Throwback Thrusday: T-Shirt Rug? More Like T-Shirt Ugh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello all! It is Throwback Thursday again! Today we are showing one of our most popular posts, written by Marquette, submitted by Deidre, and originally posted in August of 2012. Enjoy!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every now and then we get a Pinstrosity Submission that is quite well written and so we just let them do the talking. Today's is one of those. I give you Deirdre and the T-Shirt Ugh Rug. 

Like many pinners, when inspiration strikes, I must act. Crafting has been a big part of my life since I was a child; I haunt the DIY & Crafts category like most women my age spam pics from the Weddings category. I've made some great things thanks to Pinterest, like coasters out of paint swatches and a vest out of an extra-large T-shirt. But today, I'm going to talk about an abomination. Something that I thought would be super cute, but only ended up being really ugly. 

The craft was a circular rug made out of t-shirts using a hula hoop as a loom. Here's what I expected:

The Original Pin

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/hula-hoop-rug-995304/

And this is what I got:

The Pinstrosity

The Chapstick is there to show the size relative to it. Does that look like a rug to you? More like a too tiny dinner table centerpiece or a too large potholder. The directions called for a 33" hula hoop. Upon inspection, the one that I had was only 22" (and it was the biggest one at Walmart. Go figure). I also used the bottom hems of the shirts which made parts of it look extra bulky. You can see in the picture that one of my central yellow pieces was a hem. The directions also said to use a dozen t-shirts, where I only had to use four (though this may be due to the small size of my hula hoop). So now I have eight old t-shirts, boys large from Goodwill that will probably go towards another craft or gather dust at the bottom of my closet. I'm banking on the latter.

I was hoping for this to be a birthday present for my mom. Her bathroom is all decorated in blues and greens-- but this looks way too shabby and looks like a child's craft from the 70s.

Also, to any pinners who have children (I'm 22 years old, a recent college graduate, and spend little time with children): What's up with hula hoops these days? All the ones at Walmart sounded like they had water in them. What happened to the ones with beans in them?

Hey, yeah! Where are the bean hula hoops? Oh well. Another thing to add to the "My childhood was awesome, these poor kids now are missing out" list. Anyway...let's take a look at what we can do to turn this from and Ugh to a Rug. 

• This is one project where size does matter. You really do need a large hula hoop. The instructions at the end say to leave at least 8 inches between your rug and the hula hoop, and if you're already using the 33" hoop, that means your rug is only going to be 17" wide (because you're taking 8" off each side, not 8" off total). That's just under a foot and a half. Now I know the rug in the tutorial looks bigger than that, but you have to remember that the girl holding it is not very big, and she is sitting on a chair. I bet her rug is 2' wide. So this project doesn't make a very large rug to begin with, but then if you use a smaller hula hoop it is really going to start being tiny. 
• Another thing to watch while making this is how tightly you weave the t-shirts. The tutorial says, "As you work, push the weft material toward the center of the hoop and keep it just snug. If you pull the weft tight, the rug will develop lumps or bends." So you want your t-shirt strips snug, but you don't want to pull them tight. The first time I tried anything like this as a kid I pulled them nice and tight and ended up with a lumpy bowl. So get the strips woven in the snugly, but don't pull them tight. 

Pinstrosity Personal Pizzas

Whewy, Monday was a rough day. Mondays are usually just another day for me, but this past one was a Monday Deluxe. Dead car battery. Angry readers. Changes of doctor appointments. Unhappy baby. Tired Moody Momma. Etc. Etc. Etc. Makes for a rough day. It was a day that called for pizza...lots of pizza. Pizza cheers me up. And Doughnuts. Sadly...I didn't have either, and the dead car battery made getting pizza (or even pizza ingredients to make it at home) a 40 mile round trip hike that I wasn't willing to take. I'd have even gone for a tiny little palm sized pizza, but alas...it was not to be. What do tiny pizzas look like you ask? I'll show you. 

http://www.rhodesbread.com/recipes/view/2094

Don't those look yummy?! Mmm, I want one. And how cute?! You could use heart cookie cutters for valentines day, shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day, pumpkins for Halloween, etc. Perfect! I seriously want to try these out, but since I can't at this exact moment I'll show you a submission we received from Miriam and her adventure. 

