What’s the best part about the fall? Football!

Hahahaha, man. Just kidding. Tailgating! Sure, there’s other stuff like changing leaves, cooler weather, hot cocoa, fuzzy socks and fun crafts, but that all goes hand in hand with tailgating so, tailgating wins!

Wait, what? Crafting goes hand in hand with tailgating?! It sure does my skeptical friend, it sure does. Where there's beer, there's always a way.

Let's drink! And then turn those drinks into pretty lights! And, more importantly, never try to reword a children's poem again!

What you’ll need for Beer Can Lights:

Empty Beer Cans

Friends to (help you) Empty Said Beer Cans

Can Opener

Spade Drill Bits

Spray Paint

String of Christmas Lights

Work Gloves (if you’re afraid of cutting yourself)

Latex Gloves (if you’re afraid of spray painting yourself)

Not a hangover.

TIME.

What you’ll need for PBRMosas – Pronounced pee-bur-mosas:

PBR

Orange Juice

Cranberry Juice

Ice Cubes

Faith in me that this tastes good

Disclaimers/not-so-quick-notes!

You’ll probably want to use good beer. For one, and obviously, they don’t taste like sadness. Secondly, and more importantly, the cans are sturdier. Thirdly, and most importantly and obviously, we live in Colorado. Drinking crappy beer here is like a slap in Colorado’s face.

As for how many beer cans to use, it depends on how many you want on your string of lights…obviously. We used 33. Because: 1.) it made for a more fun and interesting time and b) it made sense in math talk: we could put one can up for every three lights. I’d throw out a math equation but, yuck.

If you do use 30-ish cans, you’re going to need at least 2, 3oz cans of spray paint. Which I found out the hard way.

This post is dedicated to my friend Kristin, who saved the day with her geological metal working talents. Crafty-Hour Savior to the Rescue!

30-Rack? Friends? Lights? Let’s do this.

1) Collect your beer cans, or empty your beer cans. Either way, you’re going to look like a bum with 30 empty beer cans surrounding you.

2) Use your can opener to take off the tops of the cans. This is where the sturdy cans are important. This step will be a real bee-sting if you have flimsy cans.

2.5.) Once you’ve got the tops off, stop and make a joke about beer making tops come of

Sigh. Two beers later and they're just busting their tops off.

3.) Ok, now you get to jam holes into the bottom of the cans. We used a medium size-ish (turns out I don’t know drill terms) spade drill bit to do this.

We used the drills on the left-hand side of the box, specifically the second drill bit in from the left. Again, with the drill term thing.

4.) First, we used the scary sharp end to puncture the bottom. Then we flipped said drill bit around and used the handle to widen the hole into a nice circle. There’s probably a more professional way to do this but, it worked so….go away.

Turns out, the handle of scary-drill-bit was the perfect size for the Christmas Lights. Pure luck or pure genius? The world will never know. Also, let's give a hand for the picture quality on this blog, shall we?

5.) Do this to all your cans. I told you you needed time.

Hey look at the party going on. We’re not the crazy girls sitting on the ground poking holes into cans or anything. Stop watching us.

6.) Fast forward like a cooking show and look at all those holes!

7.) Now comes the fun part (I know, right?) Take that scary sharp side of the drill bit and start creating a pattern of holes on the side of the cans. You can use whatever size drill you want, and whatever pattern you want. Just, ya know, try not to use blood in your pattern.

This is for all my hangovers raaahhhhhhhoooorrr! Also, can you tell how much of a lady I am by those sleek nails?

Part II - Man, I’m Blue.

AKA Spray Painting Time

1.) Now that you’ve artfully mangled the culprits of your hangover, it’s time to coat them in a toxic material! Is spray paint toxic?

Here’s hoping no! This picture is really gross!

2.) Find a well-ventilated area and, ya know, spray paint them; one to two coats, or until the logo’s aren’t showing. Unless you want the logo to show. In defiance of me, probably.

Doing this in an alley really helps for create the bum/crazy-girl-in-the-apartment mystique you may or may not have been going for.

3.) Um, let them dry.

Part III – The Beer String Theory.

AKA – Stringing your lights

AAKA Sweet Jesus is this over yet.

1.) Put your lights through the beer holes! You should be able to (somewhat forcefully) pop the lights into the holes on the bottom of the cans.

That's a match made in heaven, right there. Hope they used protection am-i-right ugh.

1.5) At some point you probably should have done the math (ew) to figure out how to place your lights; every 1,2, 3…or 4…or 5 lights…you get it.

2) Make sure the lights work before you hang them. (Also probably should have done before.)

3.) Hang those Sons of Beer Cans up at your next tailgate and soak in all the compliments!

&nbs… — Hooray! Gloat. Gloat. Gloat. What's on that blanket back there? meh who knows.

Part IV – You earned this.

AKA Drinky Drinky Time!!

PBRMosas!

3/4 can PBR

Splash of OJ

Smaller splash of cranberry juice

Ice Cubes

Faith in me that this tastes good

Pour your PBR into a pretty glass over ice. Fill the rest of the glass up with orange juice. Add a splash of cranberry juice for color AND taste! Oo lala!

See that tasty glass next to the ramshackle of ingredients? That's proof that this works

Well, I have a rule that once the feeling of “when will this end” enters a blog, it’s time to wrap it up. I hope you enjoyed this week’s Crafty Hour and that it brings you hours of friendship happiness