So P-Hops, my best friend in the world, had an “important” birthday on Friday, and her fantastic man and I cooked up a little party to celebrate.

My house is a pretty good party house, and people (hopefully) enjoyed themselves…

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Tami noticed the Fleetwood Mac hangy-balls, too:

I was trying to get a picture of Pam and she kept moving around. So I said “STOP MOVING AROUND” and she did her patented “tree blowing in the wind” dance.

Since I tend to over-plan and become obsessive about everything in my life, I decided to make this a fun little theme party and cook up some southwestern-native-what-have-you inspired items to add some pizzaz to the party. Basically, it gave me a wonderful excuse to get my deck all ready for the summer, and since I had done absolutely nothing with it so far, there was a lot to do…

About 30 yards of fabric bunting had to be made and mounted. OBVIOUSLY. I mean, like, what kind of plebian deck doesn’t have bunting cut from pinking shears?

I had to build some deck furniture so that there would be a place for people to sit and eat… I’ll tell you how to make some in a later post. Seriously – it’s so easy and cheap. TAKE THAT LEON’S!

Lots of cacti… daisies… reeds… you know, the things that you would imagine in some “Vintage-Southwestern-Canadian-Hybrid-Deck-Utopia”

And some bourbon-based lemonade with mason jars for glasses. It was steee-rong. About a liter of Jack Danny in there.

AND OH YEAH. I built a Teepee.

I’m not going to lie – I’m pretty proud of myself for building this unnecessary teepee. At first, everyone was sober, so, like, no one went in the teepee. But then everyone drank the lemonade and we starting teepee stuffin’ and trying to get as many people in the teepee as possible.

For the record, it’s eight.

Don’t worry, I’ll post a DIY about it this week!

PAMMY! I hope you had a good birthday! You are the best.

 …..JUST SAYIN’.  I’ll only charge you $6900.00 and a case of Hoegaarden.  I’ll even put it up in my underwear*.

*Please note that I am referring to ”Full-Body Victorian Underwear“.

 I’m going to start this post by flopping a couple things right out there on the table:

1. I am very, very proud of myself for making this shelving unit, and you might get annoyed with me as I puff up my chest in self-satisfaction throughout this post;
2. It is much harder than it looks; and
3. Although I take credit for the actual planning, prepping and construction of this particular unit, I really did get the idea from The Brick House, a blog that is much, much better than mine.  Check it out for materials lists and stuff.

I want to tell you the harrowing tale of the planning and construction of this thing… not just to revel in my success and to stroke my vanity (chest… puffing…), but also as a public service announcement for those who would like to also plan and construct this thing.

 
BLA-BLAM!

First, let’s visit The Brick House blog, and point out a couple of things that I idiotically chose to glean over in the ”bordering on sexual-level” of excitement that occurred within my loins when I decided to construct this unit:

 Yeah… she says right in the post that it was a super-huge monstrous unforgiving mega-bitch to make… and being a stubborn and “focused” (read: obsessive) person, I just put my stupid head down like a damn bull and starting forcing myself through this process like an idiot. 

That being said, I am really good at preparing for things, and spend a LOT of time working out the correct math for my specific wall measurements.  I wanted the unit to be custom built around the reclaimed barn board table I had made a couple of years ago, and I managed to fit that sucker in there like a glove.  You also have to be SUPER DUPER careful when you measure and drill the holes in the planks to feed in the black piping… because if you screw that shit up… you have to start the whole wood process all over again.

Do not try to decipher my complex mathematical code. 

Alllright.  First things first. You’d THINK that the materials required to construct the shelf would be readily available.  Black pipe, some elbowies and flangies and fittings.  And some wood.  You’d THINK.  The Brick House post seems to indicate that they are easy to get… not unlike walking into a store and getting different sizes of shoes, or maybe buying delicious coconuts at the store.

HA HA HA.  Not so fast, you! 

First, I recommend you call all of the three Home Depots within driving distance of Toronto and ask them if they have pipe.  BEFORE you drive to them all.  Because sometime they don’t stock them so frequently.  Just sayin’.

