new cat behavior

Sorry I've been MIA for a while.  I feel like I've been away for months.  Probably because I haven't really been able to focus on my blog for some time now.  My mind has been divided between my son's schooling, my daughter, our financial situation (not good), trying to find work, my husband wanting to start a family blog, starting said blog, and of course all the other everyday things. 

I do have some projects that I haven't posted yet, which I hope to start posting tomorrow.   I also am going to add some items to my shops, including kits for the silky fairy wings and the tree carving embroidery.  I'll post an update as soon as I get those things up and running.

Thanks for being patient with me!

How was everyone's Halloween?  I hope you all had a fun, safe night!  We had a great time going trick-or-treating with my brother and his family.  My little super heroes were so excited and ready to go.





Here's how our whole family of costumes turned out: (Please pardon the extremely goofy/lame photo... I actually hesitated posting it, but I did want to show how the grown-up costumes turned out.)



Can you tell who I'm supposed to be? Here's another hint:



Know now? Hawk Woman! Well, actually it's Hawk Girl, but my kids thought I deserved the title of woman. :) And by the way, there is a serious lack of female superheroes. It seems like most of the women are on the villain side of things...

But anyway, we had a great time and I hope you all did too!

P.S. I love Halloween for the experience of dressing up and going trick-or-treating for the kids, but I do not enjoy the candy. It makes my kids even crazier than they are normally (even with just one piece per day) and it's very hard for me to resist as well. I'm very temped, especially after watching the video below, to just throw it all out. But the hard part is helping my kids to understand that just because something tastes good, doesn't mean they should eat it. And I would understand peoples' arguments when they say "It's just once a year", "Let them binge and throw the rest out", "Just be sure they brush their teeth well", etc, etc, IF it really was just once a year. But the problem is the Western culture has become so saturated with sugar. It's in everything and everyone has tons of sweets for every occasion, or just daily for no reason at all. That's a major problem for many reasons.

Here's the video that has changed my perspective about sugar in a lot of ways. There's a lot to the professor's lecture, but essentially he explains how sugar is just as toxic to our bodies (i.e. our livers) as alcohol is. It also explains how sugar, NOT fat, makes people fat. (The whole "low fat" craze is completely wrong). If you have the time to watch it's an amazing video!

Please bear with me while I figure out why my web hosting company suddenly blocked access to the files I have hosted there (including background image, fonts, blog button and social media buttons).

Just wanted to let you know I'm still here and not going anywhere... except for maybe changing hosting companies!

 
It's been a while since I've posted. Why? I've been dealing with school enrollment issues for my son.

He is supposed to start kindergarten this year. However, we didn't have everything together (as far as moving in to our apartment and getting bills sent to us, a working mail box, finding out about schools around us, etc) until the summer time. So when we finally decided we would enroll him in our neighborhood public school, which we've heard good things about, and went through the required TB testing, ordering of birth certificate, and so on, it was too late. The school was full, and actually had been full for a couple months. So they automatically enrolled him in the "overload" school, told me that's where he was going, gave me a form that talked about the uniform requirements and a form to sign to have him bussed there.

Whoa, hold on a minute! 

I knew nothing about this other school.  Except for the fact that it's downtown (which, for my city, is not necessarily a good place to be).  So I drove by to check it out.  Okay, so maybe I'm a little overprotective and slightly judgmental when it comes to the safety of my children, but still...  Yikes!  There were 12 foot high walls around the school (walls like that usually don't exist unless they are necessary for some reason), run-down unkempt houses on one side, and unoccupied graffiti-covered commercial buildings on two other sides.

I decided to not completely judge the school based on the surroundings and look up reviews online.  There were some rave reviews saying the school was wonderful and the teachers were great.  There were other saying their kids got picked on because they were smart, that there was an abundance of violence in the school yard, gangs in and around the school [Can you imagine... gangs... in an elementary school?!], and that the school promoted mediocrity.  Some websites that score schools mostly based on test scores (which I'm not sure if they're very relevant or not) gave the school a very low score (like 3 out of 10).    After learning everything I could about the school I had nearly completely decided I would not let my son attend kindergarten there.

So what other options do I have?