"I was having a little Christmas get together and thought these mini cookie cutter pizzas would be a great treat for the kids. Simple, just use Christmas cookie cutters to cut out shapes from pizza dough, add sauce, cheese, whatever. So I bought refrigerated pizza dough and rolled it out, cut shapes, then tried to lift the extra dough off, leaving the tree, candy canes, etc to be decorated. Only the cutters didn't cut through all the way. So it started stretching and tearing. And pizza dough is a little sticky. Yeah.  I tried to lay it all down back where it was and re cut the shapes with a little more force. Come to find out, it only takes one little area to stick and things go wonky. So new plan, I will just redo it by smushing up the dough, flattening it back out, and recutting. Hmm, this worked better in my head!  It was not universally flat, and I was struggling. So my husband stepped in to save the day. They didn't look THAT bad before going into the oven. However, the end result speaks for itself."

The Pinstrosity:

Not the pretty shapes from the original pin, but it's pizza. It doesn't have to be pretty to taste good (have you caught our theme on food yet? We'll pick good tasting and not so pretty over beautiful and inedible any day). 

But what if you want beautiful and tasty? The key here lies in the original directions. The Pinterest caption wasn't wrong, it just wasn't complete. You do roll out the dough, cut it with cookie cutters, top it, and bake it...but there are a few steps in-between. The "pizza dough" in the original pin is actually Rhodes Roll dough. 

http://www.rhodesbread.com/recipes/view/2094

Now really quick let me make sure you know we're not getting compensated by anyone to link to Rhodes or to tell you about them (we don't ever do those kind of posts). They are the authors of the recipe and the creators of the original pin image, so we link to them and use their directions.

So, in case you didn't just read the recipe I'll summarize. They have you take a thawed, but still cold, ball of dough, flatten it out to a 4 1/2" circle, and cut it with a cookie cutter which was dipped in flour. This is where Miriam first ran into some trouble. The cookie cutter didn't quite cut the dough all the way through. Rhodes' fix? Have a small knife handy to cut away the extra connected dough. You can see that here in their tutorial video:

Not too shabby!

If you watched the video and/or read the recipe, you also probably caught the fix to the problem of the dough puffing up during baking and pushing the toppings and sauce off. What is the fix? Pre-baking. Before you add sauce or toppings, you want to bake your dough shapes for 8-10 inches minutes (inches..bhahaha, let's just skip this week). In the video we're told that if the dough starts curling up on the edges (or puffing up too I'm sure), then pull the pan out, flip the dough over, and return the pan to the oven. After you pre-bake, you top the crusts and then bake again. The pre-bake is the key to keeping the cute little shapes for your pizza crusts.

Lessons learned today? Pre-bake, and caption your Pinterest pins well!

Happy pizza creating!
Ooh! Now I want a Pinstrosity cookie cutter to make Pinstrosity Pizzas!

Chevron Cake Roll

Chevrons...they are taking over the world, literally everything I see lately is a chevron! Can I admit that I didn't know they were called "chevrons" till this trend came about, I always just called them "squiggle line things", very professional.

When I say that chevron is taking over our planet I mean it, it is even infiltrating our foods!

 

Jamie sent us this Pinstrosity and wrote about it, check it out:

 

The Original

http://andcute.com/how-to-make-a-chevron-zig-zag-cake-roll/

 

The Pinstrosity

 

"I guess I could start with the fact that I amazed myself by thinking that I could actually pull this one off. I have been very confident with my cooking lately. Although I have been counting calories and reducing sweets dramatically, I really needed to try something new.

I'm glad I had a measurement converter on my iPad because this recipe uses grams. I translated the amount as best as possible but that didn't matter because I had to blow up the proportions to get even remotely close to what things were supposed to look like.

I'll start with the egg whites and fine sugar. First, I am totally assuming that "fine sugar" is powdered sugar because I didn't see "fine sugar" at the store. Now, I translated 70 grams into a little less than 1/3 of a cup. While whipping the egg whites and sugar, I was supposed to have "firm peaks". So I guess I was supposed to have the Rocky Mountains and I ended up with a Louisiana bayou.

 

I proceeded to the egg yolk mixture and quite frankly, got confused with having to "fold" the yolk mixture UNDER the egg white mixture. ?????? I just dumped it in.

Next I had to add the flour and gently fold it in. Once again, there was absolutely nothing to fold. The recipe called for 70 grams of flour (1/3 c.). I was supposed to have DOUGH. I did not have dough. I dumped in another 1/3 c. and still didn't have dough. Another 1/3 c. later and I kind of have dough! HOLLA!

I followed the next few steps and colored some of the dough, buttered the wax paper down, and started the chevron pattern. In the beginning, it said to print out a pattern to put under the wax paper. As a design major, I got conceded and didn't think I needed a picture underneath to do a chevron pattern. Hellooooooooooo, it's SQUIGGLES for goodness sake! My chevron was horrible. The further down I got, the further away from looking like the first line it got. I learned a lesson here.

