Holiday Table Tips & Gingerbread Houses

So. You are getting out the linen napkins and planning to set a fine table. I’ve found just the place for you to find out how to make fancy napkin folds, pair wines, and set the table. After the holiday meal, you might plan to add to your weekend tradition the baking, building and decorating of a gingerbread house. Now, doesn’t that sound more fun than fighting the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping crush? Since I’m in co-charge of the annual Gingerbread House Exhibit & Contest at the Chesterton Art Center, I surfed around to see what other organizations and individuals are doing. Amazing. Finally, since you’ll be left with leftover turkey no doubt, you will appreciate a site devoted to leftover recipes.

International Guild of Professional Butlers . What better place to find the information you need to plan a perfect dinner, luncheon, buffet, or even a tea party? Add some style to your holiday dinner table by learning how to fold your napkins into a rosebud, or pyramid, a crown, Cardinal’s hat, or other forms. Access the butlersguild.com/guests/napkin_folding/ portion of the website for this information. Find the style you like, and click on the image. It will take you to a page with step-by-step, illustrated directions. Pretty cool. There is plenty more information on other pages within the website. You’ll find turkey-carving directions, “Wine 101”, tips for averting entertaining emergencies, food safety, and information about silver place settings and serving pieces. If that’s not enough, there are additional pages that instruct about wine and food pairings, and how to brew a perfect pot of tea. The experts providing all this information are, after all, extremely knowledgeable in all of these areas. Plus, there is a place on the site that gives information about butler employment opportunities.

Gingerbread Lane . Put aside all thoughts of your basic gingerbread cabin when you log on to this site’s showcase link. There are some incredibly sophisticated displays of gingerbread “wonders” here. View the amusement park created by Jock McCoy, with a roller coaster that really works. Two other spectacular creations on this page feature a gingerbread model of Mont St. Michelle and Neuschwanstein Castle. There are numerous other pictures uploaded by gingerbread bakers. I liked the French street scene with the Eiffel Tower—the frosting-glue was tinted various colors for each building and the overall effect is delightful.

Franky’s Attic . You can find all the information you need about any aspect of gingerbread at this website. In addition to choices of recipes, you will find a big selection of house patterns (.pdf) that you can print and use to create your own house. Suggestions for using different types of candy are listed, and there is information about the best way to store and preserve your finished house, too. Plus, a huge list of links may get you lost within the Internet for hours if gingerbread is your passion.

Virtual Gingerbread House . If you don’t want to bake or use graham crackers, you can still build a gingerbread house—online. But you can’t say that you can have your cake and eat it too because this is a virtual gingerbread house that you’ll be decorating. All you can do with it is print it out or email it. But, you can have a few minutes’ fun, and kids might enjoy it. The only downside is that there is annoying music in the background and I could not find a way to turn it off—unless I turned off my speakers.

Leftover Turkey . Will it be quiche, croquettes, casserole, pot pie or just plain turkey sandwiches? Search to your heart’s content among 350 or more recipes for using cooked turkey. The Internet is brimming with so many recipes that one could, if they wanted, throw away all of their cookbooks and make up their own, personalized version. Just copy and paste your favorites into Word (or similar program) and print.

More Wacky, Wild and Weird Sites

Last week I ran out of room listing wacky, wild and/or just plain weird sites that proliferate on the Web. Here are a few more.

Sibology. If there are times when you think your thinking is off-balance, you might want to use this site as a reality check for yourself. You’ll discover that your thinking is well within the boundaries of ordinary. Notice that I did not use the word “normal”? “Sib.” according to this site author, stands for “super intelligent beings.” And just about everyone in government, in computer engineering, and lots of others are targets for a verbal lashing. Whoever created this site is passionate about his (or her) beliefs. If you need a definition for “rant,” log on here.

Eternal Life Device . The FDA won’t approve Alex’s device, but this inventor is convinced that his invention will keep a person living forever. He is so sure, and apparently so altruistic, that he is giving away instructions on how to construct your own eternal life device. He also has an order form if you don’t want to bother with such stuff (but then, you’d never run out of time, would you)? The device is worn on the fingers and resembles a big ring. And there is a foot model that looks sort of like a torture object that might appeal to directors of concentration camps. Take a look.

Russian Mouse . Are you ready to spend $60 for a computer mouse? How about $160 for a keyboard? Well, not just any mouse, or any keyboard. Some person who hails from Russia spends his (or her) time painting intricate characters (think: Shrek), folkloric people, and scenes on the electronic devices. And the artist does a very good job, I’d say. I’m wondering if the artist found a supply of used mice and keyboards to use as his canvas. Not that it matters. If you want to be the first on your block—or in your cubicle—to have an artfully designed mouse or keyboard, this is the place to find it. As for me, I don’t pay enough attention to my keyboard or mouse when I use my computer—I’m too busy looking directly at the screen.

