Arts and Crafty

You would think a girl coming from Utah would be inherently crafty. I mean, this is the land of scrap booking and Martha Stewart is practically a saint. (Although Mom once told me she spoke at a Junior League convention and referred to the Temple as that "cute little church" down the street.) We never had wreaths on our front door with the exception of Christmas. No strange Easter twig trees or hydrangea bloom wreaths heralding spring were found at our house, but we did color our own Easter eggs. We never flew the flag for the 4th of July. There were never any photos of us in the living areas. "It's just one more thing to dust," Mom would say. Instead of putting her creative juices into dust collecting items, Mom would can the hell out of our raspberries and apricots every year and make homemade cookies until the cows came home. Our house looked the same virtually every season.

The one exception of decor was Halloween: Mom's favorite holiday. Every year we pulled the cardboard cut outs of witches and pumpkins and placed them in the windows. Other moms would get actual bales of hay and stuff their own scarecrows for their front porch. We even did the fake spider webs for a while until it coincided with the biannual house painting which just got plain messy. We did once have a fake hand we buried in the ground as if a corpse was climbing out of its grave, but the neighbor's dog (named Satan, literally) dug it up and carried it around the streets like a chew toy. We found it extremely funny. When I was younger Dad did a hell of a job carving pumpkins. Mom also was awesome when it came to sewing and making costumes. You dreamed it; she would make it happen.

When I went to college and joined a sorority I was actually expected to do things like create a fabric wraparound cork board and puffy quilted scrapbook for my little sister of the house. It was like asking me to do calculus. The room practically stopped breathing when I told them I didn't own a glue gun or even know how to use one. Embarrassed, Mom did tell me we in fact owned a glue gun from the 1980's or so, but it was messy and hot and never really worked. I had no recollection of this gadget what-so-ever. Two of my sisters took me to the craft store to initiate me into the world of crafting. As I wandered around the fake flowers and whole aisles dedicated to ribbon, I felt a little like I was in a foreign country. There I bought my first glue gun.

Somewhere circa 1996 I also began to scrapbook with a little help from my friends. My first one was primitive to say the least. My skills progressed as I kept developing, but once I saw the creative instinct of my sister in law's best friend, I literally came to a stand still. This woman was beyond creative. She made pop-out folding lanterns for God's sake on one of the pages. I haven't picked up my scrap booking habit (an expensive one, by the way) since 2003. Good intentions, but those pop up lanterns still haunt me. Perhaps I really should find a class or something to foray my way back into the creative world.

My husband comes from a family where his Mom has ironed embroidered hand towels that change with the month. She artistically places glitter dusted autumn leaves and rattan among the pumpkin and gourd shaped candles. Her crafty prowess showed up at our rehearsal dinner, which the photographer loved getting all of the decorative details from every angle. I have secret envy of women and men who are inherently crafty, including my mother in law.

I'm still trying to learn the artful placement of items. I have two girlfriends in particular who have the gift of style. Seriously, both of their homes look like they came out of magazines. Placement of baskets, interesting wooden signs, window treatments look effortless. Honestly, that so so far out of my league I can't even stand it. Since I've been married I've picked up cues from catalogues and other media to begin to decorate with the seasons. Sands capes in hurricanes with tea lights, mixed leaves for the fall, and cranberries for winter will grace my coffee table at times.

My newest challenge in Wisconsin is doing basket liners. I noticed that the previous owners had used twine to artistically tack the liners into the baskets for clothes storage. It was a pretty good idea, minus the orange thread. Being the clean freak, I decided to wash all of the liners. That's when I learned they had only done the decorative thread on the outside liner. The inside fabric was glued down. Still, we took out the liners and washed them. I later ironed them as well.

J and I ventured to Michael's where I thought embroidery thread would be lovely. I am not the color specialist; I defer to my husband on that. He chose a pretty slate blue gray and I went hunting for needles since our sewing kit was still lost in one of the cardboard boxes. The only needles I found were quilting needles. No problem! A needle's a needle a needle, right? Not so much.

I spent a good 30 minutes trying to thread the sucker. Tiny eye holes and twisted strands do not mix. After getting stuck 3x I let my husband have a go. He did it and I began the artistic stitching. It looked terrible. I abandoned the project and started to search for my glue gun.

Here's the problem: I haven't really located my glue gun when I really needed it since the move in 2006. I'd find the glue sticks, but not the gun. Then when I would somehow stumble across the gun I'd say to myself, "See? That's a logical placement. Just remember where it is when you need it next time." A more logical person would have just reunited the damn gun and sticks to save this need of a mental note and high frustration for the future. Not me.

Throw in 2 other moves in the past 3 years and the repeated mental note, and let me tell you how frustrated I am. I've found the glue sticks, but in every box that I have semi-unpacked I have yet to find the stupid gun. On a positive, I did find the sewing kit with better needles. I suppose I'll have to go back to my original plan of the embroidery thread and once again stumble across the glue gun when I'm not looking for it.