Again with the Pinterest

So I am always fantasizing on Pinterest.  Oohhh - I should totally make this...  I could actually sew that project...  Anyways, there was a pin about taking strawberries and drying them in the oven.

 Now - don't those look good?!?  The directions were to bake them in the oven at 210 for three hours after slicing them in half or quarters depending on the size.  Here's a link to the pin.Strawberry Drying Recipe
I should have been suspicious when I saw the difficulty rating was "Easy."    I should have known something was up from the picture.  Do those berries look like they were cut in pieces to you?!?!  

Here are mine.

Can I tell you a few things?  First of all these little mofos look A LOT better in this photo than in person aaand - motherfucking shit = when you dry stuff it just makes it more concentrated.  Sweet Berries = candy like fruit.  Sour Berries = holy mouth puckering, dude.  Plus they were slimy as hell.  Disgusting.  And even more I dried these in the oven for over four hours.  (It was butt ass cold - so it was nice to have a hot oven for that long - and nice to have an excuse to not be able to cook dinner, but still.)


Fucking sour ass berries.  They sucked and the recipe is a bunch of bull shit.  Once again, it's like the sewing mom blogs where they leave out vital parts of the recipe/directions as a way to thwart anyone trying to replicate their success.  GFY MARTHAS!!!

Oh!   I found something that makes me feel so much better!! I did a google search and here you go -     Allison from Polka Dot and Paisley who btw makes stuff and then actually SELLS it also could not get this little project to work!  YAY!   It's not just a problem with me!!  It's a problem with the stupid ass recipe!   She stuck with it for 8 hours to try to dry those damn berries!   8 HOURS!  In the summer!!  With no air!!

The Truth about How to Fix Your Cracked Heels

I love this post.  I hate this post.  I am going to discuss something utterly repulsive. Totally gross.  Way too much information to share - but I have to because no one else is. Please be forewarned.  As my gross out levels rise I will definitely be cussing more and more as well.  This big space is intentional so that you can leave before viewing any disgusting pictures - if you want.  It's not like dismembered bodies or anything.  But it is gross.
















After a long summer of polish after pedicure, I decided to take off my toenail polish to give my nails a breather.  Well, imagine my horror when I saw this...

Okay, so those aren't my toenails...  You seriously can't blame me for not taking photos of my parasite infested toes...  I felt shame.  But the one on the right is about what my big toe fucking looked like.
My heart about dropped through the floor.  I was disgusted...

So I immediately went to the drug store and got this...

Are you like me?  Does that image on the box lead you to believe that this is a product to get rid of toenail fungus?  Yes, well it's not.  In tiny print on the inside it says it can't penetrate the nail.  Hmm.  Fucking assholes.

I used an emory board to file off all of the fungus infected nail.  The good news was that it was not so infected that the fungus had penetrated beneath the nail.  THANK THE FUCKING LORD!  I think I would have to kill myself if I had fungus feet.  Seriously disturbing to me.  So disturbing that I am taking mercy on your soul and not including any pictures of them.  Because they scare the crap out of me.  Even before all of this....

Anyways...here is where things get interesting.  My heels have been cracked and yucky looking for at least 15 years.  I figured that it was part of getting older and grosser, like the whole older = harrier thing.   About 5 years ago, my toes even started to crack.  These aren't my feet, but this was about my level of cracking...

Not too terribly gross.  Because god forbid you do a google image search for this shit.  I am about ready to barf.  I feel so sorry for any poor soul who really has terrible cracks in their feet that bleed.  And people are fucking wrong about why it happens - because it's not fucking dry skin people!!!

 After filing my nails 2x a day for a week and applying the fungi cure on the nails and around the nails I had the weirdest surprise.  I got out of the shower and was drying my toes super carefully.  I proceeded to peel the skin off of my toes like peeling a hard boiled egg.  I shit you not.  So satisfying and so disgusting.

I immediately called my poor, long suffering husband and told him that I thought that the cracking on my feet was caused by fungus, not dry feet.  I also told him that I was going to do a test and start putting my fungi cure all over my feet to see if it took care of the cracks.  (I then did some research on google that backed up this theory.  Okay, hypothesis for the science nerds who are reading this.)

