Pinteresting Things

I have few guilty pleasures in my life. I swear. I don’t watch soap operas. I don’t watch much television at all, in fact. I don’t hoard shoes or clothes or pets or anything. I don’t collect expensive knick knacks.

I do, however, drink too much coffee. WAYYY too much. I also faithfully watch The Bachelor/Bachelorette. (Shhhh…don’t tell anyone! Embarrassing, I know. More embarrassing than my Dr. Phil watching days.) I enjoy drinking wine. But other than that, I don’t do much that I am ashamed to admit that I do.

Except when it comes to Pinterest. I have no idea how I cooked, decorated, gardened, cleaned, organized, celebrated holidays—how I did much of anything before God or whoever created Pinterest. When I originally joined, after hearing from others how addicting it can be, I swore up and down and sideways and in circles that I was ONLY joining as a way to save all of the recipes and jewelry making ideas I found online. I thought it would be much easier to have all of my favorite things saved in one place rather than having to scroll through my 100-yard long list of internet favorites when I wanted to find something.

Yeah. Famous last words.

That resolve lasted for all of about, oh, 1.325 seconds after I visited Pinterest for the first time after my membership was “approved.” (Why do you have to be approved I wonder? Do the powers that be at Pinterest do a mental health background check on you to make sure you are unstable enough to become totally addicted to their website before they let you join? Yes, I think that must be it.) Now, I am addicted and have something else to add to my guilty-pleasures list. For someone like me who has enjoyed creating things ever since I was a child, I was sucked into the Pinterest vortex quicker than Dorothy and Toto were swirled up into that Kansas tornado.   And once I WAS officially and irrevocably sucked in, I did no searching for a magic Wizard to guide me out. (I have, however, learned from Pinterest how to make glittery red shoes and how to make your kitchen table legs look like witches boots).

Is it obvious that I love that site?! What started out as a place for me to pin all of my favorite recipes quickly became the first place on the web that I visit most days, even before I check email or facebook. The plethora of recipes and home decorating ideas and organizing tips…OH MY. Well, if you’ve been there, you get what I’m saying. Or as my teenage daughters would say, you “feel me.” I have 20 boards (20!!!!!) just devoted to recipes.

I think I may need a 12-step program.

Pinterest has become the first place I go when I want to find just about anything. It’s better than Google! Blasphemy, I know! I hope the Google gods don’t strike me down and hide all of my Pinterest boards and change my password for saying that.

Now, while I consider Pinterest my number one guilty pleasure (I am fairly certain I would give up coffee, wine and the Bachelor/Bachelorette before I would give up Pinterest), I have also been very inspired by it. I have seen the silly cartoon photos that many people pin that say things like, “Honey, I didn’t make dinner because I was too busy pinning recipes today!” and other such things. But, I feel like it has made me more productive. Its pins and pinners have inspired me to try new recipes, organize messy areas of my house, and attempt decorating and craft projects I would never have thought of before and recently, I even choose a paint color for my bathroom based on a picture of a bathroom I found on Pinterest.

There is another upside to my Pinterest addiction. I rarely buy magazines these days. Magazines used to be another guilty pleasure of mine…Southern Living, Taste of Home, Good Housekeeping, Family Fun…that is just the beginning of the list! Now, I may pick them up to flip through when I am in line at the grocery store or Target, but I rarely buy them these days, knowing that Pinterest is like the ultimate magazine chock full of crafts and recipes and decorating and fun kid projects all at my fingertips and a mouse click. And I don’t have to wait a month to get a new issue because my daily visits to Pinterest are like receiving new issues of my favorite magazine every single day, drenching my mind with so much inspiration that my lifetime will not be long enough to make even half of the things I have pinned.  Unfortunately, the money I save by no longer buying magazines probably doesn’t make up for the money I spend on projects and recipes. But hey, we have to eat, right?

A few weeks ago, Tony and the girls were out of town all week, and I had lots of time on my hands. I decided to tackle a bunch of projects large and small, and I realized how many of them lately have been inspired by Pinterest. I’ve tried many different things, some of which were a total flop, others which were definite winners and made me feel like I could hang with Martha Stewart drinking homemade lemonade infused with crushed mint out of hand painted glasses while we make Christmas ornaments and wall art from empty toilet paper rolls. (Now that is one craft I don’t get!)

There are other things I don’t get as well. Like the cleaning tips where the pinner declares, “MIND BLOWN!” and when I try them, I wonder what they were smoking when their mind was blown because the tip really doesn’t work. For instance, if you have seen this tip, don’t waste your time trying it: A mixture of peroxide and baking soda to clean grungy old baking pans does not work. At all. Neither does cleaning your hardwood floors with tea. The picture showed a shiny, brand spanking new looking floor, but when I tried it…my floor didn’t look even a smidge different after than it did before, and my old baking trays didn’t look any cleaner or shinier before I let them soak all day covered with a paste of baking soda and peroxide.

That all said, I’ve had way more Pinterest successes than failures.

First, of course, are the recipes I’ve tried. There have been so many over time, but these are a few favorites these days:

White Chocolate  Snickerdoodle Pudding Cookies A dreamy combination of vanilla pudding mix, white chocolate chips and cinnamon, rolled in cinnamon and sugar before baking. OH MY.

Heavenly Oreo Cookie Dessert (Does that really need an explanation? I think not.)

Breakfast nachos (scrambled eggs, bacon and melted cheese piled on top of freshly made corn chips. YUM.

Chicken Pillows (another YUM. A mixture of chicken, cream cheese and some seasonings wrapped up in crescent roll dough and then baked.

