Excuse me, Ma’am, There’s a Life-Sized Witch in Your Window.

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Busted Button

So- I have a massive window above my stairwell on the front of my house- I’m talking huuuuge:

It even has a huge cill, which is reminiscent of a window seat- it would make such a great reading nook- except for the fact that it is inaccessible… well my hubby managed to display some of his Lego collection up there but it isn’t the most inviting location, considering that it is 8 feet off the ground.

It’s a great window- it looks pretty and lets a lot of light in, but there are a two problems with it:

1: It is really hard to come up with a way to decorate it for holidays (and I love my holiday decorating!)

2: It gives a plain view into my kitchen, where I reside for most of the day, and I like       to not wear clothes  my privacy.

So, I was pretty excited that this decoration I decided to do solves both of these problems! I figured this window would be the perfect place to display a big, creepy, Halloweeny silhouette.

To make a silhouette that large, I just used some tar paper, which you can find at any hardware store for relatively cheap. Now I needed some inspiration for my decoration!

I love you, Martha. She is the master of creating anything, and she is obsessed with Halloween, so I knew she could help me!

In her Halloween Handbook, I found some awesome templates. She also gives away these templates on her website here.

I chose the witch, but before I could enlarge her, I needed some help to hold down the corners of my paper! But where was I gonna find 4 single guys to do my bidding on a busy weekend morning?

Oh, hey fellas! Don’t mind if I do.

Thanks, boys!

So now you need to transfer the image from the graph onto your huge piece of paper. You can do what the instructions tell you on the link to the template, or you can use the grid system, which is explained here, and works great…

…but I just shook what my mama gave me and drew that baby free-hand.

Next, cut that witch right out!

Now… the difficult part. How was I going to get up to that window when the hubby wasn’t around to help me? I suppose I could have waited an hour… but I hate waiting… and I wanted the witch to greet everyone when they got home.

It was so high… but the banisters were pretty stable…

So up I went! Note the tag on my inside-out sweater. FASH-ON.

If I had the supplies, I think I would have used a really sticky masking tape to hang the witch, but all I had was a bit of red hockey tape and some sticky tack, which I’ve had kicking around for over a decade…

I think people used to use this stuff a lot more than they do now! It gave me memories LOL!

Before I stuck the paper to the window, I made sure there was no condensation or anything that would get in the way of a good affix-ing.

And there she was- standing pretty in her place of honor!

And I was stuck.

I guess it’s easier to climb up than it is to get down… and since I’m preggo, I didn’t want to get too risky… although I had no problem getting up… heh.

So I had to wait til these things got home:

“Dad there’s a witch in the window! And what is that silhouette next to her?” Hehehe.

After my dramatic rescue, I stared at this gal for a long while, and figured she needed something more…

Link! Stop playing with the broom! WAITTTTT!!!!!! THAT’S IT!!!!

“Get your paws off my broom, Ma, I’ve got things to do, girl.”

K fine, whatever, I can find a better broom anyways. Stupid cleaning baby 😦


Perfect!!!

Now, to wait for nightfall to snap the perfect picture!

There’s my witch! I love her so much! I’m already thinking about all the different silhouettes I can put up in that window depending on the season/ holiday! It is so festive, but simple, and not tacky (in my opinion, which borders on tacky most of the time.)

What a perfect solution to my naked cooking privacy issue!

Well, clearly I love me some Halloween and if you want to see more Busted Button Halloweeny-ness, Check out my October posts so far:

Button Tree Pumpkin

Jack Skellington Pumpkin

Button BOO! Pumpkin (with a fun surprise)

How to use pumpkin guts to make a delicious stock! 

I’m working on some rats, cats and bats to put in my other front windows, I will share those soon. Hopefully I can get them done before Halloween! So much to do, so little time! I’ve still got to post about pumpkin seeds, and my fourth and final pumpkin of the year! Oh, and I can’t forget about sharing my pumpkin-puree tips!

I hope you are all having a fabulous Halloween season too!

Happy naked cooking  Sunday evening?

*UPDATE*

I finished the rest of my silhouettes! They are from the same place I got the witch template- here. 

Here are some pics of my living room and kid’s room windows:

Posted in Craft Tutorials, Halloween | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

What to do With Pumpkin Guts (And a Most-Delicious Stock and Mushroom Soup Recipe)

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Busted Button

DON’T THROW AWAY YOUR PUMPKIN GUTS!!!! Seriously. Hundreds of thousands of pumpkin guts are thrown away every year, and it is a shame, because they hold a secret power!!!! These guts are so deep and flavorful when prepared into a stock!!! This is my absolute favorite soup broth to use in ANY soup recipe! It is so incredibly tasty and it is basically free to make. Let’s get started.

Take a nice pile of pumpkin guts (from a medium sized pumpkin) and remove most of the seeds (I’ll be sharing recipes for roasting the seeds asap).

 

 

Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large pot, and add the innards. Stir for a few minutes.

 

Next you can either add 1 large, roughly chopped onion (you don’t even need to remove the skin since this is all going to be strained later), or you can start collecting veggie scraps and putting em in a freezer bag. I collect things like squash guts, carrot tops, onion scraps, leek scraps etc. Some veggies that won’t really work are the stanky ones- like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, etc. Anyways, when my bag is full, I just dump it in with my pumpkin guts, and stir it around for another few minutes.

Then you just simply add between 6 and 8 cups of water, bring it to a boil, and simmer for between 30-60 minutes (depending on how rushed you are haha).

When your stock has simmered for enough time, strain it into a big bowl, and you have gold!

This is a beautiful site for me to see. I hope it excites a few more of you too. Then I wont feel like such an easily excited loser.

