Slip Slip

I had a job interview today with an organization that I can only describe as having an "ultra professional" dress code.  Of course I've only heard via rumor that their dress code is ultra professional but I decided not to take a chance during my interview and I dressed as professionally as I could: a skirt instead and trousers and pantyhose instead of going bare-legged.

Side note: while I was waiting in the lobby I saw an employee walk in wearing bright pink tights and worn, brown riding boots, so I'm questioning the rumors that I heard.

Now, pantyhose are not something I normally wear because, well, I hate them.  In fact, I had to go purchase a pair because I didn't own any that were nude colored.

Side note: the way the pantyhose industry defines the color "nude" is not the way I would.  I purchased the palest, non-white, pantyhose I could find but when I put them on I looked like I had only fake-baked my legs.  I hate that.

So, morning of my interview I get dressed, making sure I don't forget my slip because there is nothing less professional than not wearing a slip when one needs to.  I drive all the way downtown.  I park where I'm told to, which was about a block from the office I'd be interviewing at.  I begin walking toward the office building and when I'm about a quarter of a block away I notice that the waist of my slip is closer to my knees than my actual waist.  This is not good.

There aren't a lot of people around so I just step behind a trash can and try to pull the slip's waist up from the outside of my skirt.  This didn't work very well.  People are starting to cross the street and walk toward me.  So I just go for it.  I stick half of my arm (as discreetly as I could) half way down the back of my skirt and just pull the slip up.  But only the back half of my slip is close to wear it needs to be.  Now people are walking right by me giving me awkward smiles, so I give awkward smiles back.  Next, I go ahead and stick half of my arm part way down the front of my skirt (I'm trying to pretend like I'm tucking my shirt in, I doubt I fooled anyone) and pull up the remainder of my slip.

With my slip close to where it should be I proceeded to the office building, one hand holding my folder with my resume and directions and the other hand trying to hold my slip in place without being obvious.  When I got to the front desk I asked the lady where the closest bathroom was, she told me down the hall and down the stairs.  So I went down the hall and down the stairs to find that the ladies room was closed because it was being cleaned.  There was another receptionist/security type person at the bottom of the stairs so I asked him if he knew where the next closest bathroom was.  He wasn't sure and told me my best bet was out in the parking garage and down a ways.

While in the parking garage wondering if that guy really knew what he was talking about I realized that my slip had slipped again.  So I step between two cars and do it all over again.  I think I got it up a little better this time but I really needed a bathroom to make sure everything was ok.  Suddenly I was really grateful I had been to the interview so early.

I never found the bathroom that was supposedly near-ish the parking garage so I went back to where I came from.  There was a lobby there, a large lobby, that had very few people in it.  So I sat down in an overstuffed chair and took a few good minutes to pull my slip up extra high then stood up and re-tucked my shirt.  I think I'm good now.

The interview itself went pretty well, no complaints.  When it was done, the first thing I did was go back to the ladies room and, luckily, I found that it was open again.  I went it, took the slip off (didn't want to have to deal with it out on the side walk again - and my skirt was a pretty thick material with a lining),stuffed it in the bottom of my purse, and headed home.

I wear this slip pretty often, a few times a month at least, and it has never before slipped past my butt and down too close to my knees.  I can only think that it slipped this time because of the pantyhose - the dumb control top pantyhose that hold everything in too well and give everything from just below my boobs to the tips of my toes an un-natural slickness that can only be described as evil.  Next time I feel the need to wear both a slip and pantyhose, I will safety-pin the slip to my skirt.  Lesson learned.

My First Quilt

So, I made a quilt.  A long, long time ago I bought some light green fabric and some black fabric and some black and white fabric so now that I have a sewing machine I figured I'd make a quilt out of that old fabric I had laying around.  I also decided to use the old fabric because I didn't want to go out and buy all kinds of cute fabric then potentially ruin it.

Before I started I made sure to reference a blog that has a quilt making tutorial: Diary of a Quilter.  I didn't follow the tutorial exactly because the fabric I had for the backing wasn't the same size as her fabric, I didn't use all the tools she did because I didn't have them, and I didn't add a border because I didn't have enough fabric.  Otherwise I followed it pretty closely.