Guess what??  I was fucking right.  I am so pissed off at all the stupid pins that are like - just put lotion on and use a pumice.  Or soak your heels in vinegar and then pumice them.  (BTW, I did that about 10 years ago and never EVER do that.  The acid in the vinegar can over-dissolve your callouses and skin and it is fucking PAINFUL.)  So even though I was too disgusted with myself to take any before pictures, I do want to share my after photos.  They aren't perfect, but hot damn, these feet haven't looked this good since I was 18.  These photos were taken after a shower, with no lotion or any kind of anything on my feet.

 See?  The white looking areas are parts where I think that there is fungus still.

 As you can see - my callouses are still there.  They just aren't white and crusty looking.  The cracks like almost turned themselves inside out - and my feet were definitely warmer during this process.  And to think that so many people are gooping lotion over flakey skin that is half fungus anyway.

BTW, if somebody says your heel cracks are from flip flops - my ass they are.  It's from NOT wearing flip flops in the shower.  So don't rip on me when you see me at the pool wearing these.

What the fuck?!?

Dude. Don't let me back up your new fucking car. I wish someone would have stopped me from backing up my new car. Motherfucking shit. Seriously.

Scary toilet paper tubes!!!

This is an idea for Halloween from Pinterest. You save up paper towel and toilet paper rolls, cut eyes out and then put in a glow stick and put the thing in the bushes to make it look like eyes are staring at you out of the bushes. Scary and awesome.
After the pictures of how these are supposed to look are how mine look.
Hot damn. I never got past keeping garbage on my counter for a few months. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for not hoarding the garbage to not do this again next year. Small steps, people. Small steps!!!

Pot Roast - Hell yes!!

Okay! If you look at the picture, you're probably all- gfy Leslie that pot roast looks good. And it was. Fuck yeah!

Here's the part that makes it perfect for gfy. I bought the roast at the grocery that day- it was on clearance. That afternoon I started to brown the outside. It was happily sizzling away and I was thinking it was going to be great.
Anybody who's ever made a pot roast knows that three extra ingredients are needed. Carrots, onions and celery. At least I knew this because I always make the joy of cooking recipe.
So back to delicious sizzling. I go to the fridge and what is missing?!? Carrots and onions. I totally brain farted and forgot to purchase them at the store. What. The. Fuck.
Thank god for onion soup mix. It was a decent pot roast. Btw, first time I EVER was able to not overcook it and end up with grey meat. I guess I just can't have it all - but still, missing two out of three of the trinity?!? See I am almost as good at cooking as I am at sewing.

Housewife Fail - who's an asshole?

So my dear husband is in school right now. He had a take home test that was due last night. I told him not to worry about loading the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen so he could focus on his work.
I was even nice enough to let him know that of course I would do it all for him - no worries.
Well, guess what people?!? I sat my fat ass on the couch and watched Tv all night and totally forgot that the kitchen wasn't done at all.
The worst part is that he finished his test and then was going to load up the dishwasher and he wasn't even mad.
( first of all- no, he doesn't have any brothers and he is all mine- paws off, ladies!!)
Ugh. I ended up doing the kitchen at ten o'clock at night- it was fucking disgusting. It made me feel like the most gifted housewife ever that I totally just sat on my ass while the kitchen festered and hubby worked.

No words are needed

When you come over six months from now and there is a sticky spot by my pantry, at least you will know why.

Fucking Piles of Shit

I like to sew. I am super crappy at it because I have no patience and I absolutely fucking can't stand ironing. Well, there are many times I find bargain pants for $10 or less with the legs made for a person who isn't walking around on the legs of a fourth grader. Or possibly for someone who knows how to wear high heels. So my plan is always to hem them- which I honestly don't crap up too bad.
The problem is some of these clothes have been waiting to be hemmed for two years! Jesus, can you imagine what Martha would say? Honestly, I'm pretty sure some of these things don't even fit anymore!

Remember the Cork Board?

Do you? It only took only seven years for me to make after dragging bags of corks around for years.
I'm Back
Then, today, I decided to read the comics and ignore the deafening silence from little man.

