Must or Bust: Candy Corn Wreath and Chicken Shredding

Long time no see, my friends!

Sorry I dropped off the face of the blogging planet. .  . again. :) I haven't got any excuses you haven't already heard, so I'm just going to jump right in to the good stuff!

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Candy Corn Wreath: MUST


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I stumbled across this adorable little thing HERE thanks to "Artsy Fartsy Mama". With a blog name like that, how can you go wrong, eh? ;) Well, I set to work gathering my supplies and came to the conclusion that I wanted a bigger wreath than what she used. I needed a Halloween-y door wreath, and an itty-bitty one just isn't my style. It needs to be seen from across the valley, after all, so I settled on a 16" wreath.

She suggests painting your wreath with acrylic paint, but I took one gander at the crumbly white-foam wreath I found and nixed that idea. I'm much too fond of my paint supply to spend it painting a wreath. I decided to wrap it in orange ribbon instead and while I wouldn't say it's the best alternative under the sun, it seems to have worked tolerably well. It's just kind of a pain in the bum when you wrap it and then have to re-wrap it due to running out of ribbon. One average spool of ribbon {like what you find at Michael's} barely fit my massive wreath, so just keep that in mind as you're wrapping. Less is more. . . don't overlap the ribbon hardly at all or you'll run out. Or, better yet, just buy two spools and don't stress about it.

I bought two bags of candy corn from Wallie-World and that worked out perfectly. Granted, I loath candy corn and so I didn't snack on any of them. . . but if you can't live without candy corn, eat the ugly ones. There are plenty of those left over when all is said and done! :)

I initially thought that using Elmer's glue would suffice, so I set to work squeezing glue out of the bottle with a ferocity any elementary school kid would be proud of. That lasted for about, um, two candy corn before I promptly gave up. For one thing, if I so much as looked at it wrong, the candy corn gave up the ghost and fell off. Secondly, I began to think: "Elmer's glue and water don't get along. If this were to get wet, all my candy corn would definitely fall off!" But let's be honest-- I'll have bigger problems than glue if my candy corn wreath is found in a puddle of water. .  . I don't think candy made primarily of sugar will handle moisture very gracefully.

After a few trial and error runs, I found that holding the glue gun in your left hand is the way to go. Ya see, you get a candy corn ready in your right hand, squeeze out some hot glue with your left hand {don't be shy or your corn will fall off later}, plop it down, and repeat. Work in a counter clockwise pattern, too. You'll thank me. If you're busy trying to remember which way is "clockwise" and how to "counter" it, let me help you. It's left. Just go left.



After you finish your masterpiece {16 glue sticks later. . .}, it should look something like this:



You may think you're done {ribbon and embellishments aside}, but if your glue gun is anything like mine, it drools all over the place. The one down side of never putting your glue gun down is that it drools on your wreath instead of your counter top, resulting in countless stringy-spider-web-looking-things that need to be meticulously picked off. For your sake, I hope your glue gun can keep his trap shut once you stop pulling the trigger, but just plan on having some extra TLC to do once you finish gluing, just in case.

I'm kind of "embellishment challenged", so I left 'im nice and simple.

Viola! I'll be sure to let you know if 1) any neighbor kids come pick off candy corn when they have the munchies; or 2) birds fly away with my wreath.


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Shredding Chicken with your Kitchen Aid Mixer: Must


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I found this little gem at "Simply Healthy Family" HERE. Oh my flying stars. . . where has this BEEN all my life?!

I'll be honest, I was a little skeptical at first. Chicken being perfectly shredded using nothing but my Kitchen Aid? Nonsense. But I loathed shredding chicken by hand enough to try it out and I promise you with a holy vow that I shall never again go to town on my chicken with two forks. Sure, it makes for a couple extra dishes, but shredding an entire meal worth of chicken in less than 30 seconds is entirely worth it in my opinion.

Do it, you guys. Just make sure you put it in your mixer while it's still warm. And just to give you an idea, I started out my mixer on speed 1 and then once it started shredding, I ended up around speed 3. Worked like a charm.

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Good luck with your Halloween crafties and chicken annihilating! I wish you the best of times and many merry memories :)