Paper Wreaths

Here's the finished product from my sneak preview.

A paper wreath!

I stumbled over this tutorial the other day and decided I needed to have one! I used paper (cardstock actually) from the Winnie's Wall line by s.e.i., but I think it's been discontinued. The next one of these I make I am going to try to use a lighter weight paper. This ended up being okay, but it was a bit fiddly to work with. I also didn't attach each "leaf" individually. I found it worked better to staple groups of three and then fill in with single leaves where they were needed.

I was having a bit of a strange time hiding the stapled bits when I was trying to meet in the middle at the top, so I decided I'd hide it with this ribbon "flower." Martijn said he thought the jewel was a little bit cheeky but it worked! I think I agree.

I dug around and found a few more fun examples and tutorials for other styles of paper wreaths.

This Surprisingly Simple Paper Wreath from craftystylish.com is kinda neat. I think it would be fun to experiment with different color schemes. I might not put the berry dots on at the end, but that's just me!

The wreath on the right is the Photo Wreath from Inspire Me Crafts. I've seen some of these done with book pages and illustrations that are neat too.

This Reused Wrapping Paper Wreath is a great idea. Why throw the paper away when you can refashion it into something fun!

I think the Loopy Paper Wreath would look awesome in reds and pinks for Valentine's Day.

Next we've got the Retro Inspired Paper Straw Wreath. I like this one too, it reminds me of those old starburst clocks.

Last but not least, the Folded Paper Star Wreath. The instructions for this one are on Slide 3 of the article.

I think it's time to wrap this baby up, I have typed the word wreath so much it's starting to sound funny and not like a real word!

Comment replies going into the abyss? An easy fix!

Today I would like to tell you a story about a girl who liked to blog. She also really enjoyed getting comments and often tried to reply to them but the big bad noreply-comment@blogger.com kept thwarting her plans! Any comment she tried to send would be eaten by the big black hole of the big bad noreply-comment@blogger.com. This made for one sad blogger, she really wished to communicate back to her readers. Of course she could always reply via her blog, but oftentimes people don't go back and read replies!

The moral? Blogger doesn't give me your e-mail address to reply to comments unless you tell it to. You can do this quite easily.

1- Go into your Blogger dashboard.

2- Click on "Edit Profile."

3- Under the "Privacy" heading, click the ticky box next to "Show my e-mail address."

4- Scroll a little further and enter the e-mail address that you wish to have comment replies go to. If you don't want your private e-mail address floating around cyberspace, I recommend setting up another gmail or yahoo e-mail account.

5- Scroll all the way to the bottom and click "Save Profile."

See? Five easy steps! Now people can reply to the comments you leave on people's blogs via e-mail. Please pass the word around! And thanks to Amy for replying to one of MY comments via e-mail and making me curious enough to dig around and figure out what on earth is going on!

One more thing- this will only work if you have a Blogger account. Otherwise I think the e-mails still end up going into the abyss. I'm still looking into this.

Sneak Preview

Here's a little peek at my current project.

I'm not quite finished yet, so you'll just all have to wait in suspense one or two more days! If I have some matching ribbon in my stash then you can see it tomorrow, if not you'll have to wait until Monday.

PSA: False Advertising

I feel that it is my duty to inform all of you nice kind people that read my blog about this dastardly and deceptive false advertising.

These noodles that proclaim themselves to be "good" are not good. Not good by any stretch of the imagination. One could expect that if a company felt their product was SO superior that they could just name it "good" that the product might actually be... well, you know... good? It even declares that they are "special." If by special you mean "especially gross" I suppose it would be accurate.

If you do decide to try them, don't say I didn't warn you.

Confessions

Remember this post in which I observed that it was starting to look like spring?

Well.

I lied.

Helping Combat Depression

I've been going back and forth trying to decide if I wanted to write this post and decided on posting it in the hopes that maybe it can help someone.

