In Memoriam: Pornata

Dear Pornata: 

Your time has come. The day of candy reckoning is upon us. Sticks will be wielded. Your short, sticky life will flash before you as you disgorge your sweet payload of delicious candy guts. 

But first, photos were taken. Your future attackers posing with their victim, full of anticipatory glee.

"What do you think is inside?" I asked them. 

"Hot dogs," said Luke. "I heard it is hot dogs."

"Huh. I heard it was veggies." (Lying shamelessly to children is part of my particular skill set.)

"I HATE VEGETABLES!!!" he declared, kicking and punching with all his might. 

When mixed martial arts, and hitting with a flower made of glow bracelets didn't lead to your demise, dear Pornata, we armed the children. A heavy stick with a ball on the end. "Three hits!" they were instructed. No more or less. The other children counted loudly to make sure that no one got an extra. Luke, still anticipating hot dogs, was at the front of the line.

Even the dog got into the action. The children dutifully let him touch it three times as they counted aloud before he was removed while attempting a fourth. Dogs must follow rules too.

The Party Girl took her chances, managing several big dents, and a near break during her symbolic battle with candy-filled cancer. She was given four hits, just in case, with nary a grumble from the children. Apparently dogs also set dangerous precedents.

The second time through the line, things got violent.

You put up a valiant fight, Pornata. Perhaps too valiant. (Next time: fewer layers.) But you were no match for Michael, who smashed you to pieces for his mom like a Viking warrior. Candy and catharsis all in three hits.

CAAAANNNDDDDYYYY!!!!!!!!!!

The children swooped in on your fallen corpse, giggling vultures seeking candy carrion.

Now that cancer had been ritually vanquished, the real work began...

Bags were filled, parents were consulted, trades were brokered. All as your now-empty husk slowly rotated above them, a reminder that no pinata is immortal, and that hitting things til they break leads to candy and prizes.

Your life's mission was completed, Pornata. I never asked you if you had a (candy)bucket list, but I imagine you were mostly satisfied looking out at the neighbourhood and mocking the children playing in their backyards. 

Your vengeance will be swift, Pornata: these children may not sleep for days. You will be responsible for lost teeth, cavity creeps, and sugar crashes galore.

But they are ready for the next round. Even as the candy-bals feast on your innards, they quietly contemplate how many hits will be allowed next time, and whether your descendants really WILL have hot dogs.

Rest in (candy) Pieces, Pornata. Your sacrifice will be remembered.

Scaramel Apples

Somehow, in preparing for the party, I roped myself into making some food. This is a terrible idea. Food is not my preferred artistic medium. Much of what I know about food was learned from my mother. I was raised in a house where salt was outlawed, and a "good" dinner was everything in the refrigerator thrown into a pot and made into a casserole. Usually this included wine. This casserole was always called "glump-glump", and I grew up thinking that was a Normal Thing. It is not, and it is disgusting. Yes, mother: ALWAYS.

I got some Chips and nacho Cheese, and decided to make Caprese bites (mozzerella, basil, and tomatos) because I knew it was something my friend likes to eat in the summertime, and I was optimistic about the weather. Here they are pre-basil. I dunno why I didn't take a picture afterwards, but they did get greener, and therefore more healthy... right?

Since everything I was making started with the letter C, when I saw this video on making drunken mini Caramel apples it seemed like a good fit. They look really lovely, delicious, and perfect for taunting and/or accidentally inebriating the children.

I followed the directions, balling apples using a melon baller.

I had a choice when I bought the melon baller: either a nice kitchenaid one that would match my kitchen and cost $10, or a $3 crappy one. How often am I going to use a melon baller? I went for the cheapass one. Three apples later, the baller bailed, losing both structural integrity and its head. 

An emergency trip to the store, and a replacement, and many apples were balled.

I set one set to soak in caramel apple vodka, and another in some water with a bit of lemon juice in an attempt to keep them from turning brown. This was only moderately successful. 8 hours later, they were saturated and it was time for The Carmelling.




I dried the apples, I put them on sticks.

I performed mise-en-place, with sprinkles galore.

What I'm trying to say here, is that I TOTALLY FOLLOWED DIRECTIONS. I was skeptical after the first three apples started to pool. Maybe it was just that the day was too hot. The apples had been in the fridge, they should have been cold.

I tried some other techniques. I spun, I bobbed, I wove. And still, every time I put the apples onto the tray, they turned into Frosty in a greenhouse. Maybe they wanted top hats.

As a last ditch, I tried the refrigerator. As if somehow, that would make the caramel defy gravity and work its way back up the apples. It did not. I didn't finish the apples, I sort of gave up mid-project. They looked even worse the next morning, so I left them at home. I now have a lot of wet and vodka-soaked apples in the fridge, does anyone know a horse-who-is-also-a-hobo and might enjoy them? Perhaps in a nice glump-glump?

