Creative cookies

While at our daughter’s house, we baked cookies for Valentine’s Day.  Because of the mishap on Friday evening and E’s not feeling well on Saturday, we waited until Sunday, February 15, to bake and decorate cookies.  Mom and Dad were expected home on Monday so the cookies were a day fresher.

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We used half of the recipe of Royal icing as we didn’t have a lot of cookies to decorate.

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Red, pink, and white icing and red colored sugar.

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I found these little squeeze bottles for the icing so the twins would have more control over their decorating.

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I spread most of the cookies with a solid color and the twins decorated the tops.

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You can never have too much icing.

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For some reason the pink icing got a little too thin and was running everywhere.

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When we finished up with all the cookies, we decorated animal crackers.

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The uninvited guest

Mr. Aitch and I had an unwlecomed and uninvited guest swoop into our house Wednesday night.

A bird.

A sparrow to be exact.

He (or she) was sitting on my front door decoration when Mr. Aitch went out on the front porch.  As soon as the door opened, the sparrow made a beeline into our house.  The bird flew into the family room and perched atop the entertainment center as Mr. Aitch and I figured out how to remove him/her without causing a major ruckus.

We don’t have a big fishing net like my parents used to remove similar unwelcome and uninvited guests in their house.  The only fishing net we have is for aquariums and it just wasn’t big enough for the job.

While this brief discussion went on, the sparrow flew back and forth between the family room and kitchen taking in the view from atop the refrigerator then the entertainment center.

Our plan was to open the door from the kitchen to the garage (which is right beside the refrigerator), turn on the garage light, open the garage door, and turn out all the lights in the house and hope that the bird would “go to the light”.

And it worked.

The only presents the sparrow left for us were a few feathers.

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I took my fake-nest-and-flowers-in-a-basket decoration off the front door temporarily so we don’t have any more unwelcome and uninvited guests.

Unofficially it’s here

Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer in the great US of A.

Last month I picked up some new furniture for our front porch from IKEA (yes, I love that store) which needed assembled.  The assembly could not take place until Mr. Aitch power washed the front porch.

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Ta-da!  38 feet of clean emptiness.

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Four hours later, after some semi-easy assembly and 64 hex bolts.  Those babies are time-consuming when hexing space is limited.  I still need to get some flowers of other plants in the window box.

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I love the ottoman/table which is not connected at this time to the rest of the sofa so it’s easily moved.

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I’m planning on making new cushion covers as I don’t see the ivory staying clean even though it’s just Mr. Aitch and me.  The covers are machine washable but I’d rather make new ones “just in case”.

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Plus I can make new seat covers for the swing and rocking chair as well.

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Red and white planters.

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New front door decor.

Over and under

Alas, in my quest to remember to take before and after pictures I did remember to take an almost before picture of my kitchen stool.

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I bought this stool when we moved into our first house almost 37 years ago.  The wood was unfinished and since those kitchen cabinets were a dark walnut stain, I stained the stool to match.

The seat was a woven material that looked like rush.  It was actually paper!

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The paper/rush rubbed against the stool frame on the edges and eventually cut through making the seat a bit of a risk when sitting.  All my grandchildren loved to undo the seat so I would have to hide it when they came to our house.

My plan to repair the seat involved cotton webbing.  Only the local Joann’s store didn’t have two colors of cotton webbing so I used nylon webbing in Paprika and Steel Grey.  I had two 50% off coupons and used them both.

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Then the fun began.

First I cut off the original seat and stapled the grey webbing to the rung underneath.  Here’s the website I used as reference. and tightly wrapped the webbing for the warp.  When the top was covered, I again stapled the webbing underneath.  I seared the cut ends of the nylon by holding a flame close to the edge to melt it so it wouldn’t fray.

I inserted a thick pad of batting between the top and bottom to give the seat some stability as I didn’t have any foam.

Then I attached the paprika webbing to the stool and wove the weft over and under.  Over and under.  Over and under.  Over and under until I got to the end.  Then I wrapped this piece of webbing around the rung and repeated the over and under on the bottom of the seat until all the weaving was finished.  The paprika end was seared and stapled.

The finished stool.

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