I remember as a kid my grandparents had this long white, deep chest freezer that was in their basement with a single naked light bulb hanging above it. I imagined it would have been a good place to hide anything you never wanted someone to find. Inside the freezer were bags, and bags of tin foiled covered food that was older than I was. Layers and layers of freezer burned meats that had been on sale and vegetables from seasons ago. My grandparents grew up during the depression, so saving every last scrap of food was imperative to their survival even though they now were going grocery shopping every week. There was a an old metal coffee can next to the stove top for them to scrape their bacon fat into. And when it was full, it was placed carefully into that chest freezer in case the end of the world was tomorrow.
In their 'root cellar' were countless Bell jars full of preserves. I'm talking countless. Many shelves high and stacked to the back wall like a grocery aisle. I can vividly remember my grandparents working together like a machine to seal up jars and jars of pickles, beans, tomatoes, corn, everything from their huge garden every summer at their Winnipesaukee lake house. I don't know when they were planning on eating all that food, but it was there "just in case." It must of been done out of habit. I remember thinking that I was never going to waste my time preserving food, or freezing it. It seemed to silly when I could just go to the store and get a fresh rotisserie chicken, and a bag of pre-made salad.
I grew up on a dairy farm but was very uninterested in the business and concepts as a teenager. My mom spent hours in her gardens. She has the greenest thumb. She knows how to sew anything, cook everything and has a mean creative edge. I was never interested in what she was doing but certainly retained most of the information through what must of been osmosis.
I've come drastically far since I used to think those silly thoughts and now am more interested in all the things I didn't like as a younger woman. I don't know if it's part of my dna, or if all that work my family did in their gardens and craft rooms was imprinted onto me.
Because, I am in love with the idea of freezing food for later, canning for gifts, sewing, glue gunning, and stretching myself creatively.

I created this blog for my future and because of my past.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Paper and pumpkins.

 I accomplished the pumpkin paper decorating.  It was certainly not as easy as eluded to in the magazine!  I should have guessed that it sounded too good to be true, but there was no way to find out until I actually started cutting the paper up and gluing it to the pumpkin!  I had that awesome Martha Stewart paper that I picked up from Michael's, it was the largest paper in size because I wasn't sure how big the pumpkins were going to be until I bought them.  I found these little pie pumpkins for 30 cents a pound on my way to a dog walk.  It was this little farm with an honor system in place for purchases.  I couldn't resist the baskets and baskets of those little weird, bumpy gourds they had, or the beautiful butternut squash (even though I froze about four pounds of my own)...so, I stuffed $6 into the soap box and went on my merry way with five weird gourds, four pie pumpkins, and two butternut squash!  What a deal.

I started by cutting the paper into one inch strips and putting Mod Podge on the back with a paint brush and pressing it on the the pumpkin.  I kept doing this until I realized that it wasn't going to work all the way around because the length of the strips don't account for the roundness of the pumpkin, and the gaps that the straight cuts make when trying to round it all out.  The pumpkin above was very tricky to make.  I started with my favorite paper out of the pack, the spider webs - and quickly found it to be very challenging to line the webs lines up on the curvature of the pumpkin.  So, I had to make due and piece it together the best I could.  I ended up doing one web and leaving a space between the next one, then puzzle piecing a different patterned paper in-between the webs.  It looks great now that it's done.  But I almost threw in the towel.  My suggestion for you is to find a pattern that can be overlapped a bit on the "turns" of the paper application.  The lines will be less noticeable.  Or, start with the strips and going around the pumpkin leaving a space between each paper, so you can see the pumpkin - then go around a second or third time until it's covered.  And don't give up, finish the pumpkin!  Its going to look great when you're finished even if it's not going in for submission to Martha.

 The next one I did was with fabric.  MUCH more forgiving.  I would highly recommend doing it this way for all pumpkins.  It was so much easier because I could saturate the fabric and it just molded to the shape of the pumpkin.  It's very cute.  And it only took about twenty minutes.
This little beauty is probably my favorite.  The paper pattern was very forging and I could over lap it and it's hardly noticeable. 


 I did this one with skull and cross bones ribbon.  I was originally going to wrap the whole thing, but the orange is so beautiful on this pumpkin - that spreading the ribbon out had a cool effect.  I thought about covering the orange spaces with silver glitter, but I held back.  This one is in my kitchen.  I also coated the pumpkin with mod podge to help preserve it.  Which you can do with any gourd or pumpkin you have to make it last. 



I finished off each pumpkin with a thin coat of the Mod Podge.  And put them around the house.  Every one that has come over has complimented them!
I was also thinking that if there was a picture you like, or you had a few small Halloween images on paper - the pumpkin could get painted the same color as the paper background and then the images could get glued to the pumpkin.
I'm thinking of finding some spiders on paper and gluing just a few on the bottom of the pumpkin - as if they were marching on it.  The possibilities are endless. 

Happy papering!
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