For my last birthday, my husband made a “New Hope Investigations” sign with my logo on it. The reason it was so special is that he enabled help from our son, who was then two years old. My son finger-painted all over it. It now hangs in my office.
So for my husband’s recent birthday, I thought I would give him a thoughtful homemade gift from our son as well. The problem is, I am THE world’s worst, most UN-crafty person you will ever meet. Ever. This is not an exaggeration.
Let’s just say I should have quit before I even started.
Our son currently loves hot wheels. He loves them so much that he sleeps with them at night.
Knowing full well that I suck at any kind of craft, I decided to keep it simple. My son and I bought a picture frame and put a photo of him with my husband inside. So far, so good. Then we bought some hot wheels to hot glue onto the frame.
That’s it. That was our gift. How hard can it be to glue cars onto a frame?
Apparently, for someone completely deficient in craftiness, it wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.
The hot glue (which I of course didn’t have because a non-crafty person does not invest in hot glue guns) worked on only two of the cars. Two. The others kept falling off.
So instead of trying the hot glue again, my limited mind thought I should use a different glue. I searched around until I came across gorilla glue.
For those of you who don’t know, I found this out after it was too late. First of all, gorilla glue is a nasty yellow color that doesn’t blend well on a white frame. So there’s that. Second, apparently you’re supposed to clamp down whatever it is you just glued with gorilla glue for a solid bit of time. Didn’t know that either.
After my failed hot glue and my gross gorilla glue mess, I tried some kind of white spray glue. I should’ve known better. Really I should have.
It’s just that I get so frustrated after one thing goes wrong during a “craft” project. My mother-in-law once tried to get me “into” making jewelry. After an entire day that produced one ridiculously juvenile pair of earrings (that were crooked, mind you), I decided I was not a jewelry maker.
I just have to say that I’m grateful I was alone during my three failed attempts at glueing those suckers onto that frame. Because I am ashamed to say that the cuss words were flying around my kitchen like bats straight out of hell. And I am not a cusser.
That picture frame is lucky to be in one piece. It took everything in me not to throw open my back door and pitch it as hard and as far as I could into the back yard. My ears were actually craving to hear the glass break into pieces.
Instead, my son and I gave that frame to my husband with wiggly cars, yellow smears, and still running white spray glue off of the edges. He got a good laugh.
I did too, but it was many days later.
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When I first started out as a private investigator, I accepted a variety of cases just to get some experience within several different niches. But one thing I did NOT do was accept any work that totally fell outside of my capabilities.
If you accept work outside of your capabilities, you will end up with an embarrassing end product that you are ashamed to share with your client. And your client very likely will not be as lighthearted about it as my husband was with my gift.
So don’t be a Rachele’ Davis and pretend to know what you’re doing or fool yourself into thinking, “How hard can this be?” If you’re not qualified to do the work, refer it on to someone who is. Simple as that.
And I’ll try taking my own advice next time I get any wild ideas to make someone’s gift.