Making a Paper Peony (Tutorial)

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These are so pretty! I came across Michella Marie's tutorial and I had to try it!!  I couldn't wait to run out and get the wire and floral tape! Everything else, I had on hand. :) 
They were fun to make and it was quick and easy with a satisfying end result!!
I dyed the first ones pink, with the pink neon gel food coloring. I really didn't care for those, they didn't look very realistic to me, but I used those pictures in the tutorial anyways.
Since purple is my favorite color, I think I'll do a few in purple just to see if they turn out.  ¯\(°_o)/¯  If they look good I'll post a few pictures...

Also next time I'm going to cut the "petals" a little different (wavy) to see how that looks. :)

Each flower took about 10-15 minutes to make, total!
I think the longest part was waiting for the pink ones to dry!

What you need:

Coffee Filters (I used 6 filters for each flower, 3 small ones that I cut, and 3 normal size) you can use more filters if you want a fuller flower :)
Floral Wire (I used 18 inch 18 gage)
Floral Tape
Glue (I used hot glue,but you can use any kind)
Scissors
Needle Nose Pliers
Food Color (optional)

 I used the 3 1/4 inch filters (6-12 cup size) for all of my petals, and cut  a 1/2 inch off  3 of them to make the "smaller" size. My end flower size was about as big as my hand, stretched out...give or take a little. You can use the larger paper filters (5 1/4 inch) but this is just what I had on hand, and what I use in my coffee maker.

For the 3, inner smaller filters, this is when I cut them down to the "smaller" size.

be careful not to cut yourself on this step!

Making the Flower...
Start out by cutting your wire to length, I cut mine to 6 inches, then using  your needle nose pliers, curl one end of wire.

Poke a hole in the center of your 1st filter.

Slide the wire down to the loop.

 add a drop of glue.

Pinch and twist the base.

Add a drop of glue at the base (not shown) and continue adding your small filters.

When you have added all the small filters, wrap the base with some floral tape, before you start on the larger filters.

You don't have to wrap the whole wire at this time, just the base, for now

Add another drop of glue (not shown) and begin with the larger filters and repeat with the drop of glue between each filter, until you have added them all. After adding your last filter, using the floral tape, wrap the base, and continue down the whole wire.

All done :)

Make some more...

All White

White with random pink spots

Add pink spots

White with pink center with dark pink spots

Love These!!

This was fun, Thanks Michella! Cant wait to make more....
Let me know how yours turn out!

My Mom's All Day Roast (Revisited)

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Back in March I wrote about my mom's All Day Roast. You can find that post Here. I made this last night and took better pictures, that I'd like to share. The roast is larger than in the first post, I wasn't really happy with those pictures, but what can you do? lol
Its getting to be that time of year again, where having the oven on all day won't make the house hot! 
You also could very easily put this meal in the crock pot on Medium, maybe on Low if its on long enough. I have a Auto Shift on mine that switches back and forth between Low and High. Just make sure to add enough liquid that it doesn't dry out!


Here is what you need:

1. English Cut Roast (biggest one I can find usually,because they shrink!)
2. 2-3 Cans of Green Beans (I use French Cut, any brand)
3. 2-3 Cans of Whole White Potatoes (any brand) (fresh potatoes, don't really work for this recipe, as they fall apart..canned works best)
4. 1 packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix (or any brand)
5. (Optional) add some Baby Carrots or (my mom sometimes used frozen    Pearl Onions)
6.Water or juice from green beans or potatoes (add enough to almost come to the top of the roast)
7. Pan large enough to hold it all (13x9 isn't quite big enough!)

Preheat oven to 200 degree's... meanwhile in a pan place the roast in the middle, open your canned veggies and drain (don't drain 1 can of the green beans juice for the liquid) surround the roast with the canned veggies(adding the juice from green beans.) Sprinkle packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix on the whole thing.

Can you see the liquid? almost to the top of the roast.

Add about a can of water, slowly pour over whole thing. Make sure you have enough liquid in bottom, that comes at least half way up the roast! Cover with foil and cook at least 6-8 hours. 

Can you see where I didn't sprinkle the onion mix? That little section of green beans is for my hubby :) he doesn't like trying to pick the onions out of the green beans lol

The smell of this will drive you crazy about 2 hours after its been cooking, it smells soooo good!!

This will be a family favorite! It will be your favorite, because its so simple!

Prep time is about 5 minutes, you can't beat that for a meal that tastes like you slaved over the hot stove all day! lol (-̮̮̃•̃) 

I love the flavor of the potatoes and green beans ...yum!

This roast just literally falls apart!

OMGosh! doesn't this look so GOOD!!??

Enjoy!!!

DIY Pine Cone Ornaments

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So I have a lifetime supply of pine cones, that I needed to find something to do with, besides throw them all in our burn pile... We have a ton of pine tree's that produce lots and lots of pine cones! They are sharp little suckers too!! Maybe its just this kind, but I have never seen sharp pine cones before! 