Poof!

Ok, so its getting down to the wire, and I still have another project to do before the party. I picked up a bunch of this stuff called Decorative Mesh on clearance at Joann, with no real idea of what I was going to do with it. I thought maybe i could use it to decorate my pinata, but it wasnt really needed.

Then I got home and remembered I had another roll of it that I had bought for decorating the Halloween bathroom and never used. Well crap. I have three rolls of decorative mesh.... time to google what to do with it.

The interwebs inform me that this stuff is all the rage right now, and that the appropriate use mostly involves making ugly wreaths. Since I have a few extra styroform wreath forms around from a candy project, I decided to go this direction. First, the wreathform needs to not be white.

I happen to have a lot of orange glue left over, so I start with that. I've had bad luck with paint melting Styrofoam before, so i am hoping the glue kinda seals it. Problem: it is round. Solution: napkin holder.

A few coats later, and some of the remaining acrylic, and I have it to a state of appropriate orangishness. 

The instructions I have found mostly require zip ties, pipe cleaners or floral staples. Wtf is a floral stpaple? I dunno, but I have some orange wire. Hopefully I can make it work. I cut it into zip-tie-type lengths.

This is when I learn the true nature of decorative mesh. It is made of pure, unfiltered Satan. I hate it. I hate it forever. I wish to wrap my enemies in cocoons of decorative mesh. It is a lot like that stuff they make those bath poufs out of, but it is sharp and evil. It gets stuck to itself constantly, and my hands look like they have been through a cat fight. I didn't take many pictures of the process, because I wanted it to end as quickly as possible. It primarily involved wrangling foot long sections of mesh onto the wreath form every 3 inches using wire. This is what it looked like about halfway done:

Well. This is the completed version, I guess? Its really ugly. My whole idea for this project is to hang little messages for my friend from her friends and family on it. I dunno if it deserves that kinda treatment, but its what I have. 

I added a hanger, because hopefully it can be hung. It looks like a monster that crawled its way up from the depths of Bloodbath and Beyond and is coming to eat the world's children. Far be it from me to stand in its way.

It is poofy. AMAZINGLY poofy. I decided maybe a bow would help it out. I don't know why. When has a bow ever helped anything, really? 

I cut a bunch of ribbon and attached some blank white tags so that we can all write hopeful and loving messages to my friends. I may include some sort of spell to keep this wreath thing from growing and eating her grand children and cat. 

This is as final as this project gets. I hope whoever finds it at the Goodwill after she has torn off the tags really enjoys it. I feel sort of guilty presenting this at the party, and yet I will do it anyway. Maybe it can be ritually burned. I am adding another tag to it that says "Having leukemia is as crappy as this wreath." If craft chemotherapy exists, this thing definitely needs it.

I still have two rolls of the mesh left. I now understand why it was on clearance for less than a dollar. I hope someone else can figure out how to turn it into something party-worthy.

A Caper

The cancerversary party is only 8 days away, and I still have a few projects to work on. First up is my T-shirt. My friend would like everyone at the party to wear matching t-shirts all of the same design, and in red. I am pretty sure I was voted Least Likely to Ever Wear a Uniform in high school. The idea of matching an entire party worth of people sort of makes my skin crawl. But I was going to take one for the team (uniform) to support my friend. I ordered my T-shirt.

Then I put it on. My hair is blue. The shirt is red. The combination evokes 3-d glasses and is sort of grotesque. It is also bright and tight in all the wrong places. I hate t-shirts, the collars always make me feel like I'm being throttled. Something must be done. 

I thought about cutting into it and making designs and whatnot, or turning it into a halter top. neither of these ideas really appealed to me. Its so superhero red that I decided to go a different direction. I forgot to take a before picture, but you can get the idea. 

I took off the sleeves and turned the whole thing inside out. I serged the (former) armholes closed and then turned it right-side-out.

I had some big red ribbon I had saved from a blanket I bought. Hooray for upcycling. I sewed the ribbon onto the collar. 

Once the ribbon was done, I topstitched the whole thing to hold it together. I probably should have added interfacing so that it would be a little stiffer, but this is a one-day affair, and I am already over-budget. 

And voila! I have a cape. I'm considering wearing it myself, but I know my friend's young grandson will be at the party. He loves superheroes, and I suspect he will enjoy it more than I will, so I'm going to make a gift of it. I won't match the team technically, but hopefully I can find something that is red, (but not Too Red) to wear.

CAAAANNNNDDDDYYYYYYYYYYYY

It is time for my pinata's big test. I am really unsure whether it will hold candy without breaking. Especially the quantity of candy I would prefer it hold. I decided to test it early, so that I would have time to make repairs in the event of a candy-induced pinata hernia. 

