Things have been squirrelly since I last posted. Most of the time was lost in a haze of cold medicine thankfully.
First I developed quite a reaction after testing a custom blend I was working on for a potential customer. The last bump just faded away a couple of days ago. As this started Larry became sick, so I had my hands full and got very little sleep. (Gentlemen, I’m sorry but some of you are more work than a child when you’re sick. *grin* Ladies, you know what I’m talking about.) With my incredibly useless immune system I of course caught the bug and was twice as sick as he was. (Of course.) I hurt my back bringing in firewood, got a small burn from the wood stove, and had a couple of small falls. I was busy. *grin*
During this I got a few things done, although very little business. I did a batch of dyed jars with food dye in shades of green and brown. Although I liked the vintage tint of the brown, all three streaked, as you can tell.
So I decided that I’d work with the streaks instead of scrapping them and added a coat of paint to two of them. (The Snapple bottle didn’t go so well.) I love how they turned out!
The brown and khaki jar is my favorite. I used the same mod podge blend that I posted about before.
I also thought I’d try roasting garlic for the first time. The Mamas Girls blog has a tutorial for roasting garlic bulbs in your slow cooker and I covered the entire bottom of mine with garlic packets. There’s a little comment with the tutorial about how the house will smell amazing while roasting the garlic. Apparently we don’t fit the norm, since a big pot of garlic was quite an unpleasant smell to us. *laugh* I tried the whole squeeze technique, but maybe I’m not strong enough, because a whole lot of garlic was left behind, so I switched to using a spoon. By the way, if you haven’t roasted garlic before, I’m going to let you in on a few tidbits. First, the garlic gets really sticky. I hate to get “icky”, so I used some food service gloves. They fit a bit loosely and when I was working with the garlic it all stuck to my gloves. After Larry laughed at me for flailing around, trying to get the garlic peel off of my fingers so it wouldn’t get in the good stuff, I switched to some tighter latex gloves. Learn from my mistakes and just use them from the get go. *grin* Peel open each clove and you can scoop the garlic right out with a spoon. Six smallish bulbs came out to:
(I totally understand if that doesn’t look so appetizing. LOL)
One tablespoon added to margarine made a pretty decent spread for a loaf of garlic bread.
I mashed the rest of the garlic into an ice tray and they’re hanging out in the freezer (wrapped three times over *grin*). Once they set up I’ll pop them out and put them in a freezer bag. They look pretty weird, so I didn’t bother with a picture.
A nice side effect of the garlic is that my sinuses are a lot clearer now. After being so stuffed up that I couldn’t breathe, I’m pretty happy. I definitely recommend roasting some garlic if you catch this nasty bug. It was more effective than most of the cold medicines. *grin*
Now a fun tidbit to close this odd post out…for Christmas I bought us tickets to see the comic Gabriel Iglesias and the day is finally here. We will follow it up with dinner at our favorite Irish restaurant, too. Perfect timing since I won’t be wheezing or coughing during the skit, too. Bless the smelly garlic. *grin* Hopefully some of his comedic skills will rub off and I’ll have some really entertaining posts coming up. (Don’t hold your breath. *laugh*) I’ll be happy with some energy now that my nose is clear, so I can actually do more than wave my arms like I just don’t care (sounds a lot less embarrassing than flailing about, trying to fling or shake stuff off my fingers) and make pretty jars for fake flowers and hair ties (sounds much better than just fixing failed batches). Pamper on, Garth. 😉
Georgia's Pampering 