DIY? NFW!

Back when I was in my early 20s, I was in a craft club. My lovely, creative friend (who now writes the very entertaining Unfrump My Mom), aptly named it Glues & Booze. Each month, we’d get together to create objects that would make Martha swoon. Well, many of the women did. Not me. No, from the very beginning, I was in the remedial group. Of one.

My projects just didn’t look like everyone else’s. They looked like a preschooler had busted out of her toddler bed for the night — with something extra special in her sippy cup.

I vividly remember one of our most amazing projects… We each decorated a square to make a quilt for our first friend in the club to be having a baby. Head down, hard at work, I made my sweet little square. When I showed it to the group, there was no amount of booze that could have made the quizzical looks on their faces unclear. It was…well, terrible.

Don’t get me wrong, I love beauty, ideas, creativity. But I’m simply not able to execute. (Ok, ok, I have itty-bitty crafty moments, but even then, I’m terrible at photographing them.)

This really shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t. But somehow, as a blogger, it feels like it does. My uber-talented colleagues on Disney Baby have average moms around the world clicking, sharing, and reaching for their extraordinary level of perfection. Pinterest has exploded and offers the promise of new readers — if only you can demonstrate how to make your baby’s 1st birthday dress out of homegrown organic food scraps in three easy steps.

When did everything that’s so utterly complicated get classified as simple?

Well, I’m simply not having it. That’s right. Like my friend, Suzannah Scully, I will not let Pinterest make me feel bad about myself. In fact, I’ll do my best to laugh in the face of a pin-worthy challenge like my friend Wendy, of Tales from the Motherhood.

Because goodness knows, life is complicated enough. The last thing I need is another hive-inducing trip to the craft store (which somehow turns my little angels into frightening creatures who would make Godzilla swoon). I’ll stick with challenging myself to blowdry my hair once a week. (And some weeks, some weeks, I may even attain that goal!)

Yep, I’m replacing those three little letters that scream things like “creativity”, “simplicity”, and “good mom/blogger”. My letters, they stand for “empowerment”, “reality”, and “time to enjoy my children”.

DIY? NFW!*

*In case acronyms — further proof of complicating things by simplifying them — aren’t your thing, DIY stands for Do It Yourself. NFW stands for No Felt-Crafted-Baby-Bootie Way. (Or something like that.)

Photo credit: morgueFile.com.