Article: A Quick Cute Way To Make A Black Cat Halloween Decoration

Well this year has sure gone fast and Halloween is fast approaching, and I have to confess it's one of my favorite times of the year. Each and every year, I just love decorating for Halloween, not only in my home, but for my front door. Now of course I often buy Halloween decorations and have a fair sized collection of all kinds of decorations that I've bought over the years, but every once in awhile I decide to get a little "artistic" and create something on my own.

Being that I'm one of those environmentalist type of people and like to reuse something instead of merely trashing it out as garbage, I'm one of those people that tries to think up ways of recycling something for another purpose and use. I haven't a clue how I came up with this idea, but it's one way I discovered to recycle plastic shopping bags, especially those rather small sized bags.

How often have you done some kind of grocery shopping, especially for very small-sized items and you're given a very small sized black shopping bag? Normally, with regular sized plastic shopping bags one can in a sense reuse them say for throwing out garbage, but those really small-sized bags are kind of pesky and not really great for reusing again. So what happens? One usually just throws them out. Well guess what, I found a way to reuse them by coming up with and creating a quick, kind of cute Black Cat Halloween decoration.

In the included photo you see just one of my Black Cat Halloween decorations and here's how I made it.

What you will need:

One black plastic grocery shopping bag

One or two more plastic shopping bags

Orange yarn

Orange acrylic paint

Small artist paintbrush

Duct tape

1). For this particular decoration, the bag size itself was about 12 inches long. To create the head part of the Black Cat decoration, take more plastic grocery bags, perhaps one or two and form a ball out of them and stuff into the bottom of the bag.

2). With some orange-colored yarn, cut about 18-inches of the yarn, center the yarn and wrap it around a few times to form the "neck" and then tying it into a "bow". Smooth the front of the head to form a better "face" and form "ears" at each top end of the bag. Cut off the handles of the bag.

3). Now take the orange acrylic paint, and paint directly on the "face" the cats eyes, nose, whiskers, and mouth…get as fancy as you wish with these details, though not really necessary.

4). In order to hang up the Black Cat Halloween decoration, cut a bit more yarn, create a loop and tape it to the back of the cat's head with some duct tape.

Voilà ..that's all that's to it. Simple to make yet kind of cute and festive for Halloween and even kids can make these. Not only that, but stored away properly this decoration will last for years.

IMAGE SOURCE~©Melanie Neer~Personal Photo

ARTICLE: How To Make A Mustard Plaster: An Old Time Remedy For Congestion And Backaches

(Originally Published on Bubblews~March 22, 2014-a website that no longer exists)

My great grandmother who while being a nurse, was a virtual walking encyclopedia of natural remedies and preferred them over pharmaceutical medications; she never took anything stronger than aspirin and only relied on the old-time natural remedies and lived to be 98 years old. You might say, that her sense of natural remedies is what we might now call holistic, homeopathic or alternative types of healing. It's unfortunate however, that neither my grandmother nor mother wrote any of my great grandmother's "remedies" down, however there is one I do remember very well: the mustard plaster.

The mustard plaster has been an old-time folklore remedy mainly used for both chest congestions and backaches. Growing up, I always remembered seeing a tin can of Colman's Dry Mustard, both in my great grandmother's home and in the home where I lived with my grandmother and mother. In other words, none of us were ever without it. While there may be other brands of dry mustard, the Colman's brand seemed to be the preferred choice.

How To Make A Mustard Plaster:

From reading different articles about the Mustard Plaster, I noticed there were many variations of just how to make them. However, from a very old tin of Colman's Dry Mustard that I still have, it gives the directions, and as a by the way, none of the newer tins have them. Here are the directions:

MUSTARD PLASTER or POULTICE (Adults)

"Take equal parts of flour and Coleman's Mustard and make into a pass with tepid water. Spread on cotton cloth and cover with a second piece. Apply and allow to remain as long as can be borne but not more than 20 minutes. For sensitive skin increase the amount of flour used to four parts flour to one part mustard."

