Blog a la Cart

Month: March, 2010

Bottle Cap Earrings

We’re not talking about shooting up any saloons, but rather hitting up your local watering hole for some brewskies and thus some supplies for your next DIY project! Collect a bunch of old bottle caps and craft up some upcycled earrings. Trashion at its best!

Materials:
Bottle caps
Earring hooks
Pliers
Nail & hammer

Directions:
1. Drink a beer (or root beer, whatever floats your boat!)
2. Take the bottle caps from said beer and use the pliers to flatten the crinkled edges of each cap to help flatten the sides of the earrings.
3. In the now flattened crinkly space, chose a location for the earring hook and place the tip of a nail in that spot.
4. Using the hammer, lightly tap the nail to make a small hole in the bottle cap.
5. Thread earring hook through hole.
6. Now, thread that earring hook through your EAR hole and VOILA! bottle cap earrings!

Just think, each six-pack has the potential to be three new pairs of earrings!

Photo: Courtesy of Ashley Weeks Cart

I think that the technical term is "avoidance"

The other morning, around 6am, as James prepared for his final day of work – the final day before his adventures in stay-at-home parenthood would commence – he roused me from my slumber with the following:

Ash, Ash! I have an early birthday present for you… it’s about to be like Christmas morning. I have a zit, on my back, that hurts like a bitch, and I’m asking you to do the honors.

Now you’re probably all thinking, um GROSS! TMI! WTF?!

But yo, zit popping is my jam. And by jam, I mean obsession. And by obsession, I mean I should probably seek counseling to help reign in my irrepressible delight in exploding pussy pimples.

Nothing brings me more joy. Nothing. Save maybe a foot massage while mowing a bowl full of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked and starring at a photo of R. Patz.

Now that shit is heaven.

Essentially, James had made my day, nay my week, nay perhaps my year in permitting such excavation. Typically I have to whine and beg and threaten to revoke sex in order to gain access to a bulging zit on his person – or I turn the impulse on myself and my face turns a raging shade of crimson – because once you pop, you can stop! (Who knew that slogan was so universal). In fact, I wish I were one of those limber Cirque du Soleil performers who can contort her person into a pretzel in order to more adequately reach and experience the joy of an erupting pore on areas such as one’s own back – the very problem experienced by James on said morning.

One man’s loss is another woman’s gain.

So that, folks, is the story I have to share with you all today, because to begin to process a move 3,000 miles away from the beach, and the Pacific, and eternal sunshine, and my hetereo-life mate, and breakfast burritos, and that nursery sends me into a troubled, deep dark place that should be supressed at the moment as I shuffle my shit into our new home. And because, if it weren’t for that man, that man who knows all my strange quirks and the potential joy provided by a ripe pimple, I don’t know how I’d get through this.

That’s right, I wouldn’t. Instead, I would be standing in a pay phone booth chugging milk.

Obviously.

Oh, and these Three Stooges are bringing me some joy in the interim: Moe, Larry and Curly.

Moving is fucking tiring, y'all. And I have a potty mouth.

This photo about sums it up. So many things I want to write – so do not have the mental capacity at the moment. Safely in the east – headed to the Berkshires this weekend. Start work Monday.

The Fuck?!

There goes that potty mouth.

Calendar Envelopes

Not sure what to do with last year’s calendar? Or all those freebies you receive from your Alma Mater and the bank? Why, recycle them into pretty envelopes and send out some good old fashioned snail mail, of course! So flip back through all of your previous social engagements and then pick some special friends to reconnect with!

Materials:
Old calendars
Envelope (to create template)
Cardboard (old cereal box works great!)
Scissors
Marker
Glue stick

Directions:
1. Create your envelope template by unfolding an envelope and tracing against a piece of cardboard.
2. Cut out cardboard template.
3. Place template onto your calendar sheets (picture side down so that you are drawing on the actual calendar) and trace with a marker or pen.
4. Cut out outlines.
5. Fold all flaps in accordingly.
6. Glue sides.
7. Pull out your address book and send some snail mail, made with love (for Mama Earth!)

In this digital age, who doesn’t love a handwritten letter, especially one with such a personalized mailer?!

Photo: Courtesy of Ashley Weeks Cart