My sister is expecting baby #2 pretty much any day now. Remember I said how I’m jealous that she’s thinner than me and pregnant? I may have neglected to mention that she’s in month 9 of her pregnancy. Still thin. Still beautiful.

Joanna on the left, me on the right

I bought her some real presents for the Dragon Baby (so dubbed by big sister Neve of cloth diapering fame), but I decided to make the baby something, too. Yeah, perhaps not the best decision given my track record. I really wanted to do something like this…

Image from glutenfreeconfessions.com

But my sewing skills are so completely abysmal that I decided not to even try it. Instead, I took the onesie idea and modified it to be a sponge-stamped onesie, inspired by these kitchen towels:

Image from valley & co. lifestyle

To be honest, I was really hoping mine would turn out better than the tea towels… They sort of look like… well, they actually look a little like I made them. But you know, tie a ribbon around that shit and call it handmade and you’re golden, right?

So I gathered my supplies, including real honest-to-God fabric paint. Nothing is too good for you, Dragon Baby.

Then I had to cut my sponge in a shape. Originally, I was going to try to do something all cool and creative, like a dragon, but I thought I’d at least start with something easy, and I had a heart cookie cutter I could use as an outline.

I traced the heart onto the sponge.

It is deceptively more difficult than you would think to cut a sponge, and thus my heart ended up like this:

I then decided that a heart was quite ambitious enough.

I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been around a baby, but for me it’s been two and a half years (since big sister Neve was born), and I forgot how tiny they are when they get here.

I don’t know how anything that tiny can survive outside the womb. Human babies, you are cray.

Anyway, I dipped my newly created heart sponge in some paint.

And applied to onesie, saying a little please-don’t-embarrass-Auntie incantation as I went.

And, you know, it didn’t turn out too bad! Nicely done, Auntie.

(Next I need to learn how to hold a baby properly when her neck is still all floppy, and not freak the fuck out that I’m not going to support her little baby noggin right, and it’s going to pop off like a Barbie head. Baby steps.)

I made a set of three, and they’re not perfect, but I think they’re cute. Hopefully Dragon Baby’s mommy will tell her someday that, like the handmade sponge-stamped onesies, Auntie Sonja is a little weird, and certainly not perfect, but she’s full of love at least.

Welcome to the world, Dragon Baby.

Love,

Weird Auntie Sonja

I feel like it goes without saying, really, but this video is Not Safe For Work unless your boss doesn’t mind long strings of swears and blasphemes. It involves me attempting the bottle-cutting pin where you light things on fire. Spoiler: It did not go well. (If you can’t see the video, click here.)

And, of course, if you’re not subscribed, DO THAT!

You guys have been asking me to do this one for over a year now, I think, but it involves fire, and I am scared of fire (among many other things), so I put it off… until now. Yes, it’s the plastic spoon flower.

Image from Duitang.com

What makes it even scarier? The directions are in a language I cannot even begin to comprehend, except that “DIY” is apparently the same in all languages…

Problem number one occurred fairly quickly. I couldn’t figure out how the hell to cut the handles off the spoons, since my only idea of using a box cutter did not work at all. Husband saved the day with a pair of wire cutters that he just happened to have on his person when I just happened to ask what he might theoretically use to cut plastic spoon handles. (Boys are weird.) But it worked.

Spoons thus de-handled, I began.

Tip #1: Plastic spoons can get scorch marks. (Perhaps this is why they spray-painted the rose black in the original pin…)

Tip #2: Plastic spoons can also burst into flame.

Tip #3: When you are the Pintester, screaming swear words at the top of your lungs does not bring anyone running into the room to help. Even the dog just assumes you’re testing something, and you haven’t died yet if you’re still making noise, and everything’s probably fine.

This is usually true. In this case, I just blew out the flame and continued on putting together the center of my rose.