Like I said before, this stock can be used in ANY recipe that requires chicken or veggie stock. In my opinion it is even MORE flavorful than its meaty competitors.

Since, I’m here and we are all waiting around with a pile of golden broth and nowhere to put it- well I suppose you could freeze it at this point for a later time- why don’t I share one of my favorite vegetarian soup recipes!

I was inspired to make a non- cream-based mushroom soup last year and found a recipe online. I changed it enough, that I’m pretty sure I can just take all the credit now. Observe:

You feel free to print that recipe right off. Classy molassy over here today. Oh, spellcheck, don’t act like ‘molassy’ isn’t a word!

So the first thing you want to do is fry up your onion and garlic in some olive oil in a large pot for a few minutes, or until the onion becomes translucent. Next add your 3-4 cups of sliced mushrooms, dried herbs, and chili flakes. (You can use any combination of any kind of mushrooms here- I just used button and brown mushrooms because it’s what I had on hand.)

*A.D.D. side note* My brother used to have a mushroom growing in his bathtub. And he just let it grow and grow… Weird.

After the mushrooms get all coated and cooky for around 5-10 minutes, add your lentils, barley and fresh thyme. I suppose you could use 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves, but this is one spot where fresh thyme really makes a good difference!

What pretty, healthy food 🙂

After you add the lentils etc, pour your 2 quarts (8ish cups) of magical pumpkin gut stock (or any veggie or chicken stock) into the pot, and simmer for around half an hour. Season with salt and pepper to taste., but remember the stock has no added salt, so you might need more than you’d usually add to a soup.

 

Now shovel it in your face.  You can even put some of the soup in a small mason jar:

Hahaaha. I love sharing pointless ideas! Gosh, can you tell I didn’t get enough sleep last night? Sorry!

Anyways, if you haven’t seen my first 3 pumpkin posts be sure to check them out here:

Four Little Pumpkins

Part One: Button Tree Pumpkin

Part Two:Jack Skellington-O-Lantern

Part Three: Button BOO! Pumpkin 

BUT! If you realllly want to see what you should be doing with a pumpkin, check out this awesome video… that involves bullets LOL (Don’t try this at home.)

Happy Pumpkin gutting/shooting! (Who knew carving and cooking pumpkins was such an intense sport!?)

~Dot

Posted in Dairy-Free recipes, Halloween, Recipes, vegetarian/vegan recipes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Four Little Pumpkins (Part 3) (And a bonus gender-reveal surprise!)

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Busted Button

I am so excited to share pumpkin # 3 with you, because, once again, it features buttons! I love these button pumpkins! Pardon the rushed writing, I’ve got 3 lil kids hanging off of me (and one sucking the life out of me from the inside out lol).

WOAH that reminds me- I haven’t shared my gender-reveal cake with you all!!! A few days ago I found out the gender of this little baby! I made a cake with a pink or blue center, then iced it completely to cover any hint of the color. I let my 8 year old daughter cut it open to reveal the surprise! Here is the cake:

Tell ya what- I’ll put a photo of the inside of the cake at the bottom of the post. What an exciting post this will be!

NOW back to the pumpkin…

Cut it and gut it like so. (More details on this in Part 1 of my pumpkin journey)

Save the seeds and even the guts! I have some great roasted pumpkin seed recipes as well as this delicious broth made from the pumpkin innards!

Next, use a BOO! template (I got mine here) to trace your pattern onto the pumpkin with a sharp object.

Go over the indentation with a pen if you want it to be more clear. Note the odd texture of the pumpkin… my kids did that… they just felt the need to push a pencil lightly into the face of it one afternoon. Weirdos.

Next, bring out the big guns…

AKA black buttons.

I’m using pins rather than glue to attach these buttons to my pumpkins for two reasons: 1- I plan on reusing the buttons, and 2- I plan on eating the pumpkins. It would be quicker and easier to use hot glue, but with all the pumpkin recipes out there, how can you resist cutting up the old thing, cooking it, then freezing it into recipe-sized portions? I will definitely be posting a detailed tutorial on my favorite way to process a pumpkin! It also makes awesome baby food!

OH! Another distraction:

My friend suggested that I make a way to have some light shine through these button pumpkins- so I took a sharp tool and fashioned some little holes here and there. I think it will look so pretty at night! Feel free to skip this step if you want to.

Definitely looks like it has some sort of disease though. Anyways, back to buttoning…

Unlike my first button pumpkin, button size makes a big difference here. Choose buttons based on the size of your pattern. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but make sure to keep the small buttons on the smaller parts of the lettering!

After I finished the lettering, I felt like this pumpkin needed something else…

So I pinned some spider and bat embellishments all around. Cute hey?? I saw the original inspiration for this pumpkin on Pinterest. I couldn’t find an original source tho (I don’t like Pinterest for that- if you pin something, try to make sure that it links back to the original source- as someone who shares her creations online, it is really annoying to see one of my photos with 1000 repins that direct back to some random european website. Great now I’m in a bad mood. Speaking of which- Lets get back to the pregnancy surprise!

I actually video-taped my daughter cutting the gender-reveal cake, and if you want to watch that (it is so sweet- her reaction is awesome, and my son, who doesn’t quite understand what’s going on, is hilarious) Check it out here. 

AAAAAND the verdict is…

IT’S A GIRL!!!!!!!! YAYAYAYYAYAYAYYYYY!!!!!!!

Seriously, after having one girl and then 3 boys consecutively, we are pretty excited to be having some more estrogen in the house! Let me share a cute little ultrasound photo of her:

Introducing Flora Nightingale ❤ She is so cute and precious!

Well I guess this post didn’t turn out so rushed after all!

Happy pumpkin-making and gender-caking!

~ Dot

Posted in Craft Tutorials, Halloween, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments