During my week off around the holidays, I did little more than hang out with my family and sample my dad's favorite beer. Then my sister offered to let/help me paint some signs. We'll google our favorite quotes and then paint them on these little wooden planks so we can hang them up for all to see. Sounds like fun, right?

Absolutely not.

Making crafts is excessively difficult and stressful for people that are not crafty. When my sister saw the planks, she had visions of what colors would look good, how we could stencil things on them and which background paper we could modge podge onto it (yeah -- not sure that's even what it's called, I just went along with it). When I saw the wood, I was wondering why we didn't just buy the pre-made signs I saw at Marshalls. But in the sake of Christmas spirit, I tried anyways so I could give one to my Secret Santa recipient. Here's a recap of how the experience went:

• I stalked said person on pinterest and picked the shortest quote (s)he had pinned.
• Then we went to Michael's and purchased all the supplies (glitter letters, background paper and a better color paint).
• We got home, and I stress-free painted the entire background one color.

Here's where it got rocky.

• I was trying to put the background paper on, but that involved measuring, cutting and modge podging. Lord help me. I was legit sweating trying to get it all straight.
• Then it was bubbling. You could push them down and make it better, but it never seemed to last.
• In the time while I was waiting for it to dry, I was trying to also figure out what quote to put on the board that I'd make for myself.
• Who knew picking out your favorite quote would be so difficult!? Here are all the ones I liked, and then we can all guess why none of them worked:
  • “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” —J. D. Salinger
  • “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart; I am, I am, I am.” —Sylvia Plath
  • “Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” —Jonathan Safran Foer
  • "Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.” —Betty Smith
  • "Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there's footprints on the moon."
  • "I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” —Eric Roth

Yup, you guessed it, these are all WAY TOO LONG for a little piece of wood. So then I turned to my Facebook friends for some help and got these answers:

All good suggestions, but also too long. In hindsight, I could have probably given people more guidelines, but I also didn't want to inhibit people from sharing.

So I was still at square one, with nothing more than a blank canvass. I really wanted to use the Sylvia Plath quote BUT it's a bit depressing (if you know the story) and still pretty long. And on top of that, I am not 100% sure if it's "brag" or "bray" and I'm not the type of person that's willing to misquote someone like that.

That left me with one viable option. I dropped the craft project, did something I'm good at and wrote a blog about it instead.