I’ve been super busy with the end of telework and my in-laws are visiting.
Return to work is kicking my ass hard. Also, my soul. It’s just so sad. And it feels so infinite. Like welp, this is life now. Cause it is.
So with in-laws visiting, I don’t get to stare at the wall. We went the Botanical Gardens today and they had this book.
Oh my fucking god, bees!
When you find a nice thing and you have to show it to everyone because we stopped having show ‘n tell after kindergarten. Which, BTW, we need to bring back. You know how we have fucking bullshit Lunch ‘n Learn topics every Thursday? And fucking Wellness Wednesday lunches? Well I want a TEAMS call show ‘n tell! I wanna eat my lunch and watch my coworkers show me fancy things. Or their pets. Or their favorite new pen. Whatever they want. I’d tune into that every god damn week AND participate. So here is my latest Amazon review:
This review is for the PU Leather Tissue Box Holder with Magnetic Closure in Silver Grey. Or as Amazon calls it, the “PU Leather Tissue Box Cover Square Tissue Box Holder with Magnetic Closure, Decorative Tissue Holder for Bathroom Bedroom Office (Silver Grey).” And let me tell you, the PU Leather Tissue Box Holder with Magnetic Closure in Silver Grey has absolutely no right to be this awesome. It’s a tissue box, yall, not a jewelry box. I’ve had jewelry boxes that weren’t nearly this nice.
This box is so fantastic, that I’m skipping right over the fact that normal tissue boxes are ugly and obnoxious. Do I need a rainforest print in my living room? No. Do you sell solid colors? Also, no. We’re skipping that.
What is this box even made of? I can’t bend it. And it is actually rather weighty. My cat can’t even knock this off the table – and he’s gonna try. There’s a magnetic closure on the bottom (some tissue box covers don’t even HAVE bottoms) and when it closes, there is a very satisfying thunk sound. And yall, it’s LINED. Not just with paper – it’s lined with the velour type felt that jewelry boxes are lined with.
I say again to you, good sir, why is this box so nice?
I tried to take some close-up pictures to show you the craftsmanship. Look at those straight lines and seams. Look at that lining. Look how perfectly square the lining is cut and applied to in the inside of the bottom of the tissue box cover that no one will ever see. Look at the hole! The PU leather isn’t just cut out at the hole, it’s finished and sewn. Oh and whatever non-trivial material this thing is made of has been covered in another layer of matching PU leather very well folded over and then sealed with the way-too-nice liner. I’m actually holding this in my hands flipping it around wondering how they got this perfect curve so nicely covered without a seam going down the hole – wait! I picked it up again, after typing that, to examine this sorcery again – there is a seam, it’s just nearly invisible. I only noticed it by feel. Thank you, because I’m a crafter and I was confused by that impossibility.
The only downside it that the “silver grey” is metallic. I’m putting this in my living room so I’d have preferred a matte finish. However, if it weren’t so dang nice, I could just put it in the bathroom and it’d look great in there.
I’m going to start showing guests the tissue box, aren’t I? Being old is so weird.
I see that they make a version of this that’s got a compartment for remotes. I’m not gonna act like I don’t want that for my desk at work. And another for my night stand. And one for the guest room. FIVE STARS.
//END OF REVIEW
Yall. Blog reader yall, that is. Just to compare. I want you to see see the god awful piece of trash I reviewed last week:
I only gave it two or three stars but I really wanna go back and make it like 1 star now.
So on my last post, I mentioned calling in some warranties.
Vornado — fucking champions. Replaced the fan immediately with a new one as soon as I sent them a picture of mine with the cord cut off. A++ service. American made — BUY THEIR SHIT. They make excellent things that work and they stand by them.
Calphelon — Their website warrantly claim form errors evey damn time. I’ve tried at least 11 times on various days. Go through all the pages, answer the questions, upload photos, and bam — error submitting claim. I emailed with no response. The phone system tells you to use the website. ARRRRRRRRGGG. But I haven’t given up.
MailBoss. FUCK MAILBOSS. I called and they asked for pictures. So I sent pictures of very obvious rusting and finish flaking off after less than one year. They emailed me back that it can happen near the coast. I DON’T LIVE NEAR THE COAST. This summer was A DROUGHT. It’s a mild climate and this thing wasn’t a year old before it started rusting. They said I should sand it down, repaint it, and wax it every year to prevent this happeneing again. Wait — why isn’t waxing this thing mentioned ANYWHERE? I’d have waxed it to begin with!
So does Mailboss stand behind their product warranty. Fuck no they don’t. $400 on a mailbox and it rusts immediately and they just tell you to repaint it. Awesome.
So that made me a bit bothered. So I decided, I will let people know about this. So I clicked around on their website. Searched for them on a few websites and and then hopped on to Facebook. Ah, Target ads, thank you. So I left some comments. Then, I created a post about them and tagged them in it. It is currently at the very top of their mentions page on their own Facebook page:
It was really late on a work night, but I decided I needed to hit up some Amazon reviews for this piece of shit before bed. So I go yell on Amazon, as I like to do and then…
WHAT? I tried so hard to get into this program back in 2019 when I had a head injury and couldn’t work so I just decided to review everything I’d ever bought on Amazon. I did detailed reviews. Ton’s of pictures. People loved my reviews. I was in the top 2000 reviewers at one point. But after a few months, it just was too much effort. So I stopped trying. Oh, I still review shit — but not everything like I used to. And now I’m invited?
WHAT?
My orneriness is being recognized with free products in exchange for a honest review? What?
I’VE MADE IT.
I’ve submitted 9 reviews for free things now. Only one wave has come in. I can order up to 3 items per day with a limit of $100 per item. Of course they have to be part of the Amazon Vine program which is random as fuck. There’s over 77 thousand products and the variety is wild. A lot of it is very niche replacement parts for specific products. There’s a lot of balloon arches and party supplies. a TON of Stanly Cup organizers. And why on earth are there so many things targeted towards healing after a BBL? did you know there are airbeds with a hole cutout for your ass? Cause there are.
Now I can’t just go buck wild. I will have to claim everything on my taxes. I had to fill out a tax form and the cost of the items I receive will be counted as income. So far the most expensive thing I’ve ordered is a double golf-bag rack and shelving for my nephews and brother who all play golf. I’ve also ordered and received:
What is a drink pusher?
Yep. It’s like a vending machine thing for your refrigerator!