More kinds of quesadillas than I ever imagined--pizza, breakfast, Philly Steak…just to name a few. Tony and the girls love quesadillas, and I try a new type every week or so.

More kinds of ice cream than you can shake a scooper at. I’ve made batches  of blueberry cheesecake, s’mores, salty caramel, even bubblegum. Next up is going to be peach and toasted pecan after I go pick peaches this weekend. (Didn’t I tell you I could hang with Martha?)

Doritos crusted chicken Instead of dredging the chicken in bread crumbs, it is dredged in finely crushed up cheese Doritos and then baked. I’m not wild about it, but the girls and Tony adore it. For me, the best part is putting the Doritos in a bag and beating them into small crumbs with a metal meat mallet. I tend to make this recipe on days that I am stressed or pissed off at someone.

As you can tell, I find all kinds of healthy recipes on Pinterest. Trust me, they are. Good for my mental health at least. Fortunately, my family devours most things I make while I only get a few small bites. Imagine how much gut my dad would have to poke in disgust if I had hearty helpings of these treats. The last time I made the Oreo dessert, the only bites I got were the scrapings from the edges of the pan. Oh well. Sometimes, I have more fun making than eating. It’s not about the destination, it’s the journey. Right??

Yeah, okay. 

On to some more scrumptiousness. (Yes, Microsoft spell check, I know that is not a word).

Homemade lemonade (delicious, but way too much work—and money--for the small amount of lemonade the recipe made).

Friendship Bread If you are like me, you remember this from back in the 90’s…maybe before, but that is when I was introduced to it. And if you are like me, you eventually started hiding from your friends who tried to foist their bags of fermenting goo upon you. But, you gotta admit, that bread that you made with that fermenting goo was good stuff—warm, cinnamony GOOD stuff. On Pinterest, I came across a recipe for the starter, and decided to make some. I now have my very own bag of fermenting goo in my kitchen right now. It is ready, so later today, I will separate it into bags to give to friends, but I will keep some for myself, too. I actually have a few people lined up who can’t wait to get a bag. In a few months from now, they may be hiding from me.

Homemade vanilla extract. I’ve wanted to try this forever. I finally ordered some vanilla beans from Amazon, bought a bottle of vodka, and not only do I have a fermenting bag of goo in my kitchen, I also have a bottle of vodka sitting in plain sight for everyone to see. It is the first bottle of vodka I’ve ever in my life purchased. It sits on my counter because for two months, you are supposed to shake it every day until you have delicious vanilla extract. I hope I can wait that long to use it because it’s only been sitting for 6 weeks, and it smells wonderful already. I can’t wait to make my first batch of cookies with it.

Some downright fun decorating projects

This is one of my favorites

I discovered the idea for this before Memorial Day weekend. We were having a party while Justin was home, and I thought they were perfect. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this idea this summer. For Memorial Day, I used red gingham fabric bows and put red geraniums in the jars, but after that, I switched the red and white gingham out for orange and white, and every week or two, I buy daisies or other orange and yellow flowers to add to the jars. I have really been enjoying the sunshiny-ness.

 

 

 

Another favorite:

Still another favorite:

 

 

Fake canvas paintings Months ago, as I was perusing Pinterest early one morning, I noticed a project that looked fun and cheap. Right up my alley because I am all over fun and cheap things. These are photographs put onto canvas so they look like paintings. I knew I wanted to try this, and I had the perfect pictures in mind.

The pictures were all taken out at the Angel of Hope. I love them, and I love how these turned out. They were easy, and once again, CHEAP. I found packs of two  8x10 canvasses on sale at Hobby Lobby for $5, I bought a bottle of Mod Podge for $4, printed the 8x10 photos at Walgreens for a total of $12 and then made color copies of them on regular paper. Then, I simply coated the front of the canvas and the back of the paper with the mod podge and carefully put the photo on the canvas. The hardest part of this project was smoothing out the wrinkles and air bubbles, and the last one I made definitely looks better than the first one. After they dried, I used a coarse paint brush and slathered a glossy layer of Mod Podge over the top in a random criss-crossing pattern to leave brush marks. I really like the way they turned out, and I hung them on a wall in my living room. The whole thing took about an hour to make five of them.

My biggest undertaking this summer was re-decorating my downstairs bathroom.

I almost forgot about my front porch rocking chairs! Two of my very favorite things, how could I forget? My rocking chairs are from Cracker Barrel, given to me years ago by a friend who was moving out of state and no longer wanted them. (Crazy, huh? Those chairs are awesome!) They started out stained a warm oak, but over the years, they weathered to a not-so-pretty-ugly-I-don’t-even-know-what-to-call-it color. A couple of years ago, I was tired of looking at them and was ready to toss them in the trash and buy new ones. I decided instead to paint them apple green, and I bought black and white polka dot cushions for the seats. I did like them that color, but I quickly grew tired of them and, and I was going to be boring this summer and paint them them white. After I bought a bunch of cans of spray paint, I found a picture on Pinterest of turquoise rocking chairs on a beach-house front porch and I had to paint them turquoise. They turned out more of a beach-water blue, and I think they are lovely. I’ve gotten lots of compliments on them from neighbors. I only wish that I could sit on my porch and imgine the beach instead of the traffic racing by.

There are many more Pinterest-inspired things I have created and cooked, and many more I have on my to-do list, but since this has gotten too long, I will have to write another post or two.  

C’mon, close your eyes and chant with me…there’s no place like Pinterest…there’s no place like Pinterest…