The Queen's Rambles

I am skipping Summer Camp today. I can’t think of a single thing to say about the prompt (what new thing have you tried lately: buying a Pokemon), probably because my brain is old and befuddled. I saw a commercial the other day about some vitamin or drug you can take to increase adult memory retention. I need some of that stuff. The sad thing is I can’t remember what it’s called. I’m not even making that up to be funny.

We had our meeting today and I was able to pull a craft out of my brain in between dropping Erik off at camp and arriving at the meeting. Bethany offered to help brainstorm a craft, but I didn’t see the comment until after the meeting was over. In the end I did something super simple that I remembered from a craft camp I went to when I was a kid. One year our town decided to be fancy and have little craft classes in the park (maybe they always did this and we could only afford it one year). I vividly remember drawing fish on a piece of white paper, then going over the whole paper with cotton balls dipped in water color paints. I don’t know why that stuck with me and why I thought it was totally awesome, but that’s the craft we did today. The two elementary aged girls were equally enamored with it and made a ton of pictures (some aquariums, some alien landscapes, one princess being destroyed by a dragon). The two elementary aged boys refused to try it.

Any ideas for cheap and easy crafts are always appreciated. I am anti-craft. It’s messy, my kid won’t sit still for it and I have terrible fine motor skills. I also don’t want to spend a lot of my own money. Since our club is a non-profit we are only allowed to spend 15% of our income on things that directly benefit our club members. We usually reserve that 15% for a party at the end of the year. This year our party barely qualified–we went out to dessert at Applebees.

I finally have the gigantic box of moms club paperwork that comes with being president and it’s really interesting to read through the history. Our club was busted in 2007 for spending waaaaaay over the limit on fun stuff just for our club.

Basically we give most of our money away to charity. We get a free meeting place, so we don’t have many regular expenses. We can host an open house to try to get members to join, so I’m planning on doing that and using some of our money that way. It is frustrating to have the money to do things, but not be allowed to spend the money. It all goes back to taxes, I guess.

You want to hear what stupid thing I did today?

I finished a quilt for my new 2nd cousin (or whatever you call the daughter of your cousin) a few months ago, but never clipped the threads. Today I decided that thing was going in the mail, so I clipped the threads and gave it a look over. I noticed one of the corners wasn’t bound well so I thought I could fix it. I undid the binding on the corner. And now I have no freakin’ clue how I am going to re-bind it because it’s a hot mess. I hopehopehopehopehope I can come up with a plan when I am fresh and un-cranky tomorrow. I do not want to have to tear off the whole binding and start over. It’s a really cute quilt and I need to get it and the accompanying presents out of my house. They are in the way and bound to get ruined with the Menace and her brother roaming around.

Speaking of her brother.

He’s been wishing and wishing and wishing he could do a craft to make himself a pokemon. I am not a horrible mother who refuses to let my child do a craft. I am a forgetful mother who never remembers his bedtime wishes. If he would mention it during the day we would make it happen.

Today, shock of all shocks, I remembered. Possibly because I had been brainstorming crafts all night.

He decided he wanted to make a stuffed Pokemon, so I had him draw something out and then we went up to pick out the fabric.

He said all my fabric was for girls! Can you imagine??? Why wouldn’t Pokemon have batik flowers all over?

In the end I kind of threw my hands up in the air and went and bought him a Pokemon thing at Target after encouraging him to craft a few paper Pokemon things. Win-win, I’d say. He got to craft and he got his Pokemon. I didn’t have to use my precious fabric on a Pokemon, nor did I have to curse all night long, trying to make his design come to life. Maybe someday we will make a stuffed creature together, but 3 pm in the afternoon is not the time to go to the fabric store to find an acceptable fabric. Life revolves around traffic patterns around here and the fabric store is just far enough out that I want to avoid rush hour.