But three of my reviews have been denied and I don’t get WHY. I guess they’re really anal about the Vine reviews? This one I can only figure was because I mentioned having OCD? So I took all that out to resubmit. The gym bag review got denied and I have NO IDEA why. Maybe because I mentioned the brand of bag I was comparing it to? We’ll see, I removed the brand name and resubmitted. Then the squeegee review got denied. No idea on that one. It might be because I mentioned I was reviewing it? But that doesn’t make sense… I’m so confused. The blanket review got denied too and I fucking love that blanket. I’ve been writing really detailed reviews with tons of photos! Like the gym bag review — it wouldn’t stick to my refrigerator. So I took pictures of it fully loaded with everything in it — then on the front of the fridge, then the side, then I was like. It can’t suck this much ass. So I TOOK IT OUTSIDE and stuck it to my mailbox. Success. And it stuck to my tornado shelter too! So I had EDITED MARKUP pictures with “Fridge? No.” “Side of Fridge? No.” “Mailbox? Yes!”
Look, I went outside in the evening hours to take that photo. I put a bottle of ice water in there with my wallet and car keys and slapped it on my mailbox. I put it in photoshop and added text. These are the reviews the people WANT.
And obviously I’m reviewing with other Vine peeps and some of their reviews are a single sentence. REALLY?
Let me see if I can find the original Drink Pusher one…
Me owning this item is actually hilarious. Let me tell you why. I hosted family two weeks ago. My sister-in-laws sister doesn’t know me well. So the next morning she very timidly asked me if she could ask me something without offending me. Ok! She asked if I was OCD. Yep! She asked because of how organized my refrigerator was.
You see, I already stored my drinks like this. I just didn’t have the fancy pusher! I was manually reloading the fridge and pulling them forward to look nice. Talk about an upgrade!
I didn’t organize my drinks like this for my OCD, I just like for everything to have a proper place and look neat. Including in my refrigerator. But I did my drinks like this at first as a joke for my husband. When I started working from home, I started making him lunch. I started calling it my café and would yell order up when his lunch was ready. Then one day, I lined up all of his drinks like this and opened the fridge and joked that we stocked a full accoutrement of drinks at the café now. (He likes these Spin Drift flavored waters so I keep a lot of flavors to keep it interesting. Well, I liked the look so it’s been that way for a few months.
Then TODAY, I installed this masterpiece! I sent her a picture and told her I’ve upgraded! I actually sent it to a bunch of my friends because I’m just so tickled with it. One asked, “does that push the drinks forward for you?” YES! And she just laughed. I love it! I wish I had another row for my friends coconut water!
No redlines. No notes. I love it. Excellent price. Functions great. No tools to assemble. I’m even deeply amused that the easy-to-follow instructions just refer to it as “the pusher.”
For buyers I do have a tip: Put it together with the drinks you intend for it to hold. You’ll need to know how wide to make the lanes. When I first assembled it, I just put the rails and lanes right up next to each other. I tested it with a can and it was fine. Then I loaded it up and stuck it in the fridge and it didn’t work! Bummer! So I’m looking at it and thinking it just doesn’t have enough spring power. But no – it just had too much friction. The lane width needs to be wide enough that the rails aren’t pushing against your cans. When I tested it with just a single can, there weren’t cans on either side pushing the rails in. But you also can’t make the lanes too wide. Otherwise, your straight row of cans gets a bit jumbled. So have what you want to put in here with you when you assemble it to get the spacing right. You can always take it out and readjust later, like I did – but save yourself the trouble.
Oh! I do have one note that’s not important. My refrigerator is a full depth one. Not a counter depth fridge. Yours is probably counter depth. So I could actually fit more cans in without this. This can only fit 5 cans deep. Do I need six of every flavor at all times? Hell no. But I was doing it. Also, as you now have lanes and rails and a need for space between rows to lighten up the friction, I did have to go from 6 cans wide to 5 in roughly the same space. My husband’s choices are drastically less now. Yes, that’s sarcasm. I think this is plenty of options!
I really do love this thing. It’s so extra and so awesome all at once.
Festivus has come (early or late?). We’re having the airing of grievances. I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re gonna hear about it.
First, I fucking LOVE my Vornado fan. So much so, that I’ve bought three. When the first one died, I ordered another online. Then it (the ultimate fan in question) began to act hinky so I ordered a third fan to replace it. Well, hinky guy straightened up after that so I just had two. That’s cool. Amazing fan.
Cut to now and hinky is acting up again. Replacement already has another use so I need to order another. That’s cool. I love my Vornado. So I hop over to Amazon (after comparing prices to Walmart because I’m trying to switch over to Walmart+ because FUCK AMAZON). I have ordered this fan twice before. I know. Thank you. But wait — 5 year warranty? How old is this one? Well, hinky is only 4 years old. Thank you order history.
I look them up and they are an American company and seem to be pretty good (I mean it’s a fucking amazing fan, so I’m not surprised). So I contact them about my fan, hinky. They’re like “That’s cool. Just cut the cord and send us picture evidence so we can ship you a new one.”
Wait what? I get a FREE fan? I was just about to pay $50 for one!
Well, I have other warranty things that have been bugging me too. So it’s warranty day, bitches.
Calphalon lifetime warranty? What does that cover? I watch a youtube where they replaced his so yeah — I’m filling a claim on this expensive ass pan. We were gifted two from our registry for our wedding (no idea how two were purchased from the registry). Well, I never opened one. It’s moved with us in its original packaging. It’s been my favorite pan for 12 years. But it’s finally just not at all non-stick anymore. So I broke out the old-newbie. Holy shit. This pan is amazing! I forgot how great this pan used to be. I’m filling a warranty claim! Back up your words, Calphalon!
Mailboss mail box. Lifetime warranty. Why does my $300 white mailbox look like such shit after a year and 2 months outside in a mild climate in near drought? Why you so rusty? Lifetime warranty? But warranty doesn’t cover rust and finishes. Well, I’m arguing this is a fucking defect in yalls paint. So I called and they asked me to send pictures. So I did.
Pictures of all three products were sent in today. I’ll let you know if I get replacements. I’m pretty positive on the Vornado because they already accepted the claim — I just needed to send evidence that I “destroyed” the old one by cutting the cord — literally. We shall see on the others.
I saw this advertised to me in my Facebook feed:
It’s a Hallmark Keepsake Power Cord.
