Crafts and Candy

You guys. . . I have a confession to make.

I love to craft. And I also love candy.

Both are weaknesses of mine that can get out of control in a big hurry.

I've always had a soft spot for sweets. In fact, I remember long ago when I thought I was being sneaky pilfering from my older sister's bag of candy. In my young brain, it made perfect sense to cover my tracks by leaving one or two pieces of candy in the bottom of the bag. She'll never notice, right?

Um, wrong.

How I ever lived to adulthood is a miracle to me.

Especially after the time where we purchased a big ol' bag of cotton candy from some fair {or something along those lines} and it was left in the backseat with me. We were off to visit my grandma, and needless to say, the cotton candy bag was considerably lighter when we got there. I was in big doo-doo that day!

Chuck will buy a carton of ice cream and by the time he gets around to his second helping {days down the road}, it will oftentimes be nearly all gone. If I plan on leaving him a piece of candy {because I've eaten all the rest}, I leave it perched on the counter so that he can see it. . . but then I can also see it. And I'm home all day, staring at that forlorn piece of yummyness. I would guess that 9 times out of 10, it ends up in a belly that is definitely not my husband's.

Whoops.

. . .

Crafting is a more recent obsession, but a doozy just the same. The problem with crafting is that, if I'm not careful, I soon find our monthly budget blown to smithereens because I just HAD to buy that one thing. But then I find this other thing that would go perfectly with that thing, and. . . you get the picture. It gets out of hand very quickly in my case.

Certain holidays slay me, as well, with all their cute Pinterest projects. I have a really hard time saying no to some things. I get a wild hair and craft a ba-zillion things in a month. . . but thankfully I usually burn myself out shortly thereafter and give our budget time to recover.

Usually.

Sometimes I just burn myself out with one particular kind of craft and move on to another instead of stopping. :)

. . .

Just yesterday, I went grocery shopping for our next few weeks worth of food. I tried to go to our trusty Smith's {just minutes from our house}, but they're in the process of putting in a fuel station and have 97% of the parking lot out of commission. That would be fine if they also cut down on their patronage by 97%. . . but they don't. They just try to cram the same amount of people into a fraction of the parking spots. Aaaaaand, that doesn't work. I spent five minutes as a vulture trying to find a parking spot, but to no avail. I gave up and trekked across town to another grocery store. So awesome.

But that has nothing to do with anything. I just thought I'd share that.

What I really wanted to tell you is that I finally caved and bought some Halloween candy. Will it last to see any tick-or-treaters? Unlikely. I tell myself that it will, but, let's be honest.

I put a small fraction of it out in a Halloween bowl {I couldn't just leave the poor thing empty any longer} and told myself that I could have three pieces a day.

Well, about forty pieces later, the day ended.

Whoops. Again.

. . .

This morning, I rolled out of bed at the urging of Hannah's incessant screeching and thought, "Yum. Candy."

"No, wait a second." piped up my should angel. "You can't have candy at 7:30 in the morning."

"Okay, 8:00, then." my shoulder devil pleaded.

"No. 10:00 at the very earliest."

"You're lame."

Before I even decided what to make for breakfast, the candy bowl was calling to me. I decided to try out my willpower and make myself wait until 10:00 to sample the blessed glory held within. As I attempted to distract myself from the constant urge to stuff my face, I realized that I often need the same willpower to keep from spending precious money on crafts.

I told myself that if I could teach myself to hold off on eating candy whenever I felt like it, I could also teach myself to not spend money on "wants" instead of "needs".

Unfortunately, I ate a tootsie roll at 9:50 this morning because I felt like my only chance of retaining a smidgen of sanity rested in that little brown wrapper.

But, hey, I lasted from 7:30 until 10:00! If I can last longer tomorrow, I'll be moving in the right direction.

If it's any consolation to my wounded willpower, I managed to talk myself out of going to the bookstore to buy a book today.

But it IS only 10:30.
;)