Turkey hair clips

I made these for a couple coworkers and a couple kids at work last night, the youngest recipient called him "Tango Turkey Bubbles"... I'm not sure why but it totally made my day!!

What you need:

Fall colored silk flowers (I used 2 and got 4 turkeys out of it)
brown felt
orange felt
eye balls (I like these tiny black eyes better than the googly eyes)
hair combs (my local craft store sells them for a quarter a piece, but if you have old ones you can recycle)
hot glue gun


The how-to:

Remove the stem from the flowers, then the plastic "caps" found at the base that helps hold it together.

Remove each layer of petal and sort by size/color

Cut the layers in half

Start layering petals together to make your feathered tail, attaching each layer with hot glue

Free hand a turkey body out of the felt and attach him to the petals at both the bum and the head, otherwise the "heavy" eyes make him droopy.

Attach eyes and a nose

Glue turkey onto comb with curved side up--that way he faces out when you wear him in your FABULOUS hair!

If you don't want to wear a turkey on your head, you can glue them to napkin rings, place cards, or whatever. They're very simple!!

I found the link from where I got the idea, so click here if you need step by step pictures!

"Back to school...

back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool..." Between Adam Sandler's song and the Staples commercial, back to school time is a wonderful time of the year. Even if I'm not actually going back to school, I still enjoy it!



We have made so many great things for our classroom (with so much being purchased at back to school bargain prices!) and it's only been a week!

Here is our awesome class tree. We had a paper one that a certain student loved to rip off the wall daily so we messed him up and painted it. He ran over the day it was painted and said "Oh! No rip!" (he's almost 4, but has the verbal skills of a younger child.) Now he sits at the bottom and looks at the acorns we have decorated our tree...almost like he's plotting how to get them down.

We've not got an owl I drew sitting on the branch. He was in the knot on the tree, but that was too low. Now he's watching class from the tree. And we move him around so the kids come in from school and have to go find the owl. It's adorable.

We are doing a lot of coloring activities now too so tonight while I waited for the laundry to finish I sat here and sharpened every colored pencil. Thank heavens for electric sharpeners! Now the kids can actually use the pencils. Novel idea, I know :)

Ian's started school today too. He really liked it which is awesome. I got him a desk this semester too so he's even more excited about that! Sad but true haha. He loves having a place he can put his computer and printer and papers that doesn't have to get cleaned up when company comes or when we want to have dinner at the table! I love it too. Between the desk, the gazelle, and the tv set up for a wii back in the second bedroom, it's a good thing we don't have a kid yet! I'm not sure where one would go! (Obviously we'd rearrange/get rid of stuff but it's funny to think of just putting a bassinet on top of the desk haha)

I hope you are all enjoying back to school time! Good luck to you!

It's only September but I'm planning for November...

I'm cast iron pan shopping today. They're some trouble, but I do love them. Macy's is having a Labor Day sale and it's only $25! Regular $55! I like that a lot. So now I have to decide if I'm healthy enough to go down there/convince Ian of the importance of the pan so he'll go get it. I want to go down on Monday for the museum or the state fair (also if I'm healthy enough) but they'll only hold it until tomorrow night. Unless I call tomorrow and have them hold it. I don't know what to do!

I am so ready to cook up soups and stews and roasts. I am already thinking about Thanksgiving dinner. I want to have Thanksgiving here in my apartment and invite people over that can't go home. But I want to cook the turkey and make the fixings. It'll be our first thanksgiving on our own. I am SO excited.

The only thanksgiving dinner I have ever made by myself was a stuffed salmon fillet with linguine and a bottle of sparkling cider.  It was delighful but lonely.

Anyone have a good Thanksgiving cooking fail story? :)

It's feeling a lot like fall because...

1) I wore a sweater to work yesterday! It's green with a pink drangonfly on it. I love it!!


2) I've got my first bout of strep of the season. You could set a clock to my strep cycle...if you wanted a really slow, every 3-4 month clock. I woke up today and it was 46 degrees out, which felt nice for my fever when I went to the doctor. I told the nurse I had strep and she said, "Uh huh, you have a sore throat..." and then asked me all the other questions nurses ask. The doctor came in and in less than 30 seconds of examining me he said, "Wow, the nurse should have been able to tell this was strep, not just a sore throat!" He was amazed I could still sound normal while talking and that I hadn't come in earlier. It didn't feel like strep until this morning, but he said it must have been like this a few days (explaining the fever and other symptoms) for it to look how it did. And the last few days I've just kinda felt icky and haven't eaten much of anything that would have irritated my throat so I guess that didn't trigger anything either.


I looked for a picture online because I wanted to show you how yucky my throat was, but didn't want to take a picture of my own throat, but the ones online are WAY funky! Mine is gross, but not like those ones. It just looks/feels like someone took a knife and chopped little cuts at my ginormous tonsils. You're welcome for the mental image.


So I don't leave you on a gross note, now that it's feeling like fall, I am busting out my fall tunes.


3) This (and most of Ingrid Michaelson's songs) has been stuck in my head. Fall just reminds me of falling in love. I'm not sure why, since most of my relationships have been in the spring and summer, but I love the way this song makes me feel. You should also definitely check out "Falling in Love in a Coffee Shop" by Landon Pigg and "Love You in the Fall" by Paul Westerberg (not a real video, but just listen in the background haha).

Enjoy the end of summer folks, fall is coming and I am SO excited!