Yes, I know it is a power cord to plug in Hallmark ornaments. However, this still made me laugh. I love the idea of a Hallmark Keepsake Power Cord. I love that it’s packaged like its own precious keepsake. I love the idea of a power cord being a keepsake.
We all have keepsake power cords. There’s a drawer, or more likely box, of cords somewhere in your house. Unless you’re really disorganized and they’re kind of just everywhere.
I actually have one adapter I keep just for nostalgia. It’s an audio out to cassette converter. Yeah, when iPods came out, a lot of cars still had cassette players. Also, iPods had audio out. So yes, I keep that because it’s funny. I used that. Then I got super fancy and bought an adapter that connected to the audio out and transmitted to an FM radio frequency. Yeah, WIRELESS! I don’t think those lasted long. But what a time to be alive. The 90s were awesome.
Related but also unrelated: last night I watched an explanation of why there are so many USB connectors. USB was supposed to be the one cord to rule them all. So why are there so many? USB A/B (plus their blue counterparts for USB 3.0). Mini USB A/B. On-the-go USB. Micro USB. Now USB C.
Then there are the unknown numbers of proprietary plugs USB was made to prevent. Plus all the various monitor cables we’ve had over the years! Parallel cables for old printers. I kinda want to make a shadowbox with all the different connectors. Maybe labeled like a specimen box. If you think I’m joking, you don’t know me. That cassette adapter deserves to be on display.
Maybe Hallmark needs to make a Keepsake Power Cord ornament. A ball of mixed cables. Or a box of them.
Amazon also had this in a Facebook ad later in the day:
Disposable bathtub liners. On the one hand, I have seen enough OCD people to know this has a market. Especially if they do a rented house or hotel room.
But doesn’t it kinda scream crime scene? Just me?
Before we get started, this post is two months late. In fact, I’ve already posted our 2024 Christmas Gingerbread House post (Click here). So that post is actually a lot more informative. I only realized I hadn’t posted this one when I went to reference it for that one. My bad! So I recommend you read that one first as it has lessons learned from this one that we implemented in the second build. However on this one, we went in blind. And it was a clusterfuck. It ended up fantastic — but this is a valuable lesson in just because someone looks awesome, doesn’t mean they’re better than you. They just covered their shit in a ton of icing.
Last year (2023), K2 and I kinda of upped our Christmas Gingerbread House game. We still used kits, but we leaned in more for the decorations. So this summer, K2 was talking about how she wanted to lean into the holidays this year. We decided to go custom for Christmas houses — make our own. I pointed out that we didn’t have to wait until Christmas, I’ve done a Halloween Kit before. So we decided to go for that shit.
We roped in K and ran with it. Now, Halloween is my favorite holiday. So rather than wait for Christmas, I went all in for Halloween. I can say (since that’s already been posted) that the Christmas build went better, but my Halloween house was much more elaborate. We had TONS of candy and we made templates. I went advanced. I wanted Adam’s Family vibes. But I made it on the fly without taping it together — so there were a lot of errors. You’ll see. Look at all that candy!
This is the same Gingerbread recipe we used for the Christmas House but was our first go. It was a mess. a sticky sticky mess. I can see that it’s a lot more wet here, that might have been a problem. It’s also a lot more brown because I dumped in some coco powder for color.
Perhaps due to the wetness, These pieces bubbled while cooking so we had to pull them out and roll them. They also bent and curled like crazy while drying. So watch this shit. You’ll see some serious fuckery in my pieces. Also, as I said on that other post — if you’re baking pieces that are touching — re-cut those lines halfway through because this shit is concrete.
So here you can see my finished pieces that had windows getting ready to go in. The windows are just broken up jolly ranchers. Like I said in the previous post, you do this AFTER the cookies are baked. The jolly ranchers melt fast and they’d burn long before the dough cooks.
I’ll also point out, I tried sugar-free jolly ranchers. I noticed they were made of isomalt which is what they use in all the fancy TV competitions. So I did most of mine in Sugar-free. I didn’t have enough though, so I did end up with some regular. Some things of note:
So the first bit of fuckery I want to point out you can see here. Look at the piece with three stories of windows. Look at how fucked up that texture is. That’s because we were trying to keep them from curling by putting pans on top of them and I forgot the parchment paper on top. So I had to scrape it off a pan halfway though baking. That’s never gonna go well. You can also see on the back piece that I’m holding up how wonky the lines are and that the bottom corner curls up. This led to a lot of gaps where pieces joined which required a lot of icing coverage. One of my roof tiles also curled insanely because noone was watching it while I was rotating in new stuff.
I wasn’t thrilled with the color of this gingerbread. So the next morning, I mixed up some violet royal icing and watered it down to a wash and washed all my pieces in purple. I LOVE IT. First, very Halloween. Second, the flaws and ugly spots where there are wrinkles and dents are now bright purple instead of dark holes! Because more icing settled in those areas. I fucking love this technique. That’s why I repeated it on the Christmas house. It was fucking perfect on this Halloween House.
In these next photos, you can see that the side to right in the Louie picture has the brighter regular jolly ranchers. See what I mean about them looking better? You can also see two full size roof pieces I made. Welp, remember how I never taped this thing together? Yeah, I had to saw on that and break it as best I could in half. Live and learn. You can also see the fuck ton of small pieces to make my porch and stairs. You know what I did on the Christmas Gingerbread house? I made the fucking stairs with caramels and iced over them. LOOK HOW MUCH WORK THAT SAVED. You can also see how curled some of my pieces are. That’s where two batches of black icing will come in later. You can also see that lovely fucked up piece I scrapped off a pan.
This house was turning into such a fucking disaster that I don’t have many in-progress shots. I do have this one I want to share though to show the level of fuckery we are talking about.
There are a few things to see here:
One more cluster fuck that almost didn’t see the light of day. I found an adorable Nightmare Before Christmas themed house online and they made the roof look like metal sheeting. I wanted to do that! I wanted to have a swirl of burgundy and black. To get their texture, they used a tile grout tool dragged over the royal icing poured out. Well, I guess my royal icing was too watery? Because there was no way mine was going to hold a shape that sharp. I also didn’t have that tool, so I decided to wing it with a fork!
Well, it wasn’t going to hold the fork texture either so for over an hour, I had to keep stroking it horizontally to get the ridges. Do you see my color swirls? No? That’s because they were obliterated during this process. More and more every time I did it. Now it was just a really ugly ass color. UGH. We will wait.
