How was your Thanksgiving?

I trust you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that things are going smoothly for the Christmas deadline! During this time I am always mindful of the members who are away serving our Country in far off lands. No matter if you agree or disagree with the choices of our government the men and women are individuals and they are all away from the friends and family. So please remember them in your harts and thoughts and box off a little something for them to enjoy with each other. As of my son whom you know is serving in Iraq I am fixing him a little box to enjoy with his friends. So on the next blog I will include some recipes and a few ideas that could be useful in your boxes.
Ahh Thanksgiving a time of year to be thankful and over indulge. This year I gave Jim strict orders not to fix too much stuffing. Since Zach (my Sgt.) could not take leave to be here we have to be mindful not to fix too much.

Fantastic Bread Rolls

With all that was going on you may think that making bread from scratch would be just too much for that day. In truth , not so not so. I found this delightful recipe from Better Homes and Garden and it was such an easy thing to do. In fact it made 24 so it would be a great gift to take to the neighbors house as a special treat if you needed to split them up. However this family didn't have any trouble eating them up.











Sitting Down For Dinner





We made good on the estimated time of eating. And clean up was a breeze. It paid to have everything cleaned prior and as we went we cleaned up














Pumpkin Pie




After our dinner we enjoyed a fantastic bit of homemade pumpkin pie
















New Projects

It is amazing what you can do with some oven cleaner and a few old mirrors. I love doing digital work and recently started to redo some mirrors that I had laying around the house. I started on a small scale no bigger than a 6 x 6 mirror. Arming myself with a can of easy off and some gloves I sprayed a bit on the back of the mirror that I wanted to do.
Keeping in mind that I still wanted to center to be reflective, I sprayed around the edges. Now I would have loved for it to give more speckled effect but I believe there is something better than oven cleaner. I want to to lift in certain areas and not in others. Giving it a more aged appearance. A more eaten away look!




Now I work as you know digitally so I wanted to incorporate my efforts as a digital artist. I took some clip are that I have collected and started to compose a PhotoShop document. Keeping the document the same size as my finished product would be. I took a measurement of the center. By that I mean only a rough measurement. Just to get an idea what would be blocked by the mirrored part. After doing that I started to layer and age the images. Getting the the right placement and balancing the placement of color I printed the finial image on Kodak paper that was a semi-gloss. Now since these mirrors had backings like those of photo frames it was unnecessary for me to use glues of any kind. So I trimmed of the excess paper and popped it behind the mirror.


This makes a fantastic gift. I have already given one away! Trying playing with you clip art and put a hidden message in it for your recipients to find. Gear it around who they are of a favorite movie that they may have enjoyed with you. Or a family joke . It adds a whole other dimension the art work.