Sometimes, without warning, stuff around the house just falls apart.

Sometimes it happens gradually, but we get used to seeing our familiar crumbling junk all around us and ignore it, occasionally thinking, “Hmm, at some point I should possibly consider doing something about that.” Whatever – no judgement here. I’ve been meaning to replace the broken trim in my hallway for two years now, but everybody knows I won’t do it until I try to sell the house and my realtor tells me I have to.

Anyway, my point is that reader Sophie, of Welcome To Amateur Hour, finally got fed up with her cracked, peeling lampshade one day and decided to fix it. Not only did she decide not to dump it in a landfill, but she decorated it with scraps of fabric from old projects, too – a great way to help the environment AND personalize your decor!

Never mind that she didn’t know how to rebuild a lampshade. And forget the fact that she didn’t quite cut the fabric long enough. Or that she had no plan for how to make her new lampshade into a lampshade shape. Sophie forged ahead with her project, until she did exactly what I would do: got sick of it and left it unfinished for several more months.

Luckily, she found the strength to pick it back up and keep going.

With the help of her liquid inspiration, Sophie came up with fresh solutions. The pink silk fabric was cut too short? Cover it with ribbons! Don’t have any ribbons? Make your own tassels out of electrical wires! Seams are unsightly? Hide them by dangling wires down the side! Add a bird! And some beads!

There. That’s perfect.

You can see the whole story here – and trust me, it’s worth the quick read. Shabby chic, or just shabby? Either way, it’s funny for sure.

Find more funny at Hollow Tree Ventures, where Robyn considers it a success if her lampshades fall apart faster than her life in general.

Sometimes you just want to be the teacher’s pet.

Gone are the days when a student brings an apple to the teacher’s desk.

Now, students get their moms to bake applesauce cupcakes.

Normally you wouldn’t want worms in your apples, but for these cupcakes, they take center stage.

Green gummy goodness.

And just look at the icing.  It totally reminds you of those Red Delicious apples.  You could probably even change the color to a pastel green to get a Granny Smith effect.

When reader Agi decided to make these for her son’s birthday, she was going for the Red Delicious theme.

And her son could be teacher’s pet for the day.

Yeah.

Except there was no red.

They could still pass for delicious, though.

And green gummy worms were no where to be found.  So, she used some multi-colored worms instead.

Forget about the green candy leaves, too.  Way too hard to find.

Why not a mint leaf?  Supposedly they help with digestion, anyways.

Maybe they could pass for those “Pink Lady” apples you see in the store.

But then again, Agi said she decided to add sprinkles to the rest of the cupcakes after that.

That’s cool: they still look good.  Like those yummy pink donuts with sprinkles on top.

But now we’re getting away from the whole “healthier apple cupcakes” theme.

Oh well.

Anytime there’s sugar, cake and sprinkles involved, people aren’t too picky.

There’s no questioning the perfection of these dark chocolate cupcakes from taste.com.au. Their recipe calls for dark chocolate in the cake AND in the ganache.

Pro tip: “Ganache” sounds kind of dirty if you’re as immature as I am, but is actually a French word meaning, “Look! We found another way to cram more chocolate into this dessert!”

Reader Brenda saw these and, understandably, couldn’t wait to give them a try. The instructions only have four steps, which mostly just involve mixing the ingredients together. Seems simple enough!

Oh, dear. It looks like maybe she ran short with the ganache, giving each one a less-than-generous slathering. That shows off the cake underneath – which, upon closer inspection, is a tad pale for cupcakes made with “dark” chocolate. And a few of them look so misshapen, I wonder whether she baked them in a muffin tin or just free-standing in the oven.

But you know what? I bet they’re quite a bit more delicious than the cupcakes I didn’t even bother trying to make today. Plus, Brenda’s photo has a lot more cupcakes than the inspiration, so it definitely has that going for it – when it comes to chocolate, there’s something to be said for quantity!

Find Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures, where she serves up lots of funny – even though sometimes people are just laughing because she’s as misshapen as these cupcakes.

Where have these chewy Nutella cookies from Lovin’ From the Oven been all my life? And more importantly, why am I not eating one or twelve of them right now?

Probably because my cookie sheet would come out of the oven looking just like this faithful CraftFail reader’s, who baked her batch even though she knew her dough left something to be desired.

Hang on a second, this might actually be an improvement! Personally, I’ve never once baked a batch of cookies that didn’t all run together, yet it surprises me every time – so the fact that this reader sort of suspected this might happen goes to show she’s already closer to the inspiration that I could ever be. But in this case, I might try to do it on purpose: “I’m sorry, I’d love to share my delicious, chewy Nutella cookies, but I only have two.” Sure, they’re two REALLY long cookies, but it’s still only two.

Although I’ll grant you, they’d be tough to stack up like the originals.

For more funny, you can visit Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures, where the laughs always run together but aren’t always tasteful.

It’s no secret that kids love stuff that’s gross. They laugh at jokes about boogers, eat gummy candy shaped like worms, and want to keep loosely-capped jars full of insects as pets. So it’s no surprise that something like this stretchy rainbow slime from Tot Treasures is a big hit with the little ones.

When her entire brood started to come down with the flu at once, reader Kirsta figured some slime would be just the thing to cheer them up – because only a child could have a woozy tummy and actually feel better after playing with some oozy goop the texture of snot. With just two ingredients, and one child promising not to hurl into the bowl because “throw-up is not one of the ingredients,” how could anything go wrong?