Before we had kids my husband and I had become acquainted with Waldorf Education, so when we moved we looked into what existed in our area.  We discovered there was a school about 30 minutes away and looked into the possibility of our son going there.  Well, unfortunately the full tuition cost is extremely high.  They do work with people somewhat, but since we could not afford any tuition at all (and we have a pretty simple lifestyle), it wasn't really an option for us.  (Nor was Montessori or any other kind of private school)

Another option is traditional home schooling.  I'm completely responsible for all curriculum, scheduling, activities, and tracking down other kids and people to interact with socially.  How overwhelming!  I have a great respect for mothers who do all that.  But for me, at this point in my life, I just have far too much on my plate to take that all on. 

Then, after a post about my frustration on Facebook, my sister mentioned an online public school option that is working well for her son.  What an interesting concept!  I had heard about the idea before (they call it home-based education), but only in passing and never really researched what it was or how it worked.  So I looked into the company she mentioned -- K12.  (This is not an ad for them, I just wanted to share what I found.)


K12 is nationwide and even have some international affiliates as well.  They help connect people with virtual schools in each state, and it's considered public (i.e. free), and they meet all state requirements and are accredited so if you decide to have your child go back to standard public school, everything transfers just fine.  All the lessons are planned out already (by a local teacher).  They have work sheets, books to read, music to listen to, art supplies, science experiments.  Everything is mailed to you, for free.  You can even register to borrow a computer and printer if you don't have one.  A teacher is assigned to your child and you can e-mail them at any time with questions or concerns.  Plus there are monthly field trips with other kids/families in your area (as well as social events, and parents can decide to get together as often as they want), a quarterly in-person meeting with the teacher, and the option to attend a weekly class (so your child can have a regular classroom experience.  Although locations are limited and the closest location to us is an hour away). 

I think this is just what we (my son and I both) need right now.  It's a good balance and compromise for us.  So I'm completing the enrollment process today and hope to be able to start school with Seymour on Monday!

I'll keep you all posted with our experience!

Sometimes I think, would it really be that bad if I donated him to the zoo...at least for a little while?

I had this cane-back chair I was planning on painting and reupholstering (I found for $5 at a yard sale). It was great. I loved the curve and the cane was in perfect condition (which is rare!).



Well, today my son did this:



With one swoop of a tape measure. Sometimes I am dumbfounded by the level of destruction that this child can inflict on innocent belongings. He just runs and jumps around the apartment hitting, ripping, banging, stabbing, etc, etc.

We need to move to a house with a yard. Stat.

I'm still going to keep it and refinish it... It is just going to take a whole lot more work than previously planned!

My cousin's daughter was getting married and I knew I wanted to make something.  Usually I'm a stickler about keeping to the registry (since there's a good reason those things exist!) but I wanted to give them a little something interesting and unique.  Besides, by the time I got around to ordering a gift I realized it wouldn't arrive in time for the wedding.  Oops! 

So I turned to my newly-discovered provider of ideas wonderful, unique and fabulous -- Pinterest.  I did a quick search for "wedding gift" and ran across lots of great ideas.  Including this one:


I thought it was rather adorable and knowing the happy couple is very fun-loving I decided it would be perfect.

So I headed on down to my local Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up some plain white pillowcases.  ... I was blown away by the prices!  Holy cow!  Who pays $60 for two pillowcases?!  Yeah, so they're 750 thread count, so what?  I just need something basic.  The most basic they had was 200 thread count for $15.  I still think that's a bit much.  Unless, of course, they are sewn in the USA with fair wages and decent working conditions... which I doubt.  (But that's a rant for a different time and place)  I picked them up anyway because I didn't have time to go anywhere else.

I pre-washed them so it wouldn't cause any problems if it shrank after painting.  I'm not sure if that step was necessary, but I've seen far too many things bunch up in strange ways because they were not pre-shrunk.


Using a water-erasable marker (found in the sewing notions department of a fabric/craft store) I drew a cloud and circle shapes. If you don't get it right the first time, just redraw until you do.



If you want to you can erase the lines you won't use prior to painting, but you MUST be sure it is completely dry before painting. I'll show you what happens if you don't later.

I used this textile paint:



Using a foam brush (to better achieve a sharp edge) I painted around my outline.



At one point I messed up and smeared some of the paint. So I tried wiping it off with a damp cloth. It worked well enough that I could just paint over the worst part of it, so I did. BUT I didn't let it dry completely beforehand, so when I painted over it the paint bled.

Noooooo!

