Craft Porn

The Bold Banana Knows What I Need!

Some people just know what I need. For example: Starbucks - Vanilla Latte Frapp. Adult Swim - great adult cartoons at times when all the kids are asleep. My vegetarian Husband - picking me up a burger special w/a cherry Pepsi from my favorite spot down the street. Yes some people just know how to make me smile.

Now I can add TheBoldBanana as another of those folks that just knows what and how I like it!

They have tons of cute tops and totes for one and all, but the 3 for $35 sale was really what got my goose going. With the help of a fantastic catalog of products, I was able to find three shirts that basically epitomized what fuels my spirit.

Tacos + Caffeine + Crafting = Happy MonsterJam

The hubby likes my Caffeine Molecule TShirt the best. I actually bought it with him in mind after he told me: "Babe you suck down that cherry Pepsi like a crackhead does w/ fresh rocks & a pipe! Your a fiend!" Ahhhh yesss! I do love me some Cherry Pepsi/Coke. I can't help it. It's like my rocket fuel.

True originality is refreshing to wear. I honestly dont know which shirt I should wear first, but I know I can't go wrong either way.  Being bold is how I roll, and a yellow banana can get a big ol thanks for keeping my wardrobe on loud! 

xoxo 

The Best $20 I've Spent In Awhile

$20.00 can be alot of money to some folks nowadays... People like me specifically. I'm generally frugal moogal but as a Mom to a whole bunch of kids, I try to make every cent of a dollar maximized to its fullest potential. 

 Recently I've had the opportunity to splurge a lil on myself in between buying diapers and milk. I had a couple of bucks and went and visited my favorite site: ETSY!!!!!

Prowling around I found this shop called Specially4U and they make some super awesome name plates for the low low price of $20.00. With all kinds of fun fonts and even Asian languages, this was like a blessing from the nameplate gods who pull the strings to my stylish lil heart. 

In my young lady days, I used to rock a piece that stated the name to the geeky badass that was standing in front of you:

My personalized piece of yesteryear meant so much to me. It was with me no matter where I went or who was looking. Work. Clubbing. Partying. Sleeping. Call her "My Buddy" cuz thats how we rolled!

But I'm a married woman now with piles of laundry and dirty dishes that call out to me in between my son's screams of "Mom!!!" and cries of "Give me titty Woman!" from my baby girl. I don't care too much about looking fabulous anymore. The time spent putting a full face is now regulated to changing poopy diapers and fixing 2 year old disaster zones. 

My $20.00 spending spree @ Specially4U was like a reward for all my good mommy/wife deeds to myself. I chose the super cute heart font offered in their shop and was pleasantly surprised how good it came out. Woohoo!! Turn around time wasn't even that long for such a personalized piece. Like a week or so. 

The nameplate is fabo and all my mom looks are officially complete with this game changer accessory. No longer a Miss but now a Mrs, the world will always know who this Momma badass standing around is! Lol! (Also helps with busters tryin to holler thinking I don't take my wedding ring seriously... This shit is real son!!! Read em and weep suckas!!!) 

Muchas gracias to Specially4U for helping me ward off the bugaboos with my new nameplate repellent and keepin me lookin extra sweet! :)

Cheesy Pancakes!

Ok. So for awhile now I've been eyeballing this long green rectangle on the side of my ricotta cheese container  entitled: Heavenly Ricotta Pancakes. I never paid it too much attention before to it because my so-called "common sense" said to me that there was no way queso and pancakes can exist in harmony, duh! That mix is just a toilet bowl away from a disastrous day.  Such a recipe must be a misprint for shopping at the discount supermarket. Ha!

Wrong as usual!

With a lil optimism I tried this one the other morning and made, what was more like a crepe pancake, but nonetheless a bomb ass breakfast for the family. I grabbed a bag of my finest Krusteaz Pancake Mix (and btw I just wanna say I dont know how it works if you use Bisquick in your attempts at this recipe. Hopefully not too weird cuz the cheese aint exactly cheap!) the tub of weird lookin ricotta cheese and got to mixin.

