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.
Trump is the the savior of TikTok! All praise Trump! The man who first suggested the ban himself when he was in office previously. Biden’s administration told them they didn’t have to shut down yet and there would be no penalties yet. TikTok said promises weren’t enough. Two days before Inauguration they go dark with a message about working with Trump. Day before the Inauguration, Trump’s promises are good enough to come back online. It’s all a stunt. There is nothing new under the sun.
From the Roman satirical poet Juvenal (c. 100 AD):
“Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”
Two impeachments, 30+ felonies. Give them TikTok and watch them dance.
Man, what a day! I guess I should say what a morning. But it was a morning, that’s for sure.
Husband and I usually work from home. I go in “as needed” and he’s been pretty much telework since Covid. It’s nice. We have separate offices so it’s really nice. We both hate our jobs — but working from home with good PTO is pretty hard to beat. Anyway, the point is, we’re almost always home. And BOTH of us being gone — hardly happens.
So this morning, husband had a presentation to give at work. Cool. So he’s in the shower and my alarm goes off and I’m ignoring it. I hear my work phone bringing with Teams messages. WTF? So I look at it’s a coworker asking if I can cover some testing today. Well, I really like working from home “as needed” and I didn’t have a legitimate reason to say no so… OK. When does it start? 9:00AM. It’s 8:53. I’m still in bed. (Core hours don’t start ’til 9 and I am not a morning person so don’t judge me). So I tell her I gotta shower and pack a lunch, let’s say 10:30. Ok. So husband gets out of shower and I hop in. He goes to work. Well… tries.
While I’m in the shower I hear the door open and close… and open and close… and open and close… again and again and again. And I want to tell him, dude go — I’ll fix it! But I’m in the shower. So he finally comes up and says the doors broken. Yeah, I heard — go go go. I’ll take care of it. So I hope out of the shower, get ready for work, and then head to the garage. I need to evaluate the problem. If I can fix it — great. It’s probably the laser being out of alignment. If it’s a spring causing resistance making it think its hitting something… well… then I can’t go in because I’ll have to call someone out. So I’m not even gonna pack my lunch yet.
It’s the laser. I see husband has removed all leaves and done everything he could. So I grab my garage door opener and go over to the laser and start tweaking it with my hand and bingo — it works. Problem: when I let go, it’s severely off. So far off that tweaking it won’t work. The problem is that the lowest bracket on this track isn’t attached to the wall. So now the track is twisted too far and the laser can’t line up. It hasn’t been a problem until now, but now we have a problem. It’s cool, I’ll just attach the bracket and adjust the laser. Good to go.
I do not have an self tapping masonry screws. Damn. Oh wait! The wall right next to this has a spigot (yes, inside the garage). I had attached a hose reel there but the hose was heavy and the reel was cheap so it broke. I ended up just ripping it off the wall so I didn’t have to look at it. So those screws were still there! AND my drill is charged! Jesus loves me so much! So I back out one of the screws and start to screw the bracket in.
Welp. The screw head is too small. Goes right through the bracket. Also, the screw isn’t actually grabbing on, it’s just kind drilling out. So even if it was big enough, the screw wouldn’t hold the track straight. Fuck. God hates me. So I send this picture to my coworker as my “doctors note” and ask for another 30 minutes.
It’s cool. I have a masonry anchor kit. I’ll use that. So I drill in for a medium anchor. Screw it in and… the screw head is too small. Goes right through. God hates me. But I have bigger anchors! God loves me. So I get the bigger drill bit out and it takes forever to get through this damn foundation concrete block. And… my drill dies. God, why do you hate me? BUT I HAVE TWO DRILLS! God loves me!
My drill bit is dull. I’m out of shape and my back hurts because there’s not a good angle here and I’m putting all my weight into trying to push the drill in. Finally get it deep enough… Anchor won’t go in all the way. Who cares if it works. Oh look, screw head still too small and goes right through the bracket. God hates me.
