Overdrive

For the last seven days I felt like I was spiraling downward into complete frustration.  It's been three months now since my household goods were packed out for Germany.  Three months!!!  Well I didn't want to spiral so I took out my scissors and cut out six pug bunnies.  During the 5 hour bus ride to Paris a couple of weeks ago I hand sew the bunnies.

Then it was clipping curves and stuffing (not in Paris but in Germany when we returned from the trip):

Outline and paint the faces:

Selected body color and painted it on:

Set the pieces on the window shelf to dry.

I failed to take photos of the next step of creating these little cuties but here are the finished Pug Bunnies available in my

Etsy Shop

Woo Hoo - so much color.  I honestly can say that this brought ease to the frustration of this long wait for the arrival on my household goods.

But..........then I received the email.  Sweet Joy!!!!  All my stuff will be delivered next week. 

PUG HUGS TO ALL!!!



A Six Pack of German Beer

I really like German Beer.............packaging.  Tee hee hee - I don't drink the stuff but the packaging went from what you see in the pic above to:

THIS

The packaging became my hang tags for my dolls and such.

Come

Let me show you how I did it.

First the useful sections of the packaging are carved out

I traced circles onto the cardboard.

Painted a base coat.  Two layers of base coat.

The background color is painted on after the base coat dried.

Traced a straight section in the middle of each circle for

"PADDYWAK PUGS"

Painted the strips.  Two coats go onto the strip.

Painted the edges of the strip with Acrylic Metallic paint.  Ohhhhhh Rich Espresso is my favorite metallic color.

With my favorite pen I wrote

"Paddywak Pugs"

within each strip.

Embelished the edges with Tulip fabric paint.  First with Gold.

Then with Pink.

Staining.  My favorite part of the process.

Lustered up the labels with Mod Podge.

Once the Mod Podge dried - the circles were cut out.

Looking good.

 Punched holes in each circle

Snipped laces to poke through the hole

and

WHALLA.

PUG HUGS TO ALL!!



Paris Is Always A Good Idea

Rising bright and early @ 1:45 A.M. we scurried to gather our stuff and get to the theater to catch the bus to Paris.  It was a lovely early mornng - like Spring is really here in Baumholder.

NOT SO  IN PARIS!!!

We were dressed for a nice Spring day in Paris and as the day broke we saw it was gloomy and foggy and oh so nifty when we arrived at the rest stop in France after riding for 3.5 hours.

 

Plan 1 - find the nearest store or stand or whatever and get a jacket.  And that I did.

 

Once I was warm I savored the fact that I was at the Eiffel Tower in Paris France.

 

 And of course with the love of my life.

 

Isn't the Eiffel Tower Spectacular?

The city itself was spectacular

But we all know that if you want to get a true local flavor of the city - find a farmer's market or flea market and we stumbled upon one when we went exploring.

We dove right into the culture and mingled with the locals.  Like this nice man who was rolling out dough and smacking it upon this neat device.  Looked like an upside down wok to me but it did cook up them tortillas.

 It was amaxing how the flat cakes didn't slide off of there.  So what he has spread on the tortilla was a sauce made of toasted sesame seeds, olive oil and fresh basil.  He'll fold it in half and cook more on both sides and Whalla - a tortilla stuffed snack.  It was yummy and warm and so tasty.

 And the aroma of this huge freshly made pot of pilaf gumbo full of seafood was just too much to surpass.  So I stopped and the nice man served us up a hefty serving.  He was a jolly fellow - proud of serving his customers.

I couldn't wait to dig into the meal.

and neither was Ed.

We went on to explore the city more and shopped and of course found little bistros to eat lunch or just to sit and relax after walking for so long.

This Cafe de L'Opera 

 had a very tasty pizza.

We left a little bit of crumbs for Ratatouille's friends tee hee hee

 

 After this meal we began our walk back to the Eiffel Tower so we could catch the bus back to Baumholder.

I must share with you that we are wanderers.  We used no map to get around Paris.  We wanted to explore and whatever we stumble upon we stumble upon.  Well we stumbled upon the famous

MOULIN ROUGE

Whew what luck we had.  Moulin Rouge is a cabaret built back in 1898.  It is marked with a red windmill on the roof.  Moulin Rouge is the place where the can can dance evolved and became a famouse seductive dance all across Europe.  I wish we could have gone inside to look around but we had a bus to catch.

We did have time to see the Eiffel Tower light up.  It was a sight to see and is locked in my memory forever.

That's it for now Blog Buddies.  Until next time I leave you this photo of my son who returned from England the day before we left for Paris.  He got to see the Stonehedge of England.  How cool was that?

 PUG HUGS TO ALL.