Cinnamold

There is basically nothing left that you need to buy anymore. Thanks to Pinterest, you can hop onto the internet and create your own shampoo, dog food, ugly sweaters, cake pops, laundry detergent, toilet paper. And it will not even cost you three times as much as the products shipped over from China and available at seventeen of your closest stores.

I googled “how to make your house smell like cinnamon.” If only the post I am writing would have come up first, then I would have bought the Made from China cinnamon pine cones sold at a craft store near me for $5 a bag.

Instead, I boiled some cinnamon sticks in water for a few hours, dipped some pine cones into the cinnawater (after removing from the stove first), and let them dry on a rack before placing them in a pretty green bowl. (I even baked the pine cones in the oven first, just as Pinterest told me to.)

Moldy pinecones make a great holiday gift…for the neighbor who hosts the 3 a.m. parties; the boss who makes you work too much overtime; or that guy who just cut you off in traffic and then had the audacity to give YOU a dirty look like it was YOUR fault YOU got cut off in traffic. … What was I saying?

On Saturday, I decided that the pine cones were just not cinnamony enough, so I set about another batch of boiling cinnamon sticks. Just before I rolled the pine cones in the cinnamon water again, I noticed something. Namely, mold.

Pinterest did not warn me about the mold. I’m no scientist, but someone (Ben) tells me that bathing pine cones in moisture is one of the easiest ways to grow mold. The pine cones need to be sealed with something after the cinnamon oil unless you are TRYING to grow mold.

Next time, I’ll go the cheaper and healthier route. I’ll just buy the cones. My mother would cry if she knew I was considering spending hard-earned childhood pine cone-collecting money to buy more pine cones. But such is life.

• Cinnamon sticks $5
• Water: $0
• Pine cones: $Free from Northwoods in-laws
• Subtotal: Mold with a side of disgust

Cinnamon cones at craft store:

• $5, made in China, no hassle

Today Pinterest is teaching me to make cake pop frosting. Surely THIS won’t be a disaster.

My Beautiful Baby Pine Tree

I’m a winner!

Not of a marathon or a prize fight or an exemplary employee recognition, but something equally great:

A homemade puzzle frame which will eventually feature a picture of my kiddos putting together a jigsaw, and a surprise bonus of a cartoon version of me!

I won fellow blogger Coffee Powered Mom’s crafty giveaway! Check out her blog: I think today it was powered by about seventeen cups of coffee and a babysitting dilemma. (Wait, no, it is me who was powered by about seventeen cups of coffee. My bad.)

The last time I won a contest was in 1986. I was eight years old (don’t do the math), and I wrote a poem about a tree. I was called to the principal’s office and was awarded a sapling. I brought it home and showed my mother my beautiful new baby pine tree, which she eyed with disgust before dumping it in a garbage can. (Our yard was full of pine trees, and my blind mother was constantly battling with those cones.)

So the tree went to the dump, but my parents bought me a replacement tree: a tree of my choice. I picked an orange tree and I named her Valerie. I don’t remember eating a single one of Valerie’s oranges. But I was proud that she was mine, and that I won her.

The poem doesn’t exist anymore, but I think it went something like this:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a pine tree

Maybe not. My eight-year-old poetry was probably much, much worse.

It was also the only time I was ever called to the principal’s office for any good reason.

Thank you to Coffee Powered Mom for making me feel like a winner again!