Just kidding.
No really. Screw you.
I have this love / hate relationship with Pinterest. First of all, I'm angry I got married before Pinterest was invented. Second, Pinterest adds a lot of stress and anxiety in the lives of women, particularly moms.
But how cool is it that we can categorize our entire lives into online boards?! I'm OCD about organization and it's like a gift from the gods of crazy, feeding into my obsessive need to organize, file, sort.
On Facebook moms are constantly posting adorable projects and crafts they do for holidays and Wednesdays and whatnot. 'Hey it's taco Tuesday! Check out the taco bar I've created, especially the little signs crafted from recycled Mexican sandals in each dish just in case you don't know what diced tomatoes look like!'
Hiss.
At Halloween and Christmas Morgan brought home adorable little spider pretzel cookies and make your own snowman kits with marshmallows. Well, Valentine's Day is approaching and I figured I might as well jump on that super mom bandwagon.
I asked Morgan 'do you want Valentine's cards to give your class that you can pick out from the store with princesses or opossums or whatever you're into this week orrrrr do you want to waste an entire day cussing over crafts that are an utter disappointment and create your own cards to give out?'
She wanted to make them. Sigh.
So I got on Pinterest and did a search for 'easy DIY Valentine cards' and scrolled through all sorts of adorable ideas that made me snort and say 'heck no' and then I found one that looked cute and kind of easy. A fishbowl card that says 'glad we're in the same school' and a little bag of Swedish fish attached. She's 4 and has no idea what Valentine's Day is about and I'm not encouraging lovey dovey crap and the card rings true: she's glad to be in the same school with those kids, or most of them anyways.
So I dropped her off at gymnastics and made a quick run to Family Dollar for supplies:
Note cards
Colored paper
Glue sticks
Black marker
Blue colored pencils
Blue glitter nail polish
Swedish fish
Sandwich baggies
Vodka
Actually dollar stores don't sell liquor which is disappointing. And the clerk didn't hand me my bag with sugar babies so I had to make a U-turn.
Today while Morgan was at school I started on the project. We gated off the dining room (which is also our computer room because we live like we are in college) to keep Jack from pounding on computer keys as I typed out 'glad we are in the same school happy valentine's day' using curlz font in size 9 then copying and pasting 25 times and printing out while Jack screamed and cried because he couldn't get to mommy and then started throwing goldfish crackers and pacifiers over the gate as an offering with the hopes of being allowed past the barricade.
Then I googled 'fishbowl drawing' on my iPhone and free handed my own to use as a pattern. I used it, cut it out and was happy until I realized the note cards had lines on one side.
Auggghhh
So I had to dig out some purple paper and cut matching fishbowl shapes to glue to the note card. And then cut the message out to glue. And then outline the fishbowl in marker so that it looked like a darn fishbowl. And then I wished I had some vodka when I accidentally rubbed glue stick in my hair and pieces of paper stuck to it.
When Morgan came home from school I put her to work. She colored the water then painted over it with the nail polish. After throwing 2 away because she colored the wrong area she was already tired of the project so I had to go into 'you wanted to do this and it's for your class not mine so you sit here and do this' mode. I helped her color and paint. After a while I think even the cats were high from nail polish fumes. Then I grabbed a sharpie for Morgan to write her name with just in case we weren't high enough from huffing nail polish. After saying 'write your name and you'll be finished!' about 109 times we finally had a stack of cards ready for the next phase. I opened up the Swedish fish and divided them into 25 bags. And tasted them...I have never actually eaten them because the word 'fish' in candy just makes me go bleh but it's corn syrup and red dye #40, all the makings of type 2 diabetes and lymph node cancer usually means something tastes delicious. Now I'm addicted.
I tried to staple the baggie of fish on the card in a cutesy way but honestly after 4 hours of crafting I had turned into the honey badger and I didn't care.
Here's the final product:
Bam. Got my craft on. Bonded with child number uno. Learned that Swedish fish do not taste like fish.
Next year she's giving out ready made cards because I can't rationalize 4 hours of crafting. And Swedish fish are expensive.
