WHO WANTS FREE STUFF

WIN THESE EARRINGS!

YOU CAN WIN THIS AWESOME PAIR OF EARRINGS!

(Handmade using Goldplated findings, Goldtone leaf charms, European glass seedbeads, and gorgeous Swarovski Crystals!)

You can be the proud owner of this fantastic, sparkly, magnificent set of earrings by following these easy steps!

1. Login to Facebook
2. Search for TwinklesAndGlitter’s fanpage.
3. Suggest the fan page to at least 5 friends.
4. Leave a comment on the wall or on the original contest announcement.
5. Patiently await the arrival of Friday, July 9th 2010. (And if you’re bored there, you can visit the Etsy Shop while you’re waiting!)
6. Check back to the fan page on Friday to see if you’re a winner!

That’s all there is to it!  Good luck and may the most awesome win!

Sold! Sold! Sold!

Wait, didn’t I just say that it’s been slow on Etsy?  The little etsy gnomes must have heard me. I sold a pair of earrings and a set of destash beads in one day. Huzzah!!!  It’s not a lot of cash coming in, but always exciting!!!  And to think I almost took down my holiday offerings because they’re “out of season.”  Ha! Win. 

The destash supplies really don’t bring me any income, but it allows me to share my overstock of supplies with people.  More than anything I really only  kind of break even with the original cost.  Still, a sale is a sale and a happy customer is happy customer! 

Ohh gooody goody I love selling things on Etsy!

SOLD!

SOLD!

 

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!

Tricks Are What a Whore Does for Money

A magician named...

 

Though it was never a hobby nor obsession of my own, it really doesn’t surprise me that I’m currently dating a magician (or master of the sleight of hand…whichever you prefer.)  Who doesn’t love magic?  I’ve been fascinated by the idea of magic since I was a little girl.  My mother used to perform cheesy magic tricks like the ball and cup, quarters moving through solid objects, etc. I liked when people showed me card tricks, sleights of hand and all manner of illusions. I loved doing the little tricks with rope and the linking rings. My brother had a neat little magic trick kit as a kid with a top hat that had a secret compartment for making things disappear. We had all sorts of little wands, sparkles, and doodads, and loved to watch the magicians on tv. I can’t say as it was an obsession or anything more than fleeting entertainment at the time, but I certainly enjoyed every second of it. 

As with most relationships you tend to take an interest in whatever your significant other is into, and this newfound fascination with cards and magic as of recent is no different. My Sunshine sure loves his card tricks and performing his sleights of hand, and practices or performs any chance he gets.  His cards never leave his hand and he’s always got at least one more in his pocket just in case.  I’m quite proud to say I carry my two Dan and Dave Mirror Decks everywhere with me just in case I get up the guts to practice my two or three little unimpressive tricks. He’s also magic in the regard that he does the dishes, the laundry, cooks and cleans! I am pretty sure that’s magical… 

Sean Patrick McCleaver

It’s really quite a lot of fun to have a magician on hand for tricks on-demand and it provides an infinite amount of entertainment, but it presents one teensy weensy little problem.  Decks of cards wear out easily with frequent handling, clumping up and sticking together and making the sleights more difficult.  When the cards start clumping or bending or warping (or he does the trick SO well that he permanently loses a card from the deck…) he tosses those to the side and opens a new pack.  At the rate he’s going, pretty soon I’m going to have decks of cards coming out my wazoo!  What in the @#$^ am I supposed to do with all these piles of his used playing cards? Sunshine goes through decks of cards like people go through underwear. He kept telling me to throw out the decks when they become “unusable,” but I just couldn’t bear the thought of something so awesome going to waste. Clearly there’s a use for these cards, right? 

I embarked on a mission to find a way to upcycle his cards into something awesome. Just because they get a little dogeared, scratched, or lose some colour doesn’t make them any less usable to me! Sure a deck might be missing a few cards here and there, but that doesn’t matter at all.  It’s all about being inventive and creative! I found a great pattern with duct tape and cards to make handbags, and with input from my bff Noelle, have devised an idea for making the pattern even better! I will let you all know how that works out when I start it. If it’s successful I will be making a few bags for different people hopefully.  Thankfully I have managed to put these piles of cards to good use and I found some great inspiration!  I can’t post pictures of my designs just yet because I don’t want anyone ripping off my ideas, but as soon as my designs are ready for sale you’ll all be the first to know. 

From photos to totebags to jewelry, I have a great big pile of projects in progress that I will soon be sharing with you. I’m hoping to launch a card themed jewelry line and add a few hand painted bags/totes to the etsy shop very shortly! So keep an eye out there. Until then have some photos to tease and please you. I hope they tickle your fancy! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Holi-daze: WITH PICTURES!

I love blurry Xmas tree photos. There are 23 of them in my Facebook Xmas album.

This year’s holiday season seemed to have started out not so festive, but certainly picked up speed starting Christmas Eve….it picked up and kept chugging right along through New Years!  It went by so quickly sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t all a dream *cue cheesy montage and dream sequence music here*  Mom didn’t decorate the house as early as she usually does so our tree wasn’t up until  the day before Christmas Eve while  I baked the entire day (for eight hours to be exact.)  I made White Chocolate & Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies, Melt-In-Your-Mouth Butter Cookies (You’d do well to follow their instructions when it comes to cookie size just FYI,) Hidden Mint Cookies, and from the Joy of Cooking book I tried some Brandy Gingersnap Twist Cookies.

