It's Holiday Time

After a long day of shopping and a visit to one of the best food stores in Cincinnati, Jungle Jim's, Perry and I headed home with pizza supplies, almond peanut butter, a cart full of wine, and a bag of chestnuts. Our mission: roasting chestnuts over an open fire.
We started a big fire in the downstairs fireplace and got our chestnuts ready. To cook chestnuts you must first cut an X into them with a knife, we used a pocket knife. The chestnuts expand in heat, so it not cut first they will literally explode.
Next find a pan with a decently long handle that you can put in the fire. Place the chestnuts in the pan and cover, we covered them with aluminum foil since our pan didn't have a lid. Place on top of the fire. Make sure you check them and stir around every 5 minutes for so. We forgot this step and our chestnuts ended up black on the bottom.
After about 20 minutes the chestnuts will have expended and will be soft to eat. Remove from fire and let cool for a few minutes. Remove shell and sprinkle with salt and enjoy! Chestnuts are delicious when warm and taste a lot like starchy potatoes.

Progress

So I got butterfly templates off line and printed them out, all approximately the same size. I'm starting with three and seeing how it goes from there. Then I got magazine pictures I wanted to use for the colors, mine are blue/green based. In order to stabilize it I cut up a cereal box to fit each butterfly.
Then I used spray adhesive (I would recommend rubber cement but I was out at the time) and glued the butterflies to one side of the box and the pictures to the other side.
So then all thats left to do is the time consuming part of cutting everything out with a matt knife.
This is my progress so far. I woke up this morning with my arms sore from pressing so hard on the knife, but more is to come!

DIY Butterflies

I have found my latest DIY project. I was a little disheartened by my Anthropologie lion a few weeks ago, but this project seems a tad easier. Image Surgery creates butterflies out of maps and mounts them as though in a collection.






I think the butterflies are lovely and creative, especially mounted in frames. Time to head over to Half Price books and dig through some magazines for maps of my own!

Just Words

I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
-John Green