Motivation, Shmotivation

So apparently I greatly overestimated my enthusiasm for blogging. This happens with pretty much everything I do. Earlier today my husband asked how my Brazil Butt Lift DVDs were working out for me. The ones I just haaaad to buy last May for my saggy, misshapen, 30-something-year-old mom butt.  Well, I did them for about a week before giving up. Our DVD player stopped working so I had to play them through the computer and then hook it up to the TV. That got old after a few days, and I didn't touch them again for another four months. It was then that I discovered I had left one of the DVDs in our computer, which had been sent in for repairs. Whoops. To their credit, they did send the missing DVD back to us, probably after a good laugh. Now if only I could find the motivation to start up again. I've told a friend that I'll do mini-triathlon with her in May, so that might light a fire. Yep, despite the fact that I haven't ridden a bike since I was about 12, I haaaate running, and I can't remember the last time I swam, let alone in an alligator-infested lake, I've decided a mini-tri would be awesome! I've told my husband I'm doing it, so I have to at least make an effort. Next week I'm downloading Couch to 5k. Maybe the week after that I'll start researching "running" (who am I kidding, they will mostly be used for walking) shoes....

I did find some time to work on my crocheted blanket I've been working on for officially over a year now. I think I added about three rows to it. Huzzah!  My mom was in town for a week at the beginning of December, and then I was busy doing...stuff. Really, I'm not sure what I've been doing for the last month-ish. I did see Eddie Vedder in concert two nights in a row, which was pretty much the best Christmas/birthday/Labor Day present a girl could ever give herself. Seriously. That man is amazing.

One thing I wasn't doing last month (besides blogging) was coming up with clever predicaments for an elf who is supposed to sit on a shelf. Oh my gosh, do y'all (I'm probably wrongfully assuming more than one person reads this) have friends who do this for their kids?! My Facebook feed was clogged with pictures of the footless elves with beady little eyes doing such wacky things as lounging in a bowl of marshmallows, fishing, and finding himself taped to the bathroom mirror by some dastardly superheroes. At least my friends seemed to be fairly tame with their elf antics. I don't think I saw one elf  "poop" out peppermints, so there's that.

Dear Lord, my husband and I can't remember to get the mail every day. There's no way we'd remember to move an elf every night for a month. And then I'd have to make him "do" something? And then clean up after him? For 24  nights in a row, or however long it is the elf hangs around? In the words of E., "No thank you." In the words of me, "Fuck no." And I'd have to remember he's "real?" This is a recipe for disaster. I almost gave the elf away the night after Christmas. We were having dinner with some friends and their kids were talking about their elf. I said to the mom, in front of the kids, "Yeah, there's no way we could keep up with an elf and make him do stuff every night...um, I mean...," as she shot me death glares. "These fried pickles are really good, aren't they kids?" Super awkward.

One thing I did do, besides sit on my ass and dream of the cool felt coasters I was going to make but never did, was paint our coffee table. Our old one was a piece of crap. We were actually paid to take it from a furniture store. True story. We had bought a couch from said store, and then a couple days later I noticed the couch was on a sale and you got a free coffee table or ottoman. Woo! I called the store, they gave us the coffee table, and then refunded us the difference of the sale price. Now, shockingly the table was not of the best craftsmanship, and it was starting to get kind of scuzzy looking with odd, filmy blotches on it. I was going to search Craigslist for one, but then that little crafty light bulb went off in my head. I decided to paint it. And best of all, I promised my husband it would cost us less than five dollars. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I'll upload the pictures tomorrow next week of my coffee table project because I've got some Downton Abbey to catch up on. And my husband made me a Washington Apple or three. Cheers!

What the felt was I thinking.

I had twine and I had felt, oh and don't forget hot glue. So I decided to make garland out of said felt.  I have been "making" this garland for 2 weeks now. I decided the felt need to be in circles, the exact same size. I wonder what I'm thinking when I think of these oh-it's-going-to-be-quick'n'easy plans. Those quick 'n' easy plans are never quick and easy. 

