Stars – The Art of Cobwebs

Act 1, scene 1: Setting the scene:-

[The door is flung open. She’s arrived, but not under her own steam. She was blown through the door with the great force of a wind which took no prisoners. And she arrived with as much grace as a cow in a china shop and making about the same amount of noise too!].

WHOOO!!! Flipping heck, its windy out there! I don’t know about the weather where you are, but here in the UK (in various places dotted around Great Britain), Storm Doris has blown in and she’s making sure that her presence is felt. Folks here have christened today (Thursday evening, as I’m writing this), Doris Day. HA! Love it. (actually giggle to myself every time I say it. Doris Day. Love that soooo much!).

The odd thing about the weather this week is that I went out two days before Doris Day wearing a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a lightweight jacket. I ended up taking the jacket off and leaving it in the car because it was SO hot!

We have a saying here: … ‘Come to the UK and experience Snow; Wind; Rain; Hail; Sleet; Sunshine; Warmth; Heat; and Hotter than hot. In fact all of the weathers, all in one day!’

This week has been a mixed week. I seem to have done much but only have a little bit to show for it. I made a card for a blogging friends mum, who had broken her ankle. I have photos, and now that the card has been received the other end, I can share the piccies with you. I’ll blog the pictures in the next couple of days. After making the card, I decided it was about time I cleaned my craft room and moved a few things around which were now in the wrong place. Oh. My. Goodness! Nightmare In the Craft Room time! I got about half way through and really wished I hadn’t started this task.

I’m still finishing off. And I’ll be so glad when everything is put in its rightful place, and all the papers and trimmings have all been put back where they belong. phew!

Anyhoo... you haven’t come here to listen to my ramblings about cleaning up. You’ve come to get some edumacation. (Yes I know it’s ‘education’ … but I prefer my word. lol)

So … shall we dive in and get educationamalised? Strap yourself in. Ready? And we’re OFF! . . .

This week … I learned to leave a fresh from the oven pizza all alone for at least five minutes and NOT to take a bite of a slice until 5 minutes have passed. How did I learn this? …. picture the scene dear reader …

The smells from the oven were over-whelming. A gorgeous, tummy rumbling, nose twitchy sensation, hunger pangs sort of way. The whole house smelled of the fabulous roasted vegetables which topped the pizza, along with the two different cheeses, and the little circles of garlic butter (the size of a penny) which dotted the top of the pizza. And the Garlic bread which was cooking at the same time.

The timer dinged, sounding out its permission to remove that pizza from the oven. Pizza and garlic bread were removed, and salad was waiting for the finished dishes. The pizza was cut, popped onto the plates and served up. The smell was way too much. I couldn’t wait … I lifted that slice up to my lips and took a bite of that fabulous triangular bit which came from the centre of the pizza.

What happened next was something that should have been reported on the news! (Unfortunately the POTUS pushed me off the top spot so I never even got a mention!).

What I didn’t know about that Pizza was that the toppings and the cheese came from the depths of the core of a Volcano. So hot. SO SO SO – H.O.T.!!! Not spicy hot. Hot as in ‘let me put an iron straight out of the blacksmith’s fire into your mouth and you bite down on it for a moment or two’. Yeah, that sort of HOT.

I burnt the roof of my mouth behind my two front teeth. Not just a little burn. No. I don’t do things by halves. When I do things I go full-out and do ’em good. Ohhhh… the roof of my mouth was sore for days. The ‘problem’ lasted 4/5 days before I could brush my teeth in the normal way. In the: “I’m thinking about sunshine and flowers. What am I wearing today?. Why do I have the entire cast of the four-legged members of this household all in this tiny bathroom with me, looking up at me, waiting for me to what? Tickle them all maybe?” … way.

I had to concentrate very, v. e. r. y. carefully as I brushed the backs of those two teeth. None of that brushing the gums as well motion. Noooooooo. I had to be sure that I brushed the teeth and only the teeth. I had experienced the pain which occurred when I brushed the normal way I do, and I didn’t want to experience that again. Care needed to be taken.

So I learned that I shouldn’t be a pig with Pizza. Wait …. wait…. and wait some more … until the pizza was cool enough before you take a bite. Good lesson to learn.

I’ve also learned this week: That the Cadbury’s factory make 600,000 Creme eggs every 12 hours, and all those eggs, if weighed, weigh THREE TIMES HEAVIER than an elephant. The moral of this tale is … don’t eat more than one Cadbury Creme egg a week – unless you want to become an elephant.

I also learned that the Cadbury Brothers released the first filled eggs in 1923, but the Creme Eggs we all know today were introduced to stores only in 1963. They were initially named Fry’s Creme Eggs. But in 1971, they were rebranded as Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.

Each Creme Egg consists of 180 calories.

