lisaviolet's diary

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

craftstuff
05:05 PM - 07/01/2025

The topic: Why does it go like this?
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Years ago, I bought a Silhouette Curio machine (I've since got the newer one). And like I always do, I get all the extras and consumables I might want to use. The Curio does etching. Like in metal. I bought a fair amount of different sizes of bracelet blanks, dog tags, and the sheets for making stencils.

Playing with the shadow box maker, the 1/4" punch didn't put the hole in the right place to work on the shadow box. I played around with it, punching many holes on paper, but nothing lined up right on the shadow box. I finally got one that was perfect placement on the shadow box cover sheet, but now what? How do I replicate this?

I ordered a 1/4" hole punch from Amazon and figured I will make a guide for the hole placement. I figured that Curio stencil material would work nicely. Except I had no idea where it was. I found the metal blanks, I found the tools, but I could not find the stencil stuff.

I pulled out my bag of acetate sheets, maybe they'd work, but still looked for the stencils. Probably spent an hour searching when I finally looked in the storage container under the new Curio and I opened it. Well, damn, who'd have guessed the Curio supplies would be in the Curio storage container? Not me.

Anyway, I ended up going with the acetate. It wasn't as thick as the stencil material and it's clear where the stencil is translucent.

I made a couple of the guides. Now, I'm ready to actually make some different sizes of shadow boxes.

At least I found my Curio stuff.

A sad aside - the website where I bought the stencil material is no longer there. Their last post on Facebook was the end of last year. They were a super company to deal with.

shadow box craftstuff

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We are fans of the show Yellowstone. We've probably watched it all the way through at least five times. At least.

In one of the later seasons, Beth makes dinner for Rip and Carter. She made Hamburger Helper, but with tuna. She was so proud of herself. Rip did mention to her that "you know, there is Tuna Helper". No, she was not aware of this.

One of the questions I had at the time is the Yellowstone is a cattle ranch. Why doesn't she have hamburger? Brian theorized that they have steaks and ribs and roasts and stuff like that. Hmmph. I find that hard to believe. A cattle ranch with no hamburger.

Anyway, back when I was in high school, there were also "Skillet" dinners. Same idea as Hamburger Helper, but, in my opinion, they were WAY better than Hamburger Helper. My favorite was the Skillet Lasagna.

Out of curiosity, I started checking out the current options for these types of dinners. None of the Skillet dinners, but plenty of the Helper dinners. We have Walmart+, and I scrolled through the available choices. Unlike Amazon, you can purchase one box, not a half dozen. And they're cheaper. I spent over fifty dollars on different varieties of the Helper meals. They arrived the next day.

The thing that bothered me about the packaging is the pasta is loose in the box. The seasonings are in a packet. The reason this bothers me is somewhere along the line we got some bugs in the pantry, the little black things that like flour type products. Crackers, noodles, cereals...

Because of this, I started to package the Knorr's Sides in zip lock bags. Preventing having to throw out everything. The day of the Helper delivery, I sat on the sofa with all the boxes, opening them one by one, dumping the noodles in a zip lock bag and putting it back in the box. Not all boxes had the loose pasta, which was nice, but I opened every single one.

The Hamburger Helper is okay. I'm not real hot on it, but it's an easy meal to fix and Brian likes it. Tonight I made the Cheesy Tuna Pasta. It was good! I was surprised. I will get this again.

I wish they still had skillet dinners like back in the 70s.

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July 2025