LorishForrest - An Etsy Store!

After a fair amount of husbandly pestering...

I have decided to try and sell my creative projects on Etsy.  It's takes a lot of time and love to make these things a reality but lucky for me I have a figdity disposition and have a hard time sitting still!

I want to show you all what I have been making and of course gets your thoughts on anything that's needed in your collections as well!  This will be a constantly changing post with updates all the time so feel free to check back often!  And of course, if you see something you must have please visit my Etsy store by searching for LorishForrest.

 

 

    

S7PP: Viserys - sorry!! (not sorry.)

"He Was No Dragon.  Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon."

I've opened up an Etsy shop in case you don't want to do this yourself - we've kind of perfected the process so why mess with all that stupid glue!?! (IT'S HOT, YO!)  

Visit my shop to see for yourself by looking me up, 

LorishForrest

on Etsy.com

I saw this on another blog somewhere and I thought - GOSH HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!?!  So for about 4 years now I have been bouncing around ideas to make this happen.  It was always something though - the skull is too expensive or who has the time!?!?  But this year I am SO HAPPY I finally made this happen and - to my shegrins - it wasn't too expensive to pull off either.

I was able to find a pretty cheap prop skull on Amazon (same place I find everything...) for a reasonable price.  It's a resin cast and beautifully detailed skull that is not life-sized - it's smaller than a real skull but if you're looking for a life-sized skull, Amazon has plenty of options for you.  I would only suggest that you look for a resin or other material with a higher temp melting point. ____________________________________________________________ For the "crown" I had a few options - gold acrylic paint?  Maybe a gold wax?  Paint would be inconsistent as far as the thickness not to mention messy... and it gets REALLY hot here in the summer time - I could easily imagine coming home to Viserys laughing at me as his gold "crown" was melted in a puddle on my floor... Terrible, right?  So I hummed and hawed and came across gold glue sticks.   GOLD GLUE STICKS, YA'LL!  This was going to be a challenge that I happily accepted.  

The glue sticks melt at 250 degrees F and the resin skull has a melting point at 350 F.  We did a few things here.  Here are the supplies you need:

• gold glue sticks (I used 12 of the small ones)
• Viserys head
• wooden kabob skewers
• tin foil
• an aluminum can (we used a soda can cut in half)
• tongs
• a hair dryer (If you want...)
• a pot to boil water in - careful not to screw up your pot!!
• a wax paper lined cookie sheet

Preheat your oven to 275 F.

Put your glue sticks in your can and make sure they don't stick up over the top too much otherwise they'll melt into your pot and ruin your pot.  You've been warned!  

Put the can in your pot and add water to the pot (don't get any in the can!) being careful not to fill it up too much otherwise the can will float and spill your gold glue all over the inside of your pot which will ruin your pot.  Voice of experience - you've been warned!

Put the pot on your burner and cover it with tin foil - It might not be a bad idea to set your tongs over the top of the covered can to secure it and make sure it doesn't move around too much while the water is boiling.

You can check it a few times but it will take a few minutes to melt.  Make sure your skull is ready on the wax-paper lined cookie sheet.  Once it's melted (and bubbling a little) you'll want to pour it over your Viserys head.  You'll want to encourage it to evacuate the can with some scraping with your kabob sticks knowing that you'll have to toss em after you're done - get some help with this!  You'll need to hold the can with the tongs and scrape the glue carefully on top of  the skull. It's not going to pour easily and keep in mind that the second you take the glue off the heat it will begin to cool making it harder to manipulate.  

From here we set our hair dryer on high to keep it hot and maneuvered it to where we sorta wanted it to drip - it has a mind of it's own though and will do as it wants!  I tried reasoning with it but it found my clothing choices offensive and didn't feel up to working with me.  Once you have it sorta where you want it you can put it in your hot oven and let it go.  I camped outside of my oven for about 5 minutes watching it melt and when I was happy with where it was I pulled it out and blew it dry with my COLD hair dryer.  This is important because when you put the entire skull in the oven, it will get hot which will cause the glue to melt further even after its out of the oven - you have to cool it off.  BLOW MAN, BLOOOW!

