Dearest Friends,
I am gravely concerned. It has come to my attention that there are a group of people so depraved in their sensibilities that they have cast their votes for an abomination. Their moral turpitude knows no bounds. (Surprise! I’m actually NOT taking about the representatives voting to repeal the ACA). Continue reading “At What Cost?”
Like most people, I spend way more time surfing Pinterest for sweet ideas than I spend living a productive life. Pinterest lets you build your dream house without lifting a finger, fill your closet with a Vogue magazine’s worth of the latest trends, and serve a five-course gourmet Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of July. Scrolling through Pinterest is the perfect way to spend an evening when you had too much wine and don’t want to go to bed drunk but you need something a little more stimulating than watching a movie to keep you up. Or, um, you know, a normal evening.
And like most people, my Pinterest is full of things that looked amazing and doable in the heat of a Pinterest scroll-binge but that I will never, ever, ever get around to doing. Here are some of my top offenders:
You clicked on this because the word “hack” was in the title, thinking that I’d be giving you some clever tips and ingredient add-ons to freshen up the most estimable quiescently frozen confection: pizza.
Joke’s on you though, because the only “hack” here is the author.
This list is actually far more important than some poorly advised toppings. It’s a guide to achieving transcendent happiness for about $4.99. Regardless of your feelings about Malcolm Gladwell, I’ve definitely gotten my 10,000 freezer pizzas, which makes me uniquely qualified to dispense some practical tips. In other words: trust me, I’m a professional. Continue reading “Ultimate Freezer Pizza Hacks”
Spring is springing and Anthropologie is attempting to harvest your paycheck with some new offerings. While my personal style tends more to “hobo” than “boho,” there’s an occasional piece that catches my eye. Lots of these items would be pretty easy to DIY, saving you a trip to the mall-hole. Additionally, you can save a bunch of cash and get your style fix without buying more chiffon landfill fodder. Do it for the earth.
Perusing the offerings, I can’t help but wonder. Maybe I’m projecting, but something about the long, dark winter has unraveled the minimal ties to reality that our friendly Anthro designers usually have. Hold on to your butts, people. It’s gonna get weird.
Look at these jeans. They have Nana’s brooches! You can go to Value Village and find LOTS of Nana brooches for $.99. Then you can put them on any pants your heart desires. You could change them every day, or move the brooches from pant to pant, creating different looks for different occasions. Do not cross your legs or the pin from a brooch will go in your thigh and you will get tetanus. When that happens, you will have to go to the doctor and confess that you can’t remember your last shot because it was four insurance companies and seven primary care providers ago.
This one takes a little more effort. It’s still less than $78 worth of effort, though, so you’ll come out ahead. Find a sweatshirt and cut a u-shape in the neck. Hem it in a haphazard fashion. Cut the hood off, and sew the hood to the inside of the u-shape. Lace with an old shoestring. Choose your own sleeve adventure. Maybe you want to cut off the sleeves all the way, instead of half way. Sun’s out, guns out, amirite?
Does your overhead lighting produce shadows that look like the Wicker Man? If it doesn’t, you’re really missing out. This chandelier looks impossible to clean and impossible to resist DIY-ing. Spiders will love it! If you want to make this, knock yourself out. There are hella tassel tutorials out there. Google it. (I’m not gonna find you a link. This is a crappy blog, remember?)
This is a “sailboat decorative object.” The price seems sort of reasonable compared to the other “decorative objects” in its cohort. This is a technique Anthropologie employs to trick you into buying something extra stupid, by lowering its price relative to its stupid peers. So! Let’s look a little closer. $38 fat benjis gets you a boat apparently assembled with barbecue skewers, a table napkin, and some garden twine. You could make this out of scraps collected after a barbeque, and then you could name your boat the H.M.S. GrillMarque.
You’ve got one of these lurking in your bathroom cabinet, left over from 1998. Admittedly, they make you scalp hurt, but when you really want to turn your look up to 11, there’s just no substitute for a Hair Claw. Counting tiny butterflies, I probably had at least twenty of these at one point. The description of the item includes the phrases “sublime elegance” and “modern touches,” which is…generous. For 1/100th of the price, you can glue some rhinestones on a scalp mangler of your choice. Instead of such a measly sprinkling, you can bedazzle it on every visible surface.
The only question left: Which of these are you going to try first?
Make this recipe. It’s named because you’ll weep with happiness once you nail down your method for these any-time-of-day Potatoes O’Brien, topped with a fried egg. It’s a pretty good way to start a leisurely weekend, but it’s also a pretty good way to wind down a stupid day at work.
BuzzFeed occasionally posts quality listicles of tutorials, recipes, tips & tricks amid their hard-hitting international news coverage and Drake gifs. I like to check out these articles to fill my life with distractions to keep me from questioning the capitalist machine that controls us all get some ideas for my DIY lifestyle.
Today, BuzzFeed hit a new low in “journalism”: Continue reading “Way more than 3 ways to repurpose old shirts”
Over the last six months, I’ve encountered several dismal entries into the dessert hummus market. They usually inhabit the organic section of the refrigerator case, and include “Snickerdoodle,” “Brownie Batter,” “Vanilla Bean,” and “Orange Dreamsicle.” Here are some suggested flavors for 2017:
Why have I spent so much time pinning patterns to fabric? I guess it’s how I learned when I was a clumsy little beast and prone to knocking my patterns askew all the time. It takes time and bloodshed to use pins, which is pretty metal, but not really great for whacking out a stack of garments in one go. To solve this problem, a cottage industry has emerged. I’ve read tutorials on the internet for making your own pattern weights; some people even sell them. They’re often stacks of metal washers wrapped perplexingly in ribbon or bias tape. Do you have time to beribbon the humble washer? No, no you don’t.
Chip cards suck. If you can get your chip card to work at Starbucks every single time without fail, then you are a liar or a wizard or both. Worse, like everything else that’s allegedly supposed to boost security, chip cards are not entirely 100% secure. I’m told there is a device that identity thieves use that will scan your credit card info stored on the RFID chip from a few feet away. Not sure how that works. Magic or Star Trek.
Being the average amount of paranoid, I decided I wanted one of those fancy wallets that will protect the RFID info from being stolen via gamma rays or whatever. A quick google search turned up diy instructions on how to make an RFID protecting wallet with duct tape and tinfoil.
Duct tape and tinfoil to prevent shadowy unknowns from stealing my identity? Count me in!
There’s probably some legitimate science to how this works, but I’m not big on “science” unless it’s followed by “fiction double feature” so let’s leave the explanations to the professionals and get to CRAFTING.
We here at Handcrapted HQ have been known to partake in a cracker or two. They’re basically a cheese delivery vehicle, so they need to be sturdy enough to stand up to whatever puck of Grocery Outlet Bargain Market goodness I decide to splash my $3.99 on. Or $2.99. Or $.99. (Trust that the cheese acquired for less than a dollar is worthy of its own post.) Anyway! That extra dollar savings can best be put to use on an upgraded Carb Shovel.
Handcrapted 