The Anti-Craft

I hate to break it to you, because you are such nice people and I really enjoy it when you visit, but it's true. Brace yourselves. I should have admitted it long ago.

I am the Anti-Craft. I can ruin the simplest project with one snip of my out of control scissors. Messy things irritate me. Any chance any of my children had at being even the slightest bit creative or artistic has been squashed by my utter failure to nurture or encourage such talents. The only thing I hate more than crafting myself is dealing with small children while they 'craft.' Which seems to mean, while they smear glue/paint and/or other sticky substances on my dining room table.

Even the craft projects at toddler class drive me bananas. Teacher Glinda is always so affirming and excited. Look at how much they love to paint/smear shaving cream/destroy and eat glue sticks. They are always so into the projects. It's great. No, Teacher Glinda, it's deprivation.

But. There's some glimmer of hope for my wee Picassos. Occasionally, I get a wild hare and we do a project.

Like this. This was a thank you present we made for Aunt D after her wedding. That's a sketch of the venue. Ess and Gee each painted one and I framed them. Pretty, no? The idea came from my friend and idol in the child crafting world, Megan of Penny Carnival.

Invitations inspire me too. I get all excited when I'm actually hosting something and spend way too much time making the invitations myself. It's guest-list-limiting because I'm bored after the first ten.

It's kind of pretty too, or at least it was, before I had to delete out all the incriminating information so Matt wouldn't have a massive stroke.

Don't think I'm crafty. I love paper, but I'm immediately in over my head. My children were basically orphaned for five days while I made fifteen of those invites. They would have scavenged for dog food, but we don't have a dog.

Some people, though, are the opposite of me. They are craft angels. One of my closest friends in the world, a soul mate for over twenty years, has her craft halo. She's just damn talented, actually. And she makes these.


It's called a first year blanket. It's a baby blanket, technically, but it's a work of art. Ours are hanging on the wall in Ess and Gee's room. Because she's awesome and I think she loves me and she puts up with my crap, she's promised to make an extra one for me. For you. Okay, for one of you. The trivia champion of Summer 2009. It's the perfect prize, since I'll be very babyfied around then and feeling mushy.

Just thought I'd show you. Incentive.

(I would show you Ess's also, but my camera (sob) is (sob) broken (uncontrollable sobbing). It's a Nikon D50 and the TSA people took the lens off (yes, I checked it, I had to do it). I put it back on and it took one picture and now it hates me. I can only see black through the view finder. It's like it died. What do I do? Is it the lens? Some brilliant photographer please help me. Oh and yes, the lens cap is off, thank you Matt.)