So if you need to correct mistakes or erase guide lines, make sure it is totally, completely, 100% dry before you continue painting! Unless you want the paint to bleed... which could be cool, too, depending on what kind of effect you're going for.

So even though it was a little bit of a fail (including the fact I think I should have placed the circles a little lower to have them point to the cloud in a different place), but I still like the idea and thought it turned out pretty well. At least it was only intended to be a stand-in gift until I sent them something from their registry.



P.S. Did you know Amazon has wedding registry now? Man! I wish they had that when I got married!




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I'll be linking up to the wonderful parties listed below!

Monday - Craft o Maniac Monday -- Pink Hippo Party -- Craft Catwalk -- Craftastic Monday -- Amaze Me Monday -- Polly Want 2 Party -- Making the World Cuter Monday -- Making Monday Marvelous -- Tuesday - Get Your Craft On -- Sew Cute Tuesday -- Tip Me Tuesday -- Take a Look Tuesday -- Show Me What Ya Got -- Tuesday Time Out -- Show and Tell at Blue Cricket -- Tutorial Tuesday -- Anti-Procrastination Tuesday -- Anything Related -- Wednesday - Seven Thrity Three -- Wallet-Friendly Wednesday -- Show Off Your Stuff -- Create and Share -- A Crafty Soiree -- Whatever Goes Wednesday -- We Did it Wednesday! -- Your Whims Wednesday -- Linkin’ with Lil’ Luna -- We Did it Wednesday -- Passionately Artistic -- Thursday - Strut your Stuff Thursday -- Transformation Thursday -- Thrilling Thursday -- House of Hepworths -- Chic and Crafty Thursday -- Friday - Remodelaholic Friday -- Flaunt it Friday -- Frugal Friday -- Weekend Wander -- Furniture Feature Friday -- Show and Share Day -- Fun with Food Friday -- It's Fun to Craft! -- Tickled Pink Fridays -- Weekend Wrap-up Party -- Catch as Catch Can -- Friday Flair -- Feature Yourself Friday -- Fantabulous Friday -- Simply Link {Party} -- No Rules Link Party -- Pity Party -- Saturday - Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special -- Saturday is Crafty Day -- Let's Get Crafty Saturday -- Show and Tell Saturdays -- Saturday Spotlight -- Sunday - The DIY Showoff Project Parade -- Sunday Showcase Party -- Creative Bloggers Party -- I Heart Naptime -- Think Pink Sundays

More people are joining Google+ all the time and it's quickly becoming part of everyday interactions. However, there is one issue I have just become acutely aware of in regards to all the different companies Google owns and how they are all connected.

Did you know when you upload pictures to your blog, using Blogger to upload, they are placed in a Picasa album. Even if you never signed up for Picasa on your own, an account gets opened for you and attached to your Blogger account.

Then, when you sign up for Google+ you have to give Google+ permission to link your Picasa account. If you don't want to give permission, you don't get to sign up for Google+. Once you do sign up, all your Picasa albums appear in the albums section of your Google+ account. Well, changes made through your Google+ account end up changing everything else along the way: Picasa albums and Blogger images. So if you happen to not understand this connection and delete random old images that appear in Google+ that you don't want to be there (which I, along with quite a few other people, did), they will be deleted from your blog. Just to let you know.

I live near Google. Anyone want to go over there with me and kick someone in the head?

P.S.  Recently I have been using a Flikr account to host my images and using the html code to place them in my blog posts.  So thankfully all those images remained.  Only the ones I uploaded directly through Blogger disappeared.  It will take quite a while to go back and replace all the images! 

I've decided to go on a fast.

A project-acquisition fast.

Why?  Because this is what my creative space looks like right now.  

I have so many things I've purchased (including decor, furniture, fabric for clothing, clothing to refashion, etc) that I just haven't gotten around to completing!  I've decided it's time to actually start completing those unfinished projects (or get rid of them completely).  I'm going to see how far I can get on just the things I have right now.  I will allow myself to purchase some small supplies to help me complete the projects such as buttons, thread, glue, paint, sandpaper, etc, but no new projects to work on.

I especially need to get started on using my fabric stash.  I got a little addicted shopping Fabric.com's clearance section (with free shipping after $35 and frequent 15-20% off total purchase coupons) that I acquired a lot of great quality fabric for awesome prices. The big obstacle right now is making slopers (basic patterns used to create other designs) custom with my measurements so I can start designing and creating clothing that will fit me perfectly.  Being tall has made it very difficult to find anything that will fit me right (so I don't really have many clothes currently available to wear).  Also being "cheap" I find myself purchasing ill-fitting clothing on the clearance racks (like cute shirts at Macy's for $5 each!) with the intention of altering it... but then getting around to doing it is another story!

