O' Fun For... lazy bums

No, this isn't about bums. Just the lazy. I am officially going on blog maternity leave. The O' Fun For All blog administrators are very generous with their maternity policy- I get leave until the kid is born plus maybe a month or so, depending on how long it takes before life gets relatively normal again. I am due to have this kid April 30, but I'll at least let you know when she comes on out to join us, and possibly post something here and there in the meantime, or maybe not. So, starting now, this post is....

On Maternity Leave

See you once this kid decides to leave my poor bladder/back/stomach space alone!!

O' Fun For... clearing out the tumbleweeds

Can you see the big pile of them here on my blog? It's even bigger than the one that's been building all winter on the side of my house. So, here's a short but useful post to clear away the blog tumblweeds that have been blowing by...

It's a recipe for Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad O' Goodness. A few weeks ago I went to the Sunflower Farmer's Market in Orem. (Thanks for the tip Tiffany!) Kind of like Trader Joe's for all you Cali folks. You can buy various marinated goodness by the pound, so I loaded up a pound's worth of marinated sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts. After careful comsideration of what exactly to do with these tasty treasures, I came up with this recipe. I hope you like it...

Chicken Pesto Pasta Salad O' Marinated Goodness

*1 lb. total marinated artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, and mushrooms, chopped up

*1/2 lb jack cheese, cubed into tiny little cubes

*2 seasoned (I used a citrusy seasoning, but use whatever) chicken breasts, cooked and cubed

*1- 12 oz. package of fun noodles (spiral, wagon wheel, shell, etc.) cooked

* Half a jar (so I used about 11-ish oz.) pesto sauce- I used the kind from Costco

Mix it all up in a ginormous bowl and eat it. Mmmmm. I put some in the fridge and some in ziplocs in the freezer. It is nice cold or hot.

O' Fun For... keeping up my BS skills

...and by that I mean bologna sandwich skills. You have to break those skills out in college art classes often as the professors want you to explain the meaning behind your paintings, and there isn't usually much to explain. See, a rookie might say, "uhhh, you told us all to paint that bowl of fruit... so I guess.. it's a bowl of fruit." A seasoned BSer would respond, "Well... (tilt head and look introspective) I guess I was trying to represent the fruit as the different personalities we all possess. I tried to capture the vulnerability of the peach through use of soft brushstrokes and flesh-toned hues, the obvious superiority complex of the pears by outlining them in black, and the inaccessibility of the pomegranate by keeping it unfinished."

You see the skills you learn? Invaluable.

So, here's what the heck that has to do with today's post. My awesome Mac died, I got a new computer, and I don't yet have Photoshop on it. I took pictures of recent projects, but need to crop them and such before I post them, so until then, please enjoy this exercise in the fine art of BS:


Here is a painting I have been working on. I haven't picked up my oil paints in years, but I think it all came back pretty quickly. Just like riding a bike.



The gesso I used must have been old- the paint is cracking pretty badly. The woman in the picture wasn't so much posing for me as being a crazy window-peeping stalker-type, but I thought I'd make lemonade out of that situation by using the time she spent staring eerily though my craft room window to get some painting done. Besides hollering "Cats! They're everywhere!" or random bouts of eye twitching, she held still for hours. Although, before I could get her eyebrows done, she heard sirens a few blocks away and took off running. Oh-well. I should really call the cops and report her tomorrow, since I suppose the whole situation was really pretty creepy. Hey, and I have a pretty good picture to identify her by now, don't I?!



I don't know where the insanity which fuels my thinking process flows from, but there seems to be an endless supply. Fun times.

O' Fun For... people who like chess and their families

I realized I have never revealed the super-secret present I made for James' Christmas present. Well, the wait is over. Here is a picture of the super-secret present:



Still confused about just what is is? Well, I have a tradition of giving James a chess set each year for Christmas. This year I forgot to get one until after I had spent all the money I had budgeted on his other presents. So, I made a set of chess pieces from our family. I admit, it looked a lot cooler in my head, but there it is. James is the king, I am the queen, Toby is the Bishop, Brady the Knight, Ellie will be the rook just as soon as we get an actual picture of her, and Duke is all of the pawns. It worked well that we had the pictures of us in the Vanguard-themed party hats from James' birthday. I should learn to take more pictures as I make things so I can have better tutorials, but I guess a step-by-step will do for anyone who actually feels the need to have one of these super-cool chess sets of their very own.

1. Find pictures of all the people/animals that will be used. You need to see their whole face. Crop them in photoshop so you have just the faces, each about 1-1.5" wide.

2. Still in photoshop, cut and paste each face onto a letter-paper-sized blank background. If you are having trouble getting the images to stay the right size after pasting, make sure the resolution is the same for both the original image and the background you are pasting onto. You will need to paste the faces multiple times so you get the right amount of images for all the pieces. Make: 2 of the king's face, 2 of the queen's face, 4 of the bishop's face, 4 of the knight's face, 4 of the rook's face, and 16 of the pawn's face.

3. Copy each sheet of faces you made, and then flip the images horizontally, so you have the mirror-images of each sheet. This will give you a front and a back for each piece.

4. Print the sheets of faces you made, and cut them out.

5. Using fimo (polymer) clay, shape the bases for the pieces. I rolled the clay into balls about 3/4-1" wide, and then smooshed down from the top all around so they had flat bottoms. If you want marbley pieces, fold two colors together before you roll it into a ball. Use whatever colors and designs you want to designate which piece is which. (crowns, horseshoes, castle towers, etc.) Make a hole in the top-center of each piece with the wire you plan on using to hold the heads on. Bake the clay according to package directions.

6. Use wire-cutters to cut pieces of thick, sturdy wire for the posts of your pieces. Mine were about 2.5-3" long. You can make them taller or shorter for different pieces.

7. Cut a piece of packing tape or clear contact paper the size of your head-pieces. Lay one cut-out head face down onto the sticky side.

8. Put a thin row on hot glue onto the top of one of your wire posts. Lay it onto the back of the head piece you have taped. Use the mirror-image cutout of the same head to sandwich the gluey-wire. cover with another pice of tape. Now you have a sandwich- tape, head, wire, head, tape.

9. Cut away the excess tape- now it should just cover the head-piece with a bit extra around it.

10. Put a tiny bit of glue onto the end of the wire with no head. Shove it into the hole on the fimo-clay base.

TA-DA!! See? No? Well, I'm sorry, but that's the best I can do without pictures.

Next time I'll take pictures so you have some idea of what the heck I am talking about. Tutorials work better with images.