I don’t even want to think about what kind of disgusting fucking cancer plastic spoons cause, because when you melt them, they get pleasingly gooey, but not all that hot, and you can squish them together and then they harden almost immediately back into plastic-spoon hardness. It’s not right.

Not right, but addictively fun.

The first 2 sections of the flower came together with relatively little fuss (and/or screaming/swearing).

It took me until about the seventh or eighth spoon to realize that the technique of actually holding the whole bowl over the flame instead of just running the edges around the flame is faster and produces more petal-like results.

And then it took me until the eighth or ninth spoon to realize you can burn a hole in them.

Oops.

And here’s also where things started going all to shit. While the first two layers came together, no problem, I began to realize that the bottom layer and the middle layer were not going to cooperate. No amount of holding pieces of plastic over flame and sticking them together was producing any sort of satisfying result. As soon as I’d get one petal to stick, another one would snap right the fuck off. And they kept catching on fire.

I tried everything. I melted a few together and tried to attach 2 or 3 at once.

I tried attaching them one at a time.

I tried holding them together while torching them with my lighter.

I even tried sticking them together using one of the discarded spoon handles. Yeah. No.

I tried to make this damn thing work for probably an hour or so, inhaling carcinogenic plastic fumes all the while.

When I finally gave up and pushed away from the table, stood up, and went to open a window, I was dizzy and felt awful.

(Side note: There are several possibilities besides spoon fumes as to the cause of my general feeling of grossness. I had also eaten a really old egg for breakfast and drank lots of Diet Coke for lunch, both of which can cause a general horky feeling. Add to that the fact that I had a little wine hangover, and the spoon fumes may only have been one factor in an ill cocktail.)

I thought I was going to hurl, but I’m sort of glad I didn’t. If I’m going to puke from a pin test, I would rather it be from drinking heavily or eating something really, really gross. Not from inhaling plastic spoon fumes.

Anyway, the results were unsatisfactory all around. I ended up with a dumbass-looking scorched-all-to-hell not-flower thing and a lingering nausea. Maybe “DIY” in this case really means, “Don’t Inhale. Yech.”

Sigh, it’s a craft day, and you guys know how I feel about crafts, don’t you? No sir, I don’t like them.

This all stems from my childhood. More on that later. Here’s what I’m making today: a basket made out of a grocery bag…

Image from Elli.com

The sarcastic among you will undoubtedly note that a grocery bag is a thing to put stuff in, as is a basket, so we are using one carrying receptacle to make another carrying receptacle. Shut up, sarcastic people. The basket is way cuter.

Now, more on the reasons I don’t like crafts: They make me think about elementary school art class. You even start with similar materials.

We may have done this exact craft, in fact.

Now I know some elementary school art teachers, and I fully and deeply appreciate everything you folks do. You dedicate your life, time, and probably your money to sticky-fingered and under-developed children who really only like art class because it’s the one hour of the week when their tyrannical teacher-of-all-else gets to take a well-deserved smoke break.

I really only liked art class because it didn’t involve much math. (And I saw you try to sneak some geometry in there with that tessellation collage. I ain’t dumb.)

This project actually did involve some math, as there is a lot of cutting of strips of paper and measuring those strips.

And the instructions aren’t super clear on how many you end up with, so Imma break it down for you in case you don’t want any math in your art project, like me:

You cut 18 strips of the same length.

You take 2 of those strips and cut them in half. Now you have 20 strips (4 short ones and 16 regular ones).

You take the 4 short strips and glue them to 4 of the regular-sized strips. Now you have 4 extra-long strips and 12 regular-sized strips.

See? Math.

Then you take those strips and fold them into thirds, which really just sort of made me mad because I spent so much time carefully measuring them before I cut them out. But I think it’s so you can hide the ugly parts on the inside.

(I am a big proponent of hiding the ugly parts. It’s why I wear clothes and make-up, people. And if a make-up artist ever tells you make-up is not meant to cover the ugly parts, she’s a damn liar.)