But I continued on as I always do! After cooking the chevron for 2 minutes and letting it cool, I poured the remainder of the dough on top and cooked it. It didn't turn out too bad!"

 

 

"The next part involved very confusing directions with more wax paper, cutting boards, sugar, I had to read it over and over to get it. My next step was to roll it while it was still warm but I think I took too long messing with the cutting board flipping, sugar and wax paper because my rolling didn't go so great. I'm pretty sure the directions should have said to roll IMMEDIATELY for fear of imminent roll destruction. You will see what I mean here in a little bit.

On to the mixture I was going to be putting inside...

In the original picture, it looks like whip cream!! Even though the recipe said "heavy whipping cream", I still had whip cream in my head. At the grocery store, I knew I had to get heavy whipping cream, so what did I do? Go to the whip cream section and try to find a container that says HEAVY. I didn't find one so I just got regular whip cream and hoped it would work. It was only when I got home that I realized I was an idiot.

I had to find out how to make homemade whipping cream. What I found called for 3/4 cup of milk and 1/3 cup of butter and so that's what I did. It was ugly yellow though and the original picture showed such pretty white!! I heated my nasty whipping cream, added the white chocolate and was supposed to whip it until it had the consistency of cream cheese. In order to semi get there, I had to add twice the chocolate that was called for. Oh the calories that were coming.

When I poured it on the roll, I was so disappointed that it looked nothing like the picture and in fact resembled something rather unpleasant. Snot. I'll go with snot on this one."

 

 

 

So I think a few things happened here. First off Jamie, I like your writing style, I don't know you, but I can almost hear someone explaining all of this to me, and it's humorous and light hearted :)

 

So what happened here?  I think Jamie is was brave to try this one out, I'm not sure I would have been up for all this work! You go girl!

 

She first talks about not having fine sugar and uses powdered sugar instead, there is a difference, but only slightly. Fine sugar is just a smaller grain of regular sugar, whereas powdered is so fine it is literally powder. Taste wise I'm sure it is the same, but texture and cooking may be a different story. I am no master baker, so I will have to ask our more culinarily inclined readers...will this make a difference? It may have affected her "fine peaks" in her egg whips...I'm thinking texture is especially important in this recipe so I think the sugar did cause a problem here.

 

Next,  here is a tutorial on "folding". This would probably have helped the consistency and texture of the batter, or dough as well.

 

Next, if the recipe calls to roll out your concoction while still warm, I would try to do that pretty soon after its out of the oven, I think in this case it got too cool and didn't want to cooperate after that.

 

And last, the mix up with the heavy whipping cream. It happens to all of us. I'm sure it still tasted delicious, and I think it looks like a crepe on steroids so there is always that!! Who wouldn't love a crepe all beefed out like this!!??

 

I think you should give it another go and let us know how it turns out! Also, I thought your chevrons looked nice :)

 

And now that we know how to add chevrons to a cake it will make for fast and easy birthday cake decorating!! :)

Happy Tuesday all!

 

 

 



Kid Tested Jokes

Well, I thought my first Mix It Up Monday post with Matthias Varga's depiction of international economics using two cows was a humorous portrayal of various types of governments and countries economic state and approach, but some declared it racist and were upset. I now need to get out the door to a doctor's appointment, so I found something that will hopefully work for today and will be less offensive. 

30 Kid-Tested and Kid-Approved Jokes by Joyce from Childhood Beckons:

To say that my son loves jokes would be an understatement. I'm constantly on the lookout for more kid appropriate jokes to spare me from hearing the same ones over and over. So I thought I'd share some of the ones that make us giggle. I've also asked several amazing bloggers about their kid-tested favorites and I've included them at the end of this post. I hope your family gets a laugh, and a knee slap, out of them too!

Silly Puns

1. Why did the chicken cross the playground?  

  -To get to the other slide.

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2. What do you call a pig that knows karate? 

  - A pork chop!

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3. Why do bees have sticky hair?  

  -Because they use honeycombs.

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4. Why was the man running around his bed?  

  -He wanted to catch up on his sleep.

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5. What does a robot frog say?  

  -Rib-bot. (Said in your best robot voice)

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6. Why is 6 afraid of 7?  

  -Because 7 8 9!

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7. What's black and white, black and white, black and white? 

  -A penguin rolling down a hill!

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8. Why do cows wear bells?  

  -Because their horns don't work!

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9. What does a snail say when it's riding on a turtle's back?  

  -Weeeee!!

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10. How did the barber win the race?  

  -He knew a short cut.
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Knock Knock Jokes

11. Knock, knock.  

  -Who's there?

