DIY Projects

Crafts for the Uncrafty

Potato-Stamp Valentines: A DIY For Procrastinators (Like Me)

What's more fun than painting potatoes? NOTHING.

My feeling about Valentine's Day, in a nutshell: I want to be all "Ooh! A teachable moment wherein my child can learn the value of giving and receiving love, albeit via paper cutouts!" But I also do not want to put any real effort into the Valentine's Day-celebrating process, because few things are less fun than dragging two children through Rite Aid in search of something - anything - that doesn't have a picture of a Minion and "You're One In A Minion!" written on it.

Regardless of your personal attitude towards Valentine's Day, here is a fact: When you have a kindergartener, you have to help him or her make and distribute Valentines, because that's in the contract you sign when you procreate. Fortunately for the begrudgingly-participatory Valentine's Day celebrators among us, I have a friend named Mollie who is about as interested in fussy DIYs as I am...and yet seems to be always creating beautiful things. When I want to look like a crafty genius (but don't want to, you know, try too hard), it is Mollie to whom I turn - and so it only made sense to ask her to start publishing her (actually completely for-real accessible) ideas to RG.

DIY Projects

Just Playing Contractor Over Here

This is technically a photo of a woman painting, not of a woman doing drywall.

But strangely enough, when you google "woman doing home repair," what you get is mostly...porn.

So here is a photo of a woman painting. (I like her sneakers.)

Crafts for the Uncrafty

Crafting With Rabid Monkeys

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Erin asked if I wanted to set up a crafting afternoon for our kids, so they could make gifts for their grandparents (and anyone else who might prefer a fingerpainted snowman to, say, a Dyptique candle, which would be no one, but that's besides the point). We started a Pinterest board to find projects that seemed doable without looking too much like...you know...crafts. Our goal was to make things that the recipients might actually enjoy, as opposed to things that they feel obligated to display in perpetuity because said thing was made by a child.

This entire post is going to come with a massive caveat, and the caveat is this: If you have children under the age of...I don't know, I've only been a parent for five years. At what age do children start sitting still? Five-year-olds don't, in any case. So here's the caveat: if you have kids aged five or under and decide to make a fucking wind chime, please be aware that you will end up being the one making it. (My five-year-old did, in fact, bead his very own wind chime strand...and then picked it up to show it to me, at which point all the beads fell off, transforming a happy crafting afternoon into a trauma likely to halt further beading experiments for two years, at minimum. Because that is what happens when you try to force a five-year-old to make a fucking wind chime.) (My two-year-old, in contrast, applied herself with spectacular concentration and perseverance. Except what she was concentrating on and persevering in was ensuring that every single piece of berry bunny cereal, including the ones she dropped on the floor, were eaten.)

DIY Projects

How To Make An (Inexpensive) Bubble Chandelier

When Elise and I got together a few days before the Mermaid Party to work on the decor and she told me that we were going to make a bubble chandelier, I kind of went "mmmhmmm yeah sounds great!" and then returned to hot-gluing starfish to sticks, because obviously we were not going to make a bubble chandelier. Because in my world, that is not something that people do. It turned out that I was right (that day at least): after hot-gluing many, many starfish to many, many sticks we ran out of time, and no bubble chandeliers were made. And so I forgot about the whole thing, figuring Elise had realized that trying to make one of these things was way more labor-intensive than anything created for a two-year-old's birthday party should rightfully be.

Then, on the morning of the party, Elise showed up an hour early to help me set up (I've said this before, but helloooo awesome friend), sat down at my dining room table, and said: "OK, let's get started on the chandelier."

Excusemewhat? Do you not see I am presently pouring frozen meatballs onto a sheet of aluminum foil and not exactly ideally situated for a four-hour plastic bubble extravaganza?


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