I was talking with a friend the other day and realized, once again, that this blog is sort of just therapy for my debilitating perfectionism. The thing is, I am not blessed with the sort of perfectionism that comes with endless talent. My particular brand of perfectionism is paired with a severe lack of athleticism and craftiness. If that shit don’t make ya a little crazy, I don’t know what will.

But on this blog, I am forced to show my less-than-perfect results to all of you and declare to the world that this is who I am.

That doesn’t stop me from wanting my blog to be perfect, but anyways… It’s a vicious cycle, guys.

It took me like twenty godforsaken minutes to get the 12 short strips to look like this.

And it took me another hour or so to weave the long pieces in as the sides.

There was no small amount of cursing and back-tracking along the way. “Christ with a crutch,” is a personal favorite of mine, in case you were wondering.

(Annnnd cue the haters who don’t mind when I use a fucktillion other swear words, but if I “use the Lord’s name in vain,” they shoot righteous rockets of indignation out of their soul-parts at me, even though they probably said, “Oh my God,” seventeen times today already, and isn’t that using the Lord’s name in vain, too?)

Another twenty or thirty minutes to fold and tuck all the end pieces… and then I realized I should have done the same with the long strips on the inside of the basket, but it was too late because I’d already glued down the ends.

All of my art projects in elementary school turned out such that comments I received were along the lines of, “Oh, bless your heart,” and, “Well isn’t that… special?” I knew what it meant, and I knew my projects were not beautiful, despite an adult never actually telling me they were butt-ugly.

This one actually turned out passable, as long as you don’t look on the inside of the basket. Might not even earn me a comment like, “I can see how hard you worked on that,” (which is a total copout way to tell someone their thing sucks).

I didn’t have any strawberries to put in it, though, so I put my penis cookie cutters in there. Dick in a box. Get it? (Thought I’d leave you with a good old penis joke as an apology for discussions of psychological neuroses and theology in this post. Sorry dudes.)

Guys, I should really know better than this by now. I should. Mostly I realize that I am incapable of crafty things, like sewing or candy making or refinishing or hot gluing. But then I see a thing and I think I can do it because it doesn’t involve any special tools.

Image from SimplyMaggie.com

I can knit with my arm. It can’t possibly be as hard as knitting with, you know, needles.

I am a dumbass.

Turns out in arm knitting, your arms are the needles. So now instead of just figuring out how to knit, you also have to figure out how to use your arms while they have yarn tied in knots around them.

But I am getting ahead of myself, because the first deceptively simple step is to create a slipknot.

I don’t consider myself to be an especially stupid person. I made it through college with a fair-to-middling GPA. I can follow the rules of the road. I generally understand when it is socially acceptable for me to make a joke, or if it’s better to shut my damn mouth. Hell, I am even some kind of sailing-certified by the Naval ROTC program at UNC. (Fine, that one is probably just because I was terrible at everything and they felt sorry enough for me to give me a ribbon after my day of sort-of successfully tying knots on a sail boat, but mostly tipping said boat over in the lake.) All of that is to say that a slipknot shouldn’t give me that much trouble.

Shouldn’t. Did.

I had to look up an extra tutorial on slipknots, guys.

But eventually I got it.

Next challenge? Learn how to “cast on.” I have no idea what the fuck that means, even after interminable minutes learning how to do it.

In my first few attempts, I’m pretty sure I was just making loops around my arm.

And, yeah, you guessed it, I had to look up another tutorial on how to do that. The extra tutorial I found was with needles, not arms, but it translated well enough that I sort of managed to make something that looked kinda right-ish… 45 minutes later.

And now it was time to actually knit something, because the whole slipknot and “casting on” thing was not actually knitting, no no.

In the interest of full disclosure, by the time I got this far, I was nearly hyperventilating with frustration, I badly needed a post-lunch nap, and I sort of had to poop. So I was not concentrating fully on my task.

Still, my fuck-upedness exceeded even my own expectations. I shortly managed to tie my wrists together so fully that it took me twenty minutes to get out.

