Where craft projects go to die...

Either having your first child unleashes your inner Martha Stewart, or my sadly depleted social life in this first year of motherhood has forced me to find new ways to entertain myself.  Whatever way you want to look at it, my creative juices, they are a-flowin', and I made my first trip to Hobby Lobby this weekend for something other than Christmas decorations.

This?  Right here?  This is going to be Brigid's Halloween costume...eventually.

I don't want to spoil the surprise (because Brigid is big on keeping her costume ideas a secret...), but this will involve those pink wings and a magic wand that I plan to make out of ribbon, a dowel rod, and some hot glue.  At some point.  Before Halloween.  I hope.  Right now, Steve and I are just taking turns knotting a couple of pieces of tulle to the elastic band every so often.  And seeing as how someone thought glittery purple tulle would be a nice addition to the outfit, someone spends every night wiping glittery purple specks off of all of the kitchen furniture.  Martha never tells you about that part of the process...

This one here?  It will eventually be this.  I hope...

It's a really cute idea for a portable growth chart, and I was pretty excited when I showed Steve what I wanted to do.  But, instead of dowel rods, he wanted to use real sticks.  And instead of hot glue, he wanted it sewn.  So he found a real stick, and he sewed it up into the top of the fabric, and he put the twine on it.  And then he quit, so he could show me what it looked like. And I love it!  But, he never bothered to pick up a stick for the bottom of the darn thing.  And it's been raining ever since.  So, it's on hold.  But it will be done in time for the first birthday, or there will be some unreasonable freaking out,brought to you in part by my general lack of perspective.  I'm willing to bet Martha never has to deal with this kind of incompetence!

Also done in time for the impending first birthday?  This...

...will be turned into the party itself.  That tissue paper?  That will be hanging from the ceiling in the shape of lovely little poms, straight from the direction of Martha herself.  I'll give you a guess or two on what the theme of the day will be.  Not pictured in this box?  The Elmo-shaped cake pan Steve ordered on eBay, and the instructions for decorating said cake with many, many different colors of frosting.  That baking thing?  That's beyond any Martha-like channeling I am capable of.

And finally, this...

This is my currently poorly-decorated-for-fall mantle, which is awaiting my trip to the pumpkin patch in a couple of weeks (For Brigid, you know.  All for Brigid...) for a little additional sprucing.  The magazine picture?  That's Southern Living, of course.  And that's a picture of what I want to put up there.  But considering it involves planting actual plants in a large, hollowed out pumpkin, and I hate hollowing out pumpkins, and I'm less than capable of keeping any living plant in that condition (you know, alive) for longer than a week, I'm thinking this is the least likely of my intended projects to ever see the light of day. 

Even Martha can't pull it all off, right?