Not so Easy Fun Art

I'm sure I'm the only one who has ever found a fantastic craft on the internet that, in real life, made me want to poke myself in the eye with a popsicle stick.

Well, here's a brilliant idea that must work for many people:

Slice a large potato in half.  Scoop out a section of the top and fill it with moist potting soil. Put the potato in a shallow dish of water and sprinkle the potting soil with grass seed. Decorate the potato to look like a face and, when the grass seed grows, you have hair on your potato person! 

What a great idea: a cute easy craft that incorporates art and science!  Let me fetch the popsicle stick before I continue.

POKE! 

Okay, this totally works and probably is the cutest easiest craft ever, unless your potato actually rots from sitting in the water.

In which case it will secrete a foul-smelling brown liquid, your house will smell horrible and you will find yourself answering interesting questions about microbiology. 

Then, if you are me, you will slice off the rotten section, bleach the dish and try again with the exact same results the next day. Why, yes, I do know the definition of insanity, why do you ask?

If you have the foresight (dare I say wisdom) to have given your potatoes large googly eyes, this will give the curious effect of slowly panicking potatoes, daily sinking further into the dish.


Eventually, I gave up, and cut a new  potato and did a "hair" transplant (Hair Club for Potatoes).  This time I skipped the water in the dish, and the potatoes aren't rotting (much).  The grass never grew as well as advertised, so, instead of cute lush hair spilling over around their little spud faces, I have two rather shocked mostly bald tater people. 

And I have Choclo, who saw them and exclaimed, "Whoa!  The potatoes grew!!"  Which is enough art and science for today.