I know what you’re thinking, but Kirsta swears pumpkin guts weren’t one of the ingredients. You can read all about how this happened – and what happened when she had to leave the children UNATTENDED with all that sloppy glop – on her blog. All I know is that it took some real talent to take something that’s intended to be gross, and make it even grosser. Oh well, with kids, the more disgusting the better, right?

You can find more funny – and failure – with Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures.

Have you seen the Tumblr, Welcome To Amateur Hour, written by CraftFail reader Sophie? This lady can rock a CraftFail, and in this particular case she addresses a very serious First World Problem that touches so many of our lives: touchscreen gloves that are too big. What good is the technology to touch things without touching them, if all the science-y technological magic is down in the fingertips of the gloves, where your actual fingertips can’t reach?

Not willing to give up on the idea of using her smartphone to check the weather while outdoors in the weather, Sophie came up with a plan. She bravely snipped the tips of the gloves off and shortened the fingers, then turned them inside out… a few stitches… almost finished…

Well, no one’s going to see the insides anyway, right? Surely once they’re right side out they’ll look good as new!

You can read the whole tutorial for re-sizing your gloves here - it’s the perfect solution if you have any huge gloves you want to regift to someone with small hands. Or to Frankenstein.

For more funny join Robyn at her home, Hollow Tree Ventures - where she never wears gloves, because they make the beer slip out of her hand.

When is a meatloaf… not a meatloaf? When it’s made into a treat, like these clever meatloaf cupcakes from Six Sisters’ Stuff. Surprised? I’m still impressed that some people can make meat into a loaf at all (a shape normally reserved for bread), but now we can have meat for dessert, too? Thank goodness!

How meat shapes work is beyond me, frankly, which you could probably guess since my husband doesn’t allow me to go near the kitchen for fear I’ll be tempted to make something, burn it, and feed it to him. I assume there’s lots of smooshing involved, and quite possibly hot glue. You’re also going to need to know a few people who can stand the taste of meatloaf, which is going to completely rule out most people under the age of four. Reader Nancy must’ve been missing at least one of those ingredients when she made her treat-loaf attempt. My guess is the glue.

They sort of fell apart on her, and she reports that getting the potatoes smooth enough to pipe like icing was a disaster. My advice? Next time, try more glue.

For more funny, join Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures, where her food is always a surprise. But, um, not in a good way.

What’s pink and green and threatens to bite your guests’ hands off if they dare to sample your party food? A watermelon shark, of course, like this one from Genesee Valley Parent Magazine.

One loyal CraftFail reader saw a fruity Jaws like this on Pinterest, and decided it would be the perfect cute, clean, entertaining centerpiece for her party. Knowing it was sink or swim, she held her breath, dove in, and started carving her very own festive underwater chomper.

Instead of an adorable, tidy, fish-faced fruit bowl, our friend ended up with this deep-sea disaster. Despite its need for some serious dental work, it looks like it already chewed up the party food and spat it out. At least the kids’ fingers are safe – nobody’s reaching for these sweet treats!

For more funny, join Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures – where the laughs are so huge, we’re gonna need a bigger boat.

I like pancakes, even though people like my doctor and Medical Science keep spoiling my fun by telling me they’re not very healthy. But now, thanks to this oatmeal pancake recipe on FitSugar, I can pretend like I’ve been listening to my doctor all along by switching to a healthier, oatmeal-ier version of breakfast.

Reader Lauren was especially excited to give them a try because the recipe is so simple. Only a few ingredients and a few easy instructions – “…what could go wrong?” she wondered.

Well, so far they still look healthy, right? Are those black beans and corn I see? Surely not, but I have to assume this pancake is good for you, since it most certainly doesn’t look like it tastes very good. Maybe Lauren was able to salvage her breakfast on the plate!?! Maybe she could smash it into a flapjack shape, sprinkle a few blueberries on top, drown it in a few quarts of syrup…?

Or maybe not.

For more funny, join Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures, where she makes regular pancakes healthy by calling them “bread” and using them to make bacon sandwiches.

It seems like kids’ birthday parties are getting more elaborate by the minute. For starters, when I was a kid (“Oh great, here goes Grandma with another story about how things were back in the stone ages”) nobody came to your birthday party except for immediate family, and the celebration consisted of a cake and a few presents in the exotic location of your very own dining room. The end. These days, every kid in the school gets an invitation, and every child’s birthday party has a theme. And everyone knows that no birthday party theme is complete without cupcakes that coordinate with the themed paper plates, table decorations, mylar balloons, napkins, cups, hats, party favors, streamers, goodie bags, and hired actor wearing a full-sized character costume.

I did fine without festive party hats, adults in cartoon costumes creep me out, and fewer guests just meant more food for me! Of all the changes to birthday parties through the years, the only things I really wish we’d had back in the stone ages were the fancy cupcakes. Because, OHMYGAWD they’re so cute! These Lightning McQueen cupcakes by Your Children’s Birthday Parties are the perfect treat for any fan of the Pixar movie “Cars,” auto racing enthusiasts in general, or people like me who just enjoy eating windshields made out of white chocolate.

Reader Rae took her cupcake excitement one step further, and actually tried to make some! All she needed was icing, some candies, and about a zillion hours to carefully and slowly decorate a batch of car cakes.

Hey, slow down there – this isn’t a race! Actually, I’d still call this a winner – it might not look like Lightning McQueen, but it’s a first place Mater if I’ve ever seen one!

For more funny, join Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures, where she messes up cupcakes on purpose just so she can eat the evidence before the party.