Merry Christmas from the ModSauce Ranch!

IT HAS BEGUN.  My body has been consumed by the spirit of glitter and excess and I am TRANSFORMED.  And bloated.  Maybe it's the eggnog.

Either way I'm ready to explode with joy and moderately priced gifts bought out of love through Amazon.

Here's what Christmas is looking like at the Ranch this year.

Wreath starting to sag? Turn it clockwise a few hours and you're good to go!

Mr. Slim Wreath got moved to above my couch to rain good tidings and small spiders on my head.  And yes I keep eleventeen blankets on my couch at all times.  This selection inclues one my mom crocheted for me, the plaid is from the 1996 JCP catalog and is totally back in style now and the bottom "fur" one is from the (yes) Dollar General.  I meant to use it as a tree skirt but Charlemagne and I rather liked it...

This is her happy blanket face.  It kinda looks like her bitch face and hungry face and annoyed face and tummy rubs face. 

I've also been on the citrus train this holiday season.  Making pomanders is a great childhood memory for me which I tried to recreate a few years ago only to realize those cloves are torture devices straight from Krampus himself!  BUT I tried to put them into Clementines and sweet citrus savior in he manger it was a dream.  Now my house smells divine and I've retained use of my fingers.  A win/win!

I don't know what's happening on my coffee table... a win/lose?  It's like a plate of old food mixed with shiny things...?  I think it's a collection of leftover ornaments that didn't make it on the tree so I just left them there.  I shoulda studied more Dutch still life references.

Forgot to put candles in the lanterns...

Over on the sideboard I hung up some dried orange slices also studded with cloves.  If I was a punk rocker that's my clothes would be studded with: cloves.  

That combo is my favorite holiday scent, obviously.  I've petitioned for some Pop-tarts and pizza rolls of the same flavors but they haven't returned my harassing phone calls.

Yes, this twig thing stays up all year.  Don't care.

Now these ARE orange slices since I need a bigger round.  Sliced and baked on a rack at 250 for about three hours or so.  I decorated with some cloves but I've seen really cute ones with cranberries and cinnamon sticks tied on - just search Pinterest and tons of options come up.  So easy.  Will make again x 100. 

Tiny Santa and a church death candle.  Remember, dark Christmas.

Also feeling the big Moroccan lantern for this holiday? More next year?

It's a jumbled mess but I'm feeling it.  That skull is working its way through every season around here.  Wait til you see what I do with it for Easter!

Someone should name them!  I have three!

I haven't bought a lot of new decoration items this year but I did find these adorable little porcelain gnomes on Instagram from a great etsy shop called Salt and Ginger. I bought them with the intent to give them as gifts but I don't think I can let them go.  I mean, Chattanooga kinda has a gnome theme and also I'm selfish.

They are about 100 years old and were dug out of the ground outside a German toy factory so they are gnome zombies. 

They go well with my Crate and Barrel village that is terrorized by glittered dinosaurs and foxes.

It's a regular menagerie of weirdness up in here!

I see that calligraphy class is coming in handy.  Just kidding that's wonky as fuck...  I hope my instructor isn't reading this.

Saucy tip: I like yarn because it's soft and I have fantasies of learning to knit one day but it also is cheaper than fancy twine and ribbon for wrapping presents.  

However, I did enjoy making this giant yarn pom as a bow!  Tutorial here.

I strongly recommend NOT buying IKEA wrapping paper.  UGH.

It's yarn MADE of tiny poms that became a giant pom.  It's a pom within a pom.  Inception pom.  

Might I also recommend leather or suede to tie your gifts?  It's like Christmas for a lumbersexual.  I can practically smell the forest in here oh wait I can it's the all the fresh greenery I've used.  

Moms.  They probably don't care how amateur the calligraphy is, thank gawd.

Yes, that's the snake tail from last year that may or may not have stayed out all year...

I'm a little meh with my tree this year but if you squint it looks fine.

Charlemagne doesn't mind.