SURPRISE! 

And, I mean, black 1/2 inch pipe IS “easy” to get.  It is “easy” to get a 10-foot long piece of black pipe, a 24-inch piece, or a 6-inch piece.  But to get 6 – 12″, 7 – 18″, 1 – 32″, 3 – 30″, 1 – 43″, 14 – 8″, and 4 – 9″… is not that easy.  And I know, because I’m a very focused and resourceful person, and I called EVERY plumbing supply place in Toronto.

YOU NEED TO GET A TEN FOOT PIPE, AND HAVE EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF PIPE INDIVIDUALLY CUT. 

Which means you have to go into Home Depot, and ask the very surly Home Depot service man to spend THREE HOURS cutting 4 ten-foot long pieces of pipe into small little pieces, then individually threading each and every pipe end, while trying to answer other customers’ questions.  I’m pretty sure that the guy spent 2 hours and 30 minutes fantasizing about whipping me “pinata-style” in the face with each of the carefully cut and threaded pipes.

Note that you have to wash and spray paint the pipe, which is dirty and greasy and messy and takes longer than you’d think.  But don’t they look pretty!???

Second, the wood.  You need to get planed pine planks that are 1″ x 12″ - two planks at 6 foot (cut down to 4′ 3″ for my measurements) and two planks at 10 feet (cut down to 8′ 10″ for my measurements).  The six foot plank was a breeze – just go to Home Depot and pick that shizz up.

The ten foot plank?  Nope.  Nice try.  It’ll take more effort than that.  Home Depot… and I mean all three Home Depots within driving distance of downtown Toronto… don’t sell 1″ x 12″ planks longer than 8 feet.  Nope.  HA HA HA. You so crazy, Home Depot.

Of course, you’ll have to spend an entire morning calling home improvement stores and lumber yards trying to find the right plank dimensions.  Oh, and make sure you ask for “planed” planks, not “rough” planks.  Because they might leave out that important piece of information, then when you drive all the way to the damn store and they show you the plank, it looks like it got chewed up by a rabid silver back gorilla, and it will give you a billion splinters.

That fucker hurt.

But then I found Danforth Lumber, who are AMAZING and totally friendly and hooked me up with a ten footer.  And cut it for me.

OH YEAH ONE MORE THING.  Make sure you communicate the length really, really carefully.  Because the guy cutting the wood might think you said “8 foot” instead of “8 foot 10 inches”, and you might not realize it until after you brought it home, minutes before you start staining the wood, and you might have to drive all the way back to the East End to Danforth to get another 10 foot pine plank.  And they might not have any left, and might have to spend 1 hour digging some out from waaaaaaay back in the “miscellaneous wood pile”

Just sayin.

Then you have to sand, stain, and varnish the wood.  Get ready to breathe in poisonous fumes for two days, unless, that is, you have a covered outdoor space that would shield the wood from… oh I don’t know… a snowstorm.  Which I did not.  So the stained and varnished wood sat in my family room for two days.

Also – and this is the last thing I’ll say - make sure you buy a 7/8′ inch drill bit, not a 3/4′ bit like it says in the post.  3/4′ is too small.  And make sure you drill a pilot hole before trying to drill out that bitch of a huge hole, or else wood chips will explode into your eyeballs and the drill bit will get jammed up and you will be scared that the bit will detach from the drill and fly into your skull.

Sigh.

Seriously, though, enough complaining.

It really is getting everything bought and prepped that makes this thing really really hard.  Putting it together was a breeze.  It just all screws together like a tinker toy.  Tami came over to help, because she is wonderful.  The whole process (including pancake-eating) took about 2 hours.

Tami is wonderful!

Not only can I construct shelving units, but I can also make banana-pecan pancakes from scratch.  Dream woman, I know.

I do not recommend you take the “one footer” approach to ladder-standing like Tami does.

I assure you that I drill with much more hutzpah than this picture would indicate.  Also, for some reason I look like a butt-ugly hippie-man in this photo, when in reality I am an ethereal woman-nymph.

