FUDGE, homemade holiday gift idea #6

We are confessed chocoholics. We love it, yeah, we even go as far as to hide it from the rest of the family. (Shame on us.) We gotta tell ya, there is nothin better than good old fashioned FUDGE for the holidays! We look forward to it every year. Here is a recipe for you to share with your loved ones, or not (if you double your batch you can hide some for yourself).

2 cups confectioners sugar
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tablespoon of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Holiday sprinkles for decoration

• Thoroughly beat all ingredients except sprinkles together in a bowl or thoroughly mash everything together in a gallon sized zip lock bag.
• When ingredients are completely mixed and smooth, spoon fudge out or cut a hole in the corner of the bag and squeeze it into an 8x8 square pan. Pat out evenly. Add sprinkles if you desire and pat them into the fudge. Wait 2 hours and cut into squares.
• Individually wrap them in colorful paper candy cups then put them in a holiday tin. Tie a bow and you have the perfect gift!
• The fudge will keep for one week.
  
  
  

Homemade Holiday Idea #5

We think this is perhaps the most thoughtful gift idea we have given you so far.

This image is from Wordle.net a place where you can create word clouds. Wouldn't it be wonderful to create a gift of words, perhaps describing your love for someone or their special attributes? You can do that here. Create it, design it, print it and then frame it for your loved one. Fantastic idea! (Shhhhh.... don't tell, we have created several for our gift lists.) You can find great inexpensive frames at the dollar store, thrift stores or garage sales. Paint them a color to match your design! We're talkin one of a kind gift here people!

Homemade Holiday Gift Idea #4

So many people enjoy working in their gardens, this mini gazing globe is the perfect gift for the person with a green thumb on your list. Take a visit on over to the Crafty Gardener to see how she makes these mini gazing balls for the garden. We love this idea, she also does it with discarded bowling balls! Way to recycle!

Homemade Holiday Gift Idea #3

Simple Sugar ScrubWe got this recipe from Recipe Zaar. It's a simple inexpensive gift that you can tailor to your own liking. Use your favorite scent of essential oil. We used coconut and lime for a tropical "take me away" sensation.
This scrub is good for exfoliating any part of your body and works well with sensitive skin. Use it twice a week to keep your skin super smooth.

Ingredients:

• 1 glass jar.
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of light olive oil.
• drops of your choice of essential oil

1. mix the olive oil and sugar in the jar
2. add any optional scents you like
3. to use: place some on a wash cloth and rub in circles anywhere you need exfoliation
4. after sitting for awhile the sugar may settle to the bottom, so it may be necessary to shake this up a little before using.

Homemade Holiday Gift Idea #2

Cupcakes in a jar! Not only are these cupcakes less messy to eat than the traditional kind, you can eat them on the go and they make people happy. On top of that, they are easy to ship. What more could you ask for?

Here is a link to a tutorial on how to make them.

Homemade Holiday Idea #1

The Funky Junk Sisters have made a pledge to try to keep our holidays as homemade as possible. For the next three weeks we will be sharing with you ideas to keep your Christmas homemade too. Dip these Christmas standbys in white chocolate and nonpareils

for something extra sweet.

Candy stix how-to:

• Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stir until melted. Let cool slightly.
• Dip peppermint stix in chocolate, spoon nonpareils over chocolate. Stand candy coated end up in a loaf pan filled with dried beans. Refrigerate until set.
• Package candy in cellophane bags. Cut rectangles out of card stock the width of the bags.
• Fold them over the tops of the bags, staple shut. Affix labels over staples. Write a short Christmas greeting with a gold paint pen to sweeten the package.

These are perfect hostess gifts or stocking stuffers.

Image and recipe courtesy of marthastewart.com

Santa baby....

The Funky Junk Family spent the Thanksgiving Holiday in Leavenworth, Washington. Instead of hitting the traditional malls on Black Friday we shopped the wonderful quaint shops of the Bavarian Village called Leavenworth. Santa eluded us all day but we finally found him cruising around in style in the Kris Kringl shop. This is a twist on his ol' faithful sleigh, but when you don't have any snow you must improvise! A vintage black Mercedes will do just fine.

Now, we just gotta locate us one of these. Santa needs one for under our holiday tree. One in pristine shape or somewhat tattered, we don't mind.

Wait a minute....maybe we should just ask Santa himself for such a unique gift?

Santa baby, a '54 convertible too,

light blue.

I'll wait up for you, dear, santa baby...
So hurry down the chimney tonight.

It seems as though I am always cleaning my house, but I never really ever finish! Are you with me on this? We live with two dogs and there is always some sort of hair on the carpet or the sofa. Every day I take the lint brush to the furniture and vacuum the carpet, but the minute I turn around it's back! Maybe I should give up on having a clean house and enjoy life instead. Besides, life is too short and you just never know when your time is up.