So I've got a lot more crafting and baking up ahead but here's where we are right now.  And by here I mean watching dystopian movies like Snowpiercer (OMG) and Divergent while I wrap the last of the gifts and try to find something else to put Fireball in.  Again, I strongly recommend you explore the darker side of the season if for no other reason than Snowpiercer is just that good.

So Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/Joyous Thursday to you all from all of us at the ModSauce Ranch.

I spend way too much time drawing these for how they look.  But lettering slightly better here? 

Thank you for reading me this year when I've been all grumpy and unfunny and for all your comments and support.  They mean a lot and it just goes to show I have an amazing bunch of readers.  All six of you!

I'm going to be taking the next few weeks off so I'll see all you saucy cats in 2015! 

Wreath-tacular!

Alert the social media, I HAVE CRAFTED!  After last week's post on wreaths I kinda committed myself so I couldn't risk the embarrassment of failure.  ESPECIALLY around the holidays.  Santa would have been so disappointed.

Fortunately I have a fellow wreath-minded friend - Emily Rose - with a great property for foraging so a craft date was set.  We both foraged our respective yards and met for toast, christmas music and greenery sharing.

I was greeted with homemade jam and this upon my arrival:

Just a bathtub full of ivy, naturally.  Where else would you put it?

I wanted to go for a free-form simple wreath so no ivy for me.  I started with a piece of privet because fuck privet I hate it.  And of course this happened:

Fuck privet.  YOU ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING.  So it was too stiff (that's what she said) and I cracked it in half while trying to work it around (WHAT SHE SAID).

New plan.  I was already going to use cypress foliage so I just used the entire branch instead.  Duh.

Well lah di dah I made a circle!  I just wrapped floral wire around the ends and called it a day.  I did have to gently GENTLY coax/mold the thick part of the branch around to help with the shape just so it wouldn't pull that tightly on the wire.  I'm assuming most evergreens would be this easy to use at this time of year.  And you may need to take off some of the smaller stems on top to clean it up.  Business up top, party on the bottom.  Mullet wreath.

If you're looking to make a specific size of wreath my wreath is about 13 inches in diameter so my branch base to tip was somewhere over 40 inches.  I don't need anything that specific but if you do then don't forget 2(pi)Radius of desired wreath = length of branch.  MATH!  so handy for life's more important situations!

Back to things that are actually fun and interesting: rainbows and nandina!

Nandina foliage and berries look great right now so I mowed down a bunch from my yard and attached them with a small bit of floral wire too.  I think I threw in a small sprig of pine too and ended up with this:

Wonky and wonderful!  Well, close enough.  Maybe it needs a trim on that right side but overall I'm super happy with.  Honestly, excluding the time it took me to murder the privet at the beginning and for eating more toast I think it probably took about 20 minutes?  I bet I could knock one out in about ten minutes now that I have the magic technique.

That was so easy I decided to make another one since we were already destroying the kitchen.

Thanks for letting me ruin your house in the name of greenery, Emily.  That's one branch on the form FYI.

In case you didn't know, critters live in branches.  Every year when I decorate my mantel with cypress I always make a few new friends in the form of some teensy tiny spiders so you're forewarned.  Sometimes they're the tiny white/clear spiders which I think are kinda cute.  Your call.

I stole one of Emily's wire wreath forms - super cheap and reusable - you can see above and decided to do a fluffier option using more of the cypress base.  

I used about three long branches which were really easy to wire into the form.  I added some more nandina, some holly, a bit of cedar and pine and a few sprigs of dried crape myrtle buds.  

I didn't really even wire most of the extras on since they stuck in place fairly well.  Also, that holly is an absolute beast to work with so I was tired of getting my cuticles pierced.

Pardon the sad picture (hey, it was dark and I'm clumsy) but I'm definitely enjoying the final product: 

Ok it was actually a more round shape to start with but I when I closed the front door after hanging it the plastic hook broke and it tumbled to the ground...  Whoopsy.  Fortunately I think if I give it a haircut on the right side it'll be fine.

