I did a craft with my kids and it didn't kill me.

One word that has never been used to describe me in the history of my life? Crafty. No, I am a far cry from "Real Simple" or even "Good Housekeeping." I don't sew. I don't own a hot glue gun. My eight year old can draw a better dinosaur than I can. I'm not kidding. Even kindergarten crafts elude me, I am that bad. It has been a good long time since I attempted a real art project with the kids, I believe the hand-print turkey's of 2011 might have been my last effort.

See I got creative and made up candy bar Frankenstein! 

You see I am intimidated.When on the rare occasion I actually page through a parenting magazine (reliably at my annual "female" appointment, and perhaps at the dentist's office) I am put off by the "easy!!!" holiday craft ideas. The Christmas wreath made of candy canes and tinsel hot glued together and interlaced with laminated family photos,  the Thanksgiving centerpiece put together with pine cones, homemade dehydrated fruit and apples dipped in glitter, the Halloween garland made of egg-carton bats, shellacked fall leaves and marshmallow ghosts.... who are they kidding???  If the instructions are more than one paragraph long or include sewing, power-tools, nails or a glue gun... I'm out.

Yet today Evan had a long anticipated play date with his buddy Owen. As a mom of three, poor Evan has suffered from being the second child. When Zachary was in Kindergarten I had multiple play dates scheduled each week. I have lost steam. Somehow just keeping up with the daily responsibilities of three boys has zapped all of my energy, but it isn't fair. When I brought up the idea of a play date to Evan his face lit up like the Halloween Glow-Stick Balloon craft I found on Pinterest. I wanted to make it special. We made pizza, ice cream sundaes and yes.... we did a "spooky" craft.

Martha Stewart would be proud

As I was researching activities for the big day my eldest son protested when I typed in "easy Halloween craft" in the Google search bar. "EASY???" he whined. Damn straight kid, in fact I contemplated typing in "so ridiculously easy a newborn could do it" but I restrained myself. After pouring over page after page of "easy" ideas that were anything but simple I finally found Candy-Bar Bats.

So today I sat down with four boys and decorated Hershey's Bars with construction paper, googly eyes, glitter and markers and you know what? We had a good time. A for-real-good time. No, our creations looked very little like the expertly designed creations we saw on line, but my kids didn't care. It was fun. And it's chocolate. And chocolate tastes good. So there.

Stay tuned crafty parents- who knows what amazing craft I'll come up with for Thanksgiving!

Evan and his buddy Owen. They look happy enough!