SISTER WISDOM

I’m not a crafty person, like, at all.

Once I tried to decorate cupcakes for our church’s harvest party. They were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, and I had this yellow and orange decorator’s gel, and I thought, “How hard can it be to draw a little leaf shape on the top of the cupcake?”
Pretty doowopping difficult, as it turns out, at least for me. The leaves looked like mutilated spider webs, so I just dumped a lot of decorator’s sugar over the top and let it be. Sometimes you just need to know what you’re not good at…

But then with kids you don’t get to just avoid the things you’re not good at. Instead, you get challenged and inspired and sometimes you just grit your teeth and make yourself do whatever it is needs to be done for their general welfare, well-being, and development into a semi-normal person. I’m still not sure that “crafty stuff” is necessary for development into a semi-normal person, but I am no authority on things normal. So. Wanting to give my children some chance at a “normal life” (whatever that is) and feeling Mom-guilt upon perusing blogs of people who, apparently, have crafty as their middle names, and (this is the real kicker, I can ignore the other two) seeing how Mara and Robbie light up whenever I pull out things pertaining to artsy endeavors or general craftiness…
I pulled out the pipe cleaners.
And the yarn.
And the scissors.
And the construction paper.
And the (sigh) glue sticks. I hate glue sticks. Glue sticks are supposed to prevent glue messes, but somehow that’s never the result for us. Oh well. Fun is worth it!

And we had fun a nd were semi-crafty, at least as crafty as it gets around here.
I made yarn pictures of their names. Zeke didn’t get one because he was napping. And because he would have eaten the yarn. And the pipe cleaners. And the glue sticks.
And helped Robbie draw a rocket ship, because last night Daddy told us about rocket ships and rocket science and astronauts and planets and outer space and, most importantly, the FIRE that comes out of the rocket when it takes off from earth…

And helped Mara make a picture of balloons: YARN balloons! Who knew there was such a thing? I did not until we started making them. Watch out, crafty Mamas, we’re starting to get creative over here!

And then we made the fun chains of pipe cleaners and had rousing games of “make the pipe cleaners hisssss and squirm like snakes” and “wave the chains of pipe cleaners around while jumping and singing songs” before hanging them on the windows. Who needs curtains when you have pipe cleaners?

All this craftiness is wearing me out. I need to go bake something and then NOT decorate it.

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I linked this post to Se7en’s Fabulous Friday Fun #10! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!