I also added these post-Christmas 2013 clearance sale antlers for even more hipster credibility.  I feel so 2013 relevant!  I think I also might add in some fresh rosemary the next time I'm outside in the daylight.  Perhaps even an LED faux candle?!  I'm gettin' outrageous over here.

But it ain't all about me.  Emily made this super adorable wreath for her exterior windows:

This is a wire base like mine above but with ivy and cedar.  I love how the cedar is hairy like a muppet wreath.  What I love even more is the "bow" made out of magnolia leaves and finished with some nandina berries.  That is so damn genius.

She also did a large wreath outside using a grapevine base with ivy, cedar and cypress with equally impressive results. 

This one is about 36 inches wide and I don't think it took her more than an hour just tucking branches into the grapevine. Super easy.  Again, I bet once you've figured out your system the wreaths will go pretty fast.

From Emily's Instagram

It's like we're in Vermont!  

So even including the extra wonk on these wreaths and the cuticle stabs from the holly overall I was super stoked about the project.  I would absolutely make them again next year and maybe even do more this year.  I can't stop.  

I mean, it's essentially free, smells good and it's quite possibly the most Christmasy thing you can do other than prove to Santa in sensual detail how naughty you've been.

But only if you like gift-giving older men more than crafts.

Shit, don't we all?

This makes me exceedingly happy.

You can just turn off your porch light and dive into your candy head first because your Halloween decorations are all shit.

here

I've failed a bit at Halloween this year - my front porch has two sad pumpkins on it and nothing else and I haven't even practiced my party eye makeup.  I'm not even really doing a costume because the last time I went to a "costume" party on Halloween I was the only person dressed up which was uncomfortable as fuck.  

Everyone was wearing their holiday jorts and I was at the buffet shoving sausage balls into my mouth balancing a skull in my other hand, wearing a dramatic black felt hat and looking like I just walked off the set of AHS Coven: redneck edition.

Adults, man.  Sometimes they're the worst.

Next year I vow to have a party and you can ONLY come if you dress up!

Or can carve pumpkins like a boss.

I'll probably be all alone in costume yet again...  

Like Jesus I've been resurrected from blog death!

It has come to my attention this week that the ultimate tragedy has befallen our nation: YOU WERE NOT ABLE TO READ MY BLOG.  Apparently there was some kind of Blogger/Feedburner fuckery because new posts did not show up in RSS readers or email subscriptions since about January.  I only discovered this when my post earlier this week prompted Feedburner to wake the fuck up and send the entire backlog all in one dump and it confused people.

Thanks a fucking lot, internet things that I do not understand how they work.

Also, thanks to y'all for not even telling me!  I could have been dead, my rotting corpse hunched over on top of my laptop, Charlemagne long since eaten my eyeballs then moved away, and y'all would be like "I think she's just on hiatus..."

I would never leave for two months without telling y'all.  That's just rude.  Two weeks, maybe.  Ok maybe three like in that one summer a few years ago when it was just too damn hot to blog but never months.  

So I hope you're still here and thanks to the people that check on my site old school style or came through from Twitter.  I really should be better about tweeting myself but that seems really hard when I'd rather tweet about US Airways blunders and the weather.

So I'm not posting anything of real value today, just letting you know am I NOW aware of the problem and trying to investigate the why.  So a quick recap of what I've been up to lately?  Um...

First off, I read these while spending some time in airplanes the past few days:

All excellent.

In bloglandia, I've been planting a lot, ants make really good architects, I saw American Hustle, I WANT to see this cabin, I thrifted - A LOT - and I gave some of my latest travel and moisturization secrets to you.

Most importantly, I've kinda been redecorating my bedroom.  It needed some love after many sad years of bland and I got kinda inspired by this whole jungle theme which I totally appropriately named Heart of Darkness.  But don't worry, the jungle theme is only for blog lyfe and inspiration.  But I made a real mood board and have slowly been changing up my beauty rest space and have painted all the walls and made some other progress.  Mostly a mess but some progress too.

I think that's the main stuff.  The sad part is that I've made a pointed effort to blog more this year only to find out that almost no one is reading it.  Sigh... such is blog life.