So.  No more new projects for me until I work through what I've got.  How long will it take me?  We shall see!

P.S.  Are there any other project hoarders collectors out there like me?

Things have been pretty quiet on my blog for a little while, which I've been sad about.  I have been going through some difficult personal times and am still trying to fit everything into our apartment and small storage unit and get rid of the rest.  No luck in getting the upper portion of my fabulous cabinet upstairs.  My husband says it's too heavy for him and me to do it, (and said we should get rid of it... Ha! Not a chance.) but says it's up to me to find someone to help.  Not like I know many burly men around here.  Sigh.  I hope to have it up soon.

In the mean time I've needed to repair a couple things on my husband's suits since he wears one every day to work.  He purchased two brand new suits since he got his job and a button fell off of one of them.  Thankfully I was able to find where they hid the spare buttons (inside a small breast pocket) and sewed it on. Please pardon the lint in the photos!

When sewing a suit jacket button (or any other jacket or coat button) there needs to be space between the button and the fabric to which it's attached to leave room for the thickness of the other side of the jacket.  The amount of space depends on the thickness of the side of the jacket with the button holes.  For my husband's jacket I used two toothpicks taped together to use as spacers.



I also used a good, strong, heavy duty thread when sewing. After threading the needle and knotting the thread I stuck the needle through the fabric where the button would be starting from the front of the jacket (so the knot in the thread will be under the button in the end). I pulled the thread all the way through so the knot catches, then stuck the needle through and pulled it all to the front again. I went through the button (if your button has four holes you'll want to sew diagonally between the holes) and pulled the thread almost all the way through. Then I used the toothpicks to get the right amount of space under the button and sewed through the other holes.



I sewed through the holes a couple more times in each direction, making sure the space under the button remained the same.



Then I brought the thread to the front side, but kept it under the button instead of going through it. I wrapped it around the threads three or four times.



When I was ready to tie off I brought the thread around almost as if I was going to wrap it again, then brought the needle through the loop to make a knot. I knotted a couple times, wrapped once more then knotted one more time, just to be sure.





I cut the thread and was done! Nice new, functioning suit.


I'm linking up to the parties on my "Blog Link Parties" page, including The Creative Itch

With things changing so drastically in my life lately and the added motivation of a fun linky party [and with my craft supplies locked away until we move into our own place] I decided to do a personal / confessional post today. 

I've always been afraid of certain things.  Sure, them seem rather ridiculous and silly when I tell people about them, and maybe they are, but I do have reasons!  Ok, maybe not good enough reasons to totally justify the fear... but maybe they will help you not laugh at me quite so much. :)

- The dark.  Yes, to this day I am still afraid of the dark.  [Ha, what a way to start out the list!]  Why am I afraid of the dark?  Because of all the things that could be in the dark either indoors or outdoors i.e. wild/rabid/poisonous/otherwise dangerous animals (Okay, it doesn't have to be dark for those to be around, but the dark makes the fear of those things even more poignant.  I've heard too many stories about people getting bitten by poisonous insects or snakes, mauled or killed by bears, mountain lions entering populated cities, etc.), ghosts or evil spirits (Yes I believe in those, but I'm guessing this fear comes mostly from years of watching "real" ghost TV shows with my siblings when I was a kid and listening to everyone I know tell their stories of the supernatural, plus it doesn't help that I have an overactive imagination too), robbers/murderers/otherwise dangerous people (I blame the media, horror movies -- which I don't actually watch but the trailers are enough, and the few people who choose to do evil things which leads people to be suspicious of each other.)  Funny side note - when I was younger I used to want to sleep with the brightest nightlight available and as many as possible, but now I have trouble sleeping at night unless it is very, very dark. 