If I could start over I'd do a few things differently but, overall, I think my first quilt turned out ok.

Steps:
1. I started by measuring the fabric I was planning on using for backing.  From there I figured out how many 3 inch (well, 3.5 inch to account for seams) squares I would need for the front.  I divided that number by two (because I'd be using 2 fabrics) then cut out the appropriate number of squares from the green and the black fabrics.

2.  Once all the squares were cut out, I laid out the pieces to see what the finished quilt might look like.

3. Satisfied with the look, I took each of the squares in order and set them in their individual rows.

4. I sewed each square in the row with a 1/4 inch seem.  When a row was finished I marked the first square in the row with a pin so I wouldn't get the rows mixed up and backwards or what not.  This probably wasn't incredibly necessary since I was only using two fabrics but it made me feel better anyway. Then I laid all my rows out next to each other, pretty much recreating the look of the quilt again.

5. Once all the rows were sewn, I ironed down the seems.  Odd rows (1, 3, 5, etc) were ironed to one side while the even rows (2, 4, 6, etc) were ironed to the other side. (For some reason, I don't have a picture of this step but the tutorial mentioned above does.)

6. After the seems of each row were finished I began sewing each row together by first pinning rows 1 and 2 together while right fabrics were facing each other.  I sewed with a 1/4 inch seem.

(This is where steps for adding a border would have gone if I had done it.)

7. When all rows were sewn together creating the entire front of the quilt, I ironed the back again to try to get the seems under control.

8. Next I ironed the fabric for the back of the quilt and laid it face down as flat as I could.  Then I placed my batting on top followed by the front of my quilt face up.

9. I didn't have any fancy quilting pins or anything so I just pinned all three layers of the quilt together with the regular sewing pins I had laying around.

10. The tutorial said to sew the three layers together starting in the middle, so that is exactly what I did.  I found a spot near the very center of the quilt then started sewing from there to the outside of the quilt.  Then I went back to that spot where I started and sewed the other direction to the outside of the quilt.  From there I worked my way out sewing all my rows and columns until each seem line on the front of the quilt had been sewn over (or close to each seem, the quilt certainly isn't perfect).

11. When all the actual "quilting" was done, I laid the quilt out flat and trimmed any extra fabric off.  This is where I learned that my squares on the front didn't end up being the exact right side for my backing but it was now too late to worry about that.

12. Now it was time to worry about the binding, the part I dreaded the most.  I cut out three 2 1/2 inch wide strips of the black fabric.  The strips were long enough to go all the way around the outside edge of the quilt plus just a little to make sure there was enough.

13. Next I sewed each of the three strips together at the 2 1/2 inch sides, creating a really long 2 1/2 inch wide strip of fabric.

14. I ironed the seems down then folded the strip in half and ironed to keep the fold in place.

15. I placed the right side raw edges of strip down facing the right side raw edges of the middle of an edge of the back of the quilt and began pinning until I got to a corner.  Once at the corner I folded the strip over on itself to create a 45 degree angle; I pinned the fabric here.  Then I laid the strip fabric down on the next edge of the backing.  At the corner, this created a triangle of extra fabric (please see my pictures and/or the pictures on the tutorial mentioned above if this isn't making sense) which I pinned so the extra fabric stood up by putting a second pin at a 45 degree angle on the other side of the extra fabric.  I followed all these steps until the end of my strip met up with the beginning of my strip.

16. Then I sewed the strip for the binding to the quilt.  When I got to the first angled pin (and I mean right up to it), I removed the pin, folded the triangle down toward where I had just sewn, removed the second pin, turned the quilt so I'd be sewing down the next edge and sewed down the next edge.

At this point the tutorial said something about sewing the beginning and the end of the strip together but I didn't get it so I didn't do it.

17.  Once the whole binding strip was sewn to the back of the quilt I turned over the extra fabric from the strip to the front of the quilt and pinned it down.  Since the raw edges of the strip were sewn to the raw edge of the backing, the edge of the strip that is now on the front of the quilt is a folded edge.

