When the girls were little, I was looking for art project ideas & browsing in a craft store where they had an entire book dedicated to nothing but pompom creations. Supposedly a kid's craft, these things were elaborate, requiring pipe cleaners, feathers, gemstones, conch shells, stamps, buttons, spangles, pre-cut foam pieces, woodsies, batting, felt, embroidery floss, sewing and glue guns (This is a Holdup! Is burning adhesive in close proximity to ponytails really a good idea?). What I told myself - and even came partially to believe (not always the case with motherly justifying) - was that the end results were not even cute. If you're going to spend $7.99 on a book of silly ideas [which I'm not] and then closer to $27.99 on all of these odds 'n ends supplies, at least the final product should be "Awwwww!"
Instead, they were jumbles of accessorized excess which seemed to lead them further and further away from not only reality, but also attractiveness. At the very least, it all seemed like a lot of unnecessary pompom & circumstance to me...As I've always been quite comfortable being simplistic.
Yet, we hadn't found a satisfactory way to express it via pompoms until this past October when I got sick. And then generously shared the experience among my loved ones over the next couple of weeks. Due to a plethora of doctors & nurses & news reporters telling folks to just stay home, secure in the knowledge that "there is a 99% chance you have the swine flu," we never found out if it was truly H1N1. Besides, since a strain of pig-headedness runs on both sides of our families, there really wasn't any sure way of telling... (Nothing's worse than being falsely positive, is there?)
Probably, it was just a regular ol' flu-ke.
But vertigo has its advantages. All those visions of blinking lights & sugarplums breakdancing in our heads led to a sudden urge to make Christmas ornaments. And once we could crawl over to the dining table, we were all set to give expression to our long-latent pompomposity.
Of course, the details are necessarily a bit fuzzy. But, rest assured (& remember to drink plenty of liquids), there are no complicated sequins of events to follow here. Materials include one dollar-bin bag of pompoms & another of googly eyes (all I could bring myself to buy that day), some cardstock/construction paper, toothpicks (ladybug antennae), aluminum foil + colored markers (frog tongue), & non-NRA sanctioned glue.
Oh, and, if so desired, add a cold or flu to ensure your intellectual capacity is equal to the challenge...Here are some more easy & inexpensive Christmas tree ornaments we've enjoyed making over the years, most of which require ample amounts of acrylic paint and a minimum of nuts (oh, yeah, you'll need a couple of walnuts, too) ---
Leave a comment