New lamps

Here are the three lamps that I made in December. This first one is a blue wine bottle of Riesling that's almost 2 feet tall. I gave it to Bob and Virginia for Christmas.
All lit up...

This is a Seagram's gin bottle with colored lights. Will put it up for sale on Etsy as soon as I finish this post. www.etsy.com/shop/Freefallin44

All lit up...it really looks like a Christmas tree...

Here was a really pretty green wine bottle that I gave to Mark and Shari for Christmas. The label had a picture of a bridge on it. I wish I had written down what type of wine it was before I gave it away...

All lit up....

Now I just need to get up some motivation to make some Valentine themed bottles...plus I could use some sales to motivate me!! Tell everyone you know!!

Coffee cake and Christmas cookies

Coffee cake: the brown sugar and butter crumbles....
Cake batter.

Ready for baking.

Finished result...it was really good, but the recipe called for sour cream in the cake mix...which tasted funky to me. But it was still really good and didn't last long at work.

Peanut butter kisses. This recipe was a pain in the butt. It called for an ingredient which doesn't exist, so I had to improvise.

The end result was really good, but now I'll have to figure out how to make the mystery ingredient myself (baking mix). I used Jiffy chocolate chip cookie mix, but it came with the chocolate chips in it already...so I had to sift them all out...

Oatmeal cookies.

Chocolate peanut butter cookies. Batter.

Peanut butter balls, they look like the balls of tree sap from Jurassic Park.

Peanut butter balls covered in cookie batter and rolled in sugar. These were really good too, but definitely did not look like the beautiful picture. Which is why this picture is pre-baking, the after baking part was not very attractive, but it tasted good.

NAMIwalk

I am once again heading up a walk team for the NAMI walk on May 28th. I am writing this to ask for any help whether it be joining our team, donating money or items for fundraisers. We are planning some fundraisers at work for NAMI- The National Alliance on Mental Illness. So far, we have decided to have a raffle and a bake sale in the next few months.
For the raffle we have decided to raffle off a craft basket and a food basket so far. The craft basket will include any handmade items from donors that includes: a wine bottle lamp, soaps, and a scarf as of now. If anyone makes any type of craft or know someone who does, who would be willing to donate, please let me know.
We also need donations for a food basket that can include coupons to local restaurants and fast food places or actual foods from businesses that you know. We want to do one more basket or giveaway, so if you have any ideas, let me know please! Once we get all the donations lined up I will send everyone the dates of the raffle.
If anyone knows someone who screen-prints t-shirts, that would also be helpful and we are planning to put our logo on them as well as the logos for any businesses who donate to us. One of the teams last year had the clients create a design for the front of their shirts, so we could try doing that as well. I would like the shirts to be green because that is the ribbon color for mental illness awareness.
The NAMI walk is on May 28th at 9AM in Forest Park at the Muny, so we need to get rolling to finish these fundraisers in time. Please contact me as soon as possible with any donations or ideas! Our team page is www.nami.org/namiwalks11/STL/AdaptIL . Go there if you would like to join our team or make a donation. For every $100 our team raises, we get one t-shirt for a team member, so we hope that everyone can get a NAMI shirt this year. My personal walk page is www.nami.org/namiwalks11/STL/Casey if you would like to make a donation to me. We had the 5th largest team last year, and I would like for us to continue to grow every year. It's a really fun event full of lots of information on mental illness. I will continue to post more info about fundraisers and our progress!!