For the cotton cloth part, one may use a washcloth, and spread the plaster onto half of the washcloth, then fold over. One can then place directly right on one's chest to clear chest congestion, or on one's back for helping backaches. Have I used the Mustard Plaster myself? Yes. Does it work?Most definitely! In the past, when I've had bad bouts of bronchitis to the point where I felt like an elephant was sitting on top of my chest, I would make up the plaster. However, in my case, I was often a little more daring and I dispensed with the cloth part, and would apply the plaster directly on my chest. I would then keep it on as long as I could tolerate it. Why? The plaster does make the area where it is applied on feel hot, also and I did notice that my skin would turn noticeably red.

Now unless you have a very good condiment section of your local supermarkets, which I don't have, Coleman's Dry Mustard may be hard to find. Wanting to have a tin of the mustard on hand as a just in case, I had to resort to buying it on-line, therefore you may also have to resort to buying on-line as well. One can find it via Amazon.com, eBay and a good number of other on-line websites and runs about $5.99 for one tin.

Other articles about Mustard Plaster:

http://thewellspring.org/mustard-plaster-for-stubborn-chest-congestion/

Mustard Plaster Chest Congestion

Mustard Plaster

There's even a video on how to make a Mustard Plaster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIw9Ay3zEJs Mustard Plaster Video

Image Source: ©Melanie Neer~Personal Photo of my tin of Colman's Dry Mustard

Article: Have You Ever Just Found Out A "Celebrity" That You Knew Had Passed Away? Actor Rino Thunder

(Originally Published At The Discussion Forum MyLot~under the username of pyewacket~January 23, 2008)

MyLot Discussion

I had been involved with a discussion by worldwise about the passing of a rather well-known Native American actor, Floyd Red Crow Westerman. I gave her a link to a website that is a listing of all Native American actors....so curious I started puttering around the site myself, and came up with a familiar name, Rino (pronounced Reeno) Thunder. So clicked on his link to his site and found out to my dismay he had died back in 2003!

What was shocking for me, was that I actually knew him. This goes back to the late 1970s. Being part Native American myself I perchance went to an outdoor powwow at the Museum of the American Indian..I took my camera with me and got some excellent photos, mainly using black and white film. Then I found out about the American Indian Community House (AICH) in Manhattan and at the time they were having a gallery exhibit of Native art work. I asked permission if I could photograph some of the work and they said it was all right. A few weeks later, I went back to them, with a small portfolio of some of the black and white prints I had made up as I knew how to develop my own film and prints. I showed off my work to some of the staff members and they were so impressed that right then and there they asked me to in effect be their "official" photographer to photograph future exhibits, the powwows, to photograph their jewelry that they made on site and to photograph some of the people that belonged to AICH as many were aspiring actors who wanted their 8x10 glossy resume photos

..and yes, you can guess just who was one of the people I photographed...Rino Thunder...you can say it was a classic case of knowing him before he got "famous"--he was seen in some of the following movies:

Film

· 7th Street (2002)

· Fresh Kill (1994)

· Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)

· Beyond the Law (1992)

· Hot Shots! (1991)

· Power (1986)

· Wolfen (1982)

Television

· Miracle in the Wilderness 1992

· Invisible Thread Penn & Teller 1987

· Three Sovereigns For Sarah - American Playhouse 'John The Indian' 1985

· Stone Pillow Starring Lucille Ball 1985

· Dance in America 'Song For Dead Warriors' - Narrator (Emmy Award) 1984

· Johnny Appleseed And The Frontier Within - 'Shamen' (Emmy Award) 1983

· Leatherstocking Tales - Singing Bear (Emmy Award: Outstanding Childrens' Anthology/Dramatic Programming) 1982

When I photographed him he took on the stance of the very serious person, the classic "stoic" Indian-- never cracked a smile, but he did have a wicked sense of humor. I unfortunately don't have any of my photos of him printed up..but I do still have all the negatives of all the people I had photographed during that time.

Anyway, like I said you can imagine my shock when I was looking at that website, only to find out he had passed away in 2003..odd, as I never even remember anything mentioned about his passing..I surely would have remembered hearing about it.

http://www.tv.com/rino-thunder/person/236178/biography.html

So have any of you actually known any "celebrities"? And then found out they had passed away? All I know I really feel a sadness about having learned of this actor's passing..

(Update from original posting. While I never printed up any of the photos I took of Rino Thunder, I still have the negatives and am able to scan them to digitize.)

Image Source: ©Melanie Neer~Personal photo taken at the American Indian Community House of then "unknown" actor Rino Thunder circa 1978)