- Natural Gas.  More specifically, natural gas in homes.  It seriously gives me major stress to turn on a gas stove.  Standing there with the lighter going "click, click, click" while an extremely combustible gas pours into the room?  Yeah.  And those knobs on the front of the stove perfectly available to my kids who love to turn knobs?  I'd like to kick the genius who thought that one up.  (Speaking of that, my sister-in-law actually has one with knobs on the side of the cooking surface, much better idea)  Newer furnaces, water heaters and stoves have mechanisms that shut off the supply of gas when the pilot light goes out, which is great, but if you're living with older appliances no pilot light = leaking gas = not good.  Then earthquakes (being in California) can cause a whole lot of other problems with gas lines.  Then comes all the stories I've heard about explosions.  [One about a man who was working on something, needed a very specific part which he didn't have, left to go to the store to get it, noticed the smell of gas and told the utility workers who were digging in the street.  Gas leaked out of the pipe, through the ground, filled the crawl space under his house until it got to the level of the pilot light in the water heater.  BOOM.  The man came home to find he had no more house, although he was blessed with his life.  True story, my mom knows him.  Another one about a gas leak in a woman's home.  The utility personnel came and were outside with her.  The phone rang so she went inside to answer it, one worker followed her to try to get her out.  BOOM.  They both died.  I heard this one from the best friend of the utility worker.]  Not worth it in my opinion.  When I design and build my own house (some day!) it will be all electric, solar and wind powered. 

- Deep Water. Meaning any deeper than up to my neck when standing.  Okay, I don't have a real excuse for this one.  Other than the obvious fear of drowning.  Whenever I look at a satellite picture of an ocean (especially if I can see how the water gets deeper, or the bottom drops off) I get creeped out and have to look away.  I get scared being in boats over deep water.  Random.

Those are the main ones I've had ever since I can remember.  Then, having children has added a whole slew of other fears, of course all based around keeping my kids safe.  I mean, I do have a lot to be concerned about when my kids think it's funny to run into the middle of a street with me running after them yelling at them to stop.  Sigh.  Being a mom is hard!  But that's a post for another day... 

After miles upon miles of this...


and this...


 We are finally back in our home state of California.  It feels great!  Except for the fact that we're all sick... with strep.

It started the day before we were supposed to leave (which ended up delaying us another day) and has continued until now, with Daisy beginning to suffer the most at night with a very painful sore throat.  Thankfully we were able to go to a clinic and get a prescription for each of us yesterday, so we should be done with this very soon.

We moved most of our belongings into a storage locker, stayed in a hotel (I highly recommend Extended Stay hotels) for a few days and now we're starting to settle in to a room at my mother-in-law's house until my husband can secure a job.  It's strange thinking that we're basically homeless for now.  I can't wait until we have our own place, but until then I thank heaven for family!

As soon as I can get my camera unpacked from all the things we jammed into our mini van when we moved, I will post the tutorial for the shrug.  I was able to take all the photos before we moved, but hadn't loaded them onto the computer.  And now my husband is using the computer most of the time looking for a job, so I haven't had much time on it since we've been here.

Stay tuned, but please be patient with me!

P.S.  I'll also start up the linky party again this Tuesday (sorry for skipping a week!) and will post the features from last time. 

source

With so many women starting their own home businesses these days, it's a good idea (and best, legally speaking) to include the business in our income taxes.  It can seem daunting, overwhelming and rather confusing at first, but if you keep things organized and maintain monthly it will be a whole lot easier. 

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day working on taxes.  This was after another full day or two of organizing, going over Paypal reports, receipts, categorizing and marking (followed by procrastinating for about a month), then more organizing, double-checking and adding.  It would have been SO much easier had I just kept everything organized from the start of the year and tallied things up after each month.  What did I do instead?  I just tossed everything into a file box and waited until the end of the year to sort through everything.  BAD idea!  It was hard on me and hard on my kids -- me trying to focus, organize and think for long periods of time with antsy, cabin-fevered toddlers running around [literally] bouncing off the walls.

I'm sure many of you are more organized than I was with these things, but I hope this advice will be able to help someone.  If not, at least it will help me from now on!

source

So, without further ado, here are my tips to lessen stress with business taxes...

1.   Have a separate bank account and/or credit card for your business.  Keep business transactions out of your personal accounts.  It will make it so much easier when trying to keep track of everything... and that way you won't have 4 different accounts to look through (for the entire year) picking each business transaction out of 35 million personal transactions.  Just saying.

2.  Save every single receipt.  Especially when you use cash and the transaction won't show up on any other account statement.  But even if it will show up on a statement be sure to keep the receipt so you know if it was actually a business or personal transaction (or if you slipped in a candy bar when you were purchasing shipping supplies... and if you did you can recalculate the actual business expense, with tax, without the candy bar). 

