Martha Mondays: Pinwheels

When my kids were little I always put pinwheels in their Easter baskets. They loved blowing on them and watching them spin. I’ve never tried to make one though! Thanks to Sassy Suppers though, I now know how and it was pretty easy. Martha’s instructions are here.  We printed out patterned paper using the colored printer since I didn’t have anything cute. It’s a pretty simple matter of just cutting and gluing the corners in. I didn’t have a clothespin, so we just stuck it at the end of a stick. Very cute! And very easy. You could definitely do this project with little kids.

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Martha Mondays: Glittered Pumpkins

Megan’s Cookin’ chose glittered pumpkins for today. My project was pretty much doomed from the start. I didn’t have a pumpkin left from Halloween. My grocery store did not have any. We got one from my mom, but it was rotting inside, so the stem came off. Oy. We also tried to do this in the doorway of the garage and the wind kept blowing the glitter away. It wasn’t pretty, but it got done.

It doesn’t look half bad in the picture. Megan told me she was going to try glittering some other things for this, which I think would be cute. I thought about doing some apples, but ended up just sticking with the pumpkin.

Did you try this?

Martha Mondays: Drink Umbrellas

Sassy Suppers chose a craft project for today – drink umbrellas. What a cute project! It was really easy too. We pleated one of the umbrellas to try to make it look a bit more like the ones you get in restaurants and it turned out really well. These would be adorable for a summer party. Side note: I remember bringing a drink umbrella home from someplace as a child and using it as an umbrella for my Barbies! Barbie would definitely give these a thumbs up as well.

Next week’s project is blackberry almond shortbread squares.

Cookie Decorating

I’ve been doing holiday cookies in stages. I’ll make the dough one day, cut it out and bake it another and then we had a big cookie decorating night to decorate the gingerbread and sugar cookies. This year I bought some little squeeze bottles, thinking we could emulate Martha and make the cookies look like the ones Dani decorates on Martha’s show. Silly me. First problem – my mixer broke as I was making frosting. Then the frosting was too stiff, so we had to add milk (by hand!). Finally we got it to work. The bottles were great for outlining and making lines and designs. “Flooding” the inside of the cookie (as Dani, the cookie decorating expert on Martha’s show calls it) was harder. Sure you could squeeze frosting into the center, but then trying to spread it evenly with a knife was very hard. Still, I think the cookies turned out pretty well. I’m not a fan of a lot of frosting, but kids will be kids! It took us about 2 hours to get them all decorated. It was exhausting but fun!

My Flock

I have a thing for sheep. Quirky, unusual, yet lovable sheep. They can’t be too big. They can’t have faces that are too human. And it’s most fun if I buy them on vacation. Here is my flock. Do you love it? It’s so big I’m going to have to expand to another shelf (the big blue on on the bottom left has already begun the migration). I have a silver money sheep from China (I did not bring that one back myself unfortunately!), a cranberry colored sheep I bought on Hilton Head, a cool one that looks like it’s made out of spaghetti that I bought in Montreal, the most amazing sheep with a face made out of a crossword puzzle from Vancouver, a great one with its head tipped from Maine, one with pink ears from Hawaii and many, many more. There are sheep made of lace, clay, cotton, paper mache, bristles, real wool and much more.

My latest addition is the fab pink sheep in the front right. My friend Melanie McMinn, felter extraordinaire made this for me in New Zealand. Check out her Etsy store. She makes all sorts of amazing, gorgeous felted creations, real works of art. I’m so happy to have one of her pieces in my collection!

I Am Not Martha

I try really hard to decorate beautifully, cook wonderful meals, and buy lovely gifts, but I don’t have a wrapping room (and how I wish I did!). The wrapping supplies live in the closet under the stairs. When I’m ready to tackle the holiday wrapping, it all comes out and takes over part of our bedroom. We set up a folding table and I sit on the edge of the bed and wrap on the table. When I’m actually wrapping, all the junk you see on the table is on the bed so I have the entire table for wrapping. It’s a horrible, ugly mess, but I live with it for a week or so while I work my way through the wrapping. I would love to have a room just for wrapping, but that’s not possible. So every year I live with this disaster, hating it. It’s so very un-Martha, yet I think I’m able to produce gifts that look lovely.

