Fun with Crafting

(I'm at MMB today sharing a lovely and embarrassing story!)

From January 2011

Why is my back door wide open on a cold January day?

Same reason every surface of my kitchen is covered in this "dust."

From January 2011

Derek works Saturdays. It's kind of a bummer, but at the same time, he gets Mondays "off" (he still works from home) so it all evens out. But when the whole rest of the world is enjoying Saturdays as a weekend day, it's hard to not get depressed.

So, this past Saturday the babies were down for naps (Ezra in his bed! Weird!) and so the bigger boys wanted to do something "fun." Sigh. I pulled out the clay and we made beads and robots and flowers and all sorts of other beautiful creations. My intention was to glue magnets to the back and we'd have a whole slew of kid-made magnets. What could be better, right?

RIGHT!

It was fun indeed.

I set them in the oven to "bake" for five minutes and ran downstairs to check something... probably Facebook, but shall we pretend it was laundry?

I went up after five minutes to find my entire house filled with a lovely black-ish smoke. I ran into the kitchen to find said black smoke billowing from my oven. I looked in and saw our clay creations aflame.

At this point I thought unto myself, "Oh @#$%" and promptly turned off the oven. The fire continued. I considered leaving the door shut and letting the fire burn itself out, but it was GROSS and STINKY and was not stopping any time soon.

So, I got to use my fire extinguisher! Of course that was after I threw FLOUR on the fire. That made it worse. For some reason, I thought "gas" fires were the same as "grease" fires. However it was neither of those. It was a "CLAY" fire and good ole H2O would have worked just fine. But whatever.

Then I couldn't remember WHERE the fire extinguisher was. Give me a break, we've only lived here for two months.

I remembered it was under the sink. The under the sink cupboards were, at this moment in time, completely blocked by my portable dishwasher, which was whirling away happily.

Black smoke continued to fill my house. My throat was burning by this time.

I pulled the hose off the faucet and sent water spraying everywhere and heaved the darn thing out of the way. I dug under the sink and found my extinguisher. I pulled the pin, aimed and pulled the lever.

Nothing happened.

The flames continued to dance happily on the cookie sheet in my oven.

What the heck? I pushed harder on the lever.

NOTHING.

I stopped and decided to read the directions on the extinguisher.

1. Remove pin. CHECK!
2. Aim below flames. CHECK!
3. Push lever downwards. CHECK!

So, I just pushed HARDER!

And nothing.

My throat was really hurting now. Synthetic clay burning fumes is NOT a pleasant smell nor is the smoke it creates.

FINALLY! One more pull and whoosh! The flames were extinguished. GAG! The dust from the extinguisher does not feel good being breathed in either.

One more good WHOOSH to make sure, and the fire was out. For some weird reason, the powder flew EVERYWHERE, all over the kitchen.

I then opened all the doors and got all the fans going. My house was gray, smoky, stinky mess.

Nice, huh?

From January 2011

Oh, the hazards of arts and crafts. It took ALL DAY to clear the smoke, and now, three days later, every time I return home, I can still smell the stench of the fire. GROSS!

Can we take a moment and discuss the serious LACK of smoke detectors in this house? So far I can find ONE and it's in the basement. Yeah, super helpful. Apparently, we need more, because this old house is really just a box of matches waiting for one more craft project to go arye. Right? Right.

Blessed be, my oven still works and nothing was permanently damaged, except my cookie sheet which went to Heaven.

Henry cried when he discovered I had burned up his beloved clay creations. Yeah, sorry 'bout that.

All in all, totally NOT worth it. I think we need cable.