By the next morning, it had not solidified like the lady on the internet promised it would. So I popped it in the oven on a super low heat. This might be what cause the next problem. It was a very fragile honeycomb crumbly texture. So crumbly. It was impossible to cut my straight metal roof pieces (though I did try wit ha pizza cutter). So I just salvaged what pieces I tried to cut that didn’t shatter 100%. I had those laid out on three pans and hoped I had enough. Then I started shingling the roof with the pieces I had in some kind of manner. It was so so so bad. I almost just ripped it all off. Husband came down to see how I was doing and we discussed ripping it off because it looked so bad. And there wasn’t enough contrast with the purple siding. Also, the pieces were of very uneven thicknesses because some broke off the “back” bit — it was really weird. And the edge would just crumble if you thought about touching them. So I started outlining the bigger pieces in the purple icing to keep them from crumbling. Ran out, eventually switched to black.
Even then it was a hot mess of crumbling icing. But the black was at least making it pop a bit more. So I leaned in and started outlining the cracks that were forming. I outlined over the divots that were missing. I outlined around every piece to keep the edges protected (and together). I was kinda salvaging it! I placed big pieces over areas I had filled in with crumbled bits and just outlined around the new ones. It was not anything close to my aim, but I was achieving “decrepit” roof! I worked out for me! Triumph over adversity!
I also used a fuck ton of black icing covering all of the joins. Notice that in some areas, that black icing is REAL THICK. If you would like to look at the front of the tower, you will see how the right side of the tower has black icing three times thicker than the left. Well, it matters which pieces are back to back when assembling and that right join was wide on the front and the left was wide on the side. Fuck me! So when I iced the joins, my windows and door were so far off center it was comical. Like maybe this is why my second story window was covered? Kidding, that was its own fuckup. Welp. I guess we’ll just go with… more black icing? It worked for the roof. So um yeah… Just a really thick line of icing to make them look centered! SWEET! Yeah, I used two full batches of black icing on this house. That’s how much shit is filled in with black icing.
Now, another hot mess was that side I had to scrape off a baking pan. The gnarly bent one with all the deep divots and valleys. How the fuck was I supposed to fix that? Guys, I guess we’re doing a vine.
Yes, a vine climbing up the house that conveniently crosses all of those areas. Ooooo, what it it’s even all up on the third story roof! Like those vines that grow on my own house that grow into the gutters if I let them grow unchecked for too long. YEAH. I guess it would kind cover like the corner of the house ’cause I can’t have all this vine on the side and none on the back. And making it look “rooted” in that corner will let me cover that massive 1-inch+ gap at the bottom where the back and side join. WIN!
So you see? This house is fucking epic. It’s way “better” than my Christmas Church! I mean, “better” is in quotation marks because build-wise, this is a cluster fuck. Looks-wise though. I’m good. This is the shit. I am so fucking proud of this house. I’m almost even more proud because of how fucked up it was at points (hence there being no photos of those points). It was so bad, I wanted to scrap it. But I continued on. And it came out amazing! And some of the best bits – the crazy roof, the vine, the circle window -were never intended — they were just damage control! None of that was in my vision for this house at all. Even the heavy black icing covering gaps just makes it very gothic and Halloween.
Lastly, a few details. Lots of pumpkins! I wanted a porch with stairs just so I could put pumpkins on them. The pumpkins are Braches Pumpkins that were Moms favorite Halloween candy — plus some orange and green M&Ms for little and immature ones. I dyed shredded coconut green for the lawn. Look at my bat sprinkle door handles!
There were supposed to the three stairs but it ran out of room. Since I fucked up the stairs, I had to fix some size discrepancies with caramels sculpted like clay and iced over. Also, That’s how I came to the caramels-can-just-be-the-stairs in the next iteration.
Does anyone else think the windows look like gaping open muppet mouths? That was not intentional.
What? I totally use Honey. I mean, I haven’t been using it long — but I did fall for it and install it! It has come out that Honey is basically just a giant scam. Here’s where I’m getting my info. I first saw it here:
But he’s getting all his info from this guy that did the actual investigation. So I recommend you watch THIS video:
Basically, Honey only exists to steal affiliate links. And as a bonus, if shops partner with it — they can have Honey only display low coupon codes — even if you can google and get way better ones. It’s fucking everyone!
Oh damn, Paypal (who owns Honey), that’s DIRTY.
So basically if someone sells you on a product and you go buy it, they should get a little kickback for the commission. They were your sales-person so they get a commission. BUT, Honey is canceling them out and taking the full credit. Meaning Honey gets all of the commission and the original person who sold it to you gets nothing. But they’re also fucking YOU.
YOU downloaded Honey so you can stop googling for coupon codes. I did too! So now you’re not googling for sales codes anymore. Well, that’s a damn shame, because you’d be saving a lot of money if you were still doing that. If the store has partnered with Honey, they can have Honey control what you see. If you had googled, you might have found a good or better code (even if Honey shows nothing) — but the store doesn’t want you to see that coupon code so Honey doesn’t show it to you.
Even if the Honey window just pops up and says it has nothing, if you click it — THEY GET YOUR COMMISSION. Even if you don’t care about anyone getting a commission, do you wanna give it to PayPal? A percentage of almost every single purchase you make online? Just toss PayPal some of your money for free.
God forbid you were trying to support a business too — cause you could have given them your business, but now Honey is taking a commission on that sale.
HA. That’s so fucking shady.
Sooo… You’re gonna want to uninstall Honey and go back to looking for your own coupon codes. Go to settings > Extensions > My Extensions > UNINSTALL THAT SHIT.
That’s pretty damn epic. It only exists to steal money.
You know in Office Space where they just skimmed percentages of a penny off each transaction? Honey’s getting a LOT MORE than that! WHAT?
Low key kinda props for being that evil. That’s balls.
Let me get my popcorn and watch the epic fall of this company. I can’t believe all of the people who have been promoting this scam that’s been fucking them over the whole time. It’s using the people it’s fucking over to sell it! EPIC! Did Satan design this?
Do you just want a recipe? I mean this isn’t a recipe POST, but fuck it, click here to skip it all.
Last year, K2 and I did more elaborate gingerbread houses than usual. We stepped up our game. We still did kits, but we were more elaborate with decorations. Then, for Halloween, K2, K, and I went all in on Halloween houses. We made them FROM SCRATCH. I just went to grab you a link and I did not post it. I suck. Probably because deciding which pictures to use (meaning: not posting all 30 angles and combining some in photoshop) and writing it up takes a while. I’ve been working on this post for 3 days. But DAMN. That one was epic so it’s coming. I’ve looked at my media files three times to make sure but — nope, there’s no photos of that uploaded. WTF?
