Clay: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.

In my last post I showed you the two polymer clay characters our granddaughters made for me.

Our seventeen year old made "Dee-Dee", with the purple hair.

And our thirteen year old made the French, "Mi-Mi", with the blue hair.

It was my job to bake them, since the girls had to leave that night.

A couple of years ago, our now thirteen year old granddaughter, gave me this foot that she'd made out of clay. I thought I'd stick it in there too, since it had never been baked.

It looked so cool - like marble!

I baked them at 250 degrees for thirty minutes.

(Along with Black Dog, which the oldest girl made, and a face which the youngest made.)

Then I left them in the pan to cool, before touching them. They're very breakable when they're hot.

Apparently, not all clay can be baked!!

I'm so sad. I loved that foot! :(

I finally got my supplies together and began a practice-version of my pal,

"Mel-Mel" and "Ga-Ga". (That would be me.)

I wanted them as tiny as the original Mel-Mel.

New tools! Yay!!

I began by kneading the clay to make it soft.

At this point, Ga-Ga is looking a lot like Charlie Brown to me. Yikes!

Looking better!

My idea was to leave the faces blank, so that I could paint expressions on them, depending on what they were doing. I was going to use erasable pens, but they didn't 'erase'. Dangit!

My new idea is to paint the faces using Acrylic Paints.

I know they'll have the same expressions forever... like Botox Babes.

Oh well.

Ta Da! It's Ga-Ga!!

And here comes Mel-Mel!!

Her first hair-cut.

And here they are!! Best buddies!

I baked them and introduced them to the other characters.

They hit it off immediately!

I made a couple of hand-bags and a doggie blanket with some of the left-over clay.

(I love reverting back to kid-hood!:)

To stand Dee-Dee and Mi-Mi up and keep them from falling over, because their hair makes them top-heavy, (I can relate) I stuck Museum Putty under their feet.

Keeping this in mind, before I baked Mel-Mel and Ga-Ga, I really pushed the clay down hard, trying to make their feet flat (I can relate).

It worked great on Mel-Mel, but I had to squish Ga-Ga down a couple more times.

Note to self:

Always take a good close look at the rear of a character, before baking it!!

This is either a really ugly butt in need of some major squats, or they're saggy panty-hose!

Maybe I'll just photograph her from the front.

Here they are with the "Star", the original and petite Mel-Mel.

My big paws just couldn't make them any smaller.

It should be interesting trying to paint their faces! Yikes!!

Our granddaughters promised to make their version of Mel-Mel and Ga-Ga, for me!

And I can't wait!!

Let's get this party started!!

Signing off for now,

gabriele

Dessert And Granddaughters - What's Not To Love?

I'm SO excited! Our 13 and 17 year old granddaughters came to visit!!

They may be older, but they're as "adorkable" as the little ones! Seriously.

(Adorkable = adorable & dork.)

They love making raw desserts -

and the recipe we decided on was by the beautiful, Swedish, Karolina Norman.

It's her awesome Chocolate Swirl Pecan Pie. OMG!!

They got started right after they woke up. (Kids - how do they do it?!)

Here they're blending the Pecans into flour. (It's a BlendTec blender.)

Dates and other ingredients were mixed in the food-processor, for the crust.

Then this one mixed them a little more, with freshly washed hands.

(Thanks Toots!)

After the ingredients were thoroughly mixed, that one put them into a pan.

I said to "push it into the pan" not kill it!!

There ya go. Easy does it.

That one's blending the ingredients for the Vanilla Cream.

We could have stopped right there and been happy! Yum!

Forgot what she's doing there, but I like the picture.

And I love this one!! :-D

She likes to 'pop' into a picture, when you least expect it.

Into the nut-milk bag it goes.

This one's straining the Vanilla Cream.

That one's mixing the ingredients for the Chocolate Cream.

Lookin' good, Girls!

This one's blending the ingredients.

I have to say, and the girls totally agree -

This Chocolate is THE BEST Chocolate we've EVER made!!

We could use it for Puddings, for Toppings for Frostings, for Truffles, etc.!

Lightbulbs were going off!! (Thank you, Karolina!!)

That one's putting the Vanilla Cream into the crust.

By now, a lot of finger-licking was going on. (Mine included.)

Nobody cared about Kooties anymore.

The face-of-anticipation is priceless!

I've discovered something about myself...

I can't follow recipe directions AND take photographs at the same time.

Karolina said to be sure not to leave the Creams in the refrigerator too long.

They should not be too hard. They don't swirl together well, when they're like that.

But, the girls still had fun smushing them around!

And finally... heeeere it is!!

Heaven on a plate!

This one was wishing I'd hurry and just let her eat!

And that one couldn't - and wouldn't - wait!!

I know that our pie looks nothing like Karolina's -

but I bet it tastes just as good! Her recipes ROCK!!

Before the day was over, they both surprised me with little clay characters that they'd made for me!

How cute are THEY?!

They will be the friends of the new and improved "Mel-Mel".

The one with the purple hair

is, "Dee-Dee".

And the one with the blue hair,

is the French,

"Mi-Mi".

Thank you, Girls!!

We miss you already!

Come back SOON!!

I first heard of Karolina Norman, when my eldest daughter came across her Etsy shop.

When I saw that she had an e-book of Raw Recipes for sale, I couldn't wait to buy it.

The book is fabulous! As is her website, "Love Raw"!! Talk about inspiration! Wow!!

And this is her wonderful art: "Starbringer Creations".

Thank you again, Ms. Karolina Norman -

Raw Food Creator, Author and Artist!! You're the best!!

Signing off for now,

gabriele

Raw Portobello Burger - And The Runaway Kid

As some of you know, we had our five year old grandson and seven year old granddaughter with us for two weeks. The idea was to feed them living, raw food for the entire time.

We drove to the store and bought some organic Portobello mushrooms, lettuce, avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and sprouts.

Here they are in their new, clean aprons.

(We miss those screamin' brats!)

The first thing was peeling the cucumbers.

Talk about concentration!

They were only allowed to start peeling half-way up on the cucumber.

I figured they'd want to use those fingers again.

I let them choose their own dishes, which they liked.

I collect fun dishes - which I like.

They started piling things on and I kept telling them how great it was going to taste.

(The power of suggestion! :)

A little bit of onion.

A few slices of cucumber.

Some sprouts. Pat, pat, pat.

A slice of tomato.

She's so proud!

(Or is that disguised fear?)

Putting the lid on.

And... here it is... the first bite!

This might be a good time to tell you that this little girl "is not a fan of mushrooms".

If it was me, I'd say she 'hates' them, but her Dad (my youngest son) taught her to say that instead. He actually 'hates' them too! Big-time.

She took that first bite, jumped off the chair, ran to the trash and spit it out!!

She apologized and said that she had to do that, or she was going to "bomit".

Bless her little heart for trying!

He actually liked his and ate it all. Yay!

The next day we made a really simple, but delicious, quick dessert:

We broke six bananas in four pieces each, and froze them for a couple of hours.

We put them in a food-processor along with one tablespoons of organic, raw

Cacao Powder. And raw Chocolate Ice-Cream was born!

(And she forgave me for the mushroom.)

Here they are - showing their true colors.

They're adorable and they're dorks.

They are "THE ADORKABLES"!!

(And they'll be back!)

Signing off for now,

gabriele