“If you're going to fail, fail spectacularly.”
And that is exactly what I have done. It was my intention to provide, for your amusement and reading enjoyment, a weekly update of the traffic jam (that boarders on pileup accident) that is my life. I have, however, managed to allow several months (and a few pretty good stories) to go unreported. I can tell that you all have been waiting with bated breath for me to update this blog so I figured in the moments between starting a new episode of Rugrats season 7 (yes, there are 7 seasons and those babies never seem to grow up. That is until my kids discover Rugrats : All Grown Up which I will do almost anything to keep them from discovering) and digging through the cupboard for some form of chocolate that I can shove into my perpetually chubby face, I would jot a little something down to alleviate my guilt and put an end to my failure.
This year I have decided that I am going to be crafty and creative. I feel that we all exercise some degree of do-it-yourselfedness (not a real word but creativity has to start somewhere), but I am not shooting for the catchphrase “it's been Katy-ed.” I'm looking for questions like, “Did Katy do this?” (only without the disbelief that you all undoubtedly injected into the statement when you repeated it in your heads). I want to wow people with my “natural eye” and my….whatever else needs to be commented on so that people think I'm crafty.
Now if the end result of this is in fact craftiness, all the better. But I am not above settling for the perception of craftiness (hopefully without “borrowing” items that other crafty people have created and calling them my own, but the year is young and nothing is off the table at this point).
Why this sudden desire you wonder. Well, I'm not getting any younger and if I wait much longer people will just think that I have too much free time on my hands and set the expectation bar higher.
When all your kids are in school and you have no job, well of course you have the time to perfect handmade items, because it is either that or daytime TV (or get a job but I don't want to put any ideas into the wrong heads). But when you have 3 kids at home still and you whip out almost anything homemade you garner both envy (not the “7 deadly” type of envy just the “keeping up with the Carrolls” kind) and admiration (even if your creation is borderline crap because people have lowered the bar a notch for each child).
I'm not totally shallow, some of this goal is borne of necessity. I do have more free time then money right now so if I want some things, I have to figure out how to make them myself. But I also have some major projects coming up and I could use all the confidence I can get. It's that whole fake it till you make it mindset. If people refer to and think of me as crafty, then maybe some of that mojo will flow from the gods of hot glue and glitter right into my bones (I'm pretty sure that the gods of hot glue and glitter are not doctrinally based so let's just file that under “personal doctrine” OK?).
I am in the process of injecting myself into my living space (that is creative speak for picking out paint for the walls). So far I have almost finished a bedroom and the downstairs and completely finished 1 bathroom. They look pretty good (if I do say so myself but it really would make me feel better if you said so as well. You know, to inspire the a fore mentioned mojo). The problem is that I like color but I'm not looking to live in an upscale Tijuana neighborhood.
I can stick to a color pallet but I don't want too many colors and I don't want the same old colors on every wall (even if I did buy a 5 gallon bucket and I am so cheap that I am having a hard time leaving any of it in the bucket at all because I want to get my money's worth). I am torn between personal taste and resale appeal and I think that if I were crafty enough, I could bridge that gap. So basically, I am driving my husband crazy and spending a lot of time at Home Depot with their paint chips.
On a side note, it would make my life a whole lot easier if they would just hand me a paint chip book. Instead, I have collected one (or more) chips of every color they have ever invented. I feel like they are watching me every time I walk out of the store with a new color section. I'm just saying, you made the rules, don't eyeball me if I have to live by them.
I am also seriously considering re-staining my cabinets until I have the money (in 30 or so years) and the gumption to replace the whole kitchen. But then I run the risk of ruining the cabinets so it is going to take way more confidence and craftiness to tackle those (and maybe the god of flower arranging as well). For right now I am sticking with the baby steps of wall paint and branching out into the world of digital scrapbooking (because my paper stuff if piled high in the “crap room” and I am afraid to go in there) and natural light photography. One day I will conquer Photo-shop if it kills me.
Well it is time for another Rugrats so I will have to leave you with a final thought.
Blue based greens do not match red based browns (and I will be painting later on this week if any of you out there are looking to do a ton of hard and relatively unpleasant manual labor for little more than a “than you' and a glass of ice water or the Dr. Pepper that I failed to give up).
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