18. Finally I sewed the binding onto the front of the quilt.

Done.

From the pictures you can see that my backing has a kind of interesting pattern.  If I were to start this whole project over again I would have made the black and white fabric the front of the quilt, used solid black for the back of the quilt and the binding, and used the green fabric as a border.  Then, instead of quilting straight lines, I would have followed the lines of the black and white pattern when sewing all three layers together.  Oh well, I guess learning things is what a first quilt is all about.

Recipe: Chocolate & Candy Cane Christmas Tree Cookies

I know it is almost a full month after Christmas and I'm finally finishing up my posts about the cookies I made but I've been super lazy for the past 3ish weeks and why shouldn't I be?  I don't have a job so I can sleep in and never get dressed in real cloths and watch tv and movies all day and no one really cares.  (For the record, I'm trying to start to get up a little earlier and I don't watch tv and movies all day.)

Anyway, I think it was Christmas 2010 that I made these cookies for the first time, except I didn't do them in Christmas Tree shapes, just rectangles.  I got the cookie recipe from the box my cookie press came in and I just kind of winged the rest.  I doubled the cookie recipe because the box said the recipe only made 7 - 8 dozen cookies and 14 - 16 dozen sounded about right.  I think I ended up with something like 26 dozen cookies but since I didn't plan on that many I didn't have enough chocolate or candy canes to cover them all so I ended up with a bunch of naked Christmas Tree cookies.  Which were good.  Turns out I didn't even need the 14 - 16 dozen I originally planned for and since CJ doesn't like minty stuff much, I finally got around to finishing the last one (well, three) yesterday.

The steps to make these are pretty simple:
1. Bake the cookies (recipe at the end).
2. Crush some candy canes (I put them in a freezer ziplock bag, wrap the bag in a dish towel and go to town on them with a rolling pin).
3. Dip all the cookies in melted semi-sweet chocolate.
4. Let them cool in the refrigerator or garage or wherever it is cold.
5. When the chocolate is completely cooled, dip in melted white chocolate.
6. Immediately dip in crushed candy canes.
7. Let them cool in the refrigerator or other cool place.

I melted my chocolate in the microwave (instructions can be found with the cookie bark recipe I posted earlier) using a Pyrex measuring cup.  I kept the chocolate in the measuring cup as I dipped the cookie.  When dipping into the white chocolate then the candy canes, I just had the bowl with the candy canes sitting between the melted white chocolate and the "finished" cookie sheet to make everything really accessible.

My fridge isn't wide enough to put a cookie sheet in side ways so I'm really glad I had some lids for a few of my cookie sheets so I could stack cookie sheets in the refrigerator when the cookies needed cooling.

Classic Spritz Cookies

1 1/2 cups butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 Tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Thoroughly cream butter and sugar. Add egg, milk, vanilla and almond extract; beat well.

Stir together flour and baking powder; gradually add to creamed mixture, mixing to make a smooth dough.

Do not chill.  Place dough into Cookie Press and press cookies onto a cooled ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake 10 - 12 minutes or until lightly browned around edges.  Remove cookies from sheet; cool on rack.

Makes 7 - 8 dozen cookies.

No Job

Work was hard last year; harder than it needed to be.  I can sum up why in three main reasons:

1. I worked for an MLM.
2. My boss was the biggest drama queen I had ever met (by the way, my boss was a straight male).
3. The switch to a new company.

Let me go into some vague detail.

1.  MLMs suck.  The business model for Network Marketing companies is ethically gray at best.  I've heard them described as "Legal Pyramid Schemes" and that really is the truth.  You get a couple of people involved at the beginning and those few people end up making a ton of money (emphasis on "ton") because they sit at the top of the pyramid.  They go around preaching about how everyone can make as much money as they do but the simple truth is that if someone doesn't get involved with a successful MLM from the beginning, chances of making a very comfortable living are slim (making a living may still be possible but it won't be the same as the people at the top).  What really bothers me is that the people at the top of the pyramid don't even have to do much once they've built a large enough downline; they just end up earning commissions off of the work of the people below them.

