A Hobbity Birthday to Me

Again, slightly misleading title as I didn’t have a full-on birthday party or anything, but I just realized that it cannot be considered a misnomer, but I’ll get to that in a sec.

First off, the obvious bit. Living in a home with someone whose dream is to own a bakery and do cake decorating for the rest of her life, I naturally got a cake decorated with love from my sister. She had wanted to do this last year, but had decided that she’d rather finish of my Narnia trilogy ice cream cakes at the time. So this year was her chance to make the one she really wanted to do: The Hobbit. Using my Bilbo cup-topper from my jumbo theater pop cup as her centerpiece, she covered the top of the cake in chocolate frosting (for dirt), a couple of blackened candy melts (for rocks), and then covered the sides in yellow with part of the Elvish text on the One Ring. Pretty special, yeah?

But the highlight of my birthday it what makes it really “Hobbit-y”: my sister and I used that day to go shopping for our Operation Christmas Child boxes. How does that relate to Hobbits? Hobbits give gifts on their birthday. And one of, if not the highlight of November for me is Operation Christmas Child. I had even used my sixteenth birthday party to get my friends pack a bunch of boxes with me and that remains my most memorable birthday. Anyway, this year, my sister and I hit the dollar store and Walmart for school supplies, toys, games, and shirts. We started including shirts in our boxes last year and I think we’ll continue to do that. This year, my sister included dolls in her boxes, something I’ve only done once, but we took it a step further than that: we bought three extra outfits per doll besides. This year, I also decided to include a soccer ball and air pump in one of my boxes. In the past, I’d just packed foam balls or hackysacks, but I really wanted to send a real ball this time. The ball took quite a while to deflate and I even had to get Dad’s help with that, but we finally got it flat and folded into a box. In the end, we had a total of five shoeboxes and some leftovers for next year. 🙂

Crafty Christmas

Yeah, I know, Christmas is some time over. But these pictures need to be posted somewhere sometime! 😀 So I’m not a crafty person. I like crafts, but I know very little about how to do them and whatnot. But it began with a dollar store close-out sale….

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My sister and I made this one together with a twig wreath, red Christmas ribbon, creamy ribbon, green felt, and three fake poinsettias. Thankfully, I’d helped some friends with a wreath before, which is how I learned to use a pencil to shove fabric into the wreath. 🙂

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Then came the news that I’d meet up with a group of online friends and the decision to handmake gifts for all of them. And there was a Secret Santa gift exchange at work. Following instructions I’d found on the internet, I made bird-shaped tea-bag holders. I found out just a couple days after they’d dried that my giftee liked cardinals, so I painted them accordingly with acrylic paint and coated them with some semi-glossy, transparent polyurethane varnish. (In case you’re wondering, you wrap the string of the tea-bag around the bird to keep the string from falling into your tea.)

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Then came the salt dough Christmas tree ornament shaped like a star holding a match. It’s an inside joke between a friend and me. 😀

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Then using the same cornstarch dough from before, I made Narnian tea-bag holders shaped as the Pevensies’ gifts (not counting Edmund; he didn’t have a gift, so I went with his shield). All but the horn are have “hooks” of a kind on the backside to allow them to rest on the edge of the cup; the horn’s mouth performs that function.

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Then there came the 3D foil picture, made with hot glue, aluminum foil, a regular glue stick, and black shoe polish (instructions here). The picture is of a cross and a manger and the writing reads, “He made a way in a manger to make a way to the cross.”

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And then the hot glue ornament (instructions here).

 

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And the Mirkwood Leaf pendant made of salt dough, painted with acrylics, and varnished. The shape is roughly based on the leaves of Lorien (aka the Fellowship’s cloak pins), but painted with Mirkwoodish colours.

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This one is an Arkenstone ornament. The back is based on the decal on the Dwarvish throne. The Arkenstone is a baked marble (which makes the cracks on the inside). Behind it is a bit of white glue and a bit of light blue paint so the stone doesn’t look like the same colour as the dough.

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This was the item most up my alley: sketching! Just a bit of Big Hero 6 fanart, but I’m rather proud of it. 🙂

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And last but not least, the wrap-around bookmark, a mix of embroidery and cross-stitch on a canvas ribbon. The button is made of salt dough. (And yes, there is a reason why I went with a giraffe and a smiley button.)

And yes, despite the crunched schedule I was on, I finished everything in time, got everything down intact, and had a blast! 😀