Anyway, welcome back, missed you, love you, let's drink some chai spiked with booze and talk about my plants and paint colors and eggs.

In light of this weekend, y'all know I'd rather cut off my infamous beauty mole than celebrate the resurrection of Christ but I did run across these Easter eggs - let's call them Spring Equinox Eggs of Blessed Fertility aka Mother Nature's Ovary Glitter - and was kinda amazed.

They're decorated with flowers and then wrapped in onion skins and boiled.  Our ancestors really knew their shit.

See the full tutorial and pictures at Ulicam

But mostly about eggs and pretty colors.

Hopefully we won't have any more blog issues but please holler at me if you're having problems with something - commenting, feedly messing things up, you think I might be dead.

You're on your own with eggs though.

Christmas for all the grown women out there.

A mid-week holiday was so incredibly rude of the baby jeezus.  So I've still been celebrating through this past weekend and probably for another two weeks if I'm being honest.  Just gonna slowly close those curtains so my neighbors don't see my tree lights and keep on reading your holiday posts and pinning stuff for next year.  

I may even do some more crafts if I get a wild hair.  2014 will start off with a bang.  

Of glitter and yarn.

While I'm attempting to craft and binge watching old episodes of Buffy, here's a dump of what Christmas at the Ranch looked like this year.

There was a lot of twine and fuzzy things, just sayin.

And things that RAWR.

My local nursery.

Pretty much what my coffee table looks like all the time.  Open chocolate, tea, snakes and random shiny things.

For anyone who's wondering, Charlemagne could care less about the tree.  She has plenty outside that are much more exciting because critters live in them.  This one is only home to sparkle and pointy things.

Exhibit A:

Faux bois forever.

RED faux bois with gold coin bow.  This present was a square bellydancer.  It was my favorite.

There is never a rhyme or reason to mantle decoration - I just try to throw as much shit on there as humanly possible.  More is more for the holidays.  

Also, my life.

Forget crafting pom poms, Pinterest.  I found this great yarn at a junk store which I can't wait to use next year.  Or make a toy for Charlemagne.

Just kidding, she's too cool for toys.

I don't know what's going on here but it feels festive over on the sideboard.  I'm pretending that old cowboy is like a country Santa during the Great Depression and all the shit in front was collected from a cool person's trash pile.  It works in my head.

 I did manage to see a few lights this year which is my favorite thing to do.  The tackier the better.  These were from the Enchanted Garden at Rock City for you local people.  

Last year I made sriracha salt for gift and that went over really well so I kept with the spicy theme and made sriracha chex mix.  I know we're supposed to hate sriracha because it's too trendy but this is a small town and people still don't know how to pronounce it so I'm considered a gourmet chef.  I'll never do anything to jeopardize such a status.  Next year everyone's getting kale and they'll love it.

Also made some bacon jam since it was a hit earlier this year.  Meat paste is always a good gift.

A lot more people got meat paste this year because I had to scale back some of my holiday plans.  In mid December my car decided it needed several thousand dollars worth of repairs so there went your Christmas present.  If you were expecting a gift but didn't receive it I probably had to return it so I could get my vehicle back.  I'm sure you understand.

But all was soon forgotten because BEYONCE. 

Here

Fuck Dean Martin.  This is the only shit playing in my house this year.  What was holiday decorating just became a shrine and I'm totally okay with that.

Beyonce, Her Holiness of Glitter and Fatties, is of course my true shining star for the holiday season (and life) but shit got real this month.  Like, I cried. 

here

And then saw this moment and lost my damn mind.  

Now I do this every morning:

I spent my entire Christmas break reading black feminists and that was the best gift I could have gotten.  If you don't get it or understand why there's a fuss maybe start here.  Shout out to my girls @SoRefined and Fit and Feminist for being my support group during this glorious time.

Santa Claus who?  

here

Hope you had a holiday filled with as much joy as Beyonce has while dancing on a beach.

See y'all in 2014.  The year in which I take my cult Beyonce love to dangerous new heights.

And maybe even more dinosaurs.