Getting Ready for The Christmas season.

Christmas craft season is in full swing! We are working non-stop to make sure we have enough to bring with us to the shows.  The main things we want to bring are our Ornaments.  Here is a glimpse of some our work.

via Neptunes Saloon Facebook

We have a show coming up in New Hamburg at the end of November.  It should be fun!

Winter Wonderland Craft Show

Updates

We been quite on our blog lately, but doesn't mean that we haven't been working hard. Alot of new things have in the works that we are very excited about!!

1. We just opened our Etsy shop. Neptunes Saloon. Please check us out. ( we only have few items up, but in about a week we will have lots more)
2. We received such a great response to our Christmas Ornaments, that we have been working hard with more designs and lines, that we hope will be well loved by all.
3. We have such and amazing opportunity coming up on Aug 16, 2014.  We will have a display full of our Ornament balls for sale in an artisan shop opening up in Galt, Cambridge called Clover and Chrysalis.
We are so excited about this.  And we have been working non stop to have a fully stock display.

 

Well that's about it for today, hope everyone is having a great day.

A workshop is a place where you can plug in a glue gun

So for the past 2 months we have been working very diligently in our workshop.  By "workshop", we mean a place where we can get together to actually work; essentially anyplace you can plug in a glue gun. These days, that place usually turns out to be my living room. It's a temporary solution while my craft rooms is being organized.

Tamara always works with a Timmies by her side

  
Once the Christmas tree goes up in a couple of days the craft room will be ready and so off we will go to our new workshop where our ideas can continue coming to life.
































And in true sister style we reflect our ying/yang personalities into our workspace.  Myself, -  know I am super messy. I love clutter and work well with chaos.  Were as Tamara is the complete opposite.  Clean, organized, and "a true neat freak".

This is our work space right now, a blend of us both. Sequence, glitter, buttons and ribbon everywhere. It's a little cluttered, but it works!!

 

Take a look at some of our finished product!

These lovelies will be up in our Etsy shop soon.  So check it out. 

Please join our Neptunes Saloon Facebook group for more updates!

Getting Back to Basics

Like the saying goes, as we get older time seems to pass by quicker.  It feels like only yesterday when we were ambitiously working the crafts shows at the ages of 16 and 17. Now at 36 and 37, we look back at those younger years and we both can affirm that those days were magical.

Ms. Cass & Ms. Tam at the Kitchener Market Craft Show 1993

During those few years, we felt the happiest and most connected to our creative spirits.  In those days, we both knew in our guts that creating and being creative was what we wanted to do for the rest of our lives. It blows our minds to see the years go by, knowing that we have not fully gotten back to our true selves and to the root of what made us happy and fulfilled.   In the past 20 years we can count only a hand full of times when we have gotten together to craft, to seriously craft, and be involved with a show here or there.

Of course when real life kicks in with all it distractions and responsibilities, it's hard to make the time and effort to dedicate to the purpose of creating. Regardless, we made the decision that this year will be the start of something different.  We are trying to work together, mesh schedules, balance a newborn and every other facet of family life and continue to create - with no excuses.
A few years ago the loss of our mother, a real crafting Jedi, has been our greatest source of motivation. It got us talking about how much we miss crafting and how when we create something with our hands, we feel closest to her.  She was such a creative force. She taught us to try every medium and never get discouraged if something didn't turn out.  She was always the first to let us know how "beautiful" or how "smart" something was and always encouraged us to make more.  She truly, truly believed in her heart and soul that we needed to dedicate ourselves to using our creativity to make things and in doing that, she knew we would be greatly successful.  With that belief in us and her driving force behind us, how could we not try to live up to that potential.

Ms.Cass 2013

Which brings us to here, taking that first step together, beginning a new chapter in both our lives(as fully and sometimes chaotic) trying to live as our true self"s.

Let the journey begin.

 

Gardening in the backyard.

For a couple of months now we have been working on Ms.Tam backyard, for 2 reasons. 1) is that Ms.Tam first child is due in August and the she will not have much time to redo her backyard after the baby is born. 2) her baby shower is this coming Sunday and it will be a big family BBQ in the backyard, so the back needs to be presentable and be able to fit over 30 guess.  It has been a lot of work but the end result is so worth it.
We started by ripping out everything in a 2 to 5 foot strip along the back fence.  Big job! we laid down black plastic for a month and longer in parts to kill everything in the sections.  Mostly due to the really invasive weed commonly called "Snow on the Mountain".

