Day 13: Pinterest Is Stupid: A Cautionary Tale

I found some energy, drank an extra cup of coffee, and decided today was the day!!! And busted out a shit ton of crafts to do after school. It was a half day at school so that means we can fit in all sorts of good stuff. 

First, Pinterest informed me that it was stupidly easy and fun to make tree ornaments out of broken candy canes. So we tried. 

Emphasis on "tried". 

First, you take candy canes and break them into small pieces. This was the kids favorite part, because they were allowed to use the meat tenderizer to hammer some candy canes. 

Calen's face of rage in the background

Who would EVER give this kid a hammering device

Then, take the broken pieces and fill metal ornaments that are sitting on a cookie sheet (covered with wax paper). 

Cook at 300 degrees for 20 mins. Admire how beautiful they are as they cool (for like 20 more mins), because they'll never look this beautiful again.

Do what Pinterest says, and pull from the sides to separate the candy cane from the cutter instead of pushing down on them. "It won't break this way", they said. 

They lied. 

I carefully, painstakingly stretched one of the cookie cutters and a perfect stocking popped out. Hey! This is working! Then I did the other three. Slowly, annoyingly, SLOOOOOOWLY.....and then....

Reality.

One completely shattered into 8 thousand little pieces. Another one is so stuck in the cookie cutter I had to smash it in order to salvage the cutter. The third one broke exactly down the middle. 

This craft is stupid. 

I took the sad pieces of a shattered star and somehow managed to hot glue it together to resemble a reasonable star. The other ornaments were complete lost causes, and I had to soak the stupid cookie cutters in Dawn soap because there was solidified candy cane in the crevices. Who invented this craft?!

Oh well. The kids were excited about the surviving ones, so I glued some pipe cleaner on the back, and voila, ornaments! They're only meant to survive one year, anyways. 

Let's pretend the star isn't glued together

After that fiasco, we went back to the tried and true. Paper crafts!! Where I belong. This one actually IS easy and super adorable. 

1. Paint the back of an entire paper plate brown (I had them do this yesterday so it could dry).

2. Cut the paper plate in half. Cut one of the halves in half again. 

3. Take brown construction paper and trace the kids' hands (both hands), cut them out and glue them to the 1/4 piece of paper plate. Glue on eyeballs and a nose. 

BONUS: Calen had a coming of age moment and was allowed to use the hot glue gun for the first time ever. He was a little intimidated by it but then announced how awesome it was and then it spiraled to "if robbers decide to come into our house I'll HOT GLUE THEM TO DEATH"

4. Glue the head to the 1/2 piece of paper plate. 

4. Use more brown construction paper to make legs. Glue! Add a tail. DONE. A reindeer!!

So cute I could die. 

Finis! Cam insisted on a BIG nose and a "fluffy" tail

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