🏷️ holiday

@Dianne likes painting ceramics, so I thought she'd enjoy making salt dough ornaments. They're much more free-form artsy yet employ all the same techniques.

First, we made the dough - 1:1 flour:salt + enough water to make it like dough. This was almost a cup of water with one cup each flour & salt. We had also made chocolate chip cookie dough, molasses cookies and sour cream sugar cookie dough that day, so we put it in the fridge to cut & bake later.

The next day, Tanya helped us roll out the cookies and cut them. Then we baked them for nearly two hours, turning halfway through.

They sat for a few days while we finished up the other cookie baking and gathered paints, glitter, mod-podge, brushes, and pretty paper. (A filled loyalty punch card at Hyatt's gets you at $20 gift card!!)

Christmas Eve, Tanya came over and we started the decorating process. We sanded first - definitely recommend this step, it was surprisingly helpful to have smooth(er) surfaces to work with. We painted, decoupaged, glittered and otherwise manipulated the ornaments. Having lots of ornament hooks handy was very helpful as we painted both sides. Paint - dry - paint - dry - modpodge - dry - glitter glue - dry ... Note: mod-podge THEN glitter glue! We got quite a few started and nearly complete.

Christmas Day we hosted the afterparty from Brena's Misfit Christmas Brunch and people created more interesting ornaments. The lady with the dress is from that session.

We went to NYC Saturday to late late Tuesday night, so we couldn't finish until yesterday. I was still tying string on ornaments today. I like nylon invisible thread, and we also used some really nice stretchy gold string. We ended up throwing some unpainted ones away because we just couldn't keep occupying the kitchen table with this project.

Here's the entire set. As much work as they took, I keep expecting there to be more of them!

My nephew Tyler visited us for Pride weekend. It was great to be able to introduce him to city life and the diversity of queer culture. Denise, @terry's wonderful mommy is also visiting. These pix are a blend of Saturday night's Dyke March and Sunday's events. So much fun! It was also my birthday on Saturday and I got to enjoy brunch with with @xandra, @Dianne, Tyler and Denise, then met the boys at the Harbor after the Skyride. We hung out in the back yard of the 24 where the wisteria was gorgeous and Basra was shoving @Dianne around on the canoe. @Dianne, @xandra, Tanya and I went to the dyke march, spent a few minutes at the party on Allen, then had Ethiopian food! Yummy! @flacidness, @hodown, e:zarkasm and her boy joined us. We went back to the 24 and played games, then hit Nietzsche's for Stripteasers' 10th anniversary party. Much love! :-)

I had so much fun sharing the Fall Festival with @Dianne. Of course people loved her. she did leave several older people confused, as in, "Did someone really name their son Dianne?"

Silly pix from the past few days, including last night's frittata, an art project from tedx, my nephew Ronan, Wendy's stray plant, a mandolin at Allentown Music, the speaker we rented for the Fall Festival...

we wanted infringement t shirts and happened across the guy who designed this year's logo. he had screenprinted some t-shirts with glow in the dark paint and was carrying then around while infringing yesterday, hoping to sell them. we spent a nice bit of time chatting while listening to Josh Gage's band The Observers in front of El Buen Amigo. he had no small or medium black shirts left but there was one gaudy orange polo with sleeves cut off and a black racing pattern collar. @Dianne loved it, so we got that for her and a black t-shirt for me. our next trip home she put it on and wore it the rest of the night. despite the ridiculousness of the shirt, she totally rocked it. it also glows in the dark (the screen print, not the orange of the shirt).

At coming home buffalo, there is a little infringement museum and a place to air grievances. Dianne's plate said "Fuck Corporate America". am I wearing off on her or is she self-radicalizing? the cashier's manifesto last night really spoke to her.

seriously. in front of the Holley farms.