Anyway, so for Christmas, we REALLY wanted to step it up. I went all out on Halloween because that is my favorite. K and K2 just did regular house shapes. But I went ALL IN. We did it all from scratch and they were great. So we decided to do it again for Christmas, obviously. This time K and K2 upped their game and I’m reeling mine in a bit. I decided to simplify from the Halloween elaboration. I wanted to do a church with a steeple. Nice, but not the complexity of the Adams Family House. Plus I’ve done this before. Big house shape plus tiny house shape for steeple. Bam.
So here we go:
Since these are from scratch, we had one day scheduled just to get them baked. For the Halloween houses, we made three batches of dough but didn’t use it all up by far. So this time we started with three batches. I also died it brown to get some color. I had far fewer (so so so fewer) pieces to make on mine, but K and K2 scaled up a lot, so that wasn’t enough. So we made another two batches (we might have made a third too). Pretty sure K2 had to go to the store for more eggs, but we had no choice — no way were we gonna get close. We didn’t have brown dye left, so from there, the gingerbread pieces all had a very cool swirl effect as we combined batches. I liked it.
I think K2 came over at 4pm and I was done at 2am. Yeah. Lot of baking. I mean it took us a damn long time to get it all rolled and cut and spread all over my kitchen — but you can only fit so much on one cookie sheet and there’s only three racks in the oven. So yeah, my oven was going all night with me rotating stuff in and out. The key is a fuck ton of parchment paper and counter space.
We do paper templates and follow that for the pieces (I also keep the labeled templates to match up the pieces later when assembling). This “gingerbread” recipe has no fat in it so it doesn’t spread at all which is nice. It’s also basically concrete. It’s a pain to baby sit because it wants to curl as it cooks and dries, but it is solid as fuck. If you need to cut apart your pieces (if you have two pieces adjoining on the sheet), recut it halfway through baking because this is solid.
We learned some things from the Halloween Houses:
So here is 2am that night before I finally went to bed! My church is the greyish one on the island (I didn’t paint the roof pieces) and K and K2s are on the counter. I also meant to have a window on the front but there was a lot of cutting happening and it just got missed. Do you see all the pieces we made?
I “painted” the Halloween House purple and loved the results so much that I had to do this one as well. I always do an over-the-top red and green candy house for Christmas houses. So I wanted to go a bit more elegant this year. I wanted an icy blue-grey for the church. I nailed it, but when I was painting it, it felt like a huge fail. It was much darker than I wanted. This dough soaks up liquid like a desert so keep that in mind. And when it dried and the white sugar came through it was perfect.
This is basically just an extremely watered down royal icing that I paint on with a brush. The Halloween House had one or two layers and this has 3 or 4. What I adore about this finish is that it takes the ugly parts and makes them shine. The marbled lighter bits are the grooves and dents and cracks and imperfections. Since more icing settles in those places, it looks lighter/closer to the icing color when it dries. So it is a gorgeous way to keep the character of real baked pieces. The key is that it is a wash, not actual icing. You aren’t icing over the pieces, just washing them with a little bit of sugar (well, royal icing with a ton of water). It should be very drippy and painted on with a paint brush. You’re basting the gingerbread. It should soak into the gingerbread. I also loves that when it dries, there is a very subtle sparkle from the sugar crystals. I just adore this method.
If you’ve never done windows on gingerbread houses — you are missing out! They’re so easy! Throw in some battery powered LED lights while assembling and it’s fucking magic! You just cut them out when baking. They’re filled with melted hard candy. We used jolly ranchers. Separate by colors and bang them up a bit. They don’t have to be pulverized, but break them up a bit. Pretty sure any hard candy can work. butterscotches can do a nice cabin glow.
This is a minimum two day process since you have to bake everything. Day two is assembly and decorating. It’s easiest to decorate the sides before assembling. You have a nice flat surface to work on and stick stuff to.
I used black icing to outline my windows and do the stained glass lines. I used a darker grey/blue for decorating. I did a foundation of edible ball bearings (cake pearls?). I also did some swirls to add detail. Then, I assembled with hot glue and covered all my edges, joins, and caramel walls/stairs with the grey/blue icing. By this time, K2 was done with hers, so we have a photo of Louie watching me ice a roof edge.
After she left, I worked many more hours. Silver pearl things got added around some windows to brighten up the black and in a few details to sparkle. It was also looking a bit too generic and non-Christmas. So I made a wreath to glue on later and some garland on the windows. The green bits are sour gummies cut into pieces. The red bits are from a Christmas sprinkles pack we bought last year (save your candy from year to year — no one is eating this shit).
I needed another day to work on mine. I had assembled the church. It was iced. So Day Three, I started with trees. They are ice cream cones wrapped with sour gummy strips. Then I decided to tackle the roof. It is cinnamon toast crunch. It took 3+ hours. Louie watched TV with me though.
I decided that was a LOT of cereal roof visually, so I added some snow drifts of shredded coconut. I love them! Were they perfect? Hell no. But you know what? You can just pull off whole sections of cereal you fucked up with too many snow drifts and redo it and no one will ever know. You got a whole box of cereal.
To finish off Day Three, I used the rest of the white icing and covered a big area on my base and sprinkled it with the shredded coconut for snow.
BTW, our bases are cardboard wrapped in craft paper. We used doubled up boxes (so 4 layers of cardboard total). Put the boxes in different directions to each other so the creases for the flaps don’t’ line up. I wanted to use solid green wrapping paper but I couldn’t find any. Last Christmas, I used a green gift bag that had a glitter border and it was pretty awesome. I bet scrap fabric would work. Anything you have around to cover the cardboard.
Yeah, I needed another day to work on it. Day three was a work night so I couldn’t stay up late. Day four was mostly finishing touches. I glued the wreath on the front of the church with hot glue. I decided the back needed a wreath but I didn’t have any more circle shapes, so I glued a bunch of K2s parallelograms together and glued them to the house. It was fat and I glued it on before decorating so I thought it would be a disaster but I kinda love how huge it is. It took a ton of chopped up gummies to cover.
I topped all of the trees with extra sour gummie cuts to cover the ice cream cone tops. I made little gum drop tiny trees by the church doors topped with some of our star cutouts. I added “bushes” of gum drops. I really committed to that.
