The Trouble With Blogging

This has been bugging me for a couple weeks now, and while I was sewing something this morning I was getting downright aggravated about it, so I figure it's time to rant about it for a second.  

I've had several people ask me to do tutorials for things I've sewn and post them on my blog.  I have always politely said "no".  I've had twice that number of people tell me I need to start a food blog with my recipes and baking tips.  I have always politely said "no".  Truth is, I already have a food blog.  It's locked up secret-like and not visible to anybody but me and whoever Jamaal is currently dating right now.  (It's the first thing he asks... ("Do you think you can make my Ma's macaroni and cheese?  No?  Oh, well it was nice meeting you then, bye!").  What's the point of having it but not sharing it, you ask?  Well, I share it with my older kids and then eventually the younger ones when they venture out on their own.  It's made up of old family recipes and traditional recipes and menu's from their childhood that they remember.  I also post my cupcake and cake pictures on it with stories and/or recipes.  I will never, ever go public on it.  WHY? Because bloggers are far too serious about what they "do".  

I have a few examples I will share to make my point.  The first example are the Snickers cupcakes that I baked a few weeks ago.  

Delicious looking, right? 

Let's get something straight right now... once you learn the mechanics of baking, it's not rocket science.   Some of the baking bloggers will have you think that they are the best out there and get downright snarky about their recipes.  Well let me break it down for you... buttercream frosting has butter, sugar and milk in it, frosting is freaking frosting and nobody wants to "steal" their stupid buttercream frosting recipe, and I don't care WHAT they say, it's not THEIR recipe just because they re-typed it and hit the publish button.  Frosting has been made the same way for 100 years, it's not THEIR recipe.  Now, I give credit where credit is due... If they come up with an original recipe then that's different.  But we are talking about regular old stuff you see and eat everyday.  Like hashbrown casserole.  Just because someone added an extra 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder does not make them the owner of a NEW recipe.  Now let's talk about a Snickers cupcake.  There are four components to a Snickers bar.  Peanuts, chocolate, caramel, and nougat.  I had that swirling around in my head trying to figure out what exactly my plan was for this cupcake.  I googled it online to see what other people's ideas were, and they were all basically the same.  Some had peanut butter frosting, some had caramel frosting, some had no filling, some were filled.  OK fine.  I finally decided that I would make chocolate cake, fill it with some chopped up snickers melted together with homemade warm caramel and frost it with caramel frosting.  I don't need any new recipes for that.  I have a good go-to chocolate cake recipe, my Mom's caramel recipe, and I'm just going to dump some caramel in my stand-by buttercream recipe.  BAM.  Snicker's cupcake, that wasn't anybody else's idea, just mine, right?  Probably NOT!  There are only so many ways to make a Snickers cupcake, I'm pretty sure somebody else did it the way I did it too.  While I was browsing other peoples ideas for said cupcake, I ventured to one of the sites that I really used enjoy, and she had this HUGE rant posted about her Snickers cupcake recipe that somebody "STOLE" from her.  She degraded this other poor blogger to mincemeat pulp in her post, and the poor lady was so apologetic because she didn't know the proper blog etiquette about "linking back" to an original posters recipe, along with placing the original blogger on the pedestal she felt she belonged on.  First of all, the original posters recipe was not freaking original to begin with.   Second of all, I would have told the lady to kiss my a** if she degraded me like that.  I see that all the time with the blogging crowd, and it makes me sick.  MINE, MINE, MINE.  Like little kids.  No thanks.

This is eventually going to get into the bibs I made this morning.  You know I always take the long way to get wherever I'm going when I write.  SO, Bo is the messiest eater I've ever seen, and I've seen my fair share.  He loves to touch his food and he especially enjoys scraping it out of his mouth and rubbing it allllll over his face and chest.  I've never seen anything like it.  It's like his taste buds are on his face instead of his tongue.  This isn't my first rodeo with feeding a baby, he's really grosser than most.

He eats in his diaper.  There isn't a normal bib out there that will hold up to what he does during mealtime. 

But I do have this one particular bib made out of towel material that works better than the rest.  I went to buy some more, and they were 7 dollars each.  HA... no way.  I needed like ten of them.  Then you know the wheels started spinning... "I bet I can make this myself..." and to the internet I went.  I knew there had to be a tutorial out there somewhere for making a towel bib.  Sure enough, there were 5,000 of them.  And they were all the same.  A hand towel and a little piece of rib-knit fabric for the neck.  I didn't want to make that kind.  I don't like the rib-knit necks.  They never cover enough shirt in the front and the shirt always gets food on it anyway.  I mean, look at the size of a babies head compared to their neck.  Their heads are HUGE, their necks are not.  As a matter of fact, the best tutorial I found had a picture of her son in the bib covered with food.  The neck of his shirt was covered in food too, which I'm trying to avoid.  So... the hole has to be huge to get over the giant nugget head but then it's too huge to cover the front of the shirt.  But that's the only bib-type I could find... and when I was looking, sure enough I found some rude old lady hassling one of the bloggers.  She said, NO LIE

"This is nice and all, but this is not YOUR IDEA.  My grandmother used to make bibs just like this 30 YEARS AGO".

Did she REALLY go there with this lady?  I mean, REALLY?  The lady never claimed to have the patent on the damn towel-bib.    She simply provided an easy to follow tutorial for other folks to follow to make their own at home.  I have to stop reading the comments on blogs, that's the problem.  If I just stick to the post I'm good.  When you get down into the comments things get stupid quickly.

So anyhow, I didn't find what I was looking for so I set out to make my own.  And with that being said, there has to be somebody out there that has already thought of this.  Again, it's not rocket science.  It's just a bib.  And this is not a tutorial, and I don't claim that I invented the 5,001st version of the towel-bib.  No need to get butt-hurt about it if your great-great-great grandmother first invented it.  And NO, although I take no credit for it, I will not link back nor credit anybody else with it either, so don't even bother with that mess.  In the infamous words of Sweet Brown, "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That".

It's just a bib.

And it's an awesome bib.  So I bought some .97 cent hand towels at Walmart.  I also had a slew of bias tape scraps left over from a huge church project with the Young Women, so I figured I'd try and use those scraps up and kill two birds with one stone.  

My first go-round I made the hole too big.  I used a CD.  TOO BIG.  WAYYYY too big.  And here is another reason I can never do a tutorial.  Good luck explaining how big to make the hole...  

"And take a wooden chew toy thingie that looks about the right size and make a hole".  HA!  

Oh, and guess what else?  I got a new camera!  All hail to The Coach for surprising me with a new one!  YAY!   No more blurry Iphone pictures, starting.... NOW!  Wahooo!

Ew, gross.  New camera says I need a new ironing board cover.  It appears to be a little burnt.  Anyhow, that picture was just to prove that I could never do a tutorial.  I'm never exact enough.  I have no idea how many inches of bias tape I used, and I'm pretty sure "about that much" isn't exact enough for the blogging world.  Ha.

I used snaps.  I hate snaps.  That's who I'd like to meet.  The kin of the inventor of the snap.  Snaps are very convenient.  Yes, yes they are.  But there has GOT to be a better way to stick the stupid sides together than the stupid plastic thingie they sell at the store.  Oh, and a hammer.  I hate snaps.  

I was able to make three today in about an hour and if I'd used velcro instead of the snaps it would taken half the time.  I will make more the next time a get a break in the action with you-know-who.  

Now THAT'S a bib.  

Hopefully it will keep him clean enough to be able to take him out to eat.  You know, because stripping your baby naked in a restaurant is typically frowned upon and is also just a little bit weird!