So although the knitting thing failed, I may have a future as a super-villain.

(Also, I tried to get a good picture, but I was out of hands.)

When I finally managed to unloop myself, all that was left was a pile of knotted yarn and a couple of yarn-burned wrists.

And then I gave up, because life is too short to figure some shit out, ya know?

I’ve baked a lot of things in my life guys (although I have never been baked myself, I swear). But marbles? No, I have never baked marbles. Until today.

Why would I bake marbles? Because supposedly then they are pretty, like this:

Image from trickygirlb

The forum post where this came from says that you can make them into pretty necklaces. And it’s apparently very easy. Bake marbles at 350 for 20 minutes, then dump them in a bowl of ice water.

So, hell, I had some marbles because I bought some for my shamrock cupcakes, so I thought why not? (Hold my beer, watch this.)

I did not concern myself overly with the fact that these weren’t spread out nicely on my cookie sheet because, hey, they’re not cookies, so it should be fine.

And then I baked them for the prescribed time and temperature and got my bowl of water ready.

This would be the second time this week I’ve had marbles in a bowl in my sink. My life is fucking weird, guys.

They did crack on the insides and not the outsides, so that part totally worked. Problems:

1. They’re not that pretty.

2. They’re a huge pain in the ass to photograph, even with my fancy-butt new camera.

Too dark:

Too blurry:

Too reflective or something:

So I dunno. You can’t really see it because I’m a terrible photographer. But they’re not that impressive even when you can see them properly, I promise. I will not be making jewelry out of these.

I know, I know– they’d look better if I’d gotten solid-colored translucent marbles, instead of the swirly ones, but dudes, I had a bag of marbles already, and I wasn’t gonna go buy another color just to bake them and crack them on purpose.

So, in conclusion: I successfully cracked some balls, but the results were less than thrilling.

My post is late today. There’s a reason for that. In order to tell it to you, we must rewind to this morning at 6 a.m.

Husband and I were awakened by a tapping as of someone gently rapping at our windowpane. It was not a raven. But it was a bird. A persistent bird. A bird that would not give up its not-so-gentle tapping.

I was content to put a pillow over my head and sleep through it, but husband muttered something about “piece of crap stupid goddamn fucking bird,” and got up to smack at the window with a pillow. That worked for like 3 minutes.

And then husband came back with a step-stool and some sticky notes and worked up another solution. That worked for exactly 3 seconds.

Eventually we gave up. Husband left for work and I got up to start my day… and realized we had no internet.

And now we must rewind even further to the evening before, when husband tried to “fix” our issue with the failing UPS by plugging everything (including internet thingies) into a power strip.

So this morning, in my bird-induced sleep-deprived state, I went in to check on the router and all that other crap that makes the internet go and reported all lights to be turned on and flashy. But then I went back out to my computer and still no internet. I repeated this process a number of times. It wasn’t until about 2 in the afternoon that I went back there for something else, opened the curtains, and noticed that the little lights on the router thingies were no longer flashing.

I knew those little fucks had been flashing earlier, so I crawled around under the desk and inhaled dust bunnies and other gross shit while I followed power cords and made sure everything was plugged in. I flipped the switch on the power strip off and on…

And then I had a slow-motion moment of clarity. The power strip was plugged in to the wall… where the lamp used to be… and the lamp could be turned on and off… with the light switch. I turned on the light switch and, lo, my internets returned.

And I texted my husband to tell him he was a butthole.

That is the story of why this blog post is late.

Today I am testing aluminum foil dryer sheets.

Image from BudgetSavvyDiva.com

I know, I’m on a laundry kick this week. I’m just rolling with it, since it means I have clean laundry.

I haven’t used dryer sheets in years, mostly because I don’t care that much about my laundry being extra soft and smelly. I do use these:

They’re a little worse for the wear, and I don’t know if they do any good, but I always run them through the dryer with my stuff. So the idea of throwing something like a ball of aluminum foil in the dryer doesn’t seem that weird to me.