It doens't take too long to cool down and the result is pretty freaking amazing.  I want to make more of them.  Maybe for the finale party?  Hmmm.....

  

S7 Premier Party - White Board....

Here are the things I WANT to do.... lets see if I can pull it off.  This is an ever-changing post so keep checking back for updates!

3.14.17 - Found these... and remembered that my son has had a pack of these stupid eggs sitting on his dresser since last year and he keeps saying he's going to use them.... MINE NOW!  Gotta find my paints and my brushes... Mess, here I come!  Good thing Easter is right around the corner and egg candy will be plentiful.

I found them at this amazing website - they have lots of other tempting ideas too - maybe something else will jump out at you?  Like that beautiful and surely delicious Nights Watch cocktail?  Mmmmmmm huminah.

They mention the Game of Thrones board game - which we have - and I have to say, if you love board games, you'll love this one, it's worth picking up.  It takes a long time to play and don't play with someone who is a strategy ho - like House Lee.  They win every time, EVERY TIME!



I also found a recipe for Honey Bark .... and oh my stars, I LOVE honey bark!  Naturally, this is a must to send my soldiers home with... Alejandra does a fantastic job laying out the tutorial on making this amazing desert.  I'm not a baker, I am a cook and usually you are either one or the other so here is to hoping I don't flub it up.  Could you imagine this stuff dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with toffee pieces?  We could call it a Dornish delicacy!  You could even get SUPER authentic and stick a dead cricket on the top, heck, why not?

Too far.... sorry... lets just stick with toffee bits... mmmmm

3.15.17: Menu Planning

This year we will have the more people attending our little swa-ray than we ever have before so we are going to have to pull out all of the stops.  I have an oven, 2 bbq's, a smoker, and a fire pit and my goal is to have meat cooking on all of them.  Here is the plan

Meats:

Honeyed Chicken x 2

These will cook on one of the BBQ's 

Crown Roast x 2

I can get 2 beef ones or 3 pork ones on my roasting pan.  This will take the longest but will also need the most time to prep before hitting the table.

Baked herb and lemon stuffed fish x 6

These don't take very long under the broiler and can go into the oven after I pull out the crown roast.  I'll post a recipe a little later.

Citrus stuffed fire roasted beef haunch x 1

This will be going on the other BBQ and I am still working out what I am going to do to this poor delicious piece of meat...

Hopefully that will be enough... 

Sides:

Skillet Cranberries

Greens with Apples and Pine nuts

Slow Roasted Crown Roast Root Veggies

Frey Brothers Hand Pies

Snacks and Nibbles:

Dothraki Goat Balls

Fresh baked black bread

Olives

Cheese

and maaaaayyyyybbbeee scottish deviled eggs?  Maybe....

Desert:

Apple blossom tarts

Chocolate covered honey bark

I KNOW IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT!  But I have 17 people coming over... I should be able to out-source some of these to take something off our plates... hopefully... right?  *BREATH, JESSE!!*

Season 7, Premier party! Let the planning insanity begin! (oh boy...)

Well.... The awesome thing is that my best friends will be driving down from Washington to spend the week with us and will just happen to be with us for their first taste of allll the hooplah.

The stressful thing is that since they will be here, and since it's the second to the last time we will ever be able to host this event, my husband wants to invite freaking everybody.  *deep breath deep breath, deep breath!*

So the planning begins.  July 16th is not that far away and we have lots of work to do if we want to host an amazing party for .... 17 people.....  *deep breath deep breath, deep breath!*

I know, it doesn't seem like a lot... and I already have some great ideas, plus I'll have 2 extra sets of hands to help us with the preparations.  The thing that bothers me the most is the logisticals... I don't have enough plates... I don't have enough chairs... I don't have enough butt space on my couch. .. *sigh* most of these things can be solved with some shopping but we can't be going nuts like we did that one year...  Lets see how much of this we can do on a budget!  Thrift stores, here we come!  Of course, I will be sharing my findings here.

