Drawing and Painting a Goldfish

This was a fun project that we did by following a tutorial on Pinterest. As you can see, we all ended up with something a little bit different and my son took the idea and expanded to further to make an Angelfish instead. You can try drawing Goldfish like we did with this tutorial on The Drawbot.

More Kid Projects Compliments of Pinterest

I thought this idea for laminated play dough mats was genius! I got the idea from Planet of the Apels. I printed them all off and used clear contact paper to laminate them (I did go through most of a rolls to do this) but now we can use them over & over again and get them out to play with when friends come over. We can also use them as dry erase mats. This is great for doing preschool at home.

This project was my "birthday cake" compliments of my 7 year old daughter. Of course, I scoured pinterest first for a recipe that require NO BAKING (ok, I did bake a store bought whole wheat crust, but you can use a pre-made graham cracker crust for this.) But she did mix all of the other ingredients and pour them in to the cooled pie shell. The recipe comes from the Eagle Brand website. There is only 6 total ingredients and that includes the pre-made pie crust. So, if my 7 year old (now 9 years old) can make this, anyone can. No excuse that you can't make a pie.

My son and I made this zip line lego guy after reading about it on Little Bins for Little Hands.There are a lot of different ideas on here for creative lego creations. We will certainly be trying out more of them.

This is a Minecraft sword that my daughter made for her brother as his homemade Christmas present this past Christmas. This is a printable available from All For The Boys that you can glue on to foam board or cardboard.

Pinterest Inspired Food

I thought today I would share some of the dishes that I have made from pins I have found. Give you my thoughts and any changes I made to the the recipe and let you check out the recipe for yourselves on the blogs and websites where I found them. These are pictures of the food I made using these recipes provided in the links. Sometimes I just like to share the items I made on my blog so that I have a reference of how to make it again, like my own recipe catalog.

This recipe as titled by the author at Second Thought is Polenta with Mushrooms and Leeks. I varied from the recipe by making a mushroom and leek meat sauce to top it with. The only change I made to the recipe is I decreased the water to 1.5 C. Also, I wanted to note that it took quite a bit longer to get to the consistency described (even with a decrease in water). It took me 10 minutes longer than the 5-6 minutes in the recipe. Other than that, next time I won't add additional salt. I did like it and wasn't sure if I would like polenta, but it was good and I would make this again.

Recently, Chipotle released it's guacamole recipe and Takepart.com has the original recipe published on their website that you can copy. All ingredients are fresh and no dried seasonings. I made it and thought it tasted awesome and was able to use a hot pepper and cilantro from my garden to make it, which made this Chipotle Guacamole taste even more awesome!

In the spirit of trying Chipotle copycat recipes, I thought we would also try a Chipotle Cilantro-Lime Rice recipe as well that was featured on the Culinary Hill blog. The recipe seems spot on and I would give it a try if you are a Chipotle fan. I would not have thought about needing a bay leaf to make this recipe if I had not seen it listed.

Sweet Treats from Pinterest, Part 2

Some more recipes I found on pinterest and tried out for myself. All the pictures below are of the ones I made. 

I used the recipe from Food.com.

Kinda putzy, but Soooooo Good! The topping actually makes about double of what you need, so I used Ritz crackers on the bottom when I ran out of shortbread. My husband said they tasted good and you couldn't even taste the Ritz; that it was just a holder for the good stuff.

The picture of the plate was only about 1/3 of them. I had 20 shortbread and 20 Ritz crackers that I used.

Oh - I also used half the amount of coconut. 4 Cups seemed excessive and it really would have been. To toast the coconut, spread on a baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes, tossing and stirring every 5 minutes.

My son loved this idea for Vampire Donuts from Mommy Octopus, that we just had to do it for his birthday! He liked old fashioned donuts, so we used that instead of raised ones but we did have an issue of the donuts breaking apart, so I think raised would be better.


