Sweet Treats, Etc.

Here is a little something I made a while back, the idea gleaned from a Stampin’ Up catalog. It’s just a can – I had to eat a can of French-style green beans – covered with 3/4-inch cotton twill tape – somewhere along the line I acquired a 50-yard roll of this stuff, enough for Mummies en masse. LOL. A medium-sized bag of Peanut M&M’s was perfect to fill it. Note I said “was.” The mummy is waiting to be refilled. I ate the M&M’S. While I ate that can of green beans in one sitting, I am proud to say it took two sessions on two consecutive days to devour the M&M’S. I will admit, however, that a significantly larger number of M&M’S were consumed in Session I than Session II. No control. Back to the mummy, he might have looked more like a mummy had I not been quite so neat with the tape. Sometimes, my penchant for clean lines bites me.

Materials & Tools: Tin can (empty and clean), 3/4-inch twill tape, Black and White Daisy cardstock; 11/16th and 1-inch circle punches; 1-/4-inch Terrifically Tacky Tape; GlueDots, Gusseted cellophane bag; Black/white mini check ribbon from Wal-Mart; Medium-size bag of M&M’S.

A Slice of Life: How was your Monday? With regard to the workday, my day was OK – for a Monday. On a personal note, a little mystery that has been troubling me for several weeks has been solved. For several weeks, my left arm has been hurting in the area right about the elbow. When I say “hurt,” it really hurt almost all of the time during waking hours. As good as my health insurance is, I am not one who goes to the doctor very often. Between the Mayo Clinic and Web MD websites, I did a little reading but never came up with anything in the way of self-diagnosis. As for the pain, there wasn’t an anti-inflammatory over-the-counter drug that gave me any relief, which ruled out several things. I was thinking – finally – about giving in and having it checked out.  Yesterday, I noticed my arm didn’t hurt. Wow, I thought, maybe it went away on its own. Then, this afternoon, I noted an itchy, blistery rash where the pain had been. Eureka! I have shingles. I know that, because I had it before about 10 years ago. While the location of the pain and rash were different, the rest of the symptoms are identical. Nevertheless, I will probably pop into the clinic tomorrow to see if they want to treat it and find out if there is anyway to prevent a reoccurrence.

Enough talk about my aches and pains. When my Mom moved from our big family home to an apartment, she, of course, had to get rid of a lot of stuff. Back in my craftier sewing days, I gave her a lot of things that I had made. Some of those things have been returned to me, this scarecrow among them. Because I didn’t have one, I was actually kind of glad to see him. He is pretty cute, brings back memories of a happy time (my SAHM days), and is in remarkably good condition, considering he is probably more than 15 years old.

I wish I still had time do more time-consuming, domestic-type things like sewing and decorating cookies such as the ones pictured to the right.  These cookies are a creation of one of my sisters, who did 25 plates like this for a bake sale at church. It is my understanding she was up very late on several consecutive nights. Do you think? This is one of the sisters I’ve referred to as a “Martha” in recent posts (only to learn she didn’t didn’t particularly care for what was, to me, a green-with-envy compliment). Thus, it wasn’t Martha but Debbie who made these miniature masterpieces, and while she has only taken up cookie decorating as a hobby in the past couple of years, it appears to me she has it down pat. They are darned near to cute to eat, although Bjorn and Mathias may not think so. Great-grandma had me deliver this plate to Cameron to take home for the boys. All I got out of the deal was a photograph and bragging rights. LOL. I have awesome four sisters and a couple of cool brothers who inherited their creative talents from our awesome parents.

Well, this is kind of a long post, isn’t it? With a couple of ambitious (for me) projects in the works, this might be it for a couple of days. I have some sweet treats planned, which, if they turn out, I may show you and another family birthday party to prepare for on Friday evening. It’s Sarah’s birthday on Wednesday. The boys are spending Wednesday and Friday nights with us, too, which, to my delight, will occupy some of my precious time.

I hope your week is a good one. Thank you so much for stopping by. Your visits and comments are very much appreciated.