Do I have any washers? No. But I can make one. I can get some scrap wood and drill a hole in it and use a longer screw. Like and Amish washer. Yeah. So I start digging around the garage and find a bunch of plastic shims. I don’t know why they have holes, but this would work. They’re a bit small, but if I leave the sheet of 6 together, well that’ll do! I’m so smart. S_M_R_T. God loves me.
So I stick my sheet of shims on the screw and… the screw head is too small for the shim hole and goes right through the bracket and my shims. God hates me.
WHY? Why have you forsaken me? At this point, I’m touching spider webs. I’m on my knees in my good work clothes. (Yes, I’m wearing jeans, but they’re a nice dark wash and I have a nice shirt on — don’t judge me). My back hurts. I’m next to a rat trap. Fuck this goddamn door.
Bigger screw head… I need a bigger screw head… the original concrete self tap screw! It wasn’t grabbing, but now I have the anchor in there! So… It was hard going because the hole wasn’t wide enough. Damn my old out of shape back. I’ve also gotten up and down to fetch various shit all over the garage a ton by now. But… IT WORKS!
Jesus loves me! Though this did take 45 minutes of my day. But look at that crafty ghetto fix! I’m good!
Of course now I was late for the testing I was already going to be super late for. But I fixed it! And once I got to work, testing was super chill. Just witnessing testing which was all scripted so basically chatting all day with notes. But it was a full work day. Then I had to go to the store on my way home. Blarg.
I hope they don’t need me tomorrow. There’s no one on the schedule, but I can’t ask without being asked. If I say “Do you have coverage tomorrow?” I’ll get “can you do it?” If I say “Do you need me tomorrow?” I’ll get “are you available?” So I’m just going to be not doing it or caught off guard again. But at least the door works now.
Just so stupid that this happened on a day when both of us have to be at work — which hasn’t happened in months. Oh and I had been shipped a plant that sat i the 30 degree weather all day because I didn’t get home til 6PM.
WTF?
Oh and husband informed me that the second smaller garage door was open like 2 feet when he got home. Oops. I had retrieved the opener from the car and had it hooked to my belt while I was working on it to test it. Must have hit the wrong button once. My bad. This morning was a lot, OK?
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.
Not Related
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.
This is an update on my bedroom nook which just continues to get better and better. Our bedroom is huge so there’s plenty of room for a space like this. So I’m glad we created it. The living room has always kinda been my spot since husband hangs out in his office all the time. So before I had my office, we made the nook when my inlaws were coming for a visit and I was stressed about not having a private space.
We had bought new couches in 2019 so our old mismatched couches were in the garage. This one is actually my first piece of “real” furniture. Not that I’ve bought much real furniture still. It’s an Ashley couch I bought for my old apartment. When I got rid of the monkey couch and finally got something I liked! It’s like 15 years old so not the best shape, but still comfortable. And It sacrificed its back cushions to be pillows for the downstairs couches, but that just means that now it has actual bed pillows. Mom and I picked up the two (now one because the other is in my office) foot stools on clearance from Ollies, I think.
When the floor was being redone downstairs after The Washing Machine incident, I moved the guest room TV in here “temporarily.” I hate TVs in bedrooms and I just can’t sleep with one on. So I’m generally against them. However, this TV is in the nook and you can’t even watch it from the bed. So I have made an exception. This is because I hung the closet rod my husband very much dislikes for hanging plants. And now that those plants are taking off, I really enjoy sitting in my nook. On work nights, I retire to my nook to watch very chill relaxing TV before bed. (Right now it’s The Repair Shop, and I’m going to die when I run out of episodes so they are exclusively for nook watching).
Look how cozy and nice my nook is!