I’m not going to lie, I felt like a super-amazing, strong independant woman when the whole mofo was all installed and ready to be all vignetted up.

She is very sparse right now, and I have big plans for my upcoming vignette… some Scheurich vases, maybe?  Some graphic prints?  THE WORLD IS MY VIGNETTING OYSTER.

I needed some kind of side-table thingamajig for beside my couch, so naturally, I have been spending inordinate amounts of time on craigslist looking for something appropriate. 

I had my eye on a teak side table for a week or so, but the guy was charging something completely ridiculous like $125.00, and since my existing teak side table was procured for $20.00, paying more that five times that for essentially the same table made my heart hurt with money pains.  So I scrapped that.

Besides, I think I’m “over-teaking” it in the loft right now.  Teak credenza, teak coffee table, teak lounge chairs, and (the $20.00) teak side table… I mean I really like teak, but it’s starting to look like someone had teak diarrhea.

So then, I thought I would try to find a vintage trunk and “carelessly place it” next to my couch, so that it looks like I’m all laid back and have a trunk, and like, just keep it as my side table, like a trunk-having badass.  But then:

1. Nice vintage trunks are fucking expensive; and
2. For some reason I’m convinced that all old trunks have bedbugs/earwigs/centipedes/ghosts hiding in them, and they freak me out a little bit.  Like, I’m worried that one day I’ll randomly open up my trunk and find a bunch of skulls with worms crawling out of their eyeball sockets, and I’ll hear a child’s voice whispering from the trunk with the faint, barley audible whistle of the wind, saying “yooouuu’re neeexxxt”.  Yes, I am crazy.

One of my main problems is that I always look to buy new things instead of just re-working the old stuff I bought for no reason months ago.  For example, two months ago I bought four old apple crates from UpsideDive in a frenzy because I felt I needed to have something to fill up some space in my office for my housewarming party (in retrospect, I’m pretty sure that everyone was too drunk-slash-marvelled-by-my-social-poise-and-effervescence to notice the pile of dirty old crates in the corner, but whatever).

This weekend I finally got my shit together and built a shelving system for the office (more on that later), and my poor dirty apple crates were left homeless.

DOUBLE SUPER HAPPY SOLUTION: Make one of the apple crates into a side table.

Step One
Get the apple crate, and buy four casters.  Try to simultaneously entertain small dog who refuses to leave you alone, despite seeing you occupied building fancy apple-crate side table.

Step Two
Screw the casters to the bottom of the apple crate.  I only used one screw per caster because I only had four screws that were short enough and I’m too lazy/cheap to go buy more. 

Step Three
Take arty pictures of new “apple-crate-side-table” and sit back, absorbing multiple compliments from guests who think you are like, totally creative and stylish.

I seriously think I have some kind of mental disease.  I am not able to let my brain relax. 

I have to be making something.  Or fixing something. Or painting something. Or cleaning something.  Or planning the process of doing one of these things.  It’s super annoying.

So of course, even though I didn’t need to, I made some side-projects this weekend.

For some reason, I wanted to buy some vintage arrows and make some art.  So I found some vintage arrows.  And I made some art.  My arrows have real metal tips. It’s like “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” styles.  They probably killed things before.  No “safety nubs” for me – I don’t half-ass my arrow art.

Check out those real feathers.  They make the arrow go in certain directions.  You know how I know?  Because in the film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” starring Kevin Costner and Christian Slater, they had this one scene where Kevin Costner had to shoot an arrow at some guy who was trying to chop off Christian Slater’s head with a big axe and because he needed to make the arrow do a curve-shot, he pulled off one of the tri-feather tail thingies and shot the arrow and IT WORKED.

I just used my Girl Guide string-tying skills and I tied my arrows up by wrapping butcher string around them.

BLA-BLAM.  Arrow art.  Kevin Costner would be proud.

I also made some neon-striped wood vases.  They are didn’t turn out as well as the arrow art.