This season we have to do a few very important things:

• Come up with a theme....  
• The North Wants You!
• Create the invitations
• Done, and super awesome, I might add....
• Create house sigils for new allies to the North
• Pending.... not sure if I'll actually get around to doing this for alllll of our new bannermen....
• Create a killer (pun intended!) menu
• See the "All About Food" post!  Can't wait to start playing!
• Plan for favors and things to send home
• Ordered giant Easter eggs to paint and fill with stuff! I think I have a post on this?  I'll have to look...
• Figure out annoying logisticals (plates, chairs, butt space...)
• Already started looking at eBay - My advice, get started NOW if you have this problem!  You can find some amazing stuff and you don't want to wait until the last minute!  
• Update the Death Pool board (OOOOOO!!!!!  Hodor, nooo!)
• Work out nitty gritties so nothing gets left out
• Share my madness with all of you lucky duckies.

As always, I hope this blog can serve as a guide to help you create an amazing party too!  Feel free to snag any images you like for your own party and let me know if you have other ideas you'd like me to add.

Lets get it started!

War Is Coming.....

It has begun....

S6FP: Don't forget bread and salt...

Season 6 Finale Party

Don't forget bread and salt...

Oh, my pretties.... the time is upon us to talk about the finale party - and what better occasion then to host another wedding... (fictional, of course...)

We start today with the finalization of the invitation - a task that I can't take 100% credit for but was still equally challenged by its development.  I found an image very similar to this one online (Where everything can be found...) and was able to adapt it for our specific group of roughians.  In this endeavor, I came to the sad realization that one of our newest houses has no sigil... this must be remedied immediately!  In sticking with our "mythical creature" theme, House Courtades sigil is now the majestic and mysterious UNICORN!  Not just any unicorn, no, the happiest and luckiest unicorn I was able to conjure up from Google images - 

She's a happy unicorn...

In keeping true to my usual shinanigans, I also must include a menu for our - - occasion... This menu was fun to make  We will see if my posse picks on all of the subtleties in this and fears for their lives with every delicious fork full of awesome...

Some of the recipes were going to be a challenge and I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew like I normally do.  The main course, Lannisters Land and Sea, is a take on the traditional Roman Tenderloin (recipe here! Thanks, Innatthecrossroads.com!) I will, however, also be adding shrimp to the grill as well which I will prepare the same way (sans bacon) for House Courtade, which does not partake in red meat like a bunch of weirdos.  This recipe will be pretty quick as the majority of the time it takes is chill time in the marinade.  

The stuffed endives recipe also looked incredible but my husband does.not.not.not like goat cheese so I may have to sub cream cheese and add some steamed basil or something... plenty of time to play with that one to make something he will like.  

I also found this delicious looking soup (gotta use those soup crocks!) here that I will make with a vegetable stock instead of a chicken stock.  It looks simple enough but also packed with flavor so it's a no-brainer.  I could probably even create the tortellinis the day before and just chill them overnight as to not overwhelm myself the day of.

We love making things from scratch where we can but in an endevor such as this we have to cut a few corners as well - the biscuits will be your regular Bisquick variety with cheese and chives chopped into the dough and topped with a little seasoning which should pair nicely with the soup.  Under the biscuit will be a wonderfully flaky fish cake - yay for more protein!  

Lastly - ahh yes... This is my own special creation.  When I was little, my incredibly Irish mom would make the most incredible mexican food you've ever had.  It was quite the conundrum to our neighbors and friends in New Mexico how she could pull this off - she was Irish.  But her food was nothing short of amazing.  As kids, and only every once in a great while, she would make Sopapillas for us - which is basically a sweetened bread dough rolled out flat, cut into squares and deep fried so they popped up like little pillows of awesome.  We'd bite off a corner and drizzle honey on the inside and... nom....  I have to stop now, I'm drooling.  

So I will be making moms sopapillas, or the closest thing to it I can muster - and filling them with a mix of vanilla sweetened whipped cream, possibly a banana (haven't decided...) and sprinkling with cinnamon and sugar and a little drizzle of honey to make it even more messy and amazing.   

After that we're going to kill everyone.  

We're not REALLY going to kill everyone but it IS a wedding and we have to stick with the theme here.... muhahahhhahaha!!

