The Wigglebutt Blog

As of the new year, there is apparently, a whole lotta me to love. This post needs a little back-story. I have spent my entire working life doing physical work. I was a cocktail waitress/bartender for approx. 3 years, I worked construction, doing sheetrock, tape, texture and painting for approx. 8 years, then I moved to Alaska and started a new career in retail. I worked sixteen years as a "working" Bakery Manager in a major grocery chain bakery, I scratch baked, I threw freight (lots of it), I decorated cakes and I fried donuts (from 10pm to 6 am). As I said I've worked very physically demanding jobs all of my life, until recently........ This is where it gets interesting...... Let me also mention that, after 30 years, I kicked the bad habit of smoking. I quit smoking Oct. 22, 2007. My wonderful husband decides we should go into debt for 7 figures (which, by the way, I figured there was absolutely NO WAY this would ever actually happen) on or about January 15, and I qu...

I finally finished my tutorial I promised . It is a tutorial on how to build an insulated "box" inside your toaster oven. Why would I need an insulated box inside my toaster oven, you ask? Why, to bake polymer clay, of course. I love the one I built for myself, and I have NEVER burnt anything I have baked inside the "box". If you are having any problems with that new oven you got for Christmas, check this out. Since I am a little 'challenged' when it comes to posting pictures on the blog here, (still pretty new to this) and since the tute has quite a few pictures, and since I am very comfortable with my sitebuilder program, I decided to create a tutorials page on my website. That way it's just 1 or 2 pics here and a link to the tute. It didn't really take that long to build the page, finish taking the pictures and writing the tutorial, but as I was finishing it up, I realized that I hadn't updated my site in about 6 months and linking to it woul...

Just thought I would share a couple of pics of what I made for our gift swap at work. I filled it with bath salts. She loved it. I think:) I finally took some time and tried some of the creatures from Christi Friesen's book "Under the Sea". I think it came out pretty well:)

I had a small group of people to give a gift to this year. They all needed to be the same (equal) and they needed to be gender and age neutral. So I copped out and got gift cards to a store that I know they all shop at. The gift cards alone seemed very impersonal so I tried to come up with a more Christmas-y delivery system. Thank Goodness for the "Gift Basket" I found myself with the same problem as before. What to put in the basket with the gift card. Well this is what I finally came up with. The Anatomy of a (my) Gift Basket. I started with a plain bushel basket from Michael's and hot glued some ribbon around the sides and added a bow. To accompany the gift card I added: A small bag of mini candy bars. 2 sample bags of flavored coffee. A small bag of my homemade Snickerdoodle cookies. A music CD that my husband put together of Mannheim Steamroller Cristmas songs. And last but not least....drum roll please.................................. My Grandma Deen's FABULOU...

Now, that is one sincere, intense face. We actually received this photo as an email attachment from a very nice gentleman who likes to send us "A Joke of the Day". I couldn't resist sharing. With a four day weekend coming up, I hope to be able to finish the rest of the pictures for my very first tutorial! I can't say anymore, 'cause it's a surprise.

FROM THIS TO THIS AND THIS This little fellow is a Puffin. He is a gift for a good friend of mine. Now that he is finally finished I can continue dressing my naked herd of penguins.

When ordering anything on-line, I have learned to go straight to the shipping info first. It saves a lot of time. And frustration. I used to look around on the sites, maybe put something into my shopping cart, then go to check out, just to find out they ship to the contiguous 48 states only, or that they want to charge completely outrageous shipping charges. Now..... I am not a huge on-line shopper. I am a firm believer in Buy Alaska and I am a permit holder in the Made in Alaska program. That being said, being in Alaska, there are a few things I need that I can't come by here. A good example is that I buy Premo! in the 1 pound block. I haven't found it anywhere here, so I order it from Polymer Clay Express . You might think that it costs me a fortune to have several pounds of clay shipped to Alaska. But I order from this company for several reasons: their prices are good, they are always very prompt in shipping, they take the time to write little thank you comments on every s...