A word to the wise – if you are going to try to paint neon stripes on something that is dark, PRIME IT first.  Because I didn’t prime it, and then I painted like sixteen coats, and it still looks like shizz.  Then I primed it and was done in 5 minutes.  But the other sixteen coats below the primer got all bumpy and goopy and then it kind of made the stripes look like shit.

ARTY PHOTO OP:

Finally, I planted some more plants in some wall-planters.  Suddenly I am a Green Grower, reborn. 

So far none of my other plants have died.  A couple of brown spots on one leaf.  I decided to rectify this problem by watering the shit out of the plant.  It will likely soon rot and die.  However – this guy appears to be happy:

So does this guy:

Plants and beer.  And neon.  And arrows.  It was a pretty good Sunday.

* Also, this.

I didn’t do much this weekend, other than spend about 6 hours at Home Depot getting materials prepped for yet another project.  This one is a big one.  I’ll tell you the details soon, but here is a sneak peek:

I AM GOOD AT MATH.

You proooobably know what I’m going to make… elbows and tree and flanges and nipples and what-not.  Don’t worry, I tell you the whole harrowing ordeal once it’s all done and beautiful. 

In other news, I love my dog.  She was feeling a little under the weather this weekend, and barfed up some yarn or some shit that she ate who-knows-where, so she was being extra sucky, and basically sat on my shoulder like a parrot for two hours last night.  Here is our scandalous kissing session:

OH AND ALSO, I started watching The Wire and am so addicted.  I almost plotzzed my pantaloons.  I’m only through the first season, so DON’T TELL ME ANYTHING or I will hunt you down and “pop” you.  That’s street-speak for “murder” you.

I am fascinating, I know.

Having a place with a lot of space is a blessing and a curse. 

It’s a blessing because all of a sudden, you have all this wall space where you can throw a bunch of junk up on the wall that you didn’t have space for when you were in a condo the size of a prison cell with three walls and a window.

It’s a curse because now you have all this wall space that you have to fill with junk, or else you  look like a no-talent bum.

With that in mind, I had a HA-UGE chunk of empty space over my bed in my bedroom that I needed to fill up, so I decided to be all crafty and construction-y, and build a huge 8 foot by 4 foot art piece.  It’s basically a bunch of wood nailed together with a map painted on the front.  TA-DA!  I have no idea where I came up with this idea… other than it’s pretty much mashed together from things you would find at StyleGarage.  Slatted wood?  Check.  Industrial-rotted-wood-feel?  Check.  Canadiana-related something?  Check.  Map?  Check.

I claim the mashing-together of these ideas as my own, as reflected in my washed-out, super-arty, slatty-slat map. 

Do you love it?

Would YOU like your very own “industrial-cum-arty” wood slat map?  WELL GET YER SLATTIN’ PANTS ON, because I’m going to tell you how I did it.

Step One: Buy some shizz.

Here is what I bought for my slat-map:

1. 20 pieces of 1″ x 2″ x 8′ millstead framing lumber.  Why millstead?  Because it’s fuckin’ dirt cheap.  Plus, it’s all old pieces of wood pasted together, which adds to the “industrial-rotted-wood” feel.
2. 2 pieces of 1″ x 6″ x 5′ cedar fencing lumber.  Why cedar fencing lumber?  Because that was the first piece of wood I found with those dimensions and I’m lazy.
3. Wood stain.  I chose Minwax red oak or something like that.
4. A bunch of framing nails. 
5. A bunch of different colours of acrylic paint
6. LOW-GLOSS (i.e. satin finish) polyurethane
7. Make sure you have some tools, you no-talent bum.  I needed a hammer, some rags for staining, white chalk, a saw, a spacing tool, and paintbrushes.

 Step Two: Set the Mood.

An essential part of constructing a slat-map is bein’ all sexified and in-the-mood to get your slattin’ creative juices flowing.  Make up an unnecessarily girly martini, and put on some Fleetwood Mac.

Step Three: Stain Your Wood.