My pinata experiences were limited as a small child. But one day around my 8th year on the planet my family visited the downtown Seattle waterfront. At the trident trading company there, I saw pinatas galore. I knew what that meant. 

You see, I had done my research. I read a ton of what Jeopardy refers to as Kids Lit (I can still run that category.) I KNEW that the lifeblood of any pinata was sweet, delicious candy. There was nothing I wouldn't do to know the joys of processed white sugar, which my mother had all but outlawed from our house. (Like video games, technology, and television, my mother's opinion on sugar can be summed up in one statement: "It rots your brain.")

I begged and begged my mother to get me one, and she finally relented. The deal: I could have one, but I wouldn't get to use it until my birthday party, which was approximately 9000000 years away. I had one all picked out. It was a pony. Well... my experience as an adult has led me to believe it might have been a donkey or an alpaca. But it was a pony to me. It was red, white, and blue, and a glorious candy receptacle.

I waited and waited for my birthday. I dreamed about the candy that would rain down on me and my friends as we viciously beat the pony into a pulp, in a sadistic frenzy driven by a need for sweets. It would be delicious. There would be lollipops for everyone. It would be my day of treat-y triumph. The resulting sugar high would never end.

The birthday finally rolled around. It was a big party, many children, much pudding. I got Michael Jackson's Thriller as a gift. The pinata was to be the centerpiece of the party. The time finally came. Blindfolds were procured, sticks were brought. The pony was hit. Over and over. 

But wait. Where were my treats? My delicious sugary pinata organs? 

Well, there weren't any. My mother had the last laugh. She thought pinatas came filled, she said. All that candy would rot our brains anyway. 

At the end of the day, I was consoled with the promise of another FILLED pinata for my next birthday. I never got that pinata, and still consider the IOU outstanding. 

It is for this reason that I intend to fill the crap out of my pinata. There will be no disappointed children or cancer patients this time. Sugar will have its revenge! 

I want the candy all to be white and red, to represent the fact that my friend's leukemia is under control. Cause white and red blood cells. See? Yeah, whatever, its a theme. I wanted the candy to be mixed together, so I dumped it all into my laundry bucket to mix up. I threw in some orange Mardi Gras beads too. Hopefully no kid eats them.

It turns out I bought almost precisely the right amount of candy. It came up as high as the candy door, without spilling out. 

None fell out the bottom, and her structural integrity seems to be intact. It looks like she is good to go. Now I will let her rest in the clown room, to commune with the universe, and prepare her final wishes for the next ten days. I hope she does not know what is coming. 

I hope candy is her last meal. 

Pinataboy to the rescue!

I really wasn't sure about the next step in the pinata process. I know I wanted that fancy fringey stuff, but I wasn't really sure I had the stamina to make a million tiny paper cuts. I had some ideas for cutting down the work, but I wasn't 100% sure about them, and the last thing I want is for this pinata to look like it was made in a kindergarten classroom. 

Fortunately, the internet is frequented by superheroes. In my research, I managed to find my way to Pinataboy, who had several recommendations on decoration. I wish I had found this site earlier, its a really fantastic walkthrough of pinatery, and would have helped me out. I used the pinataboy method to cut up two rolls of orange crepe paper in just under 5 minutes. Million cuts: avoided!

I still had mod podge and orange paint, so I mixed them together once more until they were the delightful shade of a Kraft dinner. As long as I am using glue, it may as well be orange. 

I followed the tutorial, starting with the bottom, and working my way up using the strips of fringed paper. 

"Holy crap!" I told myself. "My pinata is looking like a pinata! I am a pinata god! I should take up full time pinating! Fear my fringey wrath!"

Moments later, I was punished by the pinata gods for my fringe-filled hubris. I tried to hang the pinata for easier access, and one of the legs knocked the glue jar all over everything. Fortunately it missed my phone. This is why we use drop cloths!

I managed to spoon most of the glue back into the jar. Literally. With a spoon. I wasn't sure how else to do it, and in the process accidentally poured more glue into the pile, but eventually it was mostly recovered.

I got both legs done, and started on the body. With the Pinata hanging, it was a lot easier, though there was some shifting and spinning in the wind to account for. This is a project for a closed window, crepe paper is now in my everything. 

Progress!! It took just under three hours to cover the whole thing, including cleaning the spills and cutting up another roll of crepe paper. Not too bad, I thought this would be a multi-day undertaking.

Now I have an orange cancer ribbon with more than a passing visual similarity to Cousin It, but I will give it a bit of a fluff and a trim before her big day. 

I have to leave her hanging in my kitchen in order to keep her from being eaten by the supervisor. I am sure my neighbours are wondering why I have a huge orange thing dangling over my kitchen table.