for 20 min, flip, then bake another 25 min. I did not put the broccoli in until the potatoes had been flipped. My honest review of the BBQ sauce? It's ok. It is not my favorite, I found it a little on the thin side. I basted the breasts a few times with it to be sure we got the full flavor and then put it on thick on one side the last 10 minutes. I think it may be better served with ribs after a flavorful rub. But I do also make my own whiskey bbq sauce from scratch, so I might be biased on what I was expecting. #PrivateSelectionKentuckyBourbonBBQ sauce found exclusively at #KrogerCo stores! #FreeSamp #MyMagazineSharing http://mymagazinesharing.us

Monday, August 11, 2014

Wonder Woman costume

My almost 7 year old is really into Wonder Woman and wanted to be her for Halloween. I wasn't impressed by the costumes I could find online so we decided to make our own. She has been bugging me since February, so that's why I was thinking about Halloween when it is still summer. I used a variety of pins I found on Pinterest so thought I'd put all the tutorials I found helpful all in one place. My daughter is about 52 inches tall, almost 7. So depending on the age of the person you are making yours for you may need to edit my amounts to fit your requirements.

This is how the costume currently looks, all I have left is to do the golden lasso, once I figure that out I will edit the post to include that.

Supplies

To make our version of wonder woman, we needed:

- roll of gold duct tape (crown, cuffs)

- large roll of red duct tape (boots)

- sheet of white duct tape (boots)

- foam visor with corded back (crown)

- 3 toilet paper rolls (cuffs)

- gold fabric paint (shirt)

- silver puff paint (shirt)

- red paint pen (crown star)

- red tshirt, washed.

- 1.5 yards blue star fabric (skirt)

- wide elastic (skirt)

- skinny elastic (cuffs)

- gold cording (lasso)

- gold stretchy sequins (skirt belt)

Crown To start with the top, the crown I made by taking the foam visor folding it in half, and cutting to the shape I wanted the crown to be (you will wear the visor upside down, bill up). Then I wrapped it in duct tape, and drew a star. The paint pen I have is a metallic, I need to get a brighter red to draw over the star again.

Shirt The tshirt I washed/dried to ensure any shrinking would happen before we painted, also put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to prevent any paint bleeding to the back. I downloaded the logo here and had it fit a portrait piece of paper. Then I laminated that piece of paper and carefully cut out the outline of the entire WW logo. I then used the laminated paper for a stencil, and stenciled the whole WW logo area in the gold paint. I taped down the sheet during stenciling and took it off immediately after I was done stenciling. I let the shirt dry for 2 days before continuing to the next step.

I cut the logo apart, leaving the little extra "wing" piece attached to one of the Ws. I then lined up one half into the logo where it belonged and traced with puff paint. Then outlined the whole logo in puff paint and free handed the little extra wing section that I'd left attached to the W. Then let that dry a few days undisturbed because I did it thick to hide any imperfections along the edges from stenciling.

Cuffs The cuffs I made by cutting one side (long ways) of a toilet paper roll of two rolls, I then cut another one in half (long ways) and attached one half to each of the cut rolls with some duct tape. I then angled the cuffs so the wrist area is slightly narrower than the arm side of the cuff. Wrapped the entire cuff (both sides) in the gold duct tape. Then punched a hole on each side with a thick needle and thread a small section of thin elastic (can even be a hair tie cut) in and tie. My daughter had trouble keeping the cuffs on without the elastic.

Skirt Our initial plan was to do a blue tutu with white stars glued on. But after thinking about it, my daughter decided Wonder Woman would not be the tutu type. So I headed to Pinterest to find an easy skirt to put together for her. Found this Circle Skirt. Perfect. I didn't have elastic as wide as she recommends, but my daughter wanted the sequins skirt anyways so it didn't really matter. She'd picked the blue star fabric at JoAnns, I bought 1.5 yards since she wanted it about 16 inches long. After I got the skirt built, I lengthened the straight stitch length and ran a stitch around the sequins on the elastic. Hand sewed where the sequins met up.

Boots I made complete boots, that she will wear instead of shoes on Halloween trick or treating. I roughly followed this tutorial on wrapping her legs and shoes in saran wrap then doing the duct tape and cutting off.

But after I cut off I then used the duct tape to make it wider all around. I used the entire large roll of red duct tape on her boots, she has size 1 shoes. I then cut up the white duct tape into 1 inch strips and did the stripe down the front and trim around the leg holes.

Tips

- Cut duct with scissors to keep it neat on the ends, you may need to wash your blades to get sticky gunk off after. I kept the length between 3-6" to keep them manageable, duct tape likes to stick to itself. I used a paper cutter to cut the 1 inch strips of duct tape for the boots.

- Don't over stretch the elastic for the skirt, I had to seam rip when I over stretched at first and had more elastic than skirt about halfway thru.

- Do multiple tries of the boots on as you are adding duct tape to avoid them from getting too tight.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

I've been sucked in...

To Pinterest. Follow me if you want :) http://pinterest.com/boilermish

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Bread Pudding

I was cleaning out my inbox and found this bread pudding recipe that my cousin Ruth made. She omitted the coconut flakes and substituted more milk for the coconut milk, and only made half the sauce. But it was divine :) I found this blogger has it all typed up so I'll just link you here. New Orleans Style Bread Pudding
(yes I see the irony in linking a New Orleans recipe when the Detroit Lions lost to the Saints yesterday).

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Omlet biscuit cups

Since 2.0 was born we've been a fan of these for breakfast. Easy to make and they reheat well. Can customize to how you like your eggs. :) I made another batch this morning. Now if I could just get to eat one... I have a baby wanting to sleep on me or take 10-20 min naps again today. recipe. posting from my iPhone, so hopefully my HTML skills made a link back there. ;)