The ugliest doll in the world

A few months ago I bought Audrey a new book series called Frankly Frannie. Apparently there is some mention in the books about a character making sock dolls and selling them. So Audrey of course decided that she just had to make a sock doll. I didn't even know what a sock doll was, but the Frankly Frannie website was kind enough (insert sarcasm right here) as to post a link to a site that shows you how to make one. I took a peek at the site and begged her to just let me buy her a doll. Nope, she wanted to make one herself. Great. I told her we would try to make one, but not to get her hopes up too much. She and Sophie both ran to their room and grabbed a huge handful of socks. Not even cute socks, but stained up, grubby socks with lots of pilling on them. I cut the first piece just as the directions stated and told them to fill it with stuffing which they did and then I sewed it up. Hmm, not too hard I thought. Then came the arms. Again, I followed the directions to a T. That's odd I thought, why are the arms so out of proportion? Then came the legs. By this time the girls and I were about to cry we were laughing so hard at how dumb these 'dolls' looked. I didn't even bother with the hair or face at this point. I just told the girls to finish it up themselves. And they did. With creepy results.

 Yep, we've got some mad craft making skills in this house.

Trying to get my craft on

And as usual it didn't go so well. I bought the girls an ironing board and iron to go in their playhouse. Since they have never seen an actual ironing board or iron they thought it was awesome (little do they know right?). Audrey suggested that we make a clothesline to hang the doll clothes on while they were "waiting to be ironed" so naturally I obliged. I ran to Hobby Lobby and bought the supplies:

 Yes, that's right we bought frogs. Doesn't everyone use frogs to make clotheslines? Well okay truth be told I was hoping for something a little cuter like teapots, but couldn't find any. Sophie told me these reminded her of her beloved Hattie frog so we went with frogs. After cutting some string and hot gluing it to the back of the frogs I added some adhesive backing.

 Now pay close attention to this next part because you'll soon see where I screwed up. I then stuck them on the playhouse walls and added the clothespins and called it a day.

 See where I messed up? I didn't take into account the weight of the clothes and left too much slack in the line so now it's kind of droopy. Regardless the kids seem to like it so it's staying. Total cost was less than $10.

A little advice on projects

Never, ever ever use a jigsaw on the kitchen table. Because you know bad things might happen. Like you might cut straight through the wood and the table underneath.

 By the way this picture was taken after my husband filled in the cut with wood putty. I wanted to take a picture of the actual cut, but someone was being a Mr. Cranky Pants and wouldn't let me. For the record I'm not the one that did this. This time.

Guess HGTV will have to find some new design stars

I have come to the conclusion that my husband and I suck at the whole 'cutesy decorating/home repair thing'. It think it's pretty obvious after seeing my hand at arts and crafts that I won't have to worry about people beating down my door for help. And after this latest foray into home improvement (yes, I'm snickering as I type those words because well.... you'll see) I've also come to the conclusion that my husband won't have to worry about people calling on him for his services either. You see several a few weeks ago we decided that after ten years it was time to finally get around to doing some work on one of our bathrooms.  The work we were doing should have taken most people a day to complete, a weekend at most. Not us. It's about three weeks into this little project and we've still got work to do. Don't get me wrong, we can actually use the bathroom, but it still needs some things done to it. Like the door needs to be painted, some of walls need to be touched up, and we still need to buy some kind of storage cabinet thingy for the wall. That's right a thingy. It's a real word. Trust me. Anyway, Wednesday my darling husband did not have to go to work until 2:00 so I asked him if he would please put towel holder up so the kids would quit throwing the hand towel in the sink every time they washed their hands. He did and this is the result:

 Is it just me or can anyone else see the problem here? Hmm, anybody? Yes, that bad boy will be getting moved soon. Also, notice the mirror? Yeah, you only have to be about six feet tall to be able to see yourself in it. Which I guess for me is a good thing when I think about how much weight I've put on lately (damn those Hershey's!) so maybe I won't complain about that one. Too much. So for now I guess the powers that be at HGTV can rest easy because it looks like they won't have to worry about juggling their schedule to find us a time slot. Unless they want to add some comedy into the mix in which case we will proudly say "bring it on!"

My inner Martha has died

Years ago I used to be a real artsy/creative type person. When Kylie was small I would always make cute little things for her room. She had a ladybug bedding set from Pottery Barn Kids and I bought her a table and chairs set and spent hours hand painting ladybugs on it to match her room. I painted  cute pictures to hang on her wall, made cute little pegs to hang her purses and hats on, I even painted a dresser she had. When people would come to visit they would see the things that I had done and say, "Oh, I love that. Where did you get it?" Well my friends those days are apparently long gone.
You see yesterday I got a wild hair to get crafty and well, it went horribly wrong. I decided that I wanted to paint a step stool for Kylie's room. Her bed is kind of high and I thought it would be cute to have a step stool next to it. Yeah, it would have been cute had I just left well enough alone. I took this poor innocent stool:

And ruined it.

 Go ahead and laugh. Really. I'll give you a minute or two. Trust me if you made something that looked like this I would be laughing at you so don't feel bad. Now in case you are wondering why I would put the letter A on something for Kylie's room wonder no more. I didn't. That is supposed to be the Eiffel Tower. The French weep. I just don't know what happened. Okay, I might have an idea or two. One, Sophie and Audrey were right up under me the entire time. Two, I did not have the proper size paint brush. Really stupid to use a big, wide bristle brush for something like that. So I admitted defeat sanded the top and painted over it. Hopefully she'll love her plain pink step stool. 

If not, too bad cause I'm done. 

 And no, the pinks do not match the room. At all.