I used more of the red sprinkles to decorate the tree in front of the church. And two more star cookies of different sizes for the tree topper. That’s their grand Christmas tree. I couldn’t use the red icing because it just wasn’t red enough even though we used the entire jar of red color. There are some red M&Ms on the tree and wreaths too.
Then, as my final touch… I added a little gingerbread man sprinkle by one of the door trees. I like to think a little girl left her teddy bear there by the tree.
SHE’S DONE! Light her up!
Detail shots:
Front and back:
Side A and Side B:
Holy fuck, I am so damn proud of this one! EVERYONE LOOK AT MY CHURCH! The little star Christmas tree toppers! The trees! THE WINDOWS! Look at my snow drifts!
I like to really throw my all into some projects just so I can be proud of myself and show them off. Remind myself I still “got it.”
You know whats so weird? This “elegant” gingerbread house was far cheaper than a traditional one with all the candy. Sure, it takes longer because the details are all icing. But it required hardly any actual candy. Green gummies, green gummy strips, sprinkles and jolly ranchers (plus the cereal and coconut). Usually you have to have a huge host of different candies for variety. That means it’s actually a lot cheaper to make this fancy style.
This house is a bit of a throw back to the second real gingerbread house I made with my mom back when I live in a shitty apartment in college. We did a church with steeple then too. It also had the cinnamon toast crunch roof. It even had a hershys chocolate door too! So this pleases me greatly. Momma would love it and want to keep it forever.
Another throw back — the cat destruction. It was a well known “secret” that Jack would sneak onto the counter every night and lick the icing off the gingerbread house. It was hilarious seeing bald spots appear. He never did it in front of us. But every morning there would be missing icing spots or M&Ms with the colorful shell licked off. It was part of the tradition for me.
Well, I noticed the coconut around the Halloween house was disturbed a lot and I just prayed to GOD it wasn’t a mouse. I never saw Louie do it, but I did suspect he might be the culprit. Lo and behold it is him. Louie don’t give a fuck so he got right up on the counter and started eating it right in front of me. Little fucker! And I will 100% allow it because it’s tradition.
Modified with original credit to: The Craft Crib
Ingredients
Instructions
Modified with original credit to: Hanielas
If you want to skip the backstory and skip straight to why Chewy is AMAZING — click here.
Do you use Chewy? I don’t use it for everything and never thought I’d use it until Jack got sick. I just figured it was for the really eccentric pet people but it’s actually affordable. And they do free shipping over $50. I started using it when the Vet told me that Jack’s IV supplies would be far cheaper on Chewy.com than anywhere else. Yes, Chewy does pet prescriptions too (they can call your vet or you can upload the prescription).
SIDE NOTE: GoodRx works on pet medication as well.
When Jack was sick (kidney failure), I got all of his IV supplies and prescription food through Chewy. They’re pretty awesome. They sent him birthday cards. They run great sales. They donate to charity (right now, if you write to Chewy Claus, they might fulfill your wish and every letter received is 1lb of food and supplies donated to Greater Good Charities – up to 600,000lbs). So that’s how I came to shopping on Chewy.
Step in: Louie. When I adopted Louie, his bowels were FIERCE. It was like someone had chemical bombed our entire house — not exaggerating. Not just his poop — but he was just constant gas. Like just a little gas bomb and if he pooped you better hold your breath and run to clean it up ASAP. His abdomen was swollen. His poop was just bloody diarrhea. So I quested to get his stomach right (with the vets help and lots of prebiotics — which every new pet owner wants to shove down new pets throat). The vet wouldn’t make any food recommendations but I scoured the internet and tried to get as limited ingredient as possible. So he ended up with Open Farm Raw Mix Kibble and some Natural Wonders Limited Ingredient wet food for dinner. And we got him straight. WIN.
THEN, Natural Wonders stopped making that food. Not raised the price — they stopped making it! So I took to the internet. Lots of pet owners were angry and they all had the same problem — their spoiled pet won’t eat anything else! Did you know a cat can starve itself to death? Yeah, they’re that bitchy. Thankfully, Reddit to the rescue. Someone had found that their cat would now eat Weruva Mideast Feast. It’s not as limited ingredient — but still really good and it’s the damn whole chunks of real fish Louie wants (dude, skin on sometimes even — ew). So they don’t sale his kibble, but I went right back to chewy for this fancy wet food.
So I ordered two cases of wet food for Louie. Chewy runs great coupons every once-in-a-while to get a $30 gift card if you spend $100. So when this happens, I buy up two cases of food. Rinse and repeat. That’s right, over $100 worth of cat food. Fourty-eight individual 5.5oz metal cans.
A day or two later I get an email “Hi BIL! your Chewy order has shipped!” — WAIT, BIL? I open the email. Holy fuck me, I sent it to my BIL. He’s in my addresses because last year I sent him a hilarious dog costume for his dog. He doesn’t even HAVE A CAT. He’s also 12 hours away. Do you know how much two cases of cat food weighs? I bet you do because you can do the math — it’s a lot. Do you know how much shipping costs? It’s insane!
Side story on shipping costs — feel free to skip. So I mailed my BIL the adorable pawprint ornament we made last year that I finally painted. See this post. Also this post. And here’s a picture:
So I packed it in a bubble mailer and took it to the UPS Store. They wanted $14 to ship it. It weighs 3oz. It’s in a #1 size mailer — AKA, like the smallest one. You want how much? Now I know it’s the holiday season and they’re pissy and people are mean to them, but this guy was an ass. He said that’s pretty standard for shipping. I said, its tiny, weightless, and last time I shipped him something bigger it was $6. So he goes on a spill about how that’s a good cost. So I ask how much for USPS. He says $19. Are you fucking kidding me? So another worker hears and asks where it’s going. MICHIGAN, not Europe! He says that if it’s not giving him a choice to ship ground, it’s not a choice. So I just politely tell them “sorry I wasted your time” and take my shit back. I go to the USPS office to see if this $19 is the cheapest they can do shit it true. It’s not. It’s was $6 and change. Fuck you motherfuckers! Trying to rip people off cause it’s the holiday rush. (NOTE THIS: All of you who think that USPS is not vital public infrastructure and should be privatized). So what I saying, shipping even a tiny thing is expensive as fuck.