Do you have a very un-Martha area of your house this holiday season?

Martha Mondays: Snowflakes

Thanks to Lyndsey at Tiny Skillet to for choosing paper snowflakes for today’s project. I used to do this with my kids when they were little, but I didn’t know to do the part about folding it into thirds (that part was a little hard, but I managed!). I tried to do one exactly like the one in the picture. It was close, but not quite the same. This was really fun to do and I enjoyed it.

For several years, when we took down the Christmas decorations, I used to put up snowflake decorations. I had a collection of snowflake ornaments I hung on my all-season tree. I had a snowflake wreath, and some big snowflakes that went in the kitchen windows. I stopped doing it though because by the time we got to taking down the decorations, it made more sense just to move ahead and put up Valentine’s Day decorations.  Now I just hang the snowflake ornaments on the Christmas tree. I kind of miss just having some time to celebrate winter (before I start wishing I lived in Florida by the time February comes and I’m sick to death of it!).

The project for next week has been chosen by Ana at Sweet Almond tree and is an artichoke dip (great choice for holidays!).

Final Giveaway

This is my final Martha giveaway of the year. 10 lucky winners will get a Martha Stewart Holidays double-edged snowflake trim punch (this creates a strip of die-cut paper to use as a decorative strip) AND a set of Martha Stewart Holidays treat bags (each package includes 8 bags, 8 paper boxes/trays that go at the bottom, 8 tags, 8 pieces of ribbon, and 16 adhesive strips). The paper cutter is super fun to use and makes such pretty strips of snowflakes. It’s perfect for scrapbooking, crafts or making cards. The treat bags are a great way to package candy or small cookies. It’s hard to see in the photo, but the bags have tiny white dots on them which are really cute.  The prizes are courtesy of MSLO and they will mail them out. Previous winners of my other contests have written to tell me how much they liked the punches and treat boxes they received, so I know you’ll love them!

Here’s how to win. Follow me on Twitter. Then leave a comment here with your Twitter handle, so I can match you up. If you are already following me on Twitter, just leave a comment here with your Twitter handle. You must enter by midnight ET on Friday December 10, 2010. I’ll randomly and blindly select ten winners by random number drawing (numbers assigned in order of comments here). Sorry, offer limited to U.S. addresses only and entrants age 18 and up only. One entry per person. Winners notified by email given when entering, not responsible for email transmission problems. You are responsible for notifying me of your correct  address if you are selected as a winner. Contest closes at midnight Eastern time on 12/10/10. Prize is nontransferable and may not be redeemed for cash. MarthaAndMe reserves the right to announce the name of the winners on the blog. Prizes will be sent by MSLO to winners and MarthaAndMe is not liable for any failure of MSLO to deliver.

Martha Mondays: Thanksgiving Table

Thanks to Karen at Karen and Charlie’s Kitchen for choosing this week’s pick-your-own project  – Thanksgiving tablescapes. I liked the one where you make a small pumpkin into a candleholder, so I did a trial run with that, which looks sort of lame since it’s crooked. I guess you need a straighter pumpkin to get it to work! I just hacked away at it with a knife to make the hole, then pushed the candle in. I like this idea a lot, even if mine wasn’t the greatest in execution!

Here’s a photo of a centerpiece I bought a few years ago (I think I got it at the grocery store to be honest!) and which I really still love a lot.

Martha’s Greatest Hits: Crafts Edition

I recently posted my list of Martha’s best recipes. I have done some Martha crafts (more in the first year of the blog, but I still do some from time to time). I’m not a big crafter and so I didn’t think I would have any craft greatest hits, but in looking back through the blog, there were a couple that really stood out for me as being beautiful and easy to do, so I want to share the craft version of Martha’s Greatest Hits with you!

Map Coasters I still love the concept of this

Scarf Dyed Eggs Possibly the best craft EVER

Nut Wreath I still get a lot of comments on this post from last fall. The wreath hangs in my kitchen in fall and is gorgeous!

Glitter Eggs As frustrating as they were to make, they did turn out pretty well and are very impressive looking.

Fish Print This was one of my more controversial posts. The prints I made hang at the family lake house and are gorgeous.

Do you have any favorite Martha crafts?