The Magic 8 Ball of Weekend Ideas

Did you all see this odd/entertaining little website that offers the answer to life’s most pressing question: WTF should I do today? It’s a pretty sweet little tool. I haven’t clicked through every option, but the ones I’ve seen really run the gamut of human experience. Just in case you want your weekend fun to include moderately less profanity and significantly fewer illegal narcotics, I’ve got a few suggestions to add. Think of this as a time warp, but more nostalgia and whimsy and less Tim Curry in a corset.

1. Get handsy. Thanks to the DIY aesthetic kicking in, there are lots of fun crafts to try if you’re so inclined. Make friendship bracelets. Try your hand at a woven and chain link number. Get fancy with hex nut bracelets – these marry the almost best parts of the fabric store and hardware store (note: the actual best part of the hardware store is the power tools, but they make for bad bangles). Are you a Tobias Funke-esque leather daddy? Try these bad boys on for size.

2. Embrace your inner child’s artistic ability. I’ve seen these really fancy prints all over Etsy that have cool pictures printed on dictionary pages and newsprint. Making something like that would require some print-making ability and tools. For an easier and less cost-intensive project, try some leaf rubbings using newsprint, book pages, and construction paper – no reason to stick with plain, old white 8×11 anymore.

Oh, and if you like to walk on the creepy side, you can also do gravestone rubbings. It’s almost as spooky and scary as a werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, learn how to screen print. This is not actually a skill I have. I really want to have it, though, and there are a bunch of tutorials here that seem legit. My screen printing dream is to print crass, off-color slogans onto underpants, to make a t-shirt in celebration of Mother’s Day using the chemical symbols for Molybdenum, Thorium, and Erbium, and to put my cat’s face all over everything.

If none of that works for you but you still want to be in DIY heaven (I imagine a place with upcycled couches and zines), check out Bobella’s DIY ideas for Persephone.

3. Sample all the different micro sodas available at the grocery store. The increase in unique sodas seems to parallel the rise of microbrewing with beers. We went from having Coke/Pepsi and regional flavors to being bombarded with a million loud, sugary, colorful fizzle-factories (note: “fizzle-factory” is not a nickname for soda in any part of the country except my apartment). Today is a new day; why not celebrate it with a beverage that is an unnatural blue color?

If you’d rather go on a microbrew or winery tour, either officially or in your grocery store’s liquor aisle, that could be a pretty excellent adventure, too. Spring is in the air, and as long as you don’t mind the torrential downpours or pollen, nothing would be nicer than enjoying a cool beverage outside.