//End Side Story
So I’ve mailed my BIL over a hundred dollars worth of very expensive and heavy cat food. Well, just having him ship it to me isn’t an option because that would be at an insane cost. So I call Chewy immediately. Get a human right away, BTW. No stupid pressing 1 for whatever and 2 for whatever nope. It rang, I got a spill about this call may be recorded and then a very nice woman answered. I explain how stupid I am. She says, it just shipped, maybe it can be rerouted. So she enters a reroute into the system for FedEx and says to call back if that doesn’t work.
Well, fuck me because somehow Michigan gets next day shipping from Chewy. Must be awesome for yall. So I call them back. Same easy call — another lovely lady picks up. I explain my stupidity again. No problem, she says, we’ll ship out a replacement. Awesome! Can you send me a label for my BIL to return the first? Oh no, just donate it to a shelter or a vet.
What WHAT? You don’t want a hundred dollars worth of cat food back? ‘Cause Amazon just made me promise that I’d ship back my AA batteries if they end up arriving after the post office lost them or I’d be charged for both deliveries and that was $14 of generic batteries that won’t arrive for over a week even though I pay for free 2-day shipping.
It’s true. Look at that — they sent out two more cases for free that got here the very next day. Look!
What the fucking fuck? Chewy is just going to let us donate all that? When it was 100% my mistake and my fault for messing up the order? Like they did nothing wrong, but just give away a hundred dollars worth of product?
Holy fucking shit, there is a good corporation!? They donate to charity (even in THIS way — we can just give this food to whoever we want — BIL doesn’t have a cat). Helpful cheerful humans answer the phone immediately. They send out hand written and signed cards to your pets. Like, seriously, they have to employ multiple people to just write cards. I got a sympathy letter when Jack died. And did you know, they pick random pets and have their portraits painted to surprise people with? Yeah, so make sure you upload a photo of your pet to your profile. I’ve seen them, they’re adorable.
This company, Chewy.com, has become huge — and they still seem like you’re dealing with the sweetest old mom and pop store to ever exist.
I’m blown away.
I was going to keep using Chewy anyway, but good lord almighty, I’m preaching Chewy now! USE CHEWY! Use the code CHEER right now to get a $30 gift card if you spend $100 — plus free shipping over $50.
Look how happy Louie is with his wet food!
Thank you, Chewy, for being fucking amazing. I can’t believe good people still exist.
First, it’s like Christmas, so let’s jump to the end and then go back to the beginning. Here’s where we’re going: LOOK AT THIS MASTERPIECE!
Ok, so in the beginning, I had an interview. It went well. I was chatting with the interviewer about boardgames after we were done and she asked if I’d ever heard of Quacks of Quedlinburg. I had not. I wrote it down in my very professional interview portfolio to look up later.
I pulled it up on Board Game Geek to give it a glance. It had a long list of award nominations and finalist titles and a “few” wins:
Yes, those are just the awards it WON. Clearly she wasn’t over-hyping it. I also liked that it can be two player. I recently received a long-awaited Kickstarter game that we have yet to play because we need a minimum of 3 players. So 2 players — fucking-a! I immediately added it to my Amazon Wishlist. Along with a game organizer to go with it.
I’ve never had a Broken Token game organizer. I know the brand. I know it’s reputable. I’ve just always found them so… ugly. I love me a game organizer — game changer (literally!), but damn. However, I did look at the Amazon reviews and saw this photo of someone’s customization:
WAIT. Wait wait wait. These are supposed to be CUSTOMIZED? That’s why they’re ugly? Holy fuck! I don’t know if yall noticed my recent booknook fandom and the amazing Sherlock Holmes booknook I did (link). But I knew I had the skills to make this AWESOME. So that went on the list as well.
For my birthday, my wonderful husband got it for me! Woot! I love a craft project! So I dove in. I spent over a week on this. First, I stained the wood and assembled the boxes with glue. Then I hit a roadblock, which I knew was coming.
The Amazon Review photo had been done with stickers/paper. I did plenty of that in my booknook and that’s why I know we have an amazing black and white printer but a very shitty color printer. The resolution isn’t great and you can see the print lines. So just not gonna work. I could print and paint over it, but I’m not that good at painting small details — I have shaky hands.
So have you ever heard that overcoming obstacles makes a better product? Like in the first Deadpool movie. You know when Deadpool forgets his big bag of guns in the taxi? Well, that wasn’t just any old gag. There was supposed to be a huge scene there with all those weapons. But their budget got axed so they couldn’t afford that scene. So the amazing scene that ended up in the movie replaced it. That’s one example. They had to forgo all the FX budget and do a practical scene. This EPIC case I just made is another perfect example. I couldn’t just print my graphics, I had to make this shit for real.
Aside from the labels, I could do everything else practical. I know I have an excellent black ink printer so I ordered some clear sticky paper to do the typeface. I could paint under it and then just stick the type over my paint. Yay!
Remember when I talked about my nightmare Hobby Lobby trip? Well, during that trip, I looked for things I could use for this project. I really wanted some of those tiny brass label holders that you put on photo boxes. They did not have any. So I got metallic puff paint to make something up. I also found some cute tin corner details in the wood craft section for 99 cents (for the four pack)! Were they black? Yes. Irrelevant. Then I looked through all the charms and jewelry bits. I found a pack of six insanely tacky photo charms. They’re really cheap brassy gold and the fake “diamond” inlays and thin plastic. PERFECT.
So I snipped the charm loops off with some wire cutters and painted all that shit in enamel gold paint — going for a brass accent look. Then I used paint to fill in the center of the photo charms for each player color. In the final photos, you’ll see they look like cabochons. So funny story. I was going through my glue stash and found Mod Podge 3D in there that I had bought for some project and never used. I’m pretty sure I thought it was clear puff paint but it’s not! It’s a liquid to fill bottle caps or pendants to seal things in. What? So I filled up my cheap pendants and daymn — they look amazing! Yall these were six for like $6 and half off. I’m good.
I also picked up some earrings I had hoped to use on the ingredient drawers but they were too small. I ended up using one of them on the black book spine. A bat charm also makes an appearance — I TOTALLY already had that! Again, just snipped the loops off with wire cutters and painted them the brass color.
So at this point in the project, I had decor bits and boxes. I had decisions to make. Do I use the corners as true corners? They look kinda cool sideways. I gotta cover this ugly engraving work too. Do I want to do books like the one I saw? How could I do a potion shelf?