An Oldie but a Goodie

Alrighty then.; It's been a while.  I have excuses coming out the ying yang.; Suffice it to say - two kids, summer, tons of travel. A three year old who is hell bent on destroying himself and everything else.

Anyhoo - this is a crafting fail that is old; This is before pinterest. (Maybe I haven't seen this crafting idea on pinterest for a reason.)

The idea came from Woman's Day or Family Circle or some other magazine that I hate admitting that I subscribe to.Here is the idea. Take some old glass jars - bell jars, other jars, etc and then put beads on them to make beautiful luminaries for the deck and yard; You use wire to string the beads festively about the jars and they are beautiful and lovely and magical and glowing.
Anyways, I took a lot of time and wrapped beautiful silver and blue beads around my jars.I took care with the jars to make sure they were interesting and varied shapes.(Yeah, that's a Pace jar. Big fucking deal.)

So I have had these fucking these hanging up and have used them a few times.I even bought the fake tea lights to go into them, so if we had such a magical evening inspired by the glowing, beautiful, handmade (by me!) lights they would not burn the damn deck and house down.

Well, need I say they got grimy and yucky from hanging outside and I was too damn lazy to take them down every time and then store them somewhere.They got dirty and gross.And they were ugly.So ugly that I got two separate people asking me if they were home made wasp traps. Fucking shit - can't they see the crafting genius at work in them?!?!

Easter eggs

Okey dokey. Easter was a while ago. I know it. We had a blast making eggs. We even had some weird ass eggs that came out naturally striped!! Cool!

This post should be interesting. I am writing it on my phone. It will be another example of how I make a mess of things, I think.
Anyways. I tried to make the fancy marbled eggs I've seen online. Yes. Pinterest.
The kids ones turned out. At least I didn't fuck theirs all up. Mine totally didn't work. Yes, a two year old was much better than me at making eggs. All is right with the world.

Hoarding

I just wanted to share that occasionally when I cook there is a serious cluster fuck that happens.
I end up cooking in the middle of an episode of hoarders.
Whatever, clean as ya go folks.
I know I'm in trouble when the four inch square cutting board has no room on the counter.  And the worst part is that I get more and more pissed off as I go; but stopping to clean up - not until I'm done cooking.  Which means crab ass mom.

Bon Appetit!

Motherfucking shit!

So another clever idea from Pinterest.  Fucking Pinterest.  (Yes, that is it's real name.  Pinterest.  Fucking pinterest.)
Soooo  we love bubbles around here.  At least the two kids love fucking bubbles.  I'm not sure why the little one does - he ends up eating a lot of bubbles and swallowing the solution instead of blowing a bubble.  It makes me feel sick to my stomach just thinking of it.
Anyways - inevitably, tons of bubble solution ends up being spilled on the deck.  I've tried the "spill-less" buckets.  My ass.  The kid can't get the wand into the bucket because the slot is tiny, and he ends up putting rocks, etc into there and ruining the bubbles anyway.  Then his mission becomes to shake it and hold it and figure out how to take the top off to get the bubbles out.
He prefers the bubble guns but pouring the bubbles into the trays means that a half a gallon of bubbles is gone in one refill attempt.  (Don't start with me about refilling the bubbles for him  - the explanations are lengthy and would be baloney anyway.  I need a rest dammit.)
Anyways...

I came across this gem.


















I decided to try it.
When I found the ice tea jugs - they were like $30.  And glass.  I make some dumb mistakes, but even I know better than that.  Also, I needed a screw on lid, not one that just rests on top.
Shazam!  I found the perfect one at Big Lots.   And it was $3.   I love Big Lots.  (What the hell?  I know it's a bunch of crap, but I love it anyway.)  Then I had my 6 year old try to push the button on it.  Well, she could not - so there was no way that the almost 3 year old could.  Shitballs.

Then I found another one for $10.  Problems.  It was glass.

 It had a set on top instead of one that screwed on.  I figured I could do a win/win and buy the glass one for myself for parties and the $3 one for the kids for bubbles.   My poor 6 year old.  I plopped myself in the middle of the aisle with the drink containers.  I then proceeded to take the nozzles off of them to make sure that they would fit on the other one.  She was mortified and wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to just trade the nozzles and buy one and not the other.  (I guess I am doing something right if that mattered to her.  Phew.)  It worked!  I bought them both and some dixie cups to fill with bubble solution.