Then, when these individuals on top have gotten themselves being comfortable on top, many of them (certainly not all) become some serious megalomaniacs - running around the corporate office like they own the place, making demands, running projects, making up the rules as they go all so they can make more money.  Side note here, corporate employees are not allowed to be distributors (or "consultants" or whatever the individual MLM calls the people who go out and sell stuff) in part because, and I'm sure this isn't the only reason but it is the only one I know for sure, the employees would have an unfair advantage over distributors who are not employees because the employee would be privy to information that other distributors would not be.  So if we take the reverse, shouldn't distributor's not be allowed to be involved with the workings going on at corporate because that would give them an unfair advantage over distributors who maybe don't live near corporate or who don't have the financial means to travel to the corporate office whenever they have something to *****, I mean "complain", about?

Then there is the way the big wigs manipulate things.  About a year and a half ago at the MLM I worked for we had a distributor set a record for rank advancement (the bigger your downline, the higher rank you are, basically he built a huge downline very fast).  All the non-big wigs were like "Whoa, that's awesome!  If he can do it so can I."  Um, guess what.  You can't.  This particular distributor happens to be one of the big wigs at at least one other MLM (probably more) where he took years to create a world wide downline and then become a big wig.  All he did at our MLM (and probably at others) is to convince his downline from the other MLMs to join this new, shiny MLM and voila, now he's a big wig at yet another MLM and those who don't know the real story are, once again, made to believe that it is possible to be uber-successful in the business.

And that's just a few things I have to say about the distributors, I haven't even gotten to how people are paid yet, so I will.  I was in a meeting not too long ago, November maybe, where a big wig distributor was explaining the new commission structure he came up with (as well as a new program that he created and designed so that he'd be on top, but that's another story).  He said that once you get to X rank, when you sign up a new distributor below you you now earn 105% commission on the sale.  Say what?  Where are we getting the extra 5% of the sale to give to the X ranked distributor?  His response, in short, is that some distributor's fail putting more money into the business than they, or their upline, get out of it leaving extra funds to go to the big wigs.  So here we have a bunch of distributors running around telling people that they can make millions like they do but really they need some distributors to fail in order to make the kind of money they do.  How is this ok?

To sum up, the longer I worked for an MLM the more I understood how MLMs work and the more little pieces of my soul were stolen from me.  But I did work there for over two years so I guess it is my own fault for allowing it to be a part of my life for so long.  Let's move on to the second reason why work was so hard last year.

2. Drama queens are hard to work with.  Drama Queen Boss first joined the department as a consultant, at first no one really knew why or what he was actually doing there but then we found out that it was a trial period before he became our next boss.  We were all pretty neutral about him at first then he started making demands and acting like our boss before he was our boss and slamming the way we did things which made most of us not like him at all and some of us absolutely detested him.  About this time we were told that his trail period wasn't going very well and that at the end of his contract he would no longer be at the company.  Then at the end of his contract he become our boss.  Um, there went any trust we had in the people who told us he'd be gone - but that's another issue I won't be discussing here.

Drama Queen Boss seemed to just love stirring things up.  He'd tell us one thing then tell the executives something else then tell other departments something else which made trying to communicate outside the department a beast.  Most of us saw right through this at first and learned to ignore a lot of what he said and did and learned not to feed into it.

For example, Drama Queen Boss tried to stir up some drama one day when the website went down.  It turns out that the reason it went down was related to the database and was the result of a bug created by Drama Queen Boss's favored programmer.  So Drama Queen Boss goes over the the support department (because they were dealing with customers calling and complaining that the site was down) and he told the leaders of the support department that it was his Least-Favored Developer's fault the site was down.  Well, Least-Favored Developer is a web-developer and didn't even have access to the database so either Drama Queen Boss didn't know what Least-Favored Developer did (which is a real possibility) or he was intentionally stirring up drama.  I'm guessing the latter since Drama Queen Boss knew that one of the leaders of the support department who was a part of the conversation (and the only reason we know the conversation even took place) was Least-Favored Developer's wife.  Who in their right mind goes around telling untruths about his employees to said employees wife?  Answer: Drama Queen Boss was not in his right mind.