S6PP: Our series through new eyes... GoT DEATH POOL!

Season 6 Premier Party

Game Of Thrones Through New Eyes

It does not escape our tribe of bandits that this season will be the first time that we have no flippin clue what is going to happen.  We've all read the books and watched the podcasts - we are nerds, after all, and have to maintain our delicate reputation on these things...

That being said, we are going to have to up our game a little.  Before the start of every episode last season, (and the season before) we took a "Nipple Bet." There are, of course, rules to the nipple bet.  Man nipples did not count unless accompanied by woman nipples. Nipples are also counted independently.  Groups of 10 or more independent nipples did not count (angry mobs of slaves, for example).  The person who guesses the correct amount of nipples without going over wins.  Bets are placed before the show starts and a winner is announced when the credits are over.

I won't lie, the nipple bet is fun.  It may be a tradition we carry into the completion of the series - it's a lot of fun during a tense moment of the show when everyone is silent on edge for some random member of your posse to suddenly shout out "NIPPLE!"   It's good times....

This year, however, we are in the dark!  Just as all other masses who have not taken on George's task and picked up the books.  We know it's going to be awesome, just as we did before but we also knew when key characters were going to lose their heads... we don't know anything now.  That being said, I'm playing around with a dangerous idea...

The Game Of Thrones Death Pool

Here is how this works:

During dinner we will all have an opportunity to place our bets on who is going to die this season.  You get 10 points for guessing the correct person and 5 points additional if you correctly guess the episode.  You do not lose points if you incorrectly guess the episode.  You get minus 10 points if you incorrectly guess a person (so you can't bet on EVERYONE, k?) but you can never go below 0 points.

The person who has the most points at the end of the season will win something effing amazing at the finale party.   More details on that as soon as my brain births it...

Presentation:

I bounced this around in my head for a long time before settling on simple.  I could get a big piece of plywood and modge-podge everyone's pictures on it with a map of Westeros in the background and a hand-painted title and little metal cocktail swords but... WE ONLY HAVE 6 DAYS LEFT.  So lets settle on something a little more manageable here...

I printed pictures of all of my living characters on some parchment paper and will cut them out.  I'm going to pin these to a cork-board.  Yup!  That's it, nothing fancy, just a cork board.  I was able to find some super cute weapon thumb tacks that I'll use for my guests - get to that in a minute.

The pictures will be pinned to the cork board with regular boring pins, title and decorations at the top, of course.  Each guest will have a pile of  little flags at their plate - each one is a different color labeled with their name.  They will also have a pen - on the back of their flag they will write the name of the person they are choosing to die and an episode number (if they wish) then will use a weapon to pin their flag to the character.  Betting is CLOSED once the show starts and will remain that way for the entire season.  As people die, they will be marked with a red skull and crossbones and each guest will be updated of the stats via text.

I have room on my board for 7 more people and suddenly names start flying from my husbands lips like he's an auctioneer... Eventually we found ourselves having the John Snow discussion.  He is NOT ON THE BOARD.

SPOILERS!?!?  Ok, seriously, you haven't read the books and you haven't watched the series yet, what are you doing here??  Don't get all huffy over spoilers when we are going into season 6 and you haven't done your homework!  At this point, if you aren't caught up yet that's on you.

I digress.  John Snow is not on our board because he is "dead."  A LOT of people are going to be disappointed when they set his body on fire, that's all I'm sayin.  (Not saying that's a certainty but all this talk about him being alive means he's dead and he's not coming back..... my guess - I mean, who doesn't live and breathe for the moment that Game of Thrones dashes our hopes and ruins our dreams?)

The seven we must consider are, according to the Lord of the house, are as follows:

 What do you think?  Is there anyone who is more worthy?  

Here are all of the images I chose for the board - if you want to make your own, feel free to copy+paste away!  OR you can just save this post and I will update as the season progresses.  Don't be too shy to put your own best bets in the comments- If the hype is any indication, this season will be BRUTAL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Death comes for us all... can't wait to see what this thing looks like when the season is over!!!

VALAR MORGHULIS!