Now I have my E asking to help. You can't use hot glue, you can't cut with scissors, but sure you can help. She tells me to wait until she wakes up. Yeah, ok. The felt garland in my head is hopefully going to actually turn out. I also have what it will most likely turn out in my head also.

Really how hard can felt garland be????
So I googled felt garland. Oddly I haven't even found ONE pin about making garland out of felt. I did not take this as a good sign. But who am I to worry? I mean seriously this should be QUICK 'n' EASY says the woman 2 weeks later....

Christmas Ball Wreath, now $17!

So we, meaning Rebecca and I, decided that using italics was going to be "my thing." 

Anyway, I decided after a year of whining I was going to do it, I was going to make a Christmas ball  ornament wreath. I went to Dollar Tree and bought all the red, green, and silver ornaments they had. I also found a few stocking stuffers for the twins. $20 and an unknown amount of Christmas balls later, I started hot gluing the top onto the ball. I want to note I am a cheesy Christmas movie junkie. I love watching the Hallmark channel during this time of year and occasionally I will actually switch to the Lifetime channel. Don't shoot me, it's my guilty pleasure :).  So to keep the mood going, I had my cheesy Christmas movies playing.
Finally about halfway through the hot gluing process I stopped burning myself with the glue. So I thought, "Hey, success! I'm getting better at this thing!"
By this time my husband thought I was nuts. He kept asking me, "why are you doing this?" Who knows, because we can't afford the wreath I want? Because I want to have something I've made? Because I want to?
The glue was done and since I'm an awesome mom, I snuck into the twins' room and grabbed a wire hanger. NO MORE WIRE HANGERS...EVER!!!! I made it into a circle-ish shape and started getting the balls on. It didn't turn out too bad and I bought some little balls at Target to fill in some gaps in the wreath. 


I was/am so proud of this wreath, it looks great! 

So what the hell do I see in the Target ad on Sunday? 4 days later?????
A Christmas ball wreath on sale for SEVENTEEN freaking dollars! Bastards.


Now I'm in the process of making some felt garland for the tree. Don't worry I will use felt and hot glue. Shall I attempt sewing? Rebecca seems to think I should, what does she know? 

Crackers

Pardon my French, but I made fucking crackers the other day. Crackers! I think my thoughts on this can adequately be described the letters WTF.  I don't even know why I decided to make crackers. I saw something on Pinterest, one thing led to another, and next thing I knew I was in my kitchen with my tiny food processor, a cookie press, and cracker makin' ingredients. Oh, and E. She had put the iPad down and wanted to help.

I got the first idea to make little cheese cracker from Tasty Kitchen. Now, she goes way above and beyond and makes tiny little goldfish, football, and Pac-Man cracker cutters out of strips of a tin can. I could not even wrap my head around how to do this without ending up with bloody, sliced up fingers, so I skipped this step. And I actually used kind of a hybrid recipe between this and a recipe that came with my cookie press, which I was going to use to shape my cookies into bite sized little pieces of cheddar cracker perfection.

E helped me measure the ingredients. By help I mean she dumped the flour and cheese in a bowl and on the counter and started playing in it. Whatever. I was only making a half batch, because I've learned from my past mistakes not to go all gung-ho on experimental recipes (biscuits that taste like paste anyone?).

I made the dough, and it actually turned out well. I was so proud of myself. I put the dough in my cookie press. I decided the directions to use certain disc numbers in it weren't necessary and used a pastry? icing? tip on it instead. Why don't I just follow directions? I did get a couple little dough bits out, but they were getting progressively smaller. The tip was getting jammed up with dough, so I switched to a different tip. Then some plastic part got bent, a new disc got clogged, and  I had to push the dough out of the cookie press tube with a spoon.

