SOS!

If there was any doubt that Mom's Winter Village really is a red light district...
Clearly, this woman is being held against her will.
A rescue party has been formed. Wish us luck.

Scandal!

People, I am all agast. Agog. A-stunned.

My mother -- my sweet, lovely mother -- has turned a good-natured, wholesome Christmas craft into a thing of vulgarity.

Behold, the ceramic Christmas village I painted for this woman, once-upon-a-procrastination-from-studying-for-university-finals:
Awwww. For sewing teeny-tiny pants!
Oooh! A teeny-tiny fire hydrant for that teeny-tiny doggy!Eeek! For teeny-tiny candies!

She's kept this on her mantle since November and nicknamed it the "Winter Village" so that she can revel in its lighthearted joy throughout the winter months.

However, dear readers, you are about to discover a shocking secret. Shocking.

My mother has turned this teeny-tiny delight into...
A red-light district!!

I know. I know.
Pet Shop? I'll bet.
Ooooh, what a creative innuendo.
Blasphemy!
Ok, I have no joke for this one.
I suppose that broom is used to keep this fellow's ladies of the night in line. For shame, sir. For shame.
And this gentleman's red and bulbous nose belies a history of hitting the sauce.

It shall take some time to recover from this blow, though I shan't let this prevent me from engaging in joyous and innocent Christmas crafts in the future. We shall overcome.

But in the meantime, I think I need to have a talk with my mother.

Three things.

One: after one epic headband-fail, I successfully made this one:
Yay!

Two: One of the major reasons for my lack of blogging recently is this: we just became homeowners for the first time! We take possession in March. Which means that I now spend 16.5 hours a day thinking about how to arrange my new cutlery drawer and where to put the dog food.

Yay!

Three: This is how cold it is here...

Umm...not so yay.

Errrrgh.

I have a scrappy bee in my bonnet.

The other day I took this:
And a free svg download from that I cut with my SureCutsALot software, and folded into this:
And then I filled it with this:
And added a couple of these:
And on the back I put these:
Why oh why won't this picture turn upright?

And then I gave it to a friend who was having a bad day.

And now, tonight, I am itching to make one of these:
Or these:
Or these:
But this time, I don't have the materials just lyin' around ye olde crafte quarters.

So I have to wait. With my bonnet in a bunch. And I gave away all my cookies.

Errrgh.

Uppin' the cheese factor

So I teach high school, right? And I've noticed a little somethin' about teenagers.

As much as they're "young adults who want to be taken, like, seriously, ok?", they're secretly just big kids.

And so, when you give them cheesy teacher prizes, it helps if you play up the cheese factor. It saves them from having to play it cool in front of their peeps.

So I took this:
***Editor's note: I swear we don't buy our sour cream this way. Last year a couple of my students organized a taco party for their class, and the Taco Time people sent the condiments in this. I swear.

And I turned it into this:
And I filled it with this:
***Editor's note: I had to ghost-out my name because I know that some of you are big kids, too, and would like to get your hands on my cheesy teacher prizes. The last thing I need is my grade-ten English class filling up with 30-somethings. I'm lookin' at you, Adrienne.

Clearly I need some more stuff. Like erasers. And stickers. And secret decoder rings.

They'll love that. They just won't say so.

Diversions

So it's snowing. It's been snowing for days. It doesn't show signs of stopping, and I have no corn for popping.

Seriously. I'm afraid I'm going to turn all Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining up in here.

So I am compiling this list of important diversions whilst being snowed in.

First, one must scrapbook.
("PAH" is the spitting sound my nephew made while he was practicing (pretending) teeth-brushing).

Second, one must shop. Be sure to check out the wicked deals from Ninabrook Designs $7.99 for a double-pack of Easy Runner? Super-cheap shipping within Canada? Don't mind if I do!

Also, OhMyCrafts has some smokin'-hot deals on Cricut cartridges. Adrienne and I recently found this one for $30 plus shipping when it was $119 at Michael's.

Third, one must delight in funny emails from one's mother. Luckily, mine's been working through boxes and boxes of family photos. She's not exactly scrapping - she's just tackling the enormous task of getting them into albums. (Way to go, Mom!) Here's what she sent me this week:

Subject: Questions for you about paper and glue

Hmmn, now I feel like the rest of the note needs to rhyme too LOL! OK here goes!

Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

Here are my questions

about paper and glue.

When trying to put photos in albums

The little ones are a pain in the @$$

I want to stick them to paper

but somehow do it with class.

Your Scrappiness, pray help me

with these questions so new:

Can I stick them to scrapbooking paper

with some kind of easy glue?

Can I do them two-sided

or are two papers better?

What kind of glue do I need?

and where is my sweater? (sorry, I could not think of a rhyme)

Thanks Teri! I love you, SOOT! Love, Mom

By the way, SOOT stands for "stay out of trouble". To that end - in other words, to avoid a meltdown a la The Shining - I better make my way into my craft room.

Excuse me.

• Mom

  wheelafortune@shaw.ca
• 
  
• SendFind em

Vacouver's hottest club is "Caitlin's Stagette"

This place has everything...backwards bowling...fruity umbrella drinks...spookaccini...

It's like that thing where ghosts dress up for parties and eat pasta...

Uh-huh.

(And if you get the reference, I think we were meant for each other.)