It was time for Photoshop. I love making decisions like this with photos so I can see the different options side by side. So I laid out all the boxes I had and put it in Photoshop. I used the clone tool to fill in some missing wood bits. I googled some playing cards to visualize where those would be in the finished product. And I took the Amazon Review guy’s labels to play with just for the visual. This is what I came up with:
Thankfully, the ingredient drawer fronts could be installed backwards so no worrying about that engraving. The flap in the middle (it flips up to reveal a shelf) could also be installed backwards. I was not so lucky with the other two compartments. I’d have to work something out to cover those.
The book compartment was the worst. That had to go. I couldn’t just paint books because it was engraved. Also, a bit of 3D wouldn’t kill anyone. So I made my book spines with sculpty clay! I used a earring on the black notebook. I modeled the fat green book after my own leather happy book where I have lots of Four-Leaf Clovers and cat foot-prints and even butterfly wings. I envision it being a similar book for herb identification. Oh and I totally had some glass skull beads for an upcoming booknook, so I tucked one of those guys in.
I’ve moved my crafting from the kitchen table to the living room for two reasons. One: I totally mess up the nice table every time I do stuff on there. Two: Louie gets really needy when I’m ignoring him. This way he can sit by me. Kills my back though.
I color matched the ingredients to the corresponding game tokens. I just used good old acrylic paint on the books and labels. You can see I printed out a fancy outline for my puff paint and to show me the rectangle to color in. I did not outline the squares with puff paint because, as you can see on the Rubies box in the final photos, I can’t do straight lines.
I had been hemming and hawing over what to do with the bottom compartment. I considered covering it in leather bias tape I had or maybe red felt? But It was looking very busy with all the colors. I wanted more wood to show so I decided to do a monogram. To cover the engraving, I cut an oval out of the sticky clear paper for the flat surface (all of this is Mod Podged so no worry about the adhesive strength). The Q is the same Q in the games logo. Does the puff paint work on that Q look shitty? Yeah. But I spent over an hour and like 50 Q-Tips trying to get it reasonable. I’m really proud of my puff paint filigree though.
I also had to add handles to the player token drawers. I didn’t install the wood ones so I could use my swanky cabochons. I did leave a small bit of the opening though so I could thread something through. I had thought maybe tassels. However, when I went to grab my skull bead, I realized I have Evil Eyes! How much fun would Evil Eyes be in my alchemy cabinet? So I grabbed those and the copper beads from the Sherlock Booknook and made some little pulls. I LOVE THEM. Holy fuck they’re fantastic!
I also used a lot of stain markers for clean up. More about that in the Lessons Learned section at the end.
So look! Here’s my alchemist cabinet! I am beyond thrilled with this! Can you believe I would have just printed off graphics if I had a good printer? What? This is AMAZING. I might store the game in its lid like this. Like just put the guide and player boards in the lid and slide this in over it and just put it on my game shelf like this. I think I will.
I learned a lot on this crafting journey. I’d like to pass some of that on to you.
I don’t like that the ingredient trays aren’t drawers. That sucks. The player tokens are drawers that slide in and out. The ingredient trays are just trays with a lip that slides about a centimeter into the frame. 1) this looks awkward when using the trays on the table to play because they have those stupid tabs on the sides. 2) I can’t use them as drawers like I want. I’d much prefer these had bottoms like the player token drawers.
It kind sucks that you can’t open the books compartment without removing the Fortune and Rubies tray. This is a super small complaint since you’d have to remove those for play anyway. But it also has the same stupid tab problem of the ingredient trays.
Since the box isn’t rigid and you gave us no drawer slides, the side with the ingredient trays can bow out slightly. This means the ones in the middle can come out of their tabs. Seriously, these should have been drawers. It would have fixed this too. There’s nothing holding that column to width anywhere but the very top and very bottom.
I like the swing out bottom compartment. That’s fun.
The ingredient trays need separators for the different values of the tokens. I’m going to add these with painted cardboard because I really do think you need those to play the game more efficiently. It would let you know at a glance if one item is out and also making grabbing what you want easier.
Husband and I actually gave this three plays on Sunday. Once in the afternoon and twice in the evening. We love it. It really is a good game! It’s fun! This picture is the last game where I was DESTROYED so ignore that. I did get 13 rat tails on that last turn though so fucking-a. I love the rat tail catch up mechanic!
There is a lot of luck here — but also a lot of resource management going on. It’s not coincidence husband won all three games. If the game was longer, you could even it out a bit. Only having 9 rounds means that the BEST your bag will get is 1/3 cherry bombs (8 cherry bombs plus assuming you bought 2 ingredients each of the previous 8 rounds). I wish we could buy more ingredients per round.
So far we’ve only played with the starter set of of books, so I’m sure there will be a lot of changes when we change the ingredient books up. Hawkmoth kinda sucks in only 2 player. I know it will be great in larger games though. It’s still a good game for two player! But Hawkmoth sucks for just two.
This is a great length of game for two players — just about 45 minutes.
Five Stars!
I’m going to make some customized player tokens to go around the score board. I’m cool with the wood discs for the rats and water drops though — don’t see any need to upgrade those. I’m actually going to buy insanely tiny glass vials with cork tops to make color-coded potions for each player!
I HAVE to get the Herbs and Witches expansion. Not too thrilled about the Alchemist expansion, but I really want that Herbs and Witches one. It has a better rating on BGG than the original game! I probably should have got the big box that just had the expansions. But then my organizer wouldn’t fit… so nevermind.
I might put the Evil Eye bead pulls on a nice string or ribbon instead of the seed beads. I’d like them to hang more freely.
I’m going to use cardboard to make separators inside the ingredient trays for the different chip values.
I want to get chip “sleeves.” – plastic to go around the cardboard. Would I ABSOFUCKINGLUTLY LOVE the BGG Geekup acrylic tokens? Fuck yes, I would! But that would be $42 for the base game plus $30 for the expansion. So damn.
I’d like nicer bags, but not any of the ones I’ve found for sale to go with the game. Does anyone sew? Like I like that the bags are black. I don’t want them to be color coded to the player. I want black. I think a nice black crushed velvet would be fucking sweet! With like a silky liner? Chef’s kiss! I wouldn’t mind the silky liner being matched to player color (maybe even the drawstring too). Or even them all having the same color liner on all of them– like maybe a grey? Or purple? They’d have to be the same size cause they gotta fit in my box. But yeah, I’d love a soft nice bag upgrade. But not in garish colors — I like the black bags. I might buy just some velvet bags later that aren’t intended specifically as an upgrade for this game.