I'm terrible at crafts

I've never been good at art.  Or crafts.  Or anything that involves glue, glitter, or paint.  In fact as a kid my art teacher kept calling my Mom and complaining that I wasn't even trying.  My Mom assured her that I was trying really hard and just truly was bad at art (I learned this much later in life.  At the time, I kept bragging about my art projects.  I guess I was slightly deluded even as a child).

Anyway, I've been trying not to dwell on this because I really feel like maybe I'm not qualified to be a "Mom blogger" if I can't do crafts.  There are so many amazing sites out there with all these super creative activities and I'm very challenged in this department.  Let me this illustrate for you.  Last Christmas one of my friends invited us over to do Gingerbread houses.  I was so excited until I discovered that she baked the pieces herself and we had to assemble them.  She provided a bowl with frosting and the Moms put the houses together while the kids waited. 

Poor Munchkin Girl.  She waited patiently for me.  The other Moms expertly placed the pieces in the right spots, used the perfect amount of frosting to hold them in place and they looked they'd been bought at a store.  Then there was mine.  I tried, I really did, but the pieces kept falling down so I kept using more frosting.  Pretty soon we were out of frosting and then I didn't have anything left for the sidewalks.

Munchkin Girl started decorating and as she was pushing the first piece of candy on the roof, the roof fell down.  She screamed and I scurried over to get the roof back in place, which was tough since I was now out of frosting.  To her credit, she had fun anyway and I let her do all the work.  Just like her Mommy, her self-confidence and/or delusion carried her through and she didn't notice that ours was lopsided, falling down, and missing pieces. 

See how the sides of the roof aren't even touching each other?  I'm sure glad this isn't my house!  It would be very cold to live here.

Despite the fact that I'm art-challened, I've recently been convinced of the importance of creativity.  Through blogging I've made a good friend, named Susan Case, who used to teach kindergarten and also writes a great blog.  She's been very supportive and I've asked her to write a blog for me on the importance of crafts.  She's also going to come up with an idea for us to try for Thanksgiving.  I'm excited to give this all another try. 

PS...If any of you fabulous Mommy bloggers have a good post about an easy craft, send it to me!  I clearly need help!! :-)  Otherwise, stay tuned for Susan's post on crafts...I'm going to get to Hobby Lobby this week for my glue gun!!

The Merits of Letting Daddy Interfere

Sometimes Hubby just isn't practical.  And sometimes he wants the kids to grow up immediately.  A perfect example was our first Christmas with Munchkin Girl.  She was seven months old and he insisted that we needed to go buy a real Christmas Tree and his reasoning was that Munchkin Girl would think it was really fun.  The seven month old baby. 

I grew up with a fake tree and always thought it was fine.  I don't deny his heart was in the right place.  He wanted to bond with our little daughter.  However, he just didn't realize that a seven month old wouldn't care about a tree at all, let alone whether it was fake or real.  I gave in like I always do and spent the entire Christmas Holiday cleaning up pine needles and fighting with the dogs to get them to quit drinking the water from the tree.

This brings me to this Halloween.  With Munchkin Girl at 3 and Little Buddy at 18 months, we were both excited about pumpkin carving.  Then Hubby decided to take it to a new level.  He decided we needed dry ice.  I don't know much about dry ice, but I do know that it's not something you want your 18 month old to be sticking his hands into.  At first, I protested.  I said they weren't old enough to appreciate it and it would be a total hassle and could even be dangerous.

Then I had an epiphany...why not?  I'm lucky to have a Hubby who wants to put in the extra effort to have fun with the kids.  If I end up having to clean up a little extra, so what?  So I let go...and look what my Hubby did...


The kids thought it was super cool and we had it bubbling while they cleaned out the pumpkins.


Then, it evolved a step further.  Since the kids can't really hold knives and carve a pumpkin, they got to paint the pumpkins while Daddy did the actual carving.  They really enjoyed this and I was so glad that I didn't stress over the mess they were making.  Admittedly it took a lifetime to clean up this spectacular mess, but it was totally worth it.


I guess the moral of this story is that I need to chill out and have fun.  It's an ongoing process, but I'm happy to report that I'm making progress in the right direction.