Update and visit

Sophie doll is coming along.I found the paper clay dried and shrunk a lot around the eyes. I filled in around the eye with tiny bits of paper clay. We will see after she drys how it looks. Like most things I do it is an adventure to see the out come.

Our DD and youngest grand came for a weekend visit. He is really great kid.He is in the 2nd grade and already reading goosebumps books. I am so glad to know how much he loves to read.Here they are acting silly getting ready to leave.

Sunday we attended a benefit lunch and auction for a young man named Seth Miles. Seth is 12 and has bone cancer. He and his family have been through a lot with a lot more to go. The benefit was a great success. Please keep Seth and his family in your prayers.
They are a great family. Kim (Seth's mom) is our DD's best friend since school days.

The temps. in Iowa is going to get into the 70's this week!!!!Time for yard work.
have a great week.
j

Sophie doll

I started this doll for a challenge on the vintage cloth doll yahoo group.Pictures in previous post. She is a plain doll and I was not really enthusiastic about doing her.

I have been in doll limbo for a while.I made her up thinking I would get fired up and really get into dolls again.Well that is not the case.I have made many many cloth/ rag dolls so many it is not much of a challenge to do them just for the sake of making one.I painted her with acrylic paints and was even less happy with her.

Tuesday I had to drive my mom to Ames to the doc. We stopped at Hobby Lobby and I bought a new block of paper clay. I had been thinking of putting a paper clay face on Sophie.
What fun!!!

I had an old doll head/face I used as the base for the face.
I've posted on my web shots pages pictures of the progress. This is a new thing for me putting actual eyes in a face. I usually oil paint the faces. I will cover her face with a very thin fabric a and oil paint her details.

The sculpting process with the clay is so much fun. Every little bit added or moved just a little changes the look.
http://community.webshots.com/user/nana5111

Over the years I have saved pictures to use for inspiration. I posted a few to this album.
I will keep you posted on the process.
j

old movies

I don't know when I've enjoyed a movie as much as I did Wed. night.
I am not much for tv. I enjoy the Duggers and Little people big world.

Last night I watched Bachelor Mother starring, Ginger Rogers as Polly Parrish and David Niven as David Merlin.

What a fun movie to watch.No shooting, no cussing, no sex.Just a good entertaining movie.One that made me smile.

Here is part of a review I found.

"Polly, as Miss Rogers plays her, is the salesgirl who catches a woman leaving an infant on a foundling home's doorstep and is pounced on by the attendants as its mother. In vain, thereafter, does she protest her spinsterhood. In a jiffy, or even less, the store-owner's son is doing his best to make the little mother comfortable. The owner himself sheds a sentimental tear over his grandson—he'd have known that chin anywhere. Three fathers bob up simultaneously to claim little John. Never was paternity, and maternity, so thrust upon a pair of innocents. In their case, the stork had become a bird of prey."
The rest of the review article can be found here. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9901E7D91530E53ABC4850DFB0668382629EDE

You can find schedules here http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/index/
Looks like another good one tonight at 9:45
Star Of Midnight
Have a good weekend.Looks like rain for us.
j

Surprise visit/More SNOW

Well I am depressed!!! Just when you think it is gone.It is back.SNOW.
There is an old saying.It has to snow on the robins back 3 times then it will truly be spring. The robins got to Alden the 11 of March. They were here on March 6th in 2009. I usually don't mind the winter but this one seemed really long.





We had a very nice surprise. Yesterday our youngest son,Matthew,his 2, 4 legged children and his friend Jason stopped to stay over night on their way from Fl. To Washington state.
Jason had only seen snow once when he was in the 2nd grade.As you can see in the pictures it is snowing.The one with the hood is Jason.
Mr.T. and Matt.
Mr. T took my picture with Matt but it is blurry.














Wed. and Thurs. were beautiful. We moved the pile of snow left on the patio out onto the lawn so it would melt.There was NO snow left.Only what we moved.Funny to see grilling hot dogs with snow in the back ground.

I grilled hot dogs on Thursday.Nothing tastes better than that first grilled all beef frank!.Mother nature fooled us into thinking maybe just maybe spring was really here.Have a great weekend. j

Ice from the Iowa rivers

The ice went out of the river that runs through our town.The town sign reads Best town by a dam site.
We took a drive Sunday to the Rv and boat show.
As we got closer to home we noticed the river was much higher than when we left. There had been ice jams in several places below the dam.The ice above the dam broke sometime Sunday.
I took pictures in an areas north and west of town.It is a field.The trees along the river bank shows how far the water went to float the massive ice into the field.I don't know how it got between the trees.
The ice is over 8 inches thick.It is amazing how the water rose and left the ice on the field.
The week looks like it will be warmer. The snow is melting even at night.It is good to see the dirty ground after seeing nothing but snow for months.
Have a good week.j

Rag doll progress/last post

Poor thing has been waiting and waiting.I finally took the time to paint her acrylic base coat this morning.
I'm not quite sure where we are going but she is drying.She is laying on my light box silly thing.
Hard to find a place she would balance without getting paint all over.
It is hard to decide weather to do her in oils or in colored pencils and pens.This is the Sophie pattern by Mc calls.I still think she looks like she has Popeye arms.Hope to hide them in the clothes.I normally do my own patterns but this is a challenge for a yahoo group I belong to.