A little sampling of the millions of cookies I baked this year.

I can’t seem to find my exact cookie recipe for the hidden mint cookies, but this one is close enough:

Andes Mint Cookies

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter or margarine
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 ounces Andes mints
Pecan halves

In a large bowl, cream sugars and butter or margarine. Add eggs, vanilla and water. Beat well. Mix flour, baking soda and salt well. Add gradually to egg mixture. Chill dough overnight (it is important that the dough be well chilled). Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Wrap each mint completely in cookie dough. Place 2″ apart on lightly greased cookie sheets and put a nut half on top of each cookie. Bake 7-9 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool thoroughly on wire racks.

From page 719 of our copy of Joy of Cooking:

Brandy Snaps

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Stir over low heat: (I tried this, it failed. I made a 2nd batch and did it a different way.  It’s best to just mix all ingredients with butter and molasses at room temperature)
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar, or 1/4 cup sugar plus 1/4 cup packed, grated maple sugar (I only used the granulated white sugar, not the second option)
1/3 cup dark molasses (mine wasn’t labeled as dark…but it worked just fine!)
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon or orange rind
Remove from heat and add:(again, I didn’t heat mine at all. Just did everything at room temperature)
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons brandy
Roll into 3/4 inch balls.
Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet about 12 minutes.  Remove cookies from pan, after a minute or so, with a spatula. Roll over a spoon handle. (They’re supposed to resemble a cannoli type cookie, mine didn’t.  The ones I managed to rescue before they hardened just wound up spiraled into little cylinders…see photo above for details. They’re the first cookies to the left of the oatmeal… they were SO rich and SO delicious, but I only managed to make about 8 or 10 before they hardened and wouldn’t mold. BE CAREFUL WIT HYOUR TIMING. I recommend doing one tray at a time. I tried to bake two trays at once and didn’t realise how  quickly they harden and become unworkable.  They tasted SO good though!)

Sunshine also managed to steal the kitchen from me for a hot minute, and made some Lemon Bars for his friend Joe.  Unfortunately no matter how many trays of these we seem to make, I never get to the picture taking before they’re scoffed down. This is the best you’re going to get: many, many lemon bars smashed and packed into a take-out tupperware container for delivery.  He won’t share the exact recipe, but I found a great version of Lemon Bars by Paula Deen. For those on a diet I also found a Weight Watchers Friendly Lemon Bar recipe on another blog!

Snagged a photo with the iPhone en route to Joe... everything at home got eaten first!!!

We delivered the lemon bars to Joe, wrapped some presents, and spent the rest of Christmas Eve-day at home baking whatever wasn’t done the day before.  Christmas Eve was a lovely dinner at Sunshine’s mother’s house  followed by gift giving and cookie eating.  In addition to snagging me a previously sold out Jellyfish Mood Lamp, Sunshine managed to find me something that everyone I know had previously believed nonexistant, A PIRATE STITCH PLUSH! I have  a sick, sick, sick obsession with Lilo & Stitch and have taken it upon myself to gather every version of a Stitch plush I can get my hands on.  My collection is small as I just started last year, but I certainly have made a decent dent in my collection.  I don’t know how he did it, but he really did something magnificent by finding this toy for me.  I couldn’t have thought of a better present! (Thanks, honey!)  Christmas Eve-night involved lots of hot chocolate, cookies, and snuggling up to watch movies.  Christmas Day my Pop-pop stopped by and there was more gift giving, more cookie eating, and then we left for Christmas Day dinner with Sunshine’s family.  Dinner was a hilariously fun time with his grandmother, mom, stepdad, and sister and the Lobster Ravioli in Pink Vodka sauce I ordered for dinner was simply divine!  I really had some wonderful times with family and friends this year.  It wasn’t  a super fancy holiday but it was filled with the best kind of happy: LOVE and FAMILY!!!  It’s been the best Christmas I’ve had in years.

The elusive Pirate Stitch!

The next few days flew by…and enter NEW YEARS EVE.  Sunshine and I went out and ran some errands, had lunch at It’s Greek To Me, and made a surprise cookie run to a delicious bakery in Wyckoff.  The evening was spent with delicious takeout from the local Indian restaurant, the infamous lemon bars, a few mojitos, some Guiness and Wii!    Sunshine and I took a couple-hour nap and woke up 6 minutes after midnight.

Beating me at Link's Crossbow Training is SRS BZNZ.

Little Sophia was in dire need of Sunshine's brute strength to finish her tower

Sunshine is performing some new card tricks for his mom!

Ahhh nice and warm and all snuggled up in bed!

This is Pizzazz Bob. This is Pizzazz Bob's new home thanks to Mom and Dad's wonderful Christmas gift! This is the only angle I was able to photograph this stupid fish at so he wouldn't swim away from me.

Welcome to the year 2010!  Man, that sounds so neat! How futuristic, right? Hmmm…  Still waiting on that hoverboard, McFly!  New Years Day we had lunch at my cousin’s house and then watched a movie with Sunshine’s family.  It was certainly a great way to start off the new decade!  2009 was a tough year all around for both myself and Sunshine, but this year will be better!! This year will bring much creativity and happiness and excitement and great success.  I leave you with a preview of some of my latest creations and hints of what’s to come for my Etsy shop! I wish all of you a very healthy and happy year, and I’ll see you around soon.

Collaged origami paper on a wooden frame

Hmmm...what could be happening with these.....

Gotta love iPhone apps that actually enhance one's ability to create art!