That wasn't the only instance of Drama Queen Boss creating drama for the sake of drama.  He would tell employees things about other employees that the employee told really didn't need to know.  We think his intent was that told employee would go tell the dissed employee and drama would ensue.  Luckily we are smarter than that and we'd either keep things to ourselves or when we heard what Drama Queen Boss said about us we'd roll our eyes and carry on.  The least stressful times we had that year were when Drama Queen Boss was out of the office for about a month and a half for medical reasons.  Sure, we had more work to do with him being gone but we had less drama and therefore a better work experience.

3.  When our department was suddenly acquired by a new company Drama Queen Boss was not part of the acquisition and was laid off.  That was a great moment for me and I was so excited to go to Company B.  Unfortunately that excitement didn't last long.  I don't know for sure by I think one of the original people in Company B was a Drama Queen Boss In The Making.  He'd tell us things that sounded pretty official and that some of the developers didn't want to participate in.  So those developers left, then more developers left, and eventually most of the developers were gone and the only reason I stayed through everything that went on in #1 and #2 above went with them (we had such a great team dynamic).

I tried to stay until the end of the project that was failing being worked on but one day I just couldn't bring myself to stay any more.  I'm very organized, very structured in my work, and I thrive on good communication and Company B didn't have much to do with any of that.  One day Company B's CEO asked me to send an email out to a bunch of people telling them about a meeting the next day at 9:30 am.  Finally, some semblance of structure (prior to this all meetings just kind of happened whenever the CEO could find everyone in the same location at the same time).  So I sent out the email.  The next day at 9:30 am, no one who was originally from Company B was in the office.  In fact, CEO didn't get into the office until a little after 10 am and the meeting didn't start until everyone was there at 10:30 am and, what bothered me the most, was that no one seemed to think anything of it.  Personally, I'm pretty disturbed when everyone shows up an hour late for meetings.  Is that just me?

Something similar happened on December 28th.  The CEO texted me asking if I'd be available for a meeting.  I responded with "When and where?"  (How would I know if I was available if I didn't know when the meeting was taking place, right?)  He responded by saying he was still figuring it out but we'd try from 10:30 at Said Location.  So, at 10:30 I was at Said Location and no one else was.  Given the short history I'd had with Company B this didn't surprise me much so I waited until 10:40 to text CEO and ask if something had changed.  He called me back, surprised that I had shown up for a meeting at the time and place I was told to.  Then he told me he was 10 minutes away from the office and we'd get the meeting going when he got in, then after the meeting we'd talk about the kind of roles I'd be playing at Company B.  I just said "ok" and ended the conversation but so many things about it really pissed me off.  Ten minutes after he wanted the meeting to start he was still 10 minutes away from even being in the office.  He was surprised that I was punctual and dependable. And I'd already been with the company for 2 1/2 months and he just now wanted to start figuring out what my role was going to be.  That's when I knew I was going to quit that day.

Let's fast forward to almost 2 hours later when CEO finally decided to make a physical appearance to let me know that some people he wanted in the meeting weren't in the office yet so we'll try to do it after lunch. This is when I said "If that meeting isn't happening now can we have our other meeting now?"  He obliged and I quit.  The meeting we had was very interesting and I learned a lot of things, like that one guy might be a Drama Queen Boss In The Making because CEO had been told things about reasons why other developers quit that simply weren't true.  I also learned of all the roles CEO wanted me to play in Company B.  My response to that was that at Company A we had two people doing most of those roles so there was no way I could do both at Company B plus everything Company B specific that he wanted me to eventually take on - which helped make me feel a lot better about quitting.

Long story short, I quit my job out of the blue.  I went into the CEOs office, quit, packed up my things, and never went, or looked, back.  And I feel great about it.  Through most of November and December (as well as occasionally since Drama Queen Boss took over) I had stress related headaches almost every day, pain from some ulcers I'm sure I was breeding, as well as some other annoying, but luckily harmless (as said by my doctor), physical maladies that were stress related.  I haven't had any of that since I quit and now I'm wondering why I didn't quit 15 months ago.  Oh well.  Hopefully I learned something.