Yesterday I lost a very dear friend and sister in law, no notice, just gone in her sleep. Her loss has devastated our family. Life is too short, my friends, to worry about the little things, please don't waste it and enjoy the people close to you.

Linda FJS #2

Santa, How Old Are You?

I was reminded today that Macys first introduced Santa to its stores in 1870. One hundred and thirty-nine years ago! A Macys window display in the 1870's.

Of course we are all familiar with the most famous Macy's Santa of all. The one that inspired the movie Miracle on 34th Street. A classic "must see" during the holidays.

Macy's Toy Window Display New York 1915.

Finally, a little family history...our father often played Santa for the local merchants in our home town. Here he is with Dixie on his lap in 1974!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday, may you all enjoy the company of family and friends and don't forget to take plenty of pictures. You are creating memories after all. Maybe in another one hundred and thirty-nine years, someone will come across your photos and be fascinated by the history of it all!

Linda & Dixie

A Great Idea From Sue Whitney!

Leave it to Sue Whitney of JunkMarketStyle to come up with such a cute idea.

Can you just imagine how wonderful these paperwhites will smell when they are in full bloom? Heavenly, we say, heavenly!

Follow this link to see just how she did it.

One Day We're Gonna Get Us One Of These!

They are just so stinkin cute!

Sisters on the Fly, here come The Funky Junk Sisters!

Images courtesy of tincantourists.com & dougsvintagetrailers.com.

Barns of our home town.

We have told you before about the small town we grew up in, Deer Park, Washington. We stumbled across the Deer Park/Clayton Historical Society on the web the other day as we were researching something for a project we are working on. This is what we found....wonderful old barns!

Can you believe these beautiful barns surrounded us as kids and we thought nothing of it? We crawled around in their hay lofts and cleaned the milking parlors for extra spending money. Life was much simpler back then....how we long for it now!

We are so blessed!

At our last Funky Junk Sisters Show we were contacted by a lovely photographer, Kim Taylor. She came in early before the show opening to take photos. The photos she took were so beautiful that they are being published in Porch Magazine's Autumn edition. We feel very honored to be included in this publication with shows such as Warrenton, Marburger, Leftovers, BarnHouse, Vintage Home Lifestyle, Queen of Tarte, Molly Mo's, Petaluma, Summer Cottage Antiques and La Maison Rustique!

Make sure you order your copy today!

Discovered some neat things at the Palmer Wirfs Show

Almost immediately when I walked in the door of the showplex at the Puyallup Fairgrounds this caught my eye... I love the vibrant colors of all of these old machines.

This juke box was incredible...but it sold on Saturday.

Below is the info for the vendor that had all of this fabulous stuff. He's having an auction on November 29th. If you are in the area check it out and don't forget to tell him The Funky Junk Sisters sent ya!

Aren't these beautiful, they were offered by The House of Kerri. She is a designer from Tacoma, WA.

She embellishes vintage fur capes, collars, capelets, wraps and more. She'll even do repair services on your heirloom vintage furs. The detail is gorgeous and she even ads a little bling!

Goin Junkin!

If you are in the Puyallup area this weekend you might run into us at the Palmer Wirfs Show at the fairgrounds. We'll be lookin for treasures thru the sea of vendors. Just the kinda thing we love!

Unexpected Friends

As kids growing up on a small farm just north of Spokane, we had a beautiful German Shepard named Duke. He was our protector, our friend and our playmate. We ran all over the place unsupervised, doing chores, riding horses or crawling around in the hay. He escorted us wherever we went. One time I remember him wandering home whimpering at the front door. He went and stuck his nose in a porcupine, he had hundreds of quills in his mouth. All five of us kids had to help hold him down while mom pulled out the quills one by one with pliers. It took forever, and we just hated seeing Duke in pain. Duke is long gone now, but that memory of him will never fade.

A while back I looked out in our yard and saw a porcupine and I knew our dogs would be curious, I tried to scare him away, but he wouldn't go. We have two heelers and one is extremely alert (Cooder), the other is mellow (Doobie, appropriately named by one of my son's friends). Cooder soon limped to the back door whimpering just like Duke. Fortunately he had only pawed the porcupine and wound up with just a few quills in his paw. My youngest son and hubby were able to quickly pull them out. Now Cooder is a smart dog so he had learned to not touch "Porky" ever again, but Doobie might be even smarter, he learned from Cooder to never even go near that strange animal!
The funny thing is, that porcupine hung out with our dogs for a couple of weeks after the incident. Every day he would come back to check things out.

The dogs barked at him terribly, he wouldn't go away. Finally they just excepted him as a friend from a distance.

Crazy isn't it?

Linda