Sharp!! looks like shark teeth, doesn't it?!

I've noticed that there are a lot more pine tree's in the south, and a lot less hard wood trees. One good thing about it, it stays green in the winter!

We were helping my hubby clean up the yard and it seemed like a good time to get some pine cones, so my daughter and I picked out some nice ones, to save for later.  I cleaned them up with a bucket of hot soapy water (soaking them for at least a hour) rinse them well, then a vinegar/water soak to kill anything living in them, then let them dry out again...
I never really paid attention that when they get wet, they close up, and when they dry out, they open back up!

Hot soapy water.

Bubble Bath

Vinegar/Water soak

The drying out process takes about a week, so I tried to speed up the process a little bit (I'm very impatient for things like this) 
I lined a cookie sheet with foil and turned the oven on the lowest setting, mine goes down to 170. I tried 170 for about a half hour and it really didn't seem to dry them, so I turned it up to 200 (which is also the highest I would go or you run the risk of burning them) I kept them in there for 15 minutes, then turned them and gave them another 15 minutes. This gave them a good head start on the drying process. I could see they started opening up. :) Also, with the oven drying, if anything survived the soapy water, or the vinegar bath then, they surely it couldn't live through the 200 degree heat of the oven! This also helps to melt any sap on the pine cones, mine didn't really have any on them so I didn't have to worry about that to much.

*Note* keep a close watch on them as they can burn or start on fire in your oven!!

They still ended up taking about three days to dry completely after the oven, but its better than a week! 
I left them on the foil lined cookie sheet and put them in the sun to dry and brought them in at night so they wouldn't get dew on them.
When they were finally dry, I borrowed some wire from my hubby to wrap around the pine cones when painting so they could hang and he also set me up a mobile paint booth/drying station (better known as a dolly, or some people call them hand trucks,with a piece of plywood ) and I did this outside of coarse!

Here is what you need:

White Flat Spray Paint
Clear Spray Paint (Matte, Satin, or Gloss - which ever sheen you would like)
Paint colors of your choice
Glitter (I mostly used the Iridescent as it "went" with all the colors)
Small Screw Eye Hooks
Glue
Thin ribbon for hanger (I used 1/8" wide white with Iridescent edges)
Ribbon for bow (I used 3/8" wide white with Iridescent edges)

Wire wraps around so it can hang

mobile paint booth/drying station ;)

So, first I sprayed them all white, I gave them two coats each. 

White painted Pine Cones

Then I used my accent  color (your choice of color) and painted all the tips (shark teeth lol), tops and bottoms. I used a lot of the metallic paints, they look really nice! I liked how they turned out!!

I like the view from the top, they look really cool! Half way painted.

After you have all the tips painted let them dry completely, make any touch ups after the first coat, that you need to do, then let it dry again.

Carefully wrap the wire back around the pine cone and spray with a clear coat, matte, satin, or gloss, its your preference. At least two coats of clear.

I then used Elmer's glue and a paint brush and painted the glue on anywhere where I wanted the glitter, let dry over night, or at least several hours.

Add screw eye hook in the center bottom (I used the smallest hook I could find) 

Tie your hanger ribbon on the eye hook

Tie hanger ribbon on the eye hook.
1/8" wide ribbon

 Then using a hot glue gun, or if you have a favorite craft glue, glue your bow onto the pine cone.

I made my own bows...3/8" wide ribbon

 I wish you could see just how pretty these are with the glitter, I wish the camera would pick it up better! Or maybe its the camera operator? ;)

You can almost see the glitter in this picture.

The pictures don't do them justice! They are so much prettier in person. I'll have to see if my hubby can take some with his camera that the glitter will show up.

Tips
* I found it was better to paint with a flat white paint rather than a gloss paint (learn from my mistakes) the highlight color covered much better on the flat paint.... (when I did the high gloss white I had to do two coats of highlight color, not just touch up) So flat white paint worked best for me and I was clear coating them anyways, so it didn't matter much.

*Don't spray clear after you have put on the iridescent glitter as it makes it not so sparkly (another learn from my mistake) :) It might not matter on colored glitter but it does on the iridescent!!  It made it cloudy looking.

 Other colors I've been doing.
Back row, L to R - Gold, Dark Purple Base with white tips
Front row: Metallic Green, Metallic Red and Glitter Lt. Blue.

I'm not partial to the color green, but the metallic green is almost my favorite one. Again, the picture doesn't do it justice!
In any case, they will look pretty hanging in the tree....


If anyone has some cute crafts made with pine cones, and would like to pass them along,send me a email or make a comment below.

Edit 12-15-12I did a post on a Glitter Pine Cone Ornament on 12-14-12, you can find it Here



Added a picture of the painted tip pine cone on my tree 12-25-12