Here is my sexy millstead.  At 99 cents a pop, I didn’t have high expectations, but still, they are looking pretty sad.

I had to put down a tarp and rub on the red oak stain.  Be warned.  That shit stinks like chemical barf.  I’m pretty sure I lost 10% of my brain breathing that stuff in for two hours.  You have to rub on the stain, wait 5 minutes, then rub off the excess.  The stain really does bring out the imperfections and knots in the wood, which is exactly what I wanted.  Here are my slats, looking a bit more slat-map appropriate:

You have to let that shizz dry overnight.  Also, you should make sure that you wash your hands right away, or else you will look like you have been mud-wrestling in tanker-oil.

Step Four: Nail Your Slats.

Ok.  So here is where things got a little messy.  Remember how I said I got 20 pieces of 1″ x 2″ x 8′ millsteed?  As any other logical person, I make the wild assumption that my slats of wood would be 2 inches wide by 1 inch deep by 8 feet long, right?

Here is my “slat-map art director”, Tami, measuring the handle of my hammer.  We started thinking we were crazy when we realized the size of my slat.

SURPRISE!  1″ x 2″ x 8″ actually means 1 1/2 inches wide, 3/4 of an inch deep and 8 feet  long.  HA HA HA.  Oh Home Depot, you kill me with your “hilarious surprise measurements.”

Since I had PAINSTAKINGLY measured out my project under the assumption that the measurements provided on the price tag of my wood were correct, I had to make some last minute adjustments.  Originally, I was planning to have 2″ slats separated by 1″ of space, culminating in a huge 8′ by 5′ art-monster.

I had to adjust to 1 1/2″ slats with 1″ of space, culminating in a much less impressive 8′ by 4′ art-monster.

Molly is unimpressed with the size of my slat.

I used my level as a 1″ spacer… she worked like a dream.

After nailing down four slats with my spacer, I was already very excited about the pending finished product, and Tami caught me slappin’ my wrists all gansta-like, saying “THIS SHIT ALREADY LOOKS SO GOOOOOOOD!”

Please excuse my outfit here… I am basically wearing pajamas. Fat-person pajamas.

OH YEAH, the other mess here was that I bought 1 3/4″ nails, under the assumption that my two pieces of “one inch deep” wood would be appropriately nailed together with a 1 3/4″ nail.

Since both pieces of wood were actually 3/4″ thick (oh Home Depot, you CRAAZY), the nails I bought were too long, and would basically stick out the back and chew up the back of my wall when I hung it up.  So Tami and I took a trip to Dollarama and  ”Budget One Stop” in Parkdale, which were the only places open on Sunday. 

Some things you don’t realize you need until you see them.  And put them on your head.

We soon discovered that “Budget One Stop” is a magical fairy-land.  It is jam-packed with everyting your heart could desire.  Including 1 1/4 inch nails.  Hallelujah.

Step Five: Draw the Map.

I’m a big fan of painting things with a grid.  It has worked for me in the past (kinda), and I applied the same “replicating things in a box” skills to my slat map.  First you have to find a map and scale it to the appropriate dimensions of your slats.

I used some pic off Google Images and just applied the same ratio of 1 1/2 to 1 for the lateral slats, then split it into equal 8ths.  Then I drew a grid on my slats using white chalk, and numbered the slats to make sure I was on the right track.  The chalk makes things really easy to correct if you make a mistake.

Can you see the coastline of British Columbia starting to take shape?  There’s Victoria!  BLAP BLAP!  You basically just follow the squiggles on the coast and province borders of your scaled map.  No one will really know if you screw up a little bit, unless they’re a huge geography nerd.  And if they are a huge geography nerd, why are they your friend?

I “x’ed” out the areas that needed to be painted… when you have a lot of squiggles, they all start to run together.

DRAWING NUNAVUT SUCKS SHIT.

Step Six: Paint the Map.

Now it’s time to paint!  I am cheap, so I decided to use the same paints that I used in a previous art project.  I even threw in some leftover white house paint due to my extreme cheapness.  It worked like a charm to soften up those darker colours.

