We'll make it SNOW up in here!!!

Last year while staying at the 1905 Victorian House at Acorn Hill in Gruene, TX, I found a photo in a magazine showing a stack of snowballs in the window box of an old house and I stole it.  The idea, not the magazine!!  I took a photo of the photo so we could reference it in case we didn't find instructions online (oh ye of little faith; you can find EVERYTHING online!!).  Then, when we were hit with such a devastatingly hot summer, I wasn't sure even fake snowballs could survive, so I filed the idea away and promptly forgot about it.  Until last week.
So yesterday, Sister and I scoured the Walmarts from Waxahachie to Cedar Hill in search of Styrofoam balls and bags of fake snow.  We found what we needed at JoAnns; apparently there are other fake snowball makers out there and they all shop at Wallyworld.

We assembled our supplies on a table near the back door and opened a window to provide the ventilation needed to keep us from getting loopy on the spray adhesive.  If you're going to try this yourself, you need:
Styrofoam balls in assorted sizes
Wooden skewers
Spray adhesive (we had several kinds, but all were ok to use on foam)
A large bag for dredging the balls in the snow
Artificial snow (we had two kinds, but the smaller the pieces the better)
GLOVES
Good lighting and even better ventilation

An extra pair of hands (optional, but recommended!)

Dump the snow into the large bag and shake to distribute evenly.  Make sure you put the gloves on FIRST or you'll figure out you need them as soon as you start spraying adhesive and by then it's a bit too late!!

      







You want to stick the pointy end of the skewer into the ball, but not so far that you have to do anything more than tap it to get it back out.  This keeps you from actually touching the adhesive-coated ball and totally screwing up your nice clean gloves!!
Also, it helps if you have several balls skewered and ready to spray, then you just drop the wet ones into the snow and shake the bag till they disappear to the bottom.
  This is where the extra hands come in.  If one person does all the spraying and the other person skewers and shakes, you get six balls done in a small amount of time.
You may also need to pack your snowballs to help the fake snow stick.  We seemed to have great adhesion initially, but we were dealing with an incoming cold front and as the temperatures dropped the adhesive stopped sticking to the Styrofoam.  It clumped up the snow, so maybe the dredge technique was the problem.


And you will have a LOT of snow sticking to your gloves as you go, so best to leave trying to clean it off till you're finished.

We spread waxed paper on the table and let our snowballs dry there overnight.

Things I learned from this first attempt:

Work slowly.  We waited a bit late to start so we were rushing a bit.  Probably not the best results as a result...

Use the finest snow you can find.  We had the shredded plastic kind and our snowballs look like uncooked coconut macaroons.

And it's probably best to work in daylight, outside, when it's above 50 degrees.  Just sayin...

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

Anyone who knows me knows all too well that cold weather will actually send me to the kitchen to cook.  Well, there's no need to fear that will happen anytime soon since it looks like summer will NEVER leave North Texas!!
This blog was intended as a place to showcase our efforts at creativity, in and out of the kitchen.  And in spite of the horrid summer heat, we have been creative in the months that have passed since we last put up a blog at My Sister's Kitchen.
So, I'll post a few pictures of my summer activities just to prove I've not been lazy.  And maybe now that Sister has a brand new stove she'll get to cooking!!

New "old" Kerr jars made by painting tinted Modge Podge onto glass jars.

The canning jar idea came from Pinterest, my new obsession.  If I did it again, I would try other colors, like maybe pink.  Right now my six blue jars are on my kitchen windowsill filled with leaves and pine cones.  But come December 1st, they'll be full of snow and snowballs!!

I hired a "handyman" to do some repairs around the house and it seemed like the more he repaired the more he destroyed!!  Lesson learned - do as much as you can yourself!!  So, this is my front bathroom wallpaper border after scoring and removal was started.  He made a complete mess of it by using it as his hand towel during a ceiling repair so the only choice I had was to replace it.  I ordered more rolls and Sister helped me take it down.

Then we put the new border up and I don't think it will EVER come off again!!  Once we were finished hanging the border and cleaning up the mess we made, I touched up the paint and repainted the doors, door frames, and trim.  The only thing left to replace is the light fixture...  guess it's time to learn to handle electricity!!  Won't it be cool when I can brag that I can make bolts of electricity fly from my fingertips??

I had a lot of paint left from my previous paint jobs, so I pulled it all out, stirred it all up real good, and commenced painting.  After the front bathroom was done, I moved out into the hallway and repainted the hall walls and trim.  Then I spent a good four days painting doors.  GOOD NIGHT NURSE we've got a lot of doors down that hall!!  But they look pretty good (except for the utility doors which still need another coat) and it's done.

Once the bathroom and hallway were back together, it was time to get to work on the guest room.   I knew from the beginning this would be a feminine room.  I have a collection of photos of family brides and wedding couples and wanted to incorporate those into the room.  The feel is that it is mostly a woman's room and the men are there by invitation only.  The wall color is "Possibly Pink" which contrasts well with the dark wood floors and is set off by the bright white trim and doors.  Sheli helped me with the painting job.  Sister, Sandra, and Sheli helped find the fabric for the toss pillows and sewed them up for me.  And they've all had input into the look and feel of the room, so it is most definitely a "feminine" room!!

With all the painting done for now (there's more to do, but other matters press me for time) I am focusing on projects to help organize and update and trying not to spend money in the process.  One project that is started and just waiting for a long rainy day to complete is making a quilt from all my Celtic Festival t-shirts.  I got the idea from Sandra and love it.  I've never been a fan of the way festival tees fit, so this gives me a chance to have them out of the storage box and still preserve them at the same time.

Sheli and Sandra cut the printed areas into 18" blocks.

The final quilt top will look something like this.

And of course, I've tried to spend as much time as I can with the Tater Tot.  He's growing so fast and can do so many things now it's hard to keep him busy.  But I've found that you can give him a chore and, if he's really into it, he'll do exactly what you tell him to and do his very best!!  Last week we made pizza.  He helped me use the cheese slicer on a block of mozzarella then I gave him the plate of cheese and told him to put it on the pizza dough so that every piece had its own spot.  When he was done, every single piece of cheese had a spot!!  Then he told me he wanted scrambled eggs for his dinner...  Well, you can't win 'em all.

So, you can see I haven't been completely comatose this hot, hot summer.  But I'm ready for the "Chili" days to arrive in North Texas and looking forward to some cold weather projects!!