Inadequate Materials

Since my last post, it has come to my attention that getting a shoe horn in a Christmas cracker is not the bizarre isolated incident I thought it was. As it turns  out, half of North America seems to have gotten one. This tells us two things: 1. All the crackers made on this continent must come from the same factory; and 2. Some marketing genius actually got paid to come up with that lame, pathetic idea. As I said before, next year I'll be making my own. But in the hope of keeping a million useless, outdated objects out of the landfill, I felt it was my duty to find a creative use for the lowly Christmas cracker shoe horn. So here it is: My picture isn't the best quality, but I think you get the idea. I went down to my craft room and proceeded to find anything I could that looked remotely Christmassy while the glue gun heated up. In the end, I stuck on a little red ribbon and the last of my red fabric flowers (usually used in card-making) with a decorative (read: dollar st...

That week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is my favourite one of the whole year. I realized during a discussion with my brother this past weekend that you can tell an optimist from a pessimist by how he or she approaches New Year's Eve. For me, it's all about tying up the loose ends of the past year, and then starting fresh with a plan to change my life for the better. Is there anything more thrilling than that? However, if New Year's Eve reminds you of all the stuff you didn't accomplish this year and makes you want to drink a bottle of vodka before hanging yourself with the Christmas tinsel, that's equally justified. But you should probably be aware that if this is the case, you might be a pessimist. Optimist or not, I don't think I could ever be accused of having an elegant holiday season: The fact that RB put on underwear for Christmas dinner was about the best any of us could expect. And please note, this photo was taken at 2PM and I was the ...

To all my friends who will be celebrating it this weekend, a very Merry Christmas! My friend, neighbour and fellow blogger Granny Bob stopped by this week with a beautiful package for me. Inside were a dozen of these: The moral of the story is, when life hands you glitter-turds , blog about it. Your more talented friends will show up with much better-looking ornaments for your tree! That same day, I received 4 of these from my next-door neighbour, who also happens to be Granny Bob's daughter. The crafty genes run strong in this family! My tree is starting to look less naked! Now, if I can just keep RB's grubby little hands off of everything... And just so you don't think I'm completely useless with the Christmas crafts, here's what I made following a tutorial my sister brought to my attention recently: Cute, no? I need to go out next week and get some better felt colours, but you get the idea. If you'd like to make one, they're dead easy, an...

Do you ever see something beautiful online and think you could make something like it yourself at home? This weekend, I was trolling the internet for Christmas craft ideas to do with the kids and I came across these beautiful painted papier mache ornaments: Gorgeous, no? And really, how hard could they be to make from scratch?! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 2011 winner of the Holiday Decorating Innovation Award: Psychedelic Glitter-Turds! What's even more embarrassing is that I did 90% of the work on these horrendous things! At least if the kids had done them independently we could all ooh and ahh about how special they are. Firstborn lost interest after the first gooey layer of papier mache. RB loved every messy step, but in more of an I'm-going-to-dip-my-hands-in-paint-then-run-around-the-house-flapping-them kind of way. And the catch-22 is that because they did do that 10%, I'm going to have to display them proudly on the tree until January 1st! I...

I'm generally not one to complain when we get no snow. I am the exact person places like Florida and Mexico were made for. If I never saw another snowflake, I'd be a happy woman. But something about the sight of my front yard this morning just seems really wrong: I've now spent more than a decade of my life altogether living in the prairies, and this is not at all what I'm used to looking out and seeing in mid-December. I'm not complaining per se. Goodness knows, I'll have my fair share of the white stuff come January. But still seeing grass this close to Christmas is highly unusual out here, and a look at the forecast tells me it's quite possible we will not be having a white Christmas. If this happens, I'm told it'll be the first Christmas without snow here in Manitoba in about 15 years. I choose to count myself lucky to see such a rare phenomenon. And also not to have to shovel a path to the front door. Despite this weird meteorological oc...

Okay, I know I'm already about 4 posts behind in my new two-posts-a-week commitment, but people, it's December! Enough said. I do at least have enough random fodder for 4 posts, which I will now roll into one condensed post. I kicked off last week by going to the big city all by myself. First, I got my hair done: Those are also new glasses ($15 from Zenni Optical. I'll never spend $400 at the optometrist's office again!). Then, I headed to Value Village for my bi-monthly rummage through other people's old junk. Even though I'm not really a brooch-wearer, I was stopped dead in my tracks in the jewellery section by this: My grandmother had something very similar on her cardigan when I was a kid. I expected to turn it over and find that it had been reproduced in a sweatshop in Taiwan, but was very surprised to see "Made in England" printed on the back. Brooch-wearer or not, at $4 I wasn't going to wrestle with my conscience over this one....