Crafty Bitch

I love crafty stuff, and I also like snarky stuff.

Julie Jackson and Subversive Cross Stitch rocks my socks. Somebody on some board or another I post on (can't remember now - look kids, this is what being a mom does to you!) slapped up a link to her site and I ordered "Fuck Cancer" to make for my grandmother, who is a stomach cancer survivor (they removed her whole stomach). She liked it a lot, but she puts it away when her pastor comes over for a visit. Silly, because I know her pastor, and Pastor Julie would get a kick out of it.

That led to me buying the book, and making various things from it, like "bitchin' kitchen" (the photo isn't mine, and it's slightly different as I ran the two words together and used different colors) for my mom when she finished her kitchen remodel, and "babies suck" for a pair of dear friends embarking on that journey known as parenthood. I felt it would be cruel to not give them a fair warning.

Whenever I'm feeling especially snarky, I get out the book and my cross stitching kit and I go to town. The creative outlet is soothing, and the finished project in an evening of TV watching is bliss. Plus, it's easy. Go forth and stitch!

Weekend Details!

As we prepare for Easter, I would like to take some time to reflect on what's really important about this weekend.

I'm going to IKEA! Oh yeah! We're heading to A2 to see Kerwin's grandmother and on Saturday we're going to the Ikea in Canton township. I want to get Freyja a table and chairs (the Svala set, I think - I have visions of blackboard paint on the tabletop) and I think we're having lunch there. I've had IKEA lust ever since I knew it existed.

Oh, another monumental event is this weekend, too. I'll be wearing a dress. A new one. The last time I bought a dress was for my wedding. I just couldn't resist the cute wrap dresses on sale at Target last night, and although I looked fat in it, I look fat in pants, too. I might as well look cute and to hell what people think. I wanted to link a picture, but it isn't online. It's a black and white pattern of circles made of tiny little dots. I'll try to post a picture after this weekend. I do now fully believe that EVERYONE can look great in a wrap dress.

Creativeness

While chatting online with Karen and Lori last night, I was working on learning how to do digital scrapbooking. I don't have room or funds for the paper kind, and while previous things I've done (like party invitations) have been cute and all, they're not as fancy as I know they could be. Since I have the inclination, and its' a multitasking sort of activity, I figured I should give it a shot.

Here's what I came up with for our holiday card. Simple and sweet. I used the Holiday 2006 set from Shabby Princess. Yes, I know I still need a picture on there, and probably a few more little embellishments. I plan to stage a photo shoot tonight or tomorrow.

Spaghetti Sauce

I can cook. I mean, I can really COOK. I make all sorts of weird-ass obscure Indian and Mediterranean dishes from scratch. I make things up, rarely use a recipe, and you should see my spice drawer. I make what DH calls "Quick and Dirty"* meals 5 nights a week. Rachael Ray has nothing on me (after all, I can bake. And my "Quick and Dirty" meals are way cheaper).

Why is it that I can't bring myself to make spaghetti sauce (bolognese, to be technical) from scratch? Every time I just open a jar or a can of "chunky garden vegetable" and dump it into a pan of browned, drained hamburger cooked with onion and garlic. Granted, I do doctor it up a bit, add a little pinch of this or that, a little brown sugar to take the acid edge off. I watch Giada make it from scratch, and I just want to throw things at her overlarge head, with her little carrots and celery and roma tomatoes. Who in hell has time for that(Ok, who in hell that works full time, shares a car with her husband who works full time and attends college full time, and runs around after a two year old)?!

I know it's not that hard. I keep all the requisite canned tomatoes on hand for chili (which I do make from scratch). I just don't know why I should bother, other than the sodium level, to go away from jarred pasta sauce. My mother sneers at me when I tell her we had spaghetti. "From a JAR?!" she gasps. My mother makes two things from scratch - spaghetti sauce, and sloppy joes. This gives her the right, apparently, to sneer and condescend.

I still don't know why my from a jar spaghetti bothers me. It just seems that I should do better, since I know how.

*"Quick and Dirty" came to pass when it was 6pm, I sent him outside to play with the spawn, and called him back in 15 minutes later with a piping hot from scratch "gourmet" meal on the table (Spice Blackened Chicken and reduction suace over lemon-mint couscous with sauteed asparagus spears). He then started raving about me going on "I Want To Be a Food Network Star". Pft.