I'm a complete and total craft clutz.

I've never been very good at crafts, I even bang my head on the desk when something in the curriculum says, "craft project." Not that my children have ever minded all that much, they never understood why we were wasting time cutting out colored circles and squares and gluing them to a piece of paper anyway. Obviously, the project is supposed to reinforce something they are learning, but all of us would just rather point to the object and say, "Yup. That's a yellow square. It's bigger than the pink square. Now let's move on to a good book with lots of woe and mayhem."

Here it is, Christmas again, and we are rather tight with funds this year. Not that we've ever been rolling in dough, but this year is probably the second tightest Christmas budget we have ever had. So, I thought I could do some simple crafts. S-I-M-P-L-E. Bluejane tried to warn me. 

The first craft project on my list, that I actually started, was a homemade memory game, the idea of which I got from Nancy. After some trial and error, I got my cards printed and cut out. I took them down to my local office supply store to have them laminated because I wanted them to be hard like a driver's license, just like Nancy's. I paid nearly double in laminating alone then what it would have cost me to just buy a memory game from Stuff Mart. Then, the lamination didn't work all that great and I was't the one that laminated them. That's just the way it is with me, my own crafts fail in other people's hands. (Don't worry, Nancy's turned out fine, if you love doing crafts, I'm sure it will work for you too.)

I then had to cut out my cards from the laminated pages. It's not easy to cut straight when the lady didn't put them in the page straight. Not even my big craft cutting board could manage it. So, I went and bought a big die cutter, for 40% off, thinking it would just whack them right out. Not so. I had to coax, wheedle, and cry. After hours of cajoling, all the squares were cut out but they were now as sharp as thowing stars, so I had to round the corners. My husband finally had to take over because I coudn't even wield a corner rounder properly. After it was all said and done, I discovered I was missing a piece.

Moving on to the next project, I thought I'd make some homemade candied nuts. How hard could they be? Some egg white, sugar, (white and brown) cinnamon, and of course the nuts, in this case pecans. Everything was going great, right up until I burned them. Yes, I did go and stir them around and check them from time to time, it's just that between one time and another it had been far too long for the nuts.

You've probably heard that when it comes to gifts, "It's the thought that counts." I've also heard that, "The road to a fiery climate is paved with good intentions." It would seem that these two sayings are opposing each other. Today, while pondering if I had good thoughts or good intentions, I realized that good thoughts are for those who at least tried, yet failed to some degree or another. Good intentions, on the other hand, are those things that would be the better choice and that you planned to do but never followed through with. Like making promises you don't even try to keep. Not that we should make any promises anyway, but you get the idea. I hope so, because it all made sense to me when I thought it.

It would appear that I am the kind of person that should really like to make abstract art. No rules, no directions, just throw some bits on a board and call it, "Wayward Woman," or some other ridiulous title that is supposed to make us feel empathy for the lost in a way that would embrace their lifestyle instead of turning them back on the straight and narrow. Anyway, what else can I do with 23 memory cards and a batch of burnt pecans? The problem is, I don't like abstract anything. It makes my skin feel funny as if something unseemly was trying to hold my hand. Oh, and don't try to tell me to just toss card #23 and use 22 cards instead. It was a special memory game and it had 24 cards for a reason. 

If I try to do another craft again, someone please stop me before I do serious harm to innocent craft supplies.