Picture the birds from Finding Nemo saying, "Mine, mine, mine . . . "

Todd and I have lots of glass pans, which I always hesitate to bring anywhere public, like a church activity, because you never get them back. Because they're hard to mark (Sharpie doesn't stand a chance against a dishwasher).

But I saw the coolest thing--my friend had her name etched into her glass pan. I love that idea! It's on the bottom, so it doesn't affect what you bake, but you can see the name from the top. Super easy to identify your pan. I started thinking what a great gift an etched pan would be, so I Googled it thinking I'd have to special order a pre-etched pan. Nope, turns out there's a glass etching cream you can get at a craft store for under $30. Meaning, you can do it at home! A gift AND you feel crafty. Perfect. The best site I found to explain the process is here (I've added my changes to these instructions below).

Contact paper is amazingly hard to find where we live. So finding the recommended clear contact paper is a joke. I bought a thick clear one, without stickiness on the other side, and that didn't work well--you need to seal around the letters you use to etch the name. Without a seal the etching cream seeped through and made the name blobby. Readable, but blobby. Not gift-worthy. Luckily that was my test pan.

Because I didn't have the right clear contact paper, necessity became the mother of invention. I came up with a much easier way to cut out the letters than to trace it on the opposite side of the printer paper, then trace that onto clear contact paper.

I had colored contact paper, with stickiness on the other side (nothing you had to peel--the side was just sticky, like on a Post-it note). I just stuck the sticky side to the back of the printer paper where I printed the name template, then cut out the name from the page I printed. No tracing necessary. The name was upside down on the contact paper, but facing the right way when I applied the sticky side to the bottom of the pan.

Viola! Less tracing by two. Which is nice because I get impatient, and X-acto knives are hard to use (especially if you're impatient). Though I did use the thick clear non-sticky not effective contact paper as a cutting mat, and that was excellent. When life gives you lemons . . .. This system worked much better and I was quite happy with the results.

The clerk at the craft store told me to save the extra etching cream to make it all last longer. What a great tip! After the cream had been on the pan for 30 minutes, I just used the sponge brush to push the cream off the pan back into the plastic container.

Also, letters like "o" and "e" are tough because you need to save the little hole thingie so it's not just a big space instead of a letter. I didn't cut out the holes--I just placed masking tape where necessary to make the letter look correct (look at the "e" below). Much easier than cutting out and saving a tiny piece.