Ready for another chocolate and caramel recipe? They try out this Carmelitas recipe from Lulu the Baker. I pretty much love anything with caramel, but once you add chocolate it becomes even better. This is a pretty classic recipe and worth trying. I made these bars with a homemade caramel sauce, but she also tells you how to make them with caramel candies as well. Make sure you factor in cooling time before serving these delicious bars!

This recipe from Made to Be a Momma is super easy and super tasty. It is something festive and appealing to have on the breakfast table for Christmas. I had more icing than she did. Had I made the icing thicker it might have looked even prettier.

Pinterest Inspired Craft Projects

Time to check off a few of the projects on my Pinterest Boards as DONE! If you don't already follow me on Pinterest, please do. Follow me on Pinterest!

One afternoon, us mommies decided to have a lunch playdate and I  just had enough of only doing projects with the kids. I wanted to do something for me, by me. A t-shirt scarf had been in the back of my head for a long time and it felt SOOOO good to make it, have it turn out just how I anticipated. I didn't realize that project was weighing on me. I felt such a sense of accomplishment after we finished them. I made a brown scarf that came from a tutorial from Shwin and Shwin. My friend made her gray scarf from an image that was just a pinned image, so I don't know who to give the credit to. She might need to start a blog and pin her own tutorial because she figured out re-purpose a men's t-shirt and make the scarf. Smart lady!

 The idea and basic tutorial for this giant felt flower came from Sewing In No Mans Land and ironically the tutorial was to hot glue the pieces and not sew them. I am sure it is much faster to hot glue all the pieces, but I was afraid it might not hold up if I had to wash the hat, so I hand stitched each piece to each other. I thought it turned out really cute!

No Knit Scarf from Martha Stewart was pretty easy to make. You are simply tying a bunch of knots.

Clean Eating Recipes from Pinterest

I made these Cabbage Rolls from Seeded at the Table. My exception to the recipe is that I made it with ground turkey instead and I did use brown rice.

I was very excited to try this Clean Cookie Dough recipe from He and She Eat Clean. I have seen recipes that use garbanzo beans, these do NOT. I have not tried the variety with garbanzo beans, but sometimes I just don't want too many beans, if you catch my drift. :) This is so tasty. The picture was take right after I took it from the food processor. I let it soak up a bit in the fridge before I made individual freezer cookies. Also, I did put almond extract (I love that stuff!) for half of the vanilla.

This Pumpkin Custard recipe from Clean Eating Magazine was delicious and is like a custard pumpkin pie without the crust. I would make this one again in a heartbeat!

Sweet Treats from Pinterest

Time again to share some more things I found on pinterest and made! This one is all about sweet treats!

Unicorn Poop Cookies on Instructables

Pancake Muffins with Maple Frosting and Bacon from Brown Goat

Cake Decorating Idea which I let my son do all the sprinkling on his cake and pick out which ones he wanted to use.

Pumpkin Pizza Topping from MamaMusing with a Pumpkin Pizza Crust from Food Fanatic

Re-Purpose Idea #7 - How about Over 100 Ideas!!!

Come Follow My "Repurposed/Recycled" Board on Pinterest. I currently have over 100 ideas pinned there and will just keep pinning more! Or just go ahead and follow all of my boards on Pinterest!

Pinterest Foodie

I have been eyeing up this recipe for Lasagna Roll Ups with Spinach and Turkey from Clean Eating Magazine for a long time. I only took so long to make it because I find browning meat to be tedious, which is why I am a big fan of all the Slow Cooker recipes I share with you. I used Parmesan cheese on top instead, thought it gave it more of a punch of flavor over mozzarella.

I was out of a few things to make the original Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats from The Idea Room, so I used Cheerios instead, and well I had white chocolate chips instead of butterscotch to use, but I promise the rest was the same. My family RAVED about these and my husband said I need to add it to my list of regulars to make.

This was a Clean Eating Tuna Casserole Recipe that came from Food.com. I thought it could have used a little more salt and pepper, but other than that it was a tasty recipe that was filling and loaded with tuna and veggies.