I wanted the map to look a bit weathered and worn-out, so I watered the acrylics down with  so that the grain of the wood would show through.

I wanted it to look like an old classroom map, which typically use more pastel-y colours.  Even though I’m really happy with the way the colouring turned out, I STRONGLY recommend planning out your map-colour-scheme beforehand, instead of randomly and haphazardly just throwing one colour on after another, like I did.  I am a rebel when it comes to paint-colour selection, and not everyone has the natural “paint-colour-selector-gene” like I do.*

*I totally screwed up some of the colours and had to correct them last minute and I’m an idiot and I totally should have planned out my colours.

The last part of painting the map is the outline.  I chose a white-grey outline, and very, very, very carefully went over my chalk outlines with a detail brush.  This is when I really started getting excited, because it started looking really good.

Lastly, I traced out the “CANADA” outline on the far right of the map.  I wanted it to look as close to a real map as possible, so I needed that word on there somewhere.  PLUS for those of you who do not live in Canada, it helps you know what country you are looking at.

Step Seven: Finishing Touches

The very last thing you need to do, after the paint is dry, is lightly, lightly sand over the paint with a coarse-grit sandpaper.  This will add to its “StyleGarage-Industrial-Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi”, and the wood will shine through a lot better.

Basically, it will look like a faded-out map.

Now, pop out that LOW GLOSS, water-based polyeurathane and slap that shit ON.  Two coats.  The low gloss (i.e. satin finish) is really important, because if it shines too much you won’t be able to see the faded-out map.

She’s done!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now you just need to hang her up in a place of reverence in the house.  It’s important that you make sure you hang it on some studs, because that fucker weighs about 100 pounds.  I moved my bed to the other side of the room last night juuuuuust in case I accidentally missed the stud and it came crashing down off the wall onto my soft melon-like head. 

I am in the midst of working on some really wicked-cool, super-secret projects.  I was going to wait until they were done and I could take a bunch of fancy, non-iPhone photos, but I’m so excited that I thought I’d give you a peep:

What could it beeeee???

There are a few “secret items” that will make a gigantic difference in decorating your place.  I have recently discovered them.

1. Rugs (I’ll tell you more about that at a later date)
2. Plants

 YOU’RE WELCOME.

So, I have constantly had a problem with the second item on this list, mostly because every single plant I’ve ever owned has died a horrible, horrible Natalie-induced death.  It has always been unintentional… and it didn’t used to be this way…

…because when I was in Grade Five, I was included in a super exclusive club called “The Green Growers”.  Basically, there was this Grade Four teacher that was one of those teachers who was a total hard-ass and really demanding, but who ended up being your favourite teacher… you know the type. All I remember from my first day in Grade Four was when he yelled ”I don’t want to see you guys doodling any CRAP on your NOTEBOOKS!“, then he slammed the pile of notebooks against his desk.  When you’re in Grade Four and your teacher says “CRAP” really loudly and slams notebooks on his desk, you become sure that the world will collapse.

But anyways, after the year was over, he would “hand-pick” a group of about 10 students from the Grade Four class, and they would all get a big manila envelope.  Inside the manila envelope was a hand-written invitation to “The Green Growers” club.  He would clearly just pick the super-smart kids who weren’t trouble-making assholes to the club.  So basically it was a Grade-Five nerd-club.  So I fit right in.

ANYWAYS, in “The Green Growers”, we stayed in during lunch once a week and we would plant a new plant (yes, it was quite nerdly, indeed).  The plants that I planted in “The Green Growers” ALL survived.  In fact, my mother still has about four of them at her place and they are now fucking huge monster plants.  Like, they look like they could suffocate a human baby they are so big and full.

But… ever since the last “Green Growers” meeting, where I planted a beautiful pink polka-dot plant, which later grew into a fucking 4-foot big pink polka-dot bush, I have been completely and totally unable to grow plants.