After a lil wrist work with the whisk, I poured out what came to be some golden beautiful thin pancakes. Those bad bitches left the kitchen smelling all tres magnifick! They couldn't get into my belly fast enough. Yum. Yum.

Moral of the story: Cheese really does make everything better! Makes these and be merry mis amigos!

An Oldie But Goodie: Kindle Cover

(This was previous posting from the original wordpress version of CraftCrap that didnt end up working out... still some good shit tho!-MJM)

First let me tell you that I pretty much suck at sewing instructions. All the lines: solid, dotted, arrowed... I feel like im reading a DMV pamphlet instead of making what's pictured on the damn envelope. When I was a kid I would sit at the yardage (that's what my G'Ma calls the fabric store) and pilfer through all the McCall's, Vogue, Simplicity pattern albums wishing that one day I would have the same magical skills as G'Ma had to make all these pictures come to life.

Sadly, that day has yet to come :( so when I decided to make a case for my Momma's Kindle that I bought her last Christmas, I knew finding a how-to was gonna be difficult to follow if it required more then my hot glue gun to assemble.

I love/hate being wrong. Using google as my guide I came up on a tutorial that wasn't as mind bending as my brain expected it to be. At OnePearlButton, a book style Kindle cover tutorial took me about all of my Saturday afternoon to complete due to my painstaking attention to every word on the page.

Not too shabby right? I was pretty proud of myself considering all the sewing involved.

 Perhaps G'Ma sprinkled a bit of her magical sewing powers upon my lil head when I wasn't looking. If you posses sewing skills that are slightly masterful I can bet that your Kindle cover creation will be über-awesome but if your like me and lack that talent don't fear this tutorial. Take it slow (like me) and your end result will actually resemble something useful.
I want to give this to my mom for Christmas but Im really bad at ceremonious gift giving. I get all stoked to give and want it done as soon as possible. (I love to see ppl genuinely smile.)Seeing as my momma is a major Kindle user, this cover just might end up in her hands pre-baby Jesus bday.

Hopefully she doesn't end up with an IPad anytime soon because I don't know how many Saturday afternoons I will have free to construct a cover for it... 50 days till I drop grandbaby número dos!!
Viva Mis Babies!!!

-MonsterJam Mickey

California Green Eyed Bears

Living in the boonies of Cali, I am privileged to experience nature at it's finest whether I like it or not. The other day the fam bam and I went on a mini hike up in the local mountains and tripped on the picturesque scenery that an hours drive can bring. Being as I'm a belly full of growing baby right now, our trek was limited but fulfilling enough for us to turn around immediately after being advised by some "professional" hikers (it looked like the outdoors department of Big 5 sporting threw up on them) that they saw bears on the trail we were heading up. Needless to say I was the first to waddle away as quick as my flip flops would allow (I'm a gangsta like that: hiking in drug store-bought flip flops.) I wasn't about to be caught up in an ironic fashion situation as I was rocking these bad bears on my ears and then possible be getting mauled by a cute cub in the coming minutes.
I picked these bears up outta some dood's garage whom I was ransacking picker- style. My thoughts are they were possibly fan pulls or maybe zipper pulls. Either way they look better with their green eyes... Eyes on the Cali Green pride. That's what I think of when I see them. Like if the bear on our state flag ran into a weed patch and started feeling extra irie...

I <3 Cali!

It's Really Hard For Me To Throw Shit Away...

Made from an old purse chain after I dissected it for other parts. I knew that particular piece of chain would cost me a couple of shekels if I had just up and decided I needed one, so once I was finished picking the purse apart I decided to throw it in a random drawer for later use. Later came recently and thus became something I think im gonna dub 'Aztec Bling.' The word bling is soo 6-7 years ago but that's all I kept thinking about when I was making this, that and how damn cute Jax Teller of Sons of Anarchy is. Where's an adult version of Tiger Beat when you need it?
-MJM