Getting Crafty for a TV Tray
So that brings me to my latest craft project. I like to have a drink AT ALL TIMES. So I take my water up there. I have my legs out on the couch so I would like to use the foot stool to set my drink on. However, the footstool is padded and my drink falls over. So I grabbed the nearest small flat thing and have been using it as a tiny drink tray. My “Stand By Me” frame/word-art/thing. I bought a fuck ton of these musical word-art things from Hobby Lobby on clearance for less than a dollar each ages ago. Before Covid. The before-times. I’ve done stained glass mosaics on five (including the Mario Kart items in the bathroom). I’ve still got a few in the garage. I chose to keep one of the “Stand By Me” ones because I love that some. Specifically, the Ben E King version. Great song.
So it worked great, but looked like shit and I was abusing my Stand By Me art that was in my nook cause I like it. Well, I finally got around to redoing one of the others. Meet my new drink tray:
Isn’t it adorable? I think this one said “Rock and Roll.” I painted it gloss black but the inside and “front” (now bottom) needed covering due to damage to the paper. So I modpodged some contact paper in there. Then, I thought, I could add handles! But the only handles I had were oil rubbed bronze so that didn’t work. However, remember when I did the downstairs hall and added handles and knobs? And then I had extra knobs so I replaced the cheap silver knobs on the bathroom vanity with oil rubbed bronze ones to match everything else? Well, look where those silver knobs are now!
My drink, remote, and snack tray is so cute!
String of Bananas Update
One of my nook plants is my String of Bananas (Curio Radicans). I’ve mentioned it before. It was a little 2-inch guy that I bought for the dining room tables terrarium. It outgrew that so I stuck it in a hanging pot (picture 1). Then it outgrew that pot so I had to put it in a bigger one. I had to untangle it (picture 2) and I trimmed it into 2-foot sections for rooting back into the pot (picture 3). That’s where I left off last.
Well, the plant was healthy as fuck and well over 90% of the cuttings took and started growing like crazy. But these “Sting-Of” plants look so “limp.” I want to say lifeless because they just hang there like they’re dying. Of course they are not. Its thriving. There’s just no volume. I have no desire to plant a second plant in the pot though. So I had been thinking of ways to beef up the top. A Styrofoam ball? A plant frog? I even asked at the plant nursery for suggestions. I looked into metal topiary forms but those are expensive. Then I saw the really ugly ass cheap Chinese plastic topiary balls that are far from expensive. In fact, I could get a mixed set of 4 sizes for under 10 bucks from Walmart. Hello Walmart+ membership. Yes, please.
So I used half a “ball.” I just plopped it right on top of the string of bananas and brought up the “strings” and gave them a few wraps to hide the ugly ass form and draped them back down (picture 4). This pleased me greatly. Today it’s looking like picture 5. I actually like this thing now. I hated it for so long. I fixed it!
When it gets too long, I’ll trim it again and reroot the cutting back at the top. Rinse and repeat. I mean, I don’t want to jinx it, but I don’t think I can kill this thing. It just really wants to live. After all the cutting and rerooting it’s so much thicker than that rat tail in picture 2, Now it’s got a bit of volume thanks to the topiary ball. There’s even new shoots growing out of the ball and it’s curling all around the bottom with new growth.
Look at my Air Plant
I got this air plant at the craft show (Christmas 2024 NEACA) and I have been kicking myself for not buying more since that evening. He had an ungodly amount of air plants. Like that’s this guys specialty. Loose ones mainly but also terrariums and various hanging ones like this. Also some cool art pieces that were on lava rock or drift wood. And they were CHEAP. He had a huge bush one that was like 15 years old for $75 — he pointed out that if he cut off all the pups and sold them at $5 a piece, it would net him a much bigger profit. And he had crazy exotic ones I’ve never seen before.
The hanging ones were all the standard air plant you see everywhere. So I looked through his collection (all with their scientific names and pictures of them in full bloom). I asked if he could put one of these on a hanging loop. He said for an extra $2. So yeah, I got this cool plant for $7! That boutique plant store on Governors charges like $25 for just the big pups! He told me all about caring for it and tips and tricks and sends everyone home with a sheet detailing how to water and fertilize them and get them to bloom.