Even More Pinterest Inspiration

This is my hair in the picture, but I followed the instructions from Oh So Pretty The Diaries. This was a fun up-do idea! I will use this again!

My daughter wanted to see if leaving her tooth in a different location would result in a different present from the Tooth Fairy (read all about that in my Tooth Fairy Post & her recent social experiments). The idea for this one came from Filth Wizardy.

I thought this was a neat picture, so I had to try it for myself.

 My daughter asked for some special valentine hair, so I replicated this idea from PrincessHairstyles.com

And get a load of these delicious treats I made for Valentine's Day. The recipe for the Whoopie Pies came from What's Cooking with Ruthie, but I used Red Velvet cake mix instead. And the raspberry chocolates idea came from Lauren Conrad, but as you can see I used white chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet.

Love these Shamrock Hairclips that were inspired from Potlucks on the Porch (and the one without rhinestones is a pin - my son had to have one too!)

Kids Crafts Inspired from Pinterest

I love this idea for the Hidden Pictures Lunchbox note. It is fun to mix up the lunch box notes, so I printed these off and use them from time to time. Other times I just right a note of affirmation, other times I write a joke and sometimes I forget to put anything at all in there. LOL!

My son did this one. You too can obtain the printable page from Inviting Printables.

We made this Ivory "Snow" as part of our snow theme for preschool at home. I got the idea from Homemade Serenity.

These Ice "Marbles" were a fun project. The idea came from The Queen Says. My daughter thought it was fun to pick out a variety of sizes & colors to make.

 

As were these Ice Lanterns from Craftiments.......I let my daughter mix up colors and create her own colors using liquid food coloring.

And we can't forget the Weather in a Jar experiment that I read about on I Can Teach My Child.

And certainly we can't forget the Jellyfish in a Bottle Project! Such a creative idea from bhoomplay's blog.

So many great ideas on Pinterest!

Be sure to follow me there!

Just What You Wanted - MORE Pinterest Ideas I Liked

1-10 Number Worksheet - A worksheet I did with my son for our "preschool-at-home". This website is filled with a bunch of great printable worksheet.

Triple Chocolate Chunk Muffins - Mine did not turn out like the picture, but they sure taste fantastic, although part of that may because I used raw sugar instead of an artificial one. Maybe I will buy a box of stevia and try these again with that.

Reese's Peanut Butter Bars - I did do this recipe just slightly different because I used my "clean eating" homemade graham crackers to make the bottom layer, even though the rest of this recipe is not at all clean.

Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven - This is not necessarily a quicker way to make hard boiled eggs, but I wanted to try it just the same. I really wanted to see if they were easier to peel and if it actually worked. Plus, this would be handy to throw some eggs in the oven if I am already baking something at this temperature and use the additional oven space rather than turning on the stovetop. They were indeed easy to peel.

The Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven Recipe is as follows: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove immediately. Allow to cool to touch and peel.

Caramel in a Can - I actually first read about this in the book, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People by Amy Sedaris and then I found it on pinterest and thought I should try it because it seemed simple enough and I love caramel.

Miracle Bread - I plan to try a multi-grain miracle bread recipe next. I am a big fan of homemade bread!  (Guess I have my great grandma to thank for that.) And an even bigger fan of bread that doesn't take much work, like my Artisan Bread.

Even More Pinterest Inpiration

Some more fun things we have done that have been inspired by Pinterest. I do try to limit how much time I go searching on there because there is just not enough time to be pinning all the time and then make the things we pin. Gotta have some Pinterest balance. :)

A new take on Smores - fill a sugar cone with mini marshmallows, banana chunks & chocolate chips, wrap in tinfoil and place on a grate over the fire until melted. Delish!

Hold sparkler through a cup, protects little hands from it burning too far or sparks.

Break a glow stick & cut open. Put glow stuff in  an old (clean) baby food jar and use for decoration or a camping nightlight.

This one was hard to capture on camera and works much better than this looks like, but it is a glow stick inside a balloon to create a glowing orb.