The latest issue of Highlights Magazine showed up at my house making BOLD promises.
Oh great, more art projects to clutter up my school room and hold onto for years out of guilt. NO THANKS HIGHLIGHTS!
I shared the photo on Instagram and the general consensus was most of us hate kids crafts. I mean sure, we love that our children have made something special for us that vaguely resembles the digestive tract of a cow, I mean, oops sorry, a caterpillar, but these items, embellished with 3D features and glitter, breed like rabbits. How many of us can no longer find the water dispenser on the fridge because it’s hidden under junior’s mural of grass? I’ll bet there’s no room in the keepsake box you have tucked in your closet because it’s filled with one stroke marker pictures from your toddler.
Let’s put an end to the madness! And no time like the present! With Mother’s Day just around the corner, there are tons of art projects in progress that are destined to enter your home and take up residence, never leaving unless you can discreetly hide them at the bottom of the trash can! We need to act now! Moms, grab your husbands or older children, bring them to the computer now!
Featuring five Mother’s Day crafts moms actually want to receive. (Seriously husbands, if any clay ashtrays or popsicle stick picture frames enter the house after this post, you’ve dropped the ball.) Put your youngsters to work on the good stuff and donate the Highlights magazine to the library!
1. The Toilet Paper Roll Craft …done right. I made a butterfly for demonstration purposes but really, who cares what it’s supposed to be, so long as it’s on a bottle of wine.
2. If you need to get on Mama’s good side, super size it with Carlo Rossi the Red Nosed Chianti.
3. The Ladybug Six Pack (Take note Highlights!!) If your child isn’t into ladybugs, take off a few pipe cleaners and call it a horse, or a dinosaur or a train. Whatever; mom’s guaranteed to be happy even if she can’t tell!
4. No mom wants burnt toast, cold eggs, hot coffee in her lap and juice spilled in her bed. Especially if she’s expected to eat it with everyone watching or better yet, while everyone stands outside the door screaming,
“No you can’t go in! This is Mama’s special day!”
“But I miss her! I LOVE YOU MAMA!! SOB”
“Go downstairs! We can have cereal. We need to keep it quiet for mama!”
“But then she’ll be so far away!” Commence banging and incoherent wailing as children are forcibly removed.
And then you get to try to “relax” with this banquet while all hell breaks loose elsewhere in the house.
Gentlemen, the proper solution. Let the kids pick a bouquet of something alive from your yard and present it to you your wife with a Dunkin Donuts gift card and bottle of Frangelico. Then kick her out the door for two hours. The hip flask is optional, but I’m pretty sure DD will give you the stink eye if you try to walk in with a whole bottle of Frangelico. …not that I’ve tried this.
5. Lastly, a coloring page loosely decorated by an enthusiastic preschooler. Meh.
Now take that same picture and use it to decorate a bottle of 12 year aged Scotch. BOOM! Just be careful with how much praise you bestow on your little artist, lest your tears of joy lead to a fresh onslaught of loosely colored Olafs.
Fathers, you know what needs done. Start focusing your child’s efforts into crafts that will really make Sunday a special day for the mom in your life. (Or grandmom! They’ve got twice as much junk shoved in their attic from you and your crafty kids!)
I’ve instructed my husband to get what I call “fancy” bottled rootbeer and make me a no bake cheesecake since I might be pregnant for Mother’s Day. But yes, with those adaptations, this post definitely hit the spot! 😛
Oooh I forgot about the craft. Hmmm. Well, I’m still in that first kid glow (and without the myriad of crafts yet!) and he’s only 11 months, so my husband is going to stick a crayon in his hand and see what happens. I predict the crayon will end up more in his mouth than on the page!
Your admission just lifted years of guilt over my lack of enthusiasm for kiddie crafts. I have to confess that one of my reasons for buying a stainless steel fridge was that the door isn’t magnetic and can’t be plastered with works of ‘art’.
The toilet paper roll craft with a bottle full of my favorite pink wine
I’ll be hoping for a ladybug six-pack, especially if it’s hard cider! (Although, sorry to say, Angry Orchard is my least favorite. I’m a Woodchuck kinda gal.)
I’d love any of these gifts from my kids
I’ll be drinking coffee and watching my boys color.
I’d take a half-colored picture of Olaf wrapped around a bottle of Jack Daniels. Best gift ever!
Hysterical! On Mother’s Day, I hope I’m sipping coffee brewed from a new coffee maker that I’ve been hinting pretty heavily for (as in… “please buy me a coffee maker for Mother’s Day. Nothing else.”) The coffee maker from 2 Mother’s Days-ago died. I guess I go through a lot of coffee…. 10 kids. 6 boys….. yeah. lotsa coffee.
I’m sure my 3-month-old can handle these. Or he could decorate something with spit-up which could then accessorize booze. Any booze, really.
Thanks for the laugh!
Hilarious! I found your blog throught the Fountains of Carrots podcast. I would accept any of those gifts if they came a la alcohol! 🙂
Think I’d prefer the coloring book page around a bottle of moscato.
I’m thinking turning a six-pack into Thomas the Train would be nice!
I dont have children but I’m entering for my Sister in law – who I love :). She already got a magnet for her birthday so I think she’s done.
Oh this was so funny. But for Number 4, I would take the bottle of Frangelico and a DD coffee and the hubs could take the kids AWAY from the house for a while! 🙂
I don’t like Scotch, and I had a bad experience with a stomach bug that came shortly after having some Frangelico, so our bottle has remained untouched since then, but we can substitute pretty easily on those. My kids were shocked that there was no chocolate involved in these crafts.
The six-pack one; I’m a beer girl. Or the one where everyone cleans up the tiny scraps of paper all over the floor from their “cutting practice.”
Sooo…my oldest is only 2 1/2 so I’m still amazed by everything she puts on paper, but I’d LOVE some uninterrupted time with a cup of coffee to read that book!!
I showed this to my husband but I’m afraid the instructions are too vague. Can he buy these ready made?
Oh, the best craft is no craft because no craft mess. But I’d love a gin and tonic…that I won’t have because I’m pregnant. I’ll be a rebel and do a glass of wine while pregnant but I draw the line at hard liquor.
Irish coffee, because there’s never enough coffee.
Gin+Tonic+Lemonade Perfect for a Sunday 🙂
Brilliant! “Coloring” attached to a bottle of hard liquor = best present ever. Sending this to my husband right now…
Crafts (shudder just thinking of glue and glitter) and snack sign up sheets give me hives! Yes, it’s true. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. But the Frangelico and the Dunkin donuts sound like a taste sensation.
My husband wants me to refer to this post for Father’s Day too.
I read it to him and the part with the kids screaming behind the door particularly resonated with both of us. Hopefully frangelico (with a TP roll craft) and a donut gift card will be waiting for me on Sunday.
Hahaha that’s great!!! 🙂 I’ll have to use this for Father’s Day too… I’m sure the girls wouldn’t mind decorating a few bottles for Daddy. I just finished blogging about a month of “useful” kids crafts because I also hate all the toilet paper and paper crafts so I was looking for other things. Nice to see I’m not the only mom with an aversion to the paper fluff! 🙂