Now I'm not working and it has been nice.  I'm casually looking for new work but not necessarily in software or full time or permanent, just whatever comes my way that sounds interesting.

Recipe: Pretzel, Kiss, M&M Treats

Also on our Christmas plates this year CJ and I put these pretzel, Kiss, M&M treats.  I don't know what they are called but what I have called them is also all the ingredients that go in them, go figure.

We first saw something like this at my cousin's daughter's baby blessing luncheon, except at the luncheon they had Rolos instead of Kisses.  Next year we may do it with Rolos instead but the Kisses are still really good.

Ingredients:
As I said earlier, all you need for this is some pretzels (we used square ones 'cause CJ and I like to be square), some Hershey Kisses (we used two of the regular sized bags), and some plain M&Ms (we used the green and red for Christmas - one bag)

Steps:

1. Place pretzels on a baking sheet.  I covered mine with aluminum foil just in case.

2. Place one unwrapped Kiss on each pretzel.  Bake at about 275 until the Kisses are soft - I put them in for about 5 - 8 minutes but I've read somewhere else that 3 minutes is long enough.

3. Immediately press one plain M&M into the center of each Kiss.

4. Refrigerate until chocolate is solid again.

Done.

Recipe: Chocolate Cookie Bark

For our Christmas plates this year (and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that) we made Chocolate Cookie Bark.  I first found this recipe when browsing Kraft Recipes and it looked delicious.  Then I read the ingredients and saw that it has both Oreos and Peanut Butter in it - win.  I've been making it for Christmas ever since.

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp creamy peanut butter
6 oz white chocolate, melted
8 oz semi sweet chocolate, melted
10 Oreo cookies, crushed

My Steps:
Note - to see the steps put together by Kraft, please click the link above to go directly to the recipe.  I've put in a lot of the smaller steps here, like actually melting the chocolate.


1. Cover your baking sheet or flat surface or whatever with wax paper.  I usually use my pizza pan because the bark works nicely in a round shape.

2. Put the 10 Oreo cookies in a plastic zip lock bag and hand crush them.  Large-ish chunks are ok, even good.

3. Melt all 8 ounces of the semi-sweet chocolate.  I put it all in a Pyrex measuring cup and stick it in the microwave for 1 minute then stir.  Usually at this point there isn't much to stir 'cause the chocolate hasn't melted much yet.  Then I put it in the microwave for another 30 seconds.  At this point it stirs a little better but there are still some lumps.  Another 15 - 30 seconds in the microwave stirring every 15 seconds usually gets the semi-sweet chocolate to a perfect consistency.

Please note that the Pyrex or whatever you melt your chocolate in will be hot.  Keep hot pads close by.

4. Add half the crushed Oreos to the melted semi-sweet chocolate.

5. Plop the chocolate and Oreo mixture onto the pan with the wax paper.  It is ok to have squiggles and lines of chocolate wherever, there is absolutely no reason to try to make this look perfect.  Set aside.

6. Melt all 6 ounces of white chocolate.  The first minute in the microwave is similar to the semi-sweet chocolate but after that first minute the white chocolate melts a little faster (there are 2 fewer ounces) so be careful not to over cook the chocolate by stirring often.

7. Add the creamy peanut butter to the melted white chocolate.  Mix it in until the peanut butter is melted.

8. Add the remaining crushed Oreos to the melted white chocolate.

9. Plop the white chocolate mixture onto the pan where there is not semi-sweet chocolate.  Don't worry if you have some small spaces without any chocolate.

10. Using the top side of a butter knife (if you use the serrated side you could cut your wax paper) mix both types of chocolate together until they appear marble-y.

11.  Refrigerate for at least an hour (or stick it in a cold garage or on a cold porch or wherever you can find that is cold) then use a sharp knife to cut it into the sizes and shapes you desire.

Done.