Time for plan B. No way in hell was I going to be cutting out shapes form a tin can, so I scoured my kitchen for something to use for a cutter. I settled on a part from the cookie press. It was small and would make little circles, so good enough. I had to roll the dough out. We have a marble rolling pin, which I love in theory. However, I'm not really sure how to use a rolling pin. My dough was kind of uneven, but I made those little circles anyway. I did get a small blister on my finger from using my "cracker cutter," but it was worth it.

I had to almost double the recommended baking time, but they actually turned out not terrible. I should have rolled them out thinner because they were about three times normal cracker height and weren't crispy, but at least they were edible. I would call this recipe a success, and I didn't even think I needed a drink. Granted, I made them at about nine in the morning, and even I have scruples.

Hot Glue, Felt, and Power Tools. Oh, My!

Hot glue is an essential to living.

I am not a pin mom. I think many ideas are very cool, but if they go beyond hot glue, I’m pretty sure I won’t do it. I’m married to a very wonderful husband and yep, you guessed it, I’m a mom. A mom to 2 very adorable 3-year-old boy/girl twins, E and K. Which makes them fraternal, not identical. I am also best friends with the other blogger. We’ve been friends for…20ish years. We had a sabbatical during college, but alas she saw the errors of her ways J and we quickly picked up where we left off. We are at the point when I was in recently in the ER, my husband said, “I told her everything, but I didn’t know what you wanted me to tell your mother.”

I too, was once a stay at home mom, very unexpectedly. I was a teacher in one state for 3 years. The year before I was to get to tenure status I was pink slipped. Go me! I stayed home with my then 7 month old twins. And no, it’s not like having 2 or 3 kids. There’s no comparison. I loved staying at home, was I blessed with staying home? YES! Would I do it again? Ummmmm, yes? Did I sometimes feel like I was the single worst mother alive? Oh, I had my moments.

I love to do crafty things as long as they don’t take a lot of time. Which means any type of craft that takes a long time, like those insane books people decorate and then put pictures in, scrapbooks! Ha, I’d never do that. I’m saying it takes patience and talent, which I have neither of. The things I like to do require either 1) hot glue, 2) felt, or 3) power tools.

Last Christmas I made a felt Christmas tree with ornaments for the twins, which okay, there was some heat and bond in there. Felt! Yay!

This past summer, I bought a $7 dresser at a garage sale (BTW, I love garage sales), on sale drawer pulls, sanded (power tools!), & repainted it a wonderful gray color. It is now some much-needed storage for my way too small kitchen.

For this Christmas, I decided I should probably figure out whose stocking belongs to who. So I let the twins pick and then used felt, heat and bond, then stitched, yes stitched the letters on. Very cute!!! I also wanted a wreath, those wonderful Christmas ball wreaths that are way too expensive. So Dollar Tree here I come! I don’t know how many packs of Christmas balls I bought but the only color they had left was gold. I made myself a wreath. A pretty nice wreath and don’t worry, I used hot glue.

An Old Couch, Some Sheets, and a Few Bottles of Beer Part II

For the couch-covering project, I needed three flat sheets. Or rather, assumed I needed. Which would be great if I had actually bought three flat sheets. What I actually bought were two flat sheets and one fitted sheet. Son of a bitch.

I needed a beer.

Okay, at this point I'm going to skip ahead about a million steps because I am about to throw this motherfucking couch out the window. I ended up cutting the elastic off the fitted sheet. I was going to take a picture of this step and the rest of this process, but when I went to turn the camera on, the battery was dead. I had to rearrange the cushions and sheets in about a million different ways to get everything to "fit" right. My husband said he imagined a game of Tetris going on in my head, and the screen was filling up fast.

I did some hemming of some bottom pieces. Of course, this didn't go as easily as everyone else makes it seem like it should. And of course my bobbin ran out of thread. And didn't wind correctly so I ended up have to pull all the thread off the bobbin and rewind it. And of course it didn't wind correctly the second or third times. I ended up with a lot of thread at the bottom of the bobbin and not much at the top. Whatever.