According to a survey done by Cadbury, there are different ways of eating the Creme Egg: 53 percent of people bite off the top, lick out the cream, then eat the chocolate; 20 percent just bite straight through; whereas six percent use their finger to scoop out the cream.

Which group do you fit into?

I also learned this week that I miss some of the funny people from our films and TV screens who have either parted company with us, or chosen to sit back and enjoy life, or just aren’t getting the jobs offered to them anymore. People such as Steve Martin. Bill Murray. John Candy. Robin Williams (I will never stop missing him). Leslie Nielson. Chevy Chase. Danny DeVito. Peter Sellers. Vince Vaughn. Jane Lynch. Dan Aykroyd.

We need to laugh more. I’m starting a movement for more funny stuff on TV. Lobby your TV stations and tell them that in these difficult times in which we live, we need more funny stuff on TV!

I learned this week … or should that be realised? No, we’ll stick to learned. I learned this week that I’m totally dumbfounded at how my attitudes towards certain things have changed as I’ve got older.

Things which were, in my opinion, ‘set in stone’ when I was in my twenties are now just not important at all. Stuff which was so crucial in my thirties, really aren’t anything I bother about now. Things which were of great significance are now … meh. They can all just slide on by me now.

What is important to me now is knowing that I am loved, and that the people I love KNOW I love them. Can see that I love them.

Our (Mr.Cobs and I) two children, who had their trying times and their ‘I’m going to pour her down the drain‘ moments … I now look back and see that in actual fact all that worry about them when they were in their teens, was just me being an over protective mum. I could see where ‘the dangers’ were and so would try to head them off before daughters 1 and 2 got to them. But … I shouldn’t have. They needed to learn, just like we all did. Only by learning the lesson ‘the hard way’, would they actually learn what the needed to – that being … how to deal with the problem!

So … young mums reading ... allow your children to learn about the things they’re going to need to know about in adulthood. Even if it’s how to get the lid off the Tupperware container … or how to sort their dirty clothes into piles of whites, darks and mixed colours! And WHY they need to learn that. It’s a valuable lesson – knowing not to put all the washing in the machine without sorting it out and only washing the right things with each other …. as we’ve all learned! 😀

But … enough of my ramblings! … I know what you’re waiting for … the JOKES!

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My friend thinks he is smart. He told me an onion is the only food that makes you cry, so I threw a coconut at his face.

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A child asked his father, “How were people born?” So his father said, “Adam and Eve made babies, then their babies became adults and made babies, and so on.” The child then went to his mother, asked her the same question and she told him, “We were monkeys then we evolved to become like we are now.” The child ran back to his father and said, “You lied to me!” His father replied, “No, your mom was talking about her side of the family.”

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Q: What never asks questions but receives a lot of answers?
A: The Telephone.

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Teacher: “If I gave you 2 cats and another 2 cats and another 2, how many would you have?”
Johnny: “Seven.”
Teacher: “No, listen carefully… If I gave you two cats, and another two cats and another two, how many would you have?”
Johnny: “Seven.”
Teacher: “Let me put it to you differently. If I gave you two apples, and another two apples and another two, how many would you have?”
Johnny: “Six.”
Teacher: “Good. Now if I gave you two cats, and another two cats and another two, how many would you have?”
Johnny: “Seven!”
Teacher: “Johnny, where in the heck do you get seven from?!”
Johnny: “Because I’ve already got a freaking cat!”

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Reaching the end of a job interview, the Human Resources Officer asks a young engineer fresh out of the Institute of Technology, “And what starting salary are you looking for?” The engineer replies, “In the region of $125,000 a year, depending on the benefits package.” The interviewer inquires, “Well, what would you say to a package of five weeks vacation, 14 paid holidays, full medical and dental, company matching retirement fund to 50% of salary, and a company car leased every two years, say, a red Corvette?” The engineer sits up straight and says, “Wow! Are you kidding?” The interviewer replies, “Yeah, but you started it.”

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A bank robber pulls out gun points it at the bank teller, and says, “Give me all the money or you’re geography!” The puzzled teller replies, “Did you mean to say ‘or you’re history?’” The robber says, “Don’t change the subject!”

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and last but not least …. this little thing which I saw this week and it tickled the heck out of me . . .

Well that’s us done and dusted and all caught up for another Friday! And not just any Friday either! Today is the last Friday in this month. Next Friday it will already be March. We’re really racing through these months, aren’t we. Phew. I can barely keep up.

I hope your Friday is a lovely one. A day which passes without any problems, and no gremlins getting into the hours.

May your weekend be the weekend you’re hoping for. May you sleep well and wake up feeling wonderful.

Sending you squidges, and hoping that life treats you well, till we meet next time.