I can’t believe I only bought one! Dammit. He had at least 20 varieties and some were even in bloom. I chose the crazy wobbly alien one, of course.
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.
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:
Sugar-free is far more expensive.
Sugar-free dries solid. The regular jolly ranchers always feel a little sticky to the touch. They can also drip if you put icing directly on them (as seen in a few of my Christmas House windows).
The regular jolly ranchers are more translucent and bright. The color is so much more vibrant and they light up better. Add on the cheaper price and fuck sugar-free.
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:
Look how I wedged a piece of gingerbread in that side gap LOL
The first floor roof covers my already decorated windows.
Also, if I keep the bottom roof line for the porch, my door will be covered. So I’m going to have to raise it for the porch which will cover part of that already decorated window too. Whatever. Choices had to be made.
Most obviously, what the fuck happened to my second story windows? Why is one half covered? This is what happens when you just make a template on the fly.
I’m just going to have to ice over it. I’ll scrape off the candy and iced edges and cover it in icing. Like a FUCK TON of icing to level it up and block the light.
This is why the purple icing on this (and mimicked on the side tops) has that texture. There was so much icing that it kept slipping down and I kept pushing it back up. Well, as it dried, it cracked. So I leaned into the “texture” it was creating.
It looked really bad with just a really short window — so I MADE IT A CIRCLE WINDOW! Genius. See how epic disasters can work for you?
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.
OK, so it’s the last 10 days in pictures, technically. I’m behind in life. But look, I did finally get rid of my pumpkins before Christmas Day! I had been putting it off because I didn’t want to put them in the compost with all their seeds intact and that meant slimy labor. Then I gave up and said fuck it, I’ll just toss them out.
So I grab my garden wagon to start tossing. When I pick this one up, it’s hollowed out! A kind squirrel took care of all the seeds for me! I had noticed a few tiny spots that I thought were mold. Turns out they were holes where our little friend was scraping the surface. How funny! Why would he eat it from the bottom like this? I had a few in the patch where they just ate the outer bits. So this big guy and three small hollowed out ones were saved for the compost. Thank you, animal friends.
Also, this week. I opened a new pan. After over twelve years of storing it. That’s right. I was gifted two of these for my wedding. Was I going to send one back? Fuck no. I knew this day would come. When I would want a NEW pan. And it is GLORIOUS. Aint nothing gonna stick to this. It’s so clean and grey and pretty. I love pan.
It was a super slow week at work with the holiday coming up. Engineers just take December off. So those of us left in office are kinda stuck. One lunch break, I labeled my art supplies! It sounds silly but it is not. My art supplies are organized in my dining room buffet. Things are all stored together in these reused monthly subscription boxes. Like these boxes were too good to trash, so I kept them. Then I started storing art supplies in them. Then they all ended up in the buffet but I always forget which is which.
Well, I did some resin art which means I needed a new box: “Resin.” So I shifted a few boxes around for size efficiency. While I was at it, I used LABELS. I wrote down what was in them. Look how organized I am! Louie totally helped.
Finally, today, I turned my compost. I’m so glad I went with the three bin system. I bought a corkscrew aerator and it works fine — but you can’t really stir with it. And the outer bits get dry and need to be cycled into the center. It’s so much quicker and easier to flip everything into the neighbor bin with a hay fork. Glad I did my research! The last bin currently holds dry leaves since I don’t need three yet.
Theoretically, I would have emptied out all of my pots into that bin for dirt storage already. I’m behind, OK?
I think when I stated my compost I used far too many “browns.” We’ve also had so little rain that it hasn’t stayed wet. And, hay sucks. It was pretty much hydrophobic for weeks. I’m not putting anymore hay in there. It’s the only thing not breaking down. I put a whole bag of cardboard in here and there isn’t a trace of it. Still every bit of hay in there.
At this point, I just used my aerator to mix things around. Then, dig out a hole in the middle. Then I dump my new compost in and cover it up. But I’ve flipped it a few times. This time there was a huge earthworm in there so that’s a great sign.
