one of my pinterest boards is titled, ‘I wish I was crafty’ and it is filled with projects I like and in reality, that I wish I had both time and funds to pursue.  I walk through the aisles of Jo-Ann or Michaels with Z and say things like, ‘that’d be fun to do’ and he realistically (or aggravatingingly) says, ‘ do you really?’ or ‘when would you do that?’  In reality I am usually in those places pick up items for our children’s programs at work.  Most of my craftiness is spent on meal planning and creative cookery.  This summer I began pickling and jamming and I recently did pick up the most charming hand carved stamp to use in labelling my jars.  Looking forward to that day it actually comes out of my craft suitcase[ref]yellow hardsided suitcase that was my maternal grandmothers and is filled with the ephemera of packaging like ribbons, tissue paper, wooden fruit boxes, cellophane bags and bakers twine[/ref].  One of the first will be called ‘love me some spicy jalapenos’ as named by my husbands boss for my home pickled jalapenos.  I also purchased a can of bronze spray paint yesterday in order to channel my inner Banksy[ref]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy[/ref] -or to try my hand at changing the look of a Ugandan basket picked up from my shop at work.

The baking?  Well, I have made it my mantra to say I don’t bake, but in reality, I don’t bake often.  I can do it but never just love the results and don’t really want to eat the whole of whatever it is and am not usually proud enough of said thing to bring it in to work.  I have noticed that lots of my pins tend toward baked goods and a couple weeks ago I went ahead and made apple toffee blondies.  Ridiculously full of butter, brown sugar, diced apple and toffee bits, Z promptly renamed them ‘bogey bars‘ for the little soft apple chunks inside – it didn’t seem to stop him from eating them.  They were super sweet and I only used half the frosting that the recipe made which was still more than enough for us.  I also took a good chunk of the pan in to the office.  It was the right thing to do.