You know it’s going to happen anyway. Before their little sugar-icing buttons have had time to set, at least one of those poor little gingerbread-man cookies is bound to lose his head. Or arm. Or leg.

If you don’t drop one on his head on his way from cookie sheet to cooling rack (my specialty), someone is going to sneak in and grab a quick bite.

So go ahead, go with the flow — make those gingerbread men as nature intended to begin with: Headless and/or partially dismembered.

Here are Fred’s ABC cookie cutters — where ABC stands for “Already Been Chewed.”
I think you’ll know how best to use them. No questions asked. Just, be sure to eat all the evidence.

Shampoo and coffee do not mix well. Not in a mug or in the mouth, anyway, although I’ve heard of brunettes who rinse their hair with strong coffee to enhance the colour…

My point is –

In a more perfect world, I’d love to figure out how to have that first essential morning cup of coffee and a refreshing wake-up shower, both at the same time. One possible solution? Caffeinated soap.

No, seriously.

It’s at BalmWorks, sold as singles or a set of three, with each bar of delightfully caffeinated soap going for about the price of your upscale mocha-latte. Or a couple large double-doubles over at Tim Horton’s. Or a small package of ready-ground coffee beans at the supermarket.

H/T to Cali Lewis for this one!

Michael McDowell creates some truly elegant white-glazed ceramics — simple handbuilt vases that fit with any decor and small sculptural pieces, in the main. Living and working in Denver, Colorado, with two gorgeous dogs who serve as his ‘studio assistants’ (and inspiration for his Etsy shop, Mudpuppy, perhaps?), McDowell also makes collages and paints on reclaimed china. Oh, and this set of irresistably naughty bears (naughty because they say bad things –

These adorable but naughty porcelain bears are glazed in my exquisite naturally creamy white handmade glaze with 22 karat gold luster. You’ll receive the full set so you can spell out this special word.

An “awesome divorce anniversary present,” the artist suggests… Find the bears playing about among Michael McDowell’s more, er, restrained ceramic creations at mudpuppy.etsy.com — oh, yeah, I know you have to go look!

Just when you thought it was all over, at last… the bacon obsession is back!
(You can blame Diane for this… again.)

High Society Bacon

Be the envy of some when you sport the original Uncle Oinker’s bacon-scented bacon print tuxedo ($99.95 at McPhee.com).

The bacon tuxedo is cunningly tailored from chemically treated latex print fabric to smell “just like bacon sizzling in the pan” and comes in four sizes.

Dry clean only, of course — heaven knows what this could do to your washing machine!

Archie McPhee’s your one-stop shop for bacon-related dental hygiene items, too, to make sure you’re ready for a big night out among the most snobby of carnivores. Grab bacon-flavoured toothpicks, bacon mints, and even (new!) bacon dental floss. Slip on a fashionable unisex bracelet as the finishing touch, and you’re dressed up to sizzle!

Originally uploaded by semarr

I can’t recall exactly how this idea of a virtual Bacon Collection got started, but it was definitely on Twitter, and probably sparked by @surfingtrucker:

“Anyone tried chocolate covered bacon yet?”

But the blame/credit for the collection getting to its current fat status can be laid squarely at the feet of my Lovely and Talented Research Assistant, Diane.

“Saw this on boingboing and thought of you,” she tweeted one day, linking to a bacon bikini top. The fashion statement was in response to Al Can’t Hang‘s Bacon of the Month Competition — honestly, who could make these things up? — and you can enjoy the whole cooked-in-the-sun bacon bikini story at Loona.net.

But let’s back up a bit.

First came that chocolate-covered bacon. (Yeah, okay, guys — here’s a recipe: melted chocolate chips and a pound of bacon are the star ingredients; sprinkles are optional. Good now? Right, moving on!)

Then @LaptopForHire chipped in with chocolate chip pancakes and sausage on a stick. Not bacon, but it’s pork-related and disgusting — so kudos and 10 cholesterol points for playing!

Then @BlogWellDone claimed to have a friend who once made bacon-flavoured vodka. “The horror still makes me shudder,” he said. Um, yeah.

And @HeyDriver said something about a bacon cupcake (“well, it’s the frosting”) — and just check it out! Maple Bacon Cupcakes with Maple Frosting, by Garrett at VanillaGarlic:

After reading a bit about bacon baklava, bacon candy, and bacon ice cream, I knew a bacon cupcake was do-able, but still I was hesitant and approached this with some trepidation. It’s an outside-of-the-box cupcake, a breakfast cupcake, a cupcake for those who eat with no fear.

Which brings us back to the Lovely and Talented Research Assistant, Diane, who attempted to justify these excesses of Americian cuisine with RypTide’s Unified Theory of Bacon — scientific proof that concludes:

Therefore all food products’ deliciousness is increased by the addition of bacon, except for cheese which in turn increases the deliciousness of bacon.

“Want me to knit you a bacon scarf?” Diane asked.

Ooh, that’s tempting…

But maybe later, for Part 2 of this porcine parade, when we’ll exam the role of bacon in Arts and Crafts.

Pink vinyl star shape on an eighteen-inch blue wand… we know what this is!

See?
It says “Fairy Swatter” right on it — and (in case that wasn’t hint enough) it comes with a packet of squished-fairy stickers.