I did get a lot of interesting warnings when I pinned it though. Stuff like:

OMG you’ll catch your house on fire!

You’re going to tear up all your clothes!

The foil won’t catch on fire, but you might build up enough static to start a fire from the spark!

I appreciate you all looking out for me. But I tried it anyway.

I made a ball of foil about the same size as my dryer balls.

And then I took one of the dryer balls out of the dyer and replaced it with the foil ball.

And I did a load of towels.

I hate to be a spoilsport, but nothing caught on fire. And I realize I didn’t have any delicates in this load, but nothing got torn up either.

In fact, the only damage was a little further beating up of the one dryer ball I left in there.

My dryer was undamaged.

And my towels are… um… towely. As I’m not really sure what this thing is supposed to do, I guess it did it. I don’t have a huge problem with static in my towels anyway, but, um, maybe I would if I didn’t use dryer balls, or something.

In any case, you will not catch your house on fire if you do this. Go with my blessing, children.

My husband said it was time for another craft, and you know how I love the crafts. So I decided the only one I could handle today was a socktopus, because I know I can make things out of socks.

Image from Hatched

You guys remember Calvin the Love Snowman, right? Well, I had one love sock left…

And it seems like Calvin might need a girlfriend, and so Ms. Socktopussy she shall be.

I didn’t have any cotton stuffing, but I did have a sweat sock with a hole in it.

You like that artsy-fartsy aperture shit with my holey sweat sock and a cluttered coffee table in the background? You know you do. (By the way, the bowl of yellow yucky looking stuff is my lunch, in case you were curious. It was actually pretty tasty.)

When I stuffed the sock into what would become Ms. Socktopussy, she looked a little droopy and sad… (I’d say flaccid, but I don’t think girl socktopi have that problem.)

So I stuffed the other sock in there, too, even though it didn’t have a hole in it. (When in doubt, MOAR STUFFING.)

She began to take shape…

Yes, craft table = thighs. Just be glad I’m wearing pants today.

In an ideal socktopus world, you would have pieces of felt with which to make the eyes. I did not, so I decided the button stand-by would work.

Tangent: I keep my buttons in a mason jar because I saw it on Pinterest and thought it was cute:

via shelikescherries

Mine looks like this:

Womp womp.

Anyway, I was also out of glue, so I actually honest-to-God sewed buttons on for Ms. Socktopussy’s eyes.

And then I took a picture except that I focused on the wrong thing and am fake-sewing in the photo because I needed my right hand to hold the camera. I really don’t sew left-handed. I barely sew right-handed.

Anyway, here she is: Ms. Socktopussy. Now that’s a face only Calvin the Love Snowman could love.

This pin test was originally posted on CraftFail.

This post about decorating candles got pinned and captioned improperly a whole bunch on Pinterest, but it turns out that there actually are real working instructions.

Image from A Girl in Paradise

Contrary to weird Pinterest captions, you do not draw on the wax paper, or draw on the candle, or draw a design backwards and then iron it on, or any of that other stupid shit.

The blog post clearly instructs you to draw the design on tissue paper, just the way you want it to appear (not mirrored). Sounded easy enough, so I gathered my materials.

First, I taped a piece of tissue paper about the size of my candle to a piece of regular paper. This step is only so the design won’t bleed through the tissue paper onto, like, your kitchen table or your pants. You’re welcome.

The blog post then tells you to go find some cute kids to draw a design on your paper. I don’t have any cute kids, but I am resourceful, so I recruited my husband.

(Yes, the scenic view from our living room is of dumpsters. You get used to it.)

Guess what he drew.

Yup.

So I cut out the design and prepared to adhere it to the candle.

Here’s the step where it got creative on Pinterest. Despite what you may have seen in the caption of this pin, here is what you really do: You place the tissue paper on the candle where you want it to go. You wrap a piece of wax paper around the whole thing. You heat it with a heat gun.