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?
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:
Day 1: The Bakening
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:
1) This shit is so solid it does not need to be as thick as you think to be sturdy. When I tossed my Halloween house in the trash, I tried to break it apart and was unsuccessful. So I just tipped it off my counter into a bag. It hit the floor tower roof first and didn’t crack. SOLID.
2) Cutting windows by hand sucks. My house Halloween house had a lot of windows. Cutting them out by hand sucked a lot. So this time, I bought a bunch of geometric shape cutters. Oh my lord, thank you. Clean, perfect cuts. I combined the tear drop and rectangle for gothic windows on mine. Circle and rectangle for arched windows on Ks. We did big and small combos for wreath shapes. K2 went fucking nuts with circles for snowmen and stars and diamond/parallelograms. Just yes, buy cookie cutters.
3) Royal Icing is also concrete. We do hot-glue our houses together (cause aint nobody eating this shit). You only need to glue to hold it until the icing dries. So this time I only used a bit of glue because the icing is going to do all the holding – as evidenced by my trashing of the Halloween House.
4) Caramels can be structural. My Halloween house had a fuck ton of pieces because I did a porch with stairs. I had to use caramels to fix the sides of the stairs and it occurred to me that I could have just used caramels for the stairs. It’s basically clay. It won’t hold up on its own — but you only need it to hold up until your icing dries it solid. So THIS TIME, my stairs are totally caramels. In FACT, we forgot to cut two sides for me front off-shoot so I used caramels. (One got cut, but somehow not a second one.) That’s why I had to ice over those walls when I assembled it.
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.
Making Windows
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.
Cut the windows out and then bake.
After the ginger bread is done (cool or hot, doesn’t matter), put it on baking paper and fill the holes with candy. Put a lot in there. When it melts it will lose a lot of the volume of the bits you just sprinkled in plus some might seep around the window on the back side. Do NOT do this with the raw dough. The candy will melt very fast and will burn long before your dough finishes cooking. Do this with finished cookie pieces only.
To get the stained glass effect seen here, clump colors together in piles. Watch it because it won’t take long to melt. Once they are a uniform puddle with no lines between colors, pull them out and let cool before removing from the pan. If you are quick, you could swirl the colors with a toothpick before they cool.
NOTE: White sugar will not even come close to melting before the candy, they don’t work together.
Day 2: Decorating and Assembling
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).
Day 3: Roofing
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.
Day 4: The Finishing
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.
Sentimental Throw Backs
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.
1/2 C corn syrup (the recipe says honey, you could use molasses. Corn syrup is cheapest)
1 TBS warm water
4 eggs
(Fuck spices, no one’s eating this)
6 C flour
Optional: Food coloring if you want that gingerbread look you would have gotten from the molasses, spices, and brown sugar. This is gonna be sugar cookie pale so maybe add some brown food coloring if that’s your thing. On this Christmas house bake, we did add all my brown to the first batch. Then we made more and didn’t have food coloring so we just combined them and got an awesome swirl effect.
Instructions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
Bake that shit until it’s dry. I’ve done it twice and it varied a lot. Just make sure it’s dry but don’t over cook it.
BABYSIT IT — this might bubble and it certainly likes to curl. We’ve used it twice and it varied so much.
The original recipe says: Bake the pieces at 325 degrees F for 15-20 minutes, rolling the dough once after 10 minutes. I don’t know if we used too much water, but this took a LOT longer. Just look and tap it. If it’s shiny and soft, it’s not done. I actually flipped these pieces so they’d just hurry up and cook. Maybe I just cooked them too long? No one’s eating it, it’s fine.
The original recipe also says to put a pan on it while it cools to prevent curling. Probably not a bad idea. IT CURLS. Babysit it.
1/2 tsp cream of tartar (no, I do not measure this shit. I’ve also forgot it in some colors and didn’t notice a difference. I just sprinkle it in there. It’s cheap)
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.
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.
Now you’re all caught up.
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.
