8th Annual Trash Pick

It was another gorgeous day. Due to multiple kid activities, I was only able to go pick for about two hours. Enough time to fill the minivan, not enough stuff to cause a divorce. Success!

So, I don't think I've mentioned this before, and I'm not usually one of those wacky "energy in the universe goes where it is called" (or whatever. I can't even fake this.) but every year I think of a few things I'd like to find, and I'm generally pretty happy with how it turns out. One year it was benches. I got several. This year I went with picture frames, large planters, and limestone slabs for the garden. Hey, two outta three. I'll take it.

Not shown: items for possible entries for the annual book club white elephant gift (and ooooh I got some doozies), ugly ornaments for that party, and two very nice hardback books that I gave my dad. They looked unread, marked as $35 each. One was Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The other one was Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham.

Oh, I also re-curbed a whole box of Easter decorations that I decided I didn't want after all. They were gone within the hour.

I stopped by my friend's house. She couldn't come with this year. Due to kid activities, what a coincidence. These are the items I wanted to leave on her porch as a surprise, but darn it, she was home. Beautiful objects d'art and some 3 lb weights (little joke from last year).

Three planters. The turquoise one is pottery, but the others are plastic.

Giant pile of cloth diapers. Now, I know it's treading the line on what's socially acceptable to trash pick. They were clean and ready to sell! There were 24 in the bag, along with extra inserts and 2.5 packages of disposable diapers. What kind of world do we live in where it's acceptable to throw out cloth diapers? Shame on you, person who couldn't be bothered to Freecycle them.

Cool wooden cabinet, wooden Easter musical box (works!) and hand towels, 1.5 boxes of small canning jars, a smiley face mug, a cool light fixture cover, and two Christmas ornaments.

A piglet, a couple books, a couple plates, two hanging vases, a lazy susan, and two cool Christmas plaques. 

To think on the way to trash picking I was going to buy a picture frame! It is to laugh. That whole box is full of frames. All with actual family photos. Extra style points to the freaks posing with guns. Crystal candle holder in the front.

Two nice jars, two pool cues, some cloth napkins, a book, a decorative plate, a vase, a tabletop fountain that sort of works. Needs a little work.

Some fabric I want to do crafts with, three new holiday pillows that I will use as inserts to more attractive covers, and Ye Olde Holiday Ribbon. I haven't bought gift wrap in years.

Two more books, a buttload of Christmas crap. Some hidden because there may be an Ugly Ornament winner in my future after all. Holiday hand towels.

And since I didn't have a real friend to pick with this year, I found one and installed him permanently on my dash. Please give a warm welcome to Froggy Dash. He's my buddy.

Easter Baskets for Older Kids

Continuing in the theme of "oh, yeah, that happened a bit ago," here's what our Easter egg hunt looked like this year.

The kids are now 13.5 and 11.75 years old. Roughly. Nea asked whether we were having an egg hunt this year, which was a reasonable question, as we have been out of town for at least the last 3 Easters. It’s been awhile. I wanted to mix it up a little, since they aren’t quite as excited about candy as they were a few years ago. Boo has braces, so that also complicates sugar consumption.

So I cut out 11 pink paper squares and 11 yellow. Put those in 22 of the eggs. Filled the rest of the eggs with some candy. It was pretty wet out, so we hid the eggs in the house. Oma and Opa helped. Boy, Opa wanted to make finding the eggs super difficult!

Once they found the important clue eggs, they had to unscramble the letters to find their Easter baskets.

If you want a little brain teaser, these were the two sets of clues. (answers at bottom of post)

A B E I I L M N N U V

A D L M N O O R R U Y

Oddly, Boo had a bit of trouble finding hers (pink clues). I didn’t think that part would be particularly challenging. It was under a reusable grocery bag in the back.

This is Nea’s basket. A wrapped present from a local boutique (beaded bracelet, seen in second photo), a giant jar of capers, a book, self-sealing water balloons (sort of a gift for me, frankly, knowwhatImean, fellow parents?!), and gum. She’s been eating the capers as a snack, in a bowl with a spoon. As one does.

Boo’s basket had seaweed snacks, a trashy magazine, facial wipes, running shorts (wrapped, shown separately), and gum. 

[answers to the word scramble]

Ugly Ornament Party - 2015

Oh, how we love ugly ornaments! Oh, how difficult it is (much more than you might think) to find a real contender! Sure, the stores are full of normal ugly, but the truly awful are very rare. I would know, because I look for them all year. You'd think garage sales would be full of them. But no.

Updated to add a link to this related Cracked article. I don't care what anyone says: I sort of like #3.



Here's what I brought to the table: Christmas Herpes. So named because, as we know, "Glitter is the herpes of the crafting world." I trashpicked it, naturally, so no backstory on why anyone would glue a bunch of pine cones together and then cover it in holographic glitter. What the photo doesn't show is how heavy this monstrosity is. Truly a fail. Extra points for also, again, failing to be ugly enough to garner very many votes. I'll never win my own party, sniff sniff.

For the others, let's go in reverse order. First, some bad honorable mentions: Little Drummer Boy and Leder-HORSE-n (obviously pandering to the German unicorn vote, that one).



We can all agree, no?, that they are unfortunate. But not bad enough, sorry. 

Next, the one I voted for. I love it! It's "A Very Troll-y Christmas." I believe there's some sort of troll movie coming out, so points for relevance. Also, it's a nice riff on the Easter Egg craft thing, as it's the same shape as those traditional sugary Easter delights. It only lost by a vote or two. 



And lastly, the winner, which is worse in person than what you see here, aptly named "Orange You Glad This isn't Your Ornament?" It's half a painted coconut with weird seed pods stuck on it. Except the one on top apparently wasn't glued enough, as it didn't make it to my house.



And there you have it. Another ugly ornament party in the record books. Hope you enjoyed this installment of "oh, yeah, I have a blog, oops, forgot."


We're just going to move forward and ignore the fact that this update is super late, kthanksbye.