Yes, I don't understand the cow on there.  And yes, these photos were taken after I had changed the spigots.

So this entry is one part stick it to the man.  Target can suck it.  I got what I wanted for less than the $150 that I would have spent going to Target.  (no, I have not mastered the impulse purchasing there.)

Here is the epic fail part.  The almost three year old doesn't really give a shit what is in the jug with the cool faucet part.  His mission is ALWAYS to completely empty it.  (facepalm)  sigh.

Yeah, It's more Pinterest Crap

So all winter we were waiting for a snow day to bake cookies.  Specifically, cute as hell melting snow man cup cakes.

Well, no fucking snow day.
So we made them on the first day of spring instead.  I guess that was more appropo anyways.
So dumb ass me, of course I don't bother to actually read the recipe before I pin it or promise to make it with the kids...
The cookie dough requires a trip into the fridge FUCKING OVERNIGHT!  Talk about a joykill.  That was a lot of fun..  Yay kids, we can make the dough today and then make the actual cookies tomorrow.

 You would think I would change this habit of not reading a recipe until I actually make the recipe instead of planning ahead, but no.
SOOOOOO, we make the cookie dough and then today we bake the cookies and decorate them.
It was fun.
However, you should know that sometimes I suck so bad at making stuff that I can even screw up other people's stuff.
My poor kids.
The icing was too runny to decorate with and they really looked melting.

Well, this one was the two year old's fault.

Fucking Pinterest.

Pinterest.  What the hell, people?  Fucking pinterest - such a goddamn time suck and if I thought that Martha misled me and made my inner critic even worse.  GFY, Pinterest, GFY...
Honestly at least Pinterest has a pretty good sense of humor, but still.
I saw a recipe on there for a home made cleaning product.  I know that if you have EVER been on pinterest you will be deeply fucking shocked that there are cleaning recipes on there....

Anyhow.  We have kind of hard water here and I really clean the showers about once every two weeks. If you are here to judge, GFY. (The basement shower my husband uses - I've cleaned it two times...  He's been using that shower for at least a year.  He's a boy, he doesn't care and I don't ever use it, so I don't care.)

Anyways, the recipe is for a shower cleaner.  It calls for 1 cup vinegar heated until holy hell and 1 cup blue Dawn dish detergent.

Any veteran of these stupid ass home made cleaning products knows why Mr. Fucking Clean is still in business.  Half the time you use up all your damn vinegar and you either break your damn arm scrubbing or it just doesn't work or both.  If I wanted to use god damn elbow grease, I wouldn't be such a fan of chemistry.

That being said, I do freak out a little every time I clean the bathroom with Lime Away or similar and then everything has a weird chemical flavor for 36 hours.  Chemistry is good, chemistry burning my insides, well, I'm not such a big fan.

I thought I'd give this home made recipe a try.  And it worked!  It really fucking worked. 

Why the hell am I writing about this then?  This is a blog reserved strictly for failures....  Hmmm, can you spot the epic fail here?  Can you predict the two problems that this cheap and effective home made shower cleaner may have?

I am such a moron.  It wasn't until I had the entire shower sprayed down that it occurred to me that fucking Dawn suds and suds and suds and suds and suds and suds and when you think it will finally stop being bubbly, it fucking gives you the bird of suds and can take a fucking month to rinse off.  I thought, well shit, this is going to take a year to get off.  It did.

Next unexpected problem - vinegar inhalation.  Now, don't get me wrong, I would much rather inhale vinegar than phosphoric acid. (Well, wait a fucking minute.  Coke has phosphoric acid in it. Yes, the same shit that burns lime off my shower is also in my drink. Yes, yes, different concentrations, but still, that can't be good for you.  I wish there was a word that expressed someone just shaking their head no with their eyes closed with that feeling of being screwed seven ways til Sunday.  fuck.)

I wonder if there is a difference between inhaling acetic acid (vinegar) and phosphoric acid (lime away) or if my poor lungs look like the insides of rotten pumpkins either way.  Sigh.

Growing a Baby is Making Stuff - Right?

