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.

Perfectly Pomanderous

I don’t know what inspired me to google the words “how to make your house smell like cinnamon,” but there are seemingly only two answers:

– A complicated recipe of simmering or boiling various items of dubious availability on a long-term basis

– Making a pomander

Obviously, I needed to make a pomander.

Unlike me, most everybody knows what a promenade is. It’s medieval or renaissancian or crusadish. I think midwives would sell poboys out of their secret apothecary shops before they were burned at the stakes as witches. Mostly, pomegranates were used to keep moths from eating through fine garments, as moths find moldy fruit naturally abhorrent.

Someone tell me how to pronounce the name of this thing.

Back to life/reality. I decided to make a parliament. In fact, I had all the ingredients on hand. How often does that happen?

• Orange, almost too ripe to eat
• Toothpick or other poky implement
• Whole cloves (seemingly unopened)
• Ground cinnamon (always kept on hand for the daily dose of cinnamon toast)
• Nutmeg

Some of the recipes also mentioned sandalwood. I suppose it preserves the whole thing from smushing over like a month-old jack-o-lantern, but isn’t sandalwood kind of musky smelling? Not cinnamony at all, in my opinion. And the act of acquiring sandalwood was beyond my mental capacity.

The children and I spent about five or maybe six minutes creating our pimento. I did the toothpick part. And the clove part. The children did the rolling of the spices part.

In case you want to create your own paparazzi and welcome the sweet smell of cinnacitrus into your home (it covers up litter box smell marvelously!), here is what I did (your results may vary):

1. Poke an orange with a toothpick.
2. Stick a clove into the orange hole.
3. Cry when citrus juice enters previously obtained paper cut.
4. Repeat until orange is well covered with cloves.
5. Shake cinnamon and nutmeg into a plastic bag; seal clove orange into bag.
6. Let children roll the thing around for a while.
7. Keep in cool, dry place near litter box.

I’ll let you know when the pompandcircumstance has molded over. Until then, we’ll be enjoying the aromas near the cat’s bathroom.

Notice that the iPad has to accompany Erma as she checks on the pomander the next day. The stylus felt that the pomander was doing quite well. And in case you’re wondering what Something Erma is Drawing: it’s a cupcake. Pomander hasn’t come up once in all my Draw Something games…don’t know why that is…

Mad Mosaics

You might as well go ahead and Pin It to your bulletin boards right now, because I can tell you that as soon as you read the how-to and see the final result, you are not only going to engage in this activity with the child closest to you, but you may even want to try having a go at it by yourself.

Now that the commercial element of this post is out of the way, I will share with you an outside-the-kit type of craft that I used my brain to invent.

 

SUPPLIES

You will need:

– Paper of various colors
– Glue that works
– Scissors that have not been previously glued together

 

FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T, YOUR PROJECT WILL BE ALL SCREWED UP, BUT THAT’S OKAY BECAUSE IT WILL BE SCREWED UP ANYWAY, SO IF IT IS INDEED SCREWED UP, THEN YOU KNOW YOU’VE DONE IT RIGHT

1. Cut paper into strips.
2. Cut strips into squares or rectangles.
3. Assemble cut shapes on a sheet of paper to create a design.
4. Glue design onto paper.
5. Accidentally glue paper to table.

Voila! You have a new tablecloth for your kitchen! In five EASY steps!