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Nearly at the end of Christmas Card making! HURRAY! I hear you shout. I haven’t bombarded you with them all, only the ones I thought might entertain you or, like this one today, were a bit different. I can’t believe how late I am with the making of my Christmas cards this year . . . and I still have family ones to make! eeek.

Mr. Cobs is being aaahhhmazing! He’s put the Christmas tree up all by himself. Moved the furniture around so that everything flows. The tree still has to be decorated (lights and pretty things) but everything is in place and waiting. He is such a blessing. Quite frankly I don’t think, if it were up to me, I’d have bothered putting up a tree this year. It all felt like an effort too far. (Not me being a bah humbug, but just the back problem).

I’ve tried to keep most of the cards I’ve made for Christmas this year, very simple, and also flat enough to go into a normal envelope as I really didn’t want to be making boxes on top of making the cards. This one fills the remit of simple and ‘flattish’.

The trees are made using the left over ‘hole’ from a die cut tree. I used the left over cut out as a stencil in order to make all three trees. Using three different coloured ink pads, and some dried baby wipes, I built all three trees by simply dabbing the dried baby wipe onto the ink pad and then dabbing the inky wipe onto my glass mat in order to distribute the colour so that I could gently rub the inky pad through the ‘stencil’. Once you’ve done one tree, either find a clean bit of the dried baby wipe and use it for the next colour of tree, or simply use another wipe. Once you’ve got all three in place, you could leave it right there if you wished to.

The sentiment reads ‘Oh Christmas Tree’ – but it looks a little fuzzy on the photo because the camera was focused on the trees instead of the sentiment. (my fault I’m afraid because I told it to do that. (A case of eyes wide open but without supervision, and the brain was closed for lunch.)

The ‘snow’ effect is made used Sweet Poppy glossy white texture paste, along with Pinflair Snow – which you need so little of that I’ve had my pot of snow for a couple of Christmas’s and still have half a pot. It goes a long way.

The sequins, in silver, blue for the trees and some clear but iridescent ones used for snowflakes, I dotted around and fixed in place using Pinflair Glue Gel.

The lovely twinkly stars atop of each tree … I found in the crafty section of my local charity shop. There were hundreds of them in a bag, and I couldn’t believe my luck when I found them. I think they cost me something like 50p (I think that works out at about 60 cents USA).

To give the card a little interest on the inside, I inked up another blue tree, using the same method I used on the others – only on this one, I used a fine nib glue pen and squiggled all over it, then shook a little glitter dust over it so that it caught on the squiggly bits, added an iridescent sequin to the top and voila! Finished.

So … how do you fancy a bit of “Things you might not know about Christmas”?

It may not be as popular these days but in the times of Charles Dickens, and as far back as Washington Irving, telling ghost stories was a Christmas tradition. One of the most famous – “A Christmas Carol” – was written by Dickens himself, but he’d already had some practise. In “The Pickwick Papers” (1836), his first novel, he includes “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton,” a Christmas-themed horror tale.

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Denny’s, the US diner chain famous for being ‘Always Open,’ decided to close for Christmas in 1988 to give hard-working employees the day off. Amazingly, it turned out that many of the restaurants actually had no locks. Well, they’d never needed them before. According to the New York Times, 700 branches needed to be fitted with locks so the staff could spend Christmas with their families.

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Wondering what to with your Christmas tree after the festive period? Why not see if your nearest zoo wants it? Many animals find them great fun to play with. In 2014, a zoo in Cambridgeshire, UK, compared the trees to “catnip for lions.”

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Although the modern image of Santa Claus – the “right jolly old elf” of popular culture – is now widespread, he hasn’t always been seen that way. Earlier depictions of Saint Nicolas have him as a serious, religious man (the original Saint Nicolas was Bishop of Myra, in modern-day Turkey). Sinterklaas, a holiday celebrated on Dec. 5 in the Netherlands, Belgium and parts of France, portray him as an elderly man in bishop’s clothing.

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And finally . . . .

christmas-victoria-albert — Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their Christmas Tree.

Thank Prince Albert for your tree.

The Germans are credited with first bringing evergreens into their homes and decorating them, a tradition which made its way to the United States in the 1830s. But it wasn’t until Germany’s Prince Albert introduced the tree to his new wife, England’s Queen Victoria, that the tradition really took off. The couple were sketched in front of a Christmas tree in 1848 — and royal fever did its work.

Well … that’s me done and dusted!

Hope you like the blue Christmas Trees card, and that at least one of the Christmas ‘Factoids’ taught you something you might not already know. You can go off and impress friends, relatives and anyone you happen to run into today, with your knowledge of Useless Information About Christmas Taught to you in Mini Lessons from Cobs. (And you didn’t even have to pay for the class! lol)

Have a truly lovely last Monday before Christmas.