Parenting

Crafts for the Uncrafty

Suggestion For Your Cinco De Mayo: Tissue-Paper Crafts & Ranch Water Cocktails

May 2, 2017

Cinco de Mayo is one of those holidays that only occurs to me when I'm in the middle of it - as in, when I'm sitting in a restaurant and notice the poster reading "CINCO DE MAYO CERVEZAS ONLY $2!!!" and think, Ooh. I should have a beer.

This year, Cinco de Mayo occurred to me several days prior to the actual event for two reasons: The first is that Mollie is throwing a party on Friday, and I just got the email reminder, and the second is that a few days ago I went over to Mollie's house and she showed me how to make the tissue-paper flowers and Ranch Water cocktails that'll be featured at this party. (Related: going to Mollie's house is always a good idea.) So, really, I suppose there's actually only one reason that Cinco de Mayo occurred to me before actual Cinco de Mayo, and that's "I have a friend named Mollie."

These tissue-paper flowers are so cute, and so versatile - you can make them bigger or smaller depending on the size of tissue paper you use, and can choose whatever color palette you want - and they're easy enough to make that you can hand over assembly duties to the kids (so you can focus on those Ranch Water cocktails).

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Crafts for the Uncrafty

Suddenly Surrounded By Makers

April 14, 2017

There's no friend like a friend who's willing to paint with you.

I was on the phone with Francesca the other day and we were talking about my solar fountain project and my mortar brick project and the park strip redo and the bananacakes and all the other things that you can find on Ramshackle Glam lately in the category of Awesome Things I've Never Done Before, and she said, "Huh. So...you don't really have to come up with ideas for your website anymore. You can just hang out with your friends."

This is true.

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Crafts for the Uncrafty

So Fishy: A(nother) Valentine’s Day Solution For Last-Minute Moms

February 8, 2017

Remember Monday's post about potato-stamp Valentine's Day cards? The ones you can make with your kids minus the miserable stroll through the craft-store aisles? The inspiration behind it was what you see here: my daughter was napping and all of a sudden my son announced that he was willing to make Valentines for his classmates, and I had exactly two seconds to conceive of a doable plan before losing him to the living room rug, where the epic battle between Mini Cons and random dragon figurines that my mother bought at the Met had finally been put on pause for a moment.

And so this is what I decided to do: help him make school (of fish! whee, puns!)-themed Valentines that ticked all of my personal boxes: inexpensive (check), easy (check), witty (eh, sort of), and (seemingly) original (checkity check check check).

(It is not lost on me that I have an addiction to parentheticals. Moving on.)

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Crafts for the Uncrafty

Potato-Stamp Valentines: A DIY For Procrastinators (Like Me)

February 6, 2017

What's more fun than painting potatoes? NOTHING.

My feeling about Valentine's Day, in a nutshell: I want to be all "Ooh! A teachable moment wherein my child can learn the value of giving and receiving love, albeit via paper cutouts!" But I also do not want to put any real effort into the Valentine's Day-celebrating process, because few things are less fun than dragging two children through Rite Aid in search of something - anything - that doesn't have a picture of a Minion and "You're One In A Minion!" written on it.

Regardless of your personal attitude towards Valentine's Day, here is a fact: When you have a kindergartener, you have to help him or her make and distribute Valentines, because that's in the contract you sign when you procreate. Fortunately for the begrudgingly-participatory Valentine's Day celebrators among us, I have a friend named Mollie who is about as interested in fussy DIYs as I am...and yet seems to be always creating beautiful things. When I want to look like a crafty genius (but don't want to, you know, try too hard), it is Mollie to whom I turn - and so it only made sense to ask her to start publishing her (actually completely for-real accessible) ideas to RG.

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