Do Not Try This At Home

“If you can't excel with talent, triumph with effort.” - Dave Weinbaum

There is no way I will ever excel in the field of crafts. I admire people who can turn a little cardboard and glitter into something beautiful. However, there is no amount of effort that will turn me into one of those home and garden television stars that can take fabric, yarn, stuffing, and popsicle sticks and fashion it all into a nativity set.

This is prime season for crafty people. It’s the holidays and somehow that means we all have to stick cloves into an orange or make a Santa ornament from a clothespin. Every magazine has projects that promise they are “easy and fast.” Maybe that’s why I’m no good at crafts, I was never either of those things! Not for nothing, I am licensed to own and carry a real gun, but I should never be allowed to wield a hot glue gun.

Never was this complete lack of talent more obvious than last week. Every year at Halloween, I decorate my fence posts, which are cone shaped, to look like ghosts. It really is an idiot-proof trick. A little sheet of white plastic over them, and instant Casper! So, in the little world inside my head, I thought I could do something similar only with green plastic and they would look like Christmas trees. Simple enough, right?

Not even close. The result of this attempt at bringing a little Christmas to my yard was beyond bad. I pictured the row of fence posts looking like a holiday tree farm. In reality, they looked like my lawn was being sealed off as a hazmat spill. Nothing screams “artistic nightmare” louder than a row of fence posts draped in green plastic. A friend told me that if there was a national holiday for pickles, I would be ready for it. Dill Day? Bring it on.

Another friend helpfully suggested that I could put little pointed hats on top of each post, draw ugly faces on the front and pass them off as seasick elves. I decided to just scrap the entire project and admit defeat. Christmas décor will have to come ready to use right out of the package at our house.

I don’t understand why I thought this project would be any different than the dozens of other craft projects I have attempted over the years. I still have the clay pinch pot I made in 3rd grade. Despite the fact that it lists to the right and wobbles, my parents kept it because it was perfect for holding the furnace room door closed, which is where I found it a few years ago.

I also still have the Styrofoam ball snowman that has a crater in his head where the button nose fell off. Those cute little reindeer ornaments that five-year-olds make with candy canes and pipe cleaner antlers? All of mine tragically succumbed to fatal neck fractures, their heads bobbing lifelessly to the side while their little plastic googly eyes stared off into space.

My inability to craft extends to food as well. I don’t know who decided that food should have to be worked into objets d’art. It’s food. You buy it, cook it and eat it. At no point should you have to artfully arrange it into something not even in the same species.

At Thanksgiving someone I know made little dessert turkeys out of Oreos, candy corn and chocolate chips. I’m lucky if I don’t crumble the Oreo into little bits when I pull it apart to lick the frosting. My son asked me if I could make him the “sushi” he saw on a cooking show. It was a Rice Krispy treat wrapped in fruit leather and topped with a Swedish Fish. Really George? I’m the mommy that can’t make Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes, it’s a safe bet candy sushi will not happen in my kitchen.

The same week that I was wrestling with the unholy Christmas fence, I was also part of a Secret Santa gift swap. The women in this group are amazing. Most of them can paint, quilt, sew, knit, sculpt and even throw clay pots. There was much discussion of what color yarn we all liked, and if we were the scarf or mitten type.

I seriously hope the gal who gets my gift appreciates the unique talent I have for going into a store and buying something in the color she likes. Maybe I could pay my 10-year-old daughter to draw a little Santa on the card. That way I’m kind of a patron of the arts, which is almost the same thing as an artist, right? Yeah, lets go with that.

About this column: Brenda Kelley-Kim is a Marblehead mom and a self-professed "loud mouth."