3.  Keep track of the price of inventory and materials for products.  You will need this for two reasons: one - inventory, two - "cost of goods sold".  It's much better than sitting there wondering "how much did I pay for this again?"

4.  Keep business materials and craft supplies separate from personal.  If you take something for personal use, write it down along with how much it cost.  You can probably let a little glue here and there slide, but if you bought some packages of beads for your shop and want to use one to make a necklace for yourself, write it down. 

5.  Take a look at the tax form 1040 Schedule C: Profit or Loss from a Business.  What are they going to want to know?  What categories do you need to put things in?  Decide where to put things ahead of time so you don't end up spending 20 minutes each year trying to figure out where to put postage costs.

6.  Set up a file box with a folder for each month of the year, or each category from the tax form (I use one for each month since I have the monthly summaries from Paypal to print out).  Drop in your receipts as they come. 

7.  Complete a summary and totals every month.  Go through all your receipts and the summaries for Paypal or whichever merchant account you may have.  Categorize all your expenses (into those categories from the tax form) and sales, returns and interest/dividends.  Total everything for each month.  That way you will be able to just go through and add the totals for a category from each month and get the grand total for the year in just a few minutes. 

8.  Don't forget business use of your home.  If you have a home office, work space, studio, or a corner of a room where you work on your business, measure the square footage.  Using form 8829: Expenses for Business Use of Your Home you figure the percentage of the total area of the home and you can write off that percentage of your taxes, mortgage interest/rent, utilities, insurance, repairs, etc. 

9.  When you're getting down and dirty with numbers, have a supply of calculators.  One for each of your children plus one for yourself.  That way you won't have to ask your 2 year-old to give the calculator back every 2 minutes.

And finally...

10.  Go to the IRS website to find and file your taxes with a free e-file company.  Most people can e-file and it saves a lot of time and effort.  You do have to have all the information, forms and totals, but the company does all the calculations and determining if you qualify for something.  Plus if you're going to get a refund it will arrive a lot sooner!  I will get my [fat] refund deposited into my savings account in one to two weeks.  This is the one time of year I'm happy I'm poor with two kids!  (When I'm rich I will be more than happy to pay higher taxes... but until then, yay for tax season!)

And I should also mention, after all this you need to congratulate yourself on being a savvy business woman and give yourself a big reward... say, a week long vacation?  Tee hee, I wish!

So sorry for more delays in promised posts!  I was rather sick for about 5 days straight.  Like, seriously ill.  The worst I've been sick since high school (10 years ago).  Two days straight of huddling in bed shivering and sweating with a fever.  Then several days after of violent coughing and sneezing.  Not that you need all the details... but it was intense! 

Now I'm trying to get the house back in order and get my head wrapped around everything I need to do to accomplish that.  Plus just having to keep up with the daily activities and tasks.  I have several posts that have photos taken already and just waiting for the text to be written.

Here's a teaser for one of them:

I love the way popcorn garlands look on Christmas trees.  They're fun, festive and the white looks great on the evergreen tree.  Has anyone else ever made a popcorn garland?  If not, they are not as easy as they may seem. 


Okay, I should say it depends on the kind of popcorn you make/get.  The larger pieces the better, but the popcorn I used was about 1/3 the size of the piece pictured above (from a cheap, old air popper that is on the fritz). 

I thought it would be a project that my small children and I could do together, but unfortunately, with the sharp needles and thin thread required, it doesn't work out too well with them. 


Some tips: 
     - use a very sharp, narrow needle.  If you use a thicker needle it will break the popcorn more often and frustrate you more. 
     - use thin thread (since I couldn't get thicker thread to fit through the eye of the smaller needle)
     - practice self calming techniques and hold your tongue when you're tempted to spout expletives after the tenth piece in a row crumbles in your fingertips or your children step on the middle of the five foot length you've already completed.


My verdict:  Not worth it.  Only if you've been snowed in for a week and have finished all your other projects.  Or you have no small children or anyone else to possibly get in the way and 10 hours of free time on your hands. 

P.S.  None of the pictures are mine.  I was too frustrated to take any photos myself.  And, incidentally, I found the last picture on Bizrate.com where you can purchase a 12 foot length of wax-covered popcorn garland for $20.  Hm... tempting...