Usually, this is what happens:

1. Water it and put it in some window without paying attention to whether it should be in the sun or shade or whatever.
2. Forget to water it for 3 weeks.
3. Remember that I should have watered it and then freak out and totally over-water it so that the roots are sitting in rotted soil-water for days.
4. The plant starts to die then I freak out and water it even more, making the gross rotting-root situation even worse.
5. Realize that the plant is probably going to die, but instead of throwing it out, I leave it on the window sill, never water it again, and watch it die a slow and painful death.

Then Kelsey bought me a money-tree for my housewarming party.  And 1.5 months later, it was still beautiful and THRIVING.  I think it is because Money Tree plants fall under the “So-Easy-To-Grow-That-A-Fucking-Idiot-Could-Handle-It” genus of plant.

HA HA!  So on the weekend I decided to completely outfit my house with plants that fit my new “So-Easy-To-Grow-That-A-Fucking-Idiot-Could-Handle-It” criteria.

1. Mother-in-Law’s Tongue

Yes, that is the name of this plant.  Apparently, they are really easy to grow.  I transplanted it from a different pot, though, and it all like, crumbled apart in my hands and when I transplanted it, it was all falling over.  So then I used some neon cord to tie her up.  SHE IS SO ARTY NOW.

Look how majestic Molly looks with my neon-corded plant in the background.  It’s all coming together.

2. Cacti

I have wanted to make some cactus terrariums for a while.  Also, cacti are apparently easy as pie to not-kill.  All I had to do was find some big, low, glass containers.  I found three at goodwill for like 3-5 bucks each.  Then I bought some river rocks from the dollar store (apparently putting damn rocks at the bottom of your planter prevents soil-root-rot death), and some soil.  Then I went to home depot and bought whatever cactuses they had.

Then I terraried them up all up.

LOOK AT MY PLANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel like such an adult.  Adult-slash-Grade-Five-Green-Grower.

Ok, so I tried to keep the “homemade gifts” thing going from last year, but this year was SO busy and I wanted to shoot myself in the face, and I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to.

That being said, I managed to make some ugly fun little gifts for some friends by using this handy DIY from Design*Sponge.  Now, it seems like a cute idea, and I tried my best, but after it was all said and done, I kind of felt like I was 7 years old and giving my friends a picture of my hand cut out on a paper plate with sparkly macaroni on it. 

Anyhoo, the best one I made was with this really thick 1″ twisted manila rope…

First, you use a bunch of glue and glue it…

Then, you utilize even more glue and just keep gluing…

And then, you glue…

And then you have a bowl. 

Now, I felt that one single glue-and-rope bowl was clearly not enough to warrant a full present, so I went with a smaller “nested” bowl on the inside.

Note: the size of the rope needs to correspond to the size of the bowl.  Because if you use thin rope to make a big bowl, it will look like a pile of smashed shit.  Trust me.

Anyhoo, here is the smaller bowl being glued…

And here they are, all nested together.

I made a whole bunch of these, to varying degrees of success, but this set was by far the nicest, mostly due to the thick 1″ twisted manila rope.  I bought 15 feet of it, thinking that I would be able to make three or four rope-and-glue bowls with it.  FYI – 15 feet of 1″ twisted manila rope makes ONE rope-and-glue bowl. 

In order to be “cool and different” in my rope-and-glue bowl craft adventures, I also tried to deviate from the Design*Sponge recommendation of twisted paper rope and make a couple of bowls using nylon diamond-braided rope.

I thought that the black and red and yellow diamond pattern would turn out all cool and look like a big ol’ coiled snake or something like that.

But then, after it was made, someone told me “that is one fucking ugly bowl”, and I became embarrassed. And I decided to not give my snake-rope-and-glue bowl to anyone.

If you want my snake-rope-and-glue bowl, let me know. 

Anyways, I apologize to everyone who received my rope-and-glue bowls for a present and had to pretend they liked it, much like when you get a paper cut out of a 7 year-old’s hand pasted onto a paper plate with sparkly macaroni on it and you have to pretend you like it and put the horrible disaster on your fridge for two weeks to make the child feel better.