So I did that, except I didn’t have a heat gun. I panicked momentarily, but then I realized I have a heated implement which blows hot air, and it was probably close enough.

I crossed my fingers and blasted the candle for half a minute or so with heat from my very old and relatively cheap hair dryer. Ok, well, I didn’t really cross my fingers because my damn hands were full. It’s a figure of speech, people. Jeez.

And you know what? It worked! The tissue paper (the whole chunk of it, not just the ink) adhered to the candle! Amazeballs.

And now I have this lovely gift for someone very special… I just have to decide who… Maybe a teenager. I could incorporate an object lesson about the dangers of unprotected sex, and then light the candle and say, “Now do you want your penis to feel like it’s on fire? No? Then use condoms.”

And all of Sonja’s nephews lived happily ever after. The end.

My sister pinned this thing about getting stains out of your carpet with an iron, and wrote, “I just tried this, and I guarantee hilarious results.” So how could I pass up an opportunity like that?

Image from ehow.com

This is specifically meant for Kool-Aid stains, but I don’t think I’ve had Kool-Aid in my house for years. (Crystal Lite maybe, but not Kool-Aid.)

I do, however, have a stinky dog, as you’ll recall.

And I’m going to blame her for these unidentified carpet stains.

(I know you can’t see it very well, but it’s a little spot that looks suspiciously like a shitstain. She doesn’t poop in the house, ever, so it’s quite possible that it’s just gross doggy dirt or slobber, or perhaps not even her fault. I did spill an entire glass of Coke in there once, so, ya know…)

I dug my iron out of the very back of my laundry room cabinet (which was a feat, but not as impossible as prying my ironing board out from behind the washing machine, so it’s a good thing I only needed the iron for this one).

The post did warn against using blue Windex, but blue was all I had and I just figured a blue stain wouldn’t be any more disgusting than a brown stain, so you know, I wasn’t too worried about it, even if it were to fail.

I squirted.

And then I ironed.

At first, I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen besides that my towel would soak up a puddle of Windex. But, eventually, some nasty brown stuff started pulling through the towel.

But I could still see the stain, and I figured, as I usually do, that if some is good, MORE IS BETTER.

So I sprayed and ironed and repeated.

Yeah, all that nasty brown shit was in my carpet, which I occasionally do yoga and push-ups on. My face has no doubt touched it many times.

But you know what? Its not in the carpet anymore.

TADA!

I got so excited that I ran around the room finding other little shitstains and spraying them and ironing them. I got to a particularly gnarly one and started grossing myself out with all the crap that came through the towel, but then I looked closer…

And I’m pretty sure that those are scorch marks rather than dirt. Oops.

And, in the interest of honesty, I’ll tell you it didn’t work on all the stains. This one wouldn’t come up completely.

But, I’ll tell you what, for a test that my sister promised would result in hilarity, I did not end up with a blue carpet or a house fire or even burny ammonia steam in my eyes. A minimally scorched towel is not really a fail when you’re me.

So what’s her story?

I emailed to ask her, and I promise to leave the explanation in the comments when I hear back… Stay tuned.

ETA: Joanna emailed me back, with pictures. Enjoy!

After reading your blog post, wish I had used blue Windex.  Here’s my story: 

Neve barfed squash and carrot juice (that toddler snack juice stuff that comes in the tube) all over the carpet in the den.  It was orange.  She was sick.  She was not actually barfing from the taste.

I got it the best I could with Resolve, but there was still some there.  I didn’t want to use my blue Windex, so I made the ammonia solution.  I sprayed liberally and ironed.  The steam made the whole downstairs unbearable for at least an hour, and I almost asphyxiated myself.  Plus, I also scorched the towel like you, and the barf stil didn’t come all the way up, although it improved.

I am attaching pictures, but they’re not very good.  I couldn’t get one of the billowing noxious steam.