I say this with no sarcasm that I am so thankful to finally see a celebrity that looks pregnant - and I feel for her that she has to go out and show everyone her big-ness as she is approaching her delivery date.
For anyone who hates on her, first of all, she is 5'2", and second of all I wonder how much of her weight gain is in her boobs.  Seriously.  Her poor boobs...

I just had to discuss, because I was GINORMOUS when pregnant and am so happy to see a pregnant lady who is also ginormous.
I have to say, I did not suck at growing babies.  Giant, healthy, beautiful babies.  Thank god for cesareans.

More Paint Hate

Alright...
Here is the finished room.  It's been finished a while.  I haven't made shit.  I've been making hot dogs for dinner and not doing any kind of craftiness at all. 
Haters can suck it.  I had to clean my goddamn house.  REALLY clean my house.  It's a long story that is mortifying so I'll be posting about it soon.
Anyhoo - here is the lovely room all painted...

It turned out pretty well - and goes better with the rug than the mint green did. 
I just wanted to share more of the fallout from this project.

Are you asking yourself where the cream carpet is in that nice blue room?  There is no cream carpet in that fucking room.  Somehow I managed to track a huge splotch of paint all the way into the living room. This, I noticed.
This next one, I did not...  A friend spotted it today...

Yeah, I don't know how I did that either.  If you know how my house is laid out you would know how much raw talent it would take to track that much paint that far down the hall and around the corner - 
Maybe it's from the string on my hoodie that I managed to dip into the paint....
I don't know, but I know that you are jealous of my mad skills....
(Holes in the wall?  What?)
And to think that one of my friends couldn't understand why I would possibly need one of those tyveck haz mat suits in all my painting crap....

I fucking hate painting.

Sigh.  I forgot how much I hate to paint a room.  It fucking sucks.  From the tedious prep work through to the clean up.
If you know anything about me, you know that I am a weird combo of a perfectionist and a lazy ass.  So I am looking for reasons that I can't do a job and normally it's because of abnormally high standards.  I am also ALWAYS looking for a good short cut....
First of all, the room I was painting had issues.  It was previously a minty light green and was last painted before our daughter was born - so over 6 years ago.  The previous owners had EVERY surface in this house covered in wall paper.  To top it off, when we removed the wall paper, some of the walls were smooth and some were textured.  So skim coating was a must. 
So this was the second time around for skim coating - which if you don't know what skim coating  is, be thankful and just know it means DUST.  The kind of dust that is so tiny it will break your fucking vacuum, the kind of dust that gets into your ears and mouth and under your fingernails.

Here's a taste of that dust I was talkng about - and this is after I ruined a vacuum with it.  (Ok, in all honesty, I ruined this vacuum with that kind of dust a while ago... and the white streaks are not dust it's like chalk marks from the dust...)



 My husband was nice enough to keep the kids out of my hair.  I spent ALL damn day doing this. Normally the weekends for me mean actually sitting on my ass and enjoying it - so actually doing something for the house was a bit of a stretch.  The mess was kind of overwhelming - I stopped and decided to take a photo after all the painting was done, especially because the job wasn't done.

 It was at this point that I just wanted to fucking stop - but had to put the room back together...
Keep in mind that my laziness created more work for me, because I spent the entire day stepping over this pile of crap.

One would think that when I realized this at the start of the job, that I would have picked the shit up off the floor - but no. 

I'm actually surprised that it wasn't a bigger disaster because I didn't do any kind of taping.  What a waste of time.  I hate taping and then the paint seeps under it anyways because I always have a false sense of security with tape and go apeshit painting.

Sooo I had drips that needed to be washed up - and the number of times I did this meant that the rag became saturated and ended up leaving a white paint haze on the floor.  I don't fuck around with the wood floors, so I ended up washing and scrubbing them with a brush ala Cindrella to make sure all of the film was off.  (I even sang "Sing sweet nightingale!  Ahhhhhhl around you" while scrubbing.)

Phew.  All done.  Like I said.  I fucking hate painting.  I didn't even go into all the weird blobs, drips etc. that I was left with - not to mention what a crap job the trim ended up being.  Whatever.  It's done.  The room is fucking blue and not green.