Snow on the Mountain

This plant had taken over the corners of her yard.  When I tell you that Ms. Tam hates this plant, she really despises it.  So started the project.  We knew that it takes a good year for a garden to establish it self which was too long to wait to have color in the back yard.  We decided to invest money in some really pretty pots and putt together some planters with annuals and perennials.  They turn out pretty and colorful.

 

 In the left corner we raised the old garden bed and planted some Hosta, Dianthus, a Cotoneaster Standard.   We lined the edge of the garden in medium river rocks.  

Then we placed black mulch on the rest of the plastic covered area and lined with river rock, then placed all the planters on stepping stones.  Added some final touches with solar lights and some garden decor.

We still have some setting up of tents, lights, decorations and tables for the BBQ.

Then we have fun and eat!

A day in the garden isn't complete without Luna.  She did spend more of the time sunning herself on the lounger.

We will post some pictures of the cake that Ms.Cass is making and the decoration we made to decorate the tents

Cake Ball Cake

So we finally got around to making a cake for the March birthday boys. Although a little late, it still served a delicious purpose.  We began by seperating jobs - Miss Cass was in charge of making the cake balls and Miss Tam was in charge of making the cake batter.  We cheated a bit with this project and used Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker cake mixes. The difference is that we mixed a packet of pudding mix with Soy milk and then poured it into the dry batter. This is so that it will make the cake denser and moist.

With the cake pop maker, the task of making cake pops is quite easy (good x-mas present from Miss Tam). We have made them by hand before and it is a serious amount of work so with this little tool our cake balls got done in minutes.

While Miss Cass made the cake balls, Miss Tam mixed the batter, preped the cake trays and baked it in the oven as directed by the cake mix box directions. Once the cakes were cooled, we cut them into the sizes that we wanted for our cake shape and began icing them.

After icing the cake ( we also used a bit of store bought icing to hold the layers together only), it was time to coat some of the balls with purple chocolate melts and milk chocolate melts. Then we brought out the piping bag and added a few extra touches to them.

For the decorative icing, we made a buttercream version from scratch. The ingredients are:

1 cup of unsalted butter

3-4 cups of icing sugar sifted

half teaspoon of table salt

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 tablespoons of Soy milk

Blend the ingredients with a hand blender for approximately 8-10 mins. 

The last portion of our project was incorporating the cake balls into the cake. Although we had a few glitches along the way, it turned out great! Very delicious! We found the homemade icing was sooo good because it wasn`t overly sweet and it had a very creamy texture.  So our March Birthday Cake for the fellas was a wonderful success!  What will we do for next year?!

In this coming week we hope to blog about a few of the things we have going on. Hopefully we will have a post on one of the crafts we are currently working on, and as well we will be posting some pics from an upcoming Michael Jackson tribute concert we are attending here in Kitchener! 

Stay posted!!

Luna's Dog Modelling Day

Throughout our posts you may have noticed a little friend who appears in some of our photos - Luna.
This wiener dog is definitely a special edition to our family. Always looking to play or lounge on our laps, she has grown into having a bit of a princess/diva complex.  And in line with that very sentiment we wanted to share a truly special day we had with Luna earlier in March.  It began one lazy Saturday morning when a random opportunity presented itself via a community radio station. We heard about a non profit fashion show that was being held and that they were conducting tryouts for a spot on the cat walk.  So we figured we'd give Luna a shot at the big leagues :) 

It was being held by The K-W Humane Society and Ren`s Pet Depot. We found out that it was an annual fundraiser called On the "On The Cat Walk" Fashion Show which put together fashions for not just people, but for dogs as well.


So we decided to take Luna to the Top Dog qualifying tryouts and see if she would be chosen as one of the top 10 dogs for their model search. To our surprise Luna not only qualified but she actually received the best score!

Way to make us proud Luna!

Keep in mind that Luna had never been involved in any big events before. She lives a humble life at home where she enjoys the comfort of simple things like sunbathing, driving, and playing DS Light.  And so once we arrived at the venue for the fashion show and saw how grand the event truly was, we were a bit worried about her abilities to perform under that kind of pressure.

We never know quite where she is headed

 

Luna always lounges on sunny days



Luna getting fitted for the show

 The event was beautifully decorated and packed full of dog and fashion lovers. It was so much more than we expected and it truly makes us aware of how hard the volunteers from organizations like The Humane Society work. We will definitely be participating next year as well! 

And so how did Luna do?  See if you can spot her 3 seconds of fame in the video below :)

Well for now we can not get the video uploaded.  Check back later to see it.  OR

Click on link below to view it.

KW Humane Society Fashion Show