No other novelty product we’ve seen this year (so far) is so perfectly suited to slapping any hint of whimsy or make-believe out of a sunporch-sitting day… But I bet it would swat down a pesky house-fly just as effectively. Probably.

If you’re plagued by Tinkerbell and her gang at the bottom of the garden, get your Fairy Swatter at McPhee.com.

This just in from Amanda Nicole, our Girl in Vancouver: the Doggy Broom!

With an aluminum handle that’s shaped like a dog leash in zero gravity, and a colourful plastic broom that vaguely resembles a small long-haired dog — dare we suggest that the Scopa Cane Doggy broom (ViceVersa) is the perfect household item for those pet lovers who are severly allergic to fur and animal dander?

[via Brilliant at InventorSpot]

Today, I dashed into town to stock up on essentials, and while there stopped in at DJ’s mother’s house. Well, I’m ashamed to say that a parcel was waiting for me there since Christmas! (You know how it goes, never enough time in a day – especially when we seem to get a blasted snowstorm every third day…)

More later on one of the other goodies just unwrapped, but I had to show you this amazing vase — one of a pair I’m now delighted to be able to call my own.

Wondervase, they call it.

In a flat cardboard package, you find a flat plastic envelope — the medium size is 6″ x 11″ which seems a very useful size. Fill it with very warm water, right up to the top. The bottom flattens out and the whole thing becomes quite surprisingly stable.

So far, so good — but the real fun starts as the plastic warms up and becomes flexible.

You can bend it, fold it, twist it, and generally shape it into the mad funky vase of your dreams…

I can see getting a fistful of these vases and keeping them on hand for garden season — a quick and unusual way to present a gift of home-grown garden flowers to our visitors!

Truth be told, I’ve been playing with this all afternoon…

Tip: The instructions say to pour out the warm water and replace it with cool water, to make the vase hold its strange new shape, but I found it works better just to let it cool down on its own, less of the vacuum effect to suck in the sides — especially if you make the shape very narrow at the top, like this crazy twisted “bud vase” I shaped up around the handle of a wooden spoon.

All I need now is a long-stemmed rose!

When you’re done with the vase, you rinse it out as you would any vase, because you know it’s bound to get a bit gunky inside after a week or so with flowers in it — then soften it up again with warm water and smooth it out flat.

Besides the enormous amount of fun I found this Wondervase thing, it’s a huge bonus just to be able to pop it into a drawer with my dish towels and such. Because if you ever saw the ungodly mess that’s the inside of my china cabinet, you’d know I couldn’t possibly find the shelf space to store an ordinary vase…

So a snowboarding accident wipes out your plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro? What then? You look for a whole new hobby, of course! But maybe one that’s a tiny bit less challenging to the body… but boggles the mind and tests the patience.

For Lee Greenwood, that means he’s taught himself to trap a Rubik’s Cube inside a skinny-necked water carafe.

Impossible is Nothing!

Seriously, I tip my hat to this fellow we call Scramblejam — deprived of one challenge, Lee just picked himself up and took on another one, equally “impossible” for the average person to do.

Oh sure, just like the magician’s tricks, of course there’s a secret to making an Impossible Bottle… but the real secret may lie in what my grandmother used to call “stick-to-it-iveness”!

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

~ David Beckham

All the weight-control guru types tell us not to skip breakfast, but c’mon, how realistic is that? I can barely manage to get my act together enough to grab a cup of coffee on the way through my kitchen. Given a choice between a bowl of Kellogg cardboard and an extra fifteen minutes of sleep, I know which one has more appeal on the average morning!

But toast, now — how challenging is it to find time for a bit of toast?

Target’s pop art toaster, which “prints” your choice of 6 designs on the bread as it toasts it up, is just amusing enough that it might be the push a lazy girl needs to do that whole blood-sugar-level stabilizing breakfast thing, and face the day all energized.

Maybe.

But the lovely Italian Pink makes a good point on this — In the morning, still trapped in the haze of sleep, all tousled and goopy-eyed and foggy in the brain… who is going to want to fiddle around changing disks on the damn toaster as a way to start the day.

But the toaster is, you have to admit, very retro-cute. And maybe someone else would volunteer to make the toast, all thoughtful and romantic-like?

Certainly, if a couple slices of smiley-face toast were to appear before my eyes… maybe some of that homemade cinnamon-oatmeal bread, with just a touch of honey, and a cup of free-trade java on the side… I’d probably be prepared to re-think this whole breakfast-eating idea.

If anything short of a six-in-hand pimped-out pumpkin could lighten up a Cinderella’s household chores… it might be this whimsical hand-painted dustpan and broom set…

The ridiculously adorable cleaning tools are designed to nest sweetly together, while a heart-shaped magnet on the back will stick them to any metal surface for tidy storage or display.

When the queen of the castle must lower herself to menial tasks, let this prince and princess help.

Designed by Créa Créa, Paris, from Flax Art & Design.

Thanks to Marc at the Garden Desk for the tip-off on Magic Sproutz — fortune-telling plants in a can!

Well, it’s the gardener’s equivalent of a fortune cookie, really…

Open can, add water and moderate light, watch the plant pop up in a couple of days… and read your secret fortune message on the seed casing!

I can’t believe they are billing these fun little things as toys for kids. Oh, sure, no doubt they’d go down big in the elementary school set… but what about the rest of us? No office cubicle should be without a plant — it might as well be a happy little plant with a secret to share…