International Museum of Toilets . Yes, there really IS such a place. It’s in New Delhi, India. Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak has taken it upon himself to collect some extraordinarily ornate models that would fit well in a Baroque-designed dwelling. What’s more, Dr. Pathak has researched the history of toilets to way, way back in time, and he dedicates a page to ancient “rules of usage” that is quite a fascinating read. Dr. Pathak is not some Internet crank—his credentials include presenting a history paper at the International Symposium on Public Toilets held in Hong Kong in 1995.

Spiders on Drugs . Here you will discover that drinking too much coffee is worse than ingesting hard drugs. Well, at least it looks that way when you see the webs lab spiders have spun after they have been inoculated with such other substances as marijuana, mescaline, LSD, and Benzedrine. The photos of the spider webs illustrate an experiment that NASA scientists engaged in, seeking to measure toxicity relationships. The coffee web looks the worst (at least to me). But read the captions carefully. The spiders behaved differently because of a particular drug’s effect. Coffee revved them up. Marijuana got them going, then got them chilling out for a long snooze, so their webs were not completed. At least the coffee subjects finished their webs…

Wacky, Wild and Weird

Need a laugh about now? I’ve found some places on the Internet that are worth a good laugh. Or, if not a good laugh, an opportunity to mull over the notion that humans who post to the Web come in all flavors and take up some imaginative—even out-of-this-world kinds of projects. Have fun logging on to some or all of the following.

Pumpkin Computer . What do you do with your pumpkin after Halloween is long past, assuming no pies have been baked? A few ingenious students transformed a pumpkin into a working computer. Honest. You can see for yourself at this website and since they were nice enough to provide step-by-step instructions, you, too can be the first on your block to have a pumpkin computer.

Receipt Collection . Mark Thomas is a self-avowed collector. He does not explain why he chooses to save, scan and upload every receipt he receives for every purchase he makes. Why he thinks the average surfer might find his website of scanned receipts one to bookmark and return to, I don’t know. After I viewed just one page of his receipts (he has more than 2,000 posted), I was wishing that he might put aside the electronics for awhile and go out and get some fresh air. But then, judging from the information on his receipts, I can see that this guy really does get around.

Confuse Your House Guests . A pair of twentysomethings found a way to turn their living room sideways. Yes, almost upside down, but in this case, sideways. Sound like a college prank? That’s sort of correct. The guys who did this give step-by-step directions on how they performed their trick, no magic, just amazing ingenuity. When you see the pictures, you can imitate what they’ve done in time for April Fool’s Day. Beware. This is no small project.

A Year of Stuffed Animals . A guy by the name of Jacob must have been given a ton of scrap material. Jacob’s hobby, if that is what it is called, is to make a stuffed animal a day. He’s posted pictures of some of his results, and don’t expect department-store stuffed animals when you go to his site.

Eat 22 . If Jacob can make a stuffed animal a day, then Ellie can photograph every morsel of food that has hit her lips for the past year. Yet, Ellie took her project a few steps further. She had a gala gallery reception after the year was up. Guests nibbled on tiny cupcakes with “Eat 22” lettered in the frosting. And, she made a poster of her many eating sessions—a collage of photos—available for purchase. Does she deserve an award for entrepreneurial genius or what?

MOFA . Since we are on the subject of food, here is a gallery that our food writer, Carolyn McConnell, might enjoy. MOFA stands for Museum of Food Anomalies. Web viewers are invited to send in their weird food pictures for posting. How about a ghost-faced cereal? Or a green pepper, when cut open, reveals a smiley face? Go ahead—look around and waste some time. Pretty soon you, too, will be examining every edible for an anomaly. Too bad Ellie (Eat 22, posted above) didn’t think of doing that.

Wait! There’s more. I’ll write about them next week, since I’m out of room. Meanwhile, check out my new, improved website, Artmedia-Indiana which shows the results of my six weeks of toil completing my online website building class.

Update: Virtual Classroom II

After the last post, I worked through my final lessons--took the final exam--and passed!.

You can view a sample of what I learned at my website, Artmedia-Indiana.

I used a combination of my html training and Dreamweaver. For anyone who tells you that it's a good thing to learn html even though you might use a wysiwyg editor, believe them! It makes things so much easier.

Now I will concentrate on getting the print columns posted regularly once again--or at least, I'll make a valiant attempt.

Thanks for hanging in there.