Those close to me are aware that I struggle with depression. It's more of a chronic thing with me rather than situational, so it's not something that really will ever go away. That being said, I want ME to be in control, not the depression. Sometimes it's more work than others. I put together this list of things that have been helpful to me.

Go Out-If you're sitting at home doing nothing it's far easier to get into negative thought patterns that go in circles and can be consuming than it is if you're out and about.

Exercise- As loathe as I am to admit this, I do feel better mood-wise if I've been more active. I love going out on my bike, so I can kill two birds with one stone by going out AND exercising.

Sleep- It seems a bit cruel that one of the symptoms of depression can be insomnia, because a good nights sleep can really put a new perspective on things! Be careful with this though, too much sleep isn't a good thing either.

Therapy- Finding a good therapist can oftentimes be incredibly frustrating, but if you are able to find one that you click with I think it can be very beneficial. It's not easy, and if you don't want it to work, it won't.

Medication- I don't ever think medication is 100% effective by itself, but if you can find something that works for you I think it can be an invaluable tool to feeling better about life.

Use a Lightbox- Seasonal depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD) hits a lot of people. It's especially hard here when even the non rainy days are often rather gray and gloomy. There are several options available. I use this little guy:

It's a goLITE. It uses a blue light technology which is better for me since it doesn't emit UV rays. Someone somewhere is laughing at the girl who needs sunshine to help with her depression but is allergic to the sun!

If you feel like you suffer from the "wintertime blues" I HIGHLY recommend looking into one of these. I use mine throughout the year, depending on the weather (sometimes I swear we go weeks and weeks without ever seeing blue skies) but I know a few people that just use them in the winter time when the days are shorter.

These are just some of the tips that work for me. I'd love to hear what others have to add to this list.

Onion Chopper Review

This weeks Kitchen Tip Tuesday is a product review. I'll try not to sound like an infomercial, but I really love this thing!

What is it? It's an onion chopper! The Progressive International Onion Chopper to be exact. I got a chance to use my grandma's when I was in Utah earlier this year and it's really pretty spiffy.

You first peel your onion and cut it into thick slices (1/2"-3/4" thick). Pop it onto the cutting grid, bring the lid down and press. Viola! Nice uniformly sized onion chunks. There's even handy measuring lines along the side of the chopper.

The reviews for this chopper on Amazon range from "this is a horrible piece of garbage and should never have been invented" to "THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER INVENTED." I think it's on the better side of good, but there are a few tricks to making it work for you. First off, fresher onions seem to work better than old onions. The user guide says you can just cut the onion in half, but I find that it works a lot better if you slice the onion into thirds or fourths (if it's a mega huge onion, more slices may be needed).

The chopper is dishwasher safe (big plus) and comes with a nifty little cleaning tool. I recommend you don't lose this, it's a huge help. I think it would be awful to clean without it.

I probably wouldn't use this if I was chopping more than two or three onions at once since a food processor would be faster, but for smaller chopping jobs it's great. I've also had success cutting zucchini, firm tomatoes (uh, make sure they're firm, they'll turn into tomato puree otherwise), cucumbers and carrots. I've had mixed success with bell peppers. If they're fresh, it works great. If they'd been previously frozen, not quite so great.

If you're really handy and less clumsy with a knife than I am then this tool may not be for you. However, if you stink at cutting onions into nice little dices I think it's a good investment. The model I have only has one size of blade, but I think their "Vidalia" chopper has a larger grid blade included.

I also have the garnish slicer made by this company and it died the first time we used it. It seemed like there was a flaw somewhere that caused the blade to bend and cut into the plastic. Progressive International advertises that their products have a lifetime guarantee so we contacted them... and waited... and waited... I'd about given up hope, but finally (almost 6 weeks later) one of their customer service representatives got in touch and mailed out new parts to replace the bad ones. So, the customer service was very slow, but they do seem to stand behind their products and I think that's a good thing.

For more great tips, check out Kitchen Tip Tuesday.