The days here in Iowa are damp, foggy, and just plain dreary. No sun for days.We are in a flood watch already and spring is not here yet.

After the flood of 2008 we are moving things out of harms way.

I have to tell you the cake recipe in the last post was really good. I left out the coconut cream(couldn't find it).Used the whole can of sweetened condensed milk.When I served it I put strawberries on the cake, then the whipped cream and coconut flakes.It was a hit with everyone that tried a piece.
Have a great weekend.Hope for sunny days.
j

2 new recipes/cake and bread

Two new recipes.
Coconut cake.Over on http://www.theoldcupboarddoorblog.com/
Willa has a really good cake recipe.
I could not find the coconut cream at our grocery so I left it out.Just using the sweetened condensed milk.

Tonight I am going to serve strawberries from our garden over the cake the cool whip, coconut flakes and choc. on top of the strawberries. I will let you know how it is.
I tried to hide the sample I tried but as you can see in the corner I didn't quite get that done. The sample was really good with the rest of the goodies on it,-----it will be sinful.

Ingredients:
1 (18.25 ounce) packaged white cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
2 teaspoon coconut extract
1 (14 ounce) can coconut cream
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 cup flaked coconut
The coconut cream is found in the mixed drink (cocktail drinks) aisle of the grocery store

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan.
In a large bowl, mix together the cake mix, eggs, oil, water and coconut extract. Hand beat for 2 mins and pour into the floured pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

In medium bowl, combine the coconut cream with the sweetened condensed milk and stir until smooth. When the cake comes out of the oven, poke holes into it in even rows using a large fork or chopsticks. Pour the cream mixture over, and allow it to soak into the cake. Allow to stand at room temp for 30 minutes and then refrigerate several hours or overnight.

In a large bowl, whisk whipping cream until soft peaks form. Add sugar and continue whipping until stiff. Spread over cooled cake. Sprinkle top with flaked coconut. I like to grate some chocolate on top of the whipped cream.
You can use Cool whip for the topping if you prefer.
Note: I use only half of the cream mixture. The full amount makes the cake very heavy but very good!!
Posted by The Old Cupboard Door at 12:00 AM 7 comments
Thursday, February 18, 2010



Over on Sandra's blog,
http://simplysandras.blogspot.com/2009/07/garlic-pull-apart-bread.html
She has a recipe for pull apart garlic bread.Let me tell you it is so good.I made 2 loaves yesterday using the frozen bread dough.

I cut it into 8 pieces then cut those in half. I followed the recipe directions but I did not use as much garlic. I used 1 and 3/4 Tablespoons and we like less garlic so I will only use 1 tablespoon the next time I make it.It took a couple hours for it to rise.
The mix was enough to do both loaves.I poured the remaining mixture over the top. I hate to waste anything.

This is Sandra's recipe.
You can make it with any white flour bread dough. You just make your bread as usual and then after it has risen once, you cut it into pieces like this or about 15 pieces per loaf:

In a small bowl, melt a stick of butter and add 2 TBS of beaten egg, 3 TBS garlic salt and 1 TBS parsley. Mix it up and dip each piece into the mixture and place in a greased loaf pan. For one loaf recipe use a one regular size loaf pan. They will be squished up real tight, but that is what you want so that it rises high. Doesn't it look good already???
Let it rise again, about 30 minutes and pop it in a preheated 350 oven for about 25 minutes. Brush the tops with butter and sprinkle some garlic on top. Then just pull a piece off and eat it!! My family LOVES this bread! I was going to take a picture of it when it came out, but everyone was digging in it before I remembered, so I only got the one lone piece at the top.


If you want to make it with frozen dough, here is what you do:


Thaw a one pound loaf of frozen dough on the counter for about 15 minutes. Cut into 15 pieces. They will be hard. Mix the butter, garlic, egg and parsley and dip each piece and put it in a regular loaf pan. Let rise for 1-1/2 hours and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

Have a good week.
j

Rag doll

Today I started the challenge doll for the vintage cloth doll group challenge.
It is hard for me to stay true to a pattern.I did ok but did not follow exactly.

The pattern is a remake of a vintage pattern.McCalls needs to up date this pattern.It is a basic doll pattern with a 5 part head.The arms are a bit to large and the feet a bit too short.
They do not have the straight of the grain markings on the pattern pieces so once you use the pattern those are lost to the pattern unless you mark them yourself.They also do not have the number of pieces you need to cut on the pattern piece.
That is basic 101 pattern design as far as I am concerned.

I added ears.Also knee and elbow seams so she sits very well.
The challenge is to do the doll and ward robe for her over the rest of the year.
Pattern calls for yarn hair but she may want painted hair.I'll see once I do the face.

Moving the sewing rooms is at a stand still until Mr. T. gets the rest of his things moved.
That is one of the reasons I needed a distraction with making a doll.Feels good to be doing them again.It has been too long.
so much for this day.Hope yours was good.
j

winter and spring

Same areas
I thought I would share a couple of pictures.This is last spring.










This is Now!There are just 21 days till spring.Mother nature better get in gear!!!!