Felt Book: Barn Yard Finger Puppets

What kid doesn't like finger puppets (what adult for that matter)?  When I saw this page on Pinterest I knew I wanted to make one for c.b.

By the way, I'll be the first to admit that my barn does not look nearly as good as the barn this page was patterned after but I'll also willingly admit that my finger puppets are super cute.

I saved this page and the ukulele page for last because I was dreading figuring out how to applique with my sewing machine but once I figured it out it was simple.

My pattern for this page came in really handy when trying to figure out how many of what color of felt pages I needed and how to get the barn doors set up.

Materials & Cost:

1 Background Page - From the packet for $0.15.

Brown Felt - About $.05 worth.

Red Felt - About $0.08 worth.

Barn Fabric - I got this from the remnants section for $1.04 and have a good chunk left over for later projects.

Other Felt For Puppets (yellow, pink, orange, white, black, brown, red) - About $0.10 worth.

12 Small Googly Eyes (2 for each puppet) - I got a package of something like 50 for $0.49.

White Pom Poms - I got a package of about 50 (maybe 100, I'm way too lazy to get off my butt to walk 10 feet to go check for sure) for $1.99.

2 Buttons - I used a pink button for the pig's nose and a black button for the cow's nose.  I found both buttons in my big jar of buttons (a lot of which come from the extra buttons that come with cloths).

Glue - I didn't keep the receipt for the clear Elmer's glue that I bought but I'm pretty sure the amount of glue I used was pretty insignificant compared to the price of the whole bottle.

The total cost for this page is $3.90 making the total cost for all eight pages $21.15.

Steps:

1. Cut the barn out of paper to make sure it fits well on the background page.

2. Use the paper cut out to cut the fabric for the barn.

3. Pin the fabric barn to the background felt page.

4. Applique the barn fabric to the felt page.

5. Cut out the "stall" for the barn out of brown felt; make sure it fits.

6. Cut out the doors for the barn out of red felt; make sure it fits.

7. Sew velcro to the stall where the two doors are going to meet the stall.  Then sew all but the top section of the stall to the background page.

8. Sew velcro to the barn doors.

9. Sew the outside side only of the doors to the background page.  This allows the doors to be able to open.

10. Measure the size you want your puppets to be.  I used my own finger and made sure to leave plenty of space for sewing.

11. Use the pattern from #10 to cut out all the background parts for the puppets.  I needed 8 in white, 2 in yellow, and 2 in pink.  Remember you need 2 for each puppet - a front and a back.

12. Add sewn on "accessories" to the puppets.  As you can see in the third picture above I've added a black spot and a button nose to the cow; an orange triangle beak to the rooster; a pink triangle nose to the rabbit; a brown face to the sheep (you'll see it later); an orange triangle beak to the chicken; and a pink button nose to the pig (it was going to have ears to but I forgot).  All sewn on accessories (like beaks) need to be done at this step so we don't see the stitching on the back and, more importantly, so we don't sew the front and the back of the puppets together defeating the purpose of making puppets.

Also at this step, sew the back of the puppet onto the front of the puppet with the middle layer accessories.  In the third picture these middle layer accessories (called such because they are sewn between the front and the back instead of being sewn on the front - for more details see the Mr. Potato Head tutorial) are the white horns and black ears of the cow, the red "tuft" of the rooster, the long ears of the rabbit, and the yellow wings and orange inner wings of the chicken.

13. Glue the googly eyes on to all the puppets.  Note - the felt absorbed a lot of the glue and I ended up having to put the glue on pretty thick.

14. (Ok, the first picture in the series below isn't a step, just a note that while I was working on the pom pom for the rabbit that Samus (circled in lavender) was chewing on her fence.)

15. Glue a pom pom onto the lower backside of the rabbit.  Again, use a lot of glue and give it a lot of time to try - like over night or all day while you are away at work.

16. (Last two pictures) Glue pom poms onto the front of the sheep actually making it look more like a sheep.  I can't emphasize enough that a good portion of glue needs to be used and that it will take a good chunk of time for the glue to dry.

Done.