Eventually I got the sheets on. I did a lot of tucking, retucking, pinning, and swearing. It didn't look spectacular and looked like I had covered my couch in sheets, but it did look marginally better than what was underneath. And then my husband said six words I will never forget: "Are those sheets two different colors?"

It was like time stood still. I looked at the couch. I looked at my husband. I looked at the couch again. Yep, one of the sheets is a slightly lighter shade of grey than the other two. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. More beer. The next day was Thanksgiving, and the day after that the dreaded Black Friday. No way in hell was I going to WalMart on Black Friday (good thing, too because it turns out a woman went complete batshit crazy at that WalMart and attacked a police officer on Black Friday).

I didn't care anymore. I had been defeated by a DIY project yet again. Le sigh. Really, you just kind of get used to it.

Maybe I could just get some fabric to re-cover the throw pillows. Ha, yeah....

An Old Couch, Some Sheets, and a Few Bottles of Beer Part I

Don't worry, this is a PG-rated post.

We need a new couch. Unfortunately, since I have yet to figure out how to turn being a stay-at-home mom into a lucrative career, a new couch isn't in the budget right now. I've read blogs about moms who buy everything  using money they make through SwagBucks, taking surveys, etc. I've tried them, too. At the rate I'm going, a new couch is only 362 years away.

Our couch has two problems: 1. The frame broke 2 1/2 years ago and has been held up with a stack of books since then. My husband, who is about as handy as I am crafty (i.e. not very), had said he was going to fix it, you know 2 1/2 years ago. 2. It is just getting gross. My daughter was an epic spitter-upper when she was a baby. Also, she wanders into our living room with food and occasionally her sippy cup. She drinks Pediasure with chocolate Carnation Breakfast Essentials, and that shit stains. So yeah, we need a new couch. 

Slipcovers are expensive. We have a chaise with our couch, and apparently they don't make a lot of slipcovers for couches with a chaise. So after some extensive research--really, I research everything to death--I came across some YouTube videos on how to cover a couch with a sheet or two. Bingo! I started to get that DIY high I get when reading about projects. So easy! No sewing! Looks...like you covered your couch with a sheet. Which was fine with me because anything would be an improvement really, and it would cover the books.

I'd buy cheap sheets on clearance; how much could it cost? Apparently no one wants 200 thread count sheets anymore, and my first three stops were a disappointing bust. That left one more place to try. I'm pretty sure I could actually feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it. I had to go to WalMart. Ugh.

To say I am not a fan of WalMart is an understatement. I call it my flea bath, the place I hate more than a cat hates a flea bath. My husband calls IKEA his flea bath. Hmmm, as I'm typing this I realize that in the past I've marveled about the low cost of their sheets. I probably should've gone to IKEA....

Anyhoo, according to my online sheet research, WalMart had cheap sheets. So I went there. I am convinced their parking lot was designed by third graders. Seriously. The entrances all come in at an angle to the parking lot, creating a weird triangular intersection. Two sides have a stop sign and one doesn't, but no one ever seems to be able to figure out who's supposed to stop and who isn't. Gah! I did find sheets, but not at the super low WalMart cost I was expecting. At that point I didn't really care and bought three queen-sized sheets and a Snickers for $38 or so. The Snickers was going to give me the energy to tackle this project. The devil voice in my head told me me buy it. It was also telling me I should have just bought a slip cover.

(Pretend like there's an "n" in "Discout." I'm too lazy to figure out how to fix it.)

To calculate how many sheets I'd need, I measured the couch and used what I learned in high school geometry. Oh wait, no. No I didn't. I didn't even measure the flipping couch. I just figured king-size would be too big and twin would be too small. And that I needed three sheets because two didn't seem like enough, and I didn't want to pay for four. 

I'll continue with my couch covering adventure in the next post, but I'll give you a sneak peek: I told my husband this was the worst idea I've ever had. Oh, and I drink some beer.