Boo.

  -Boo who?

Please don't cry. It's only a joke.
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12. Knock, knock.

  -Who's there?

Nobody.

  -Nobody who?

(Stay silent)

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13. Knock, knock.

  -Who's there?

Interrupting cow.

  -Interrupting c..

MOO!!!

(Can be used with any animal. Just interrupt the other person with the corresponding animal noise!)

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14. Knock, knock.

  -Who's there?

Cows say.

  -Cows say who?

No silly, cows say moo!

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15. Knock, knock.

  -Who's there?

Owls say.

  -Owls say who?

Yep.

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16. Knock, knock.

  -Who's there?

Tank.

  -Tank who?

You're welcome!

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17. Knock, knock.

  -Who's there?

Little old lady.

  -Little old lady who?

I didn't know you could yodel!
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More Kid-Tested Jokes

18. What is brown and sticky?
-A stick!
Deborah from Learn With Play At Home
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19. Why did half a chicken cross the road?
- To get to his other side!
JDaniel4'sMom from JDaniel4sMom
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20. What's mom and dad's favorite ride at a fair?
- A married-go-round!
Henry son of Laura from PlayDrHutch
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21. Where do cows go on Friday night?
- To the MOOOvie theater.
Krissy from B-Inspired Mama
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22. What did zero say to eight?
- Nice belt!
Danielle from Mommy and Me Book Club
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23. Where do sheep get their wool cut?
- At the BAAAbars!
Deborah from Learn With Play At Home
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24. Knock, knock.
-Who's there?
Banana.
-Banana who?
Knock, knock.
-Who's there?
Banana
-Banana who?
Knock, knock.
- Who's there?
Orange.
-Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn't say banana again?
Danielle from 52 Brand New
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25. Where did the king keep his armies?
- In his sleevies!
Kristin from Sense of Wonder
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26. Where do library books like to sleep?
- Under their covers!
Kim from Adventures in Reading with Kids
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27. Why can't a bicycle stand up by itself?
- Because it's two-tired!
From The Iowa Farmer's Wife
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28. Knock, knock.
- Who's there?
Yourself.
- Yourself who?
Your cell phone's ringing you better answer it.
From The Iowa Farmer's Wife
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29. How do you make a tissue dance?
- Put a little boogie in it.
Kate from Picklebums
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30. Knock, knock.
- Who's there?
Smell mop.
- Smell mop who?
(Potty humor at it's finest)
Rachelle from Tinkerlab
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Sunday Surprise! (zucchini Snacks)

Surprise! It's Sunday AND there is a Pinstrosity post! Could it be? Is this real life? Yes, yes it is.

First of all, I think a belated cheers for Marquette and Emilee is in order! Did you get in on the Day of Epicness?!? Holy cow, talk about a blogging accomplishment. These two ladies are incredible. I'm still so honored to have been invited to join them.

Have you all seen Despicable Me? The moment that keeps coming to my mind is the tea party scene, in which Gru's character says "And now, we will make the clinking noise. Clink!"

So, here's to you Emilee and Marquette. Clink! And here's to you wonderful readers. Clink!

www.savespendsplurge.com

Now-- onto the rest of your Sunday Pinstrosity post! I thought I would tell you this week about a couple of Pin Wins that I've had in my kitchen recently. What kind of pin wins, you ask? Zucchini wins. Why zucchini? Because I had a whole bushel of it that needed to travel into our tummies and not the trash can.

There is a great grocery store near my house called MeKong Asian Market. I buy my tea, some seasoning, and miscellaneous produce there. I was able to scoop up six ginormous zucchini there for something like $3 or $4. They were in great shape and kept for an impressive amount of time in our fridge, so I turned to Pinterest for some new ways to enjoy zucchini.

Let me tell you all about the delicious discoveries I made on my zu-quest-inni:

Wit and Aroma-Inspired Zucchini Pizza

The Original Pin 

Look at that pizza!!! Beautiful!!!

To be completely fair, the only resemblance between Wit&Aroma's pizza and the one that I made is that they are both called "Zucchini Pizza". Now, I would love to attempt the original recipe at some point. But, for the time being, here's what I made for us to eat (and now to share with you):

The Pin Spin

Clearly, our pizzas look (and I'm sure taste) nothing alike. But, none-the-less-- can I just say, my pizza turned out to be DELICIOUS!

You'll notice that there is only zucchini on half of this pizza. You can thank my skeptical boyfriend and self doubt for that-- as I was concerned that it would taste weird. Why I questioned zucchini as a topping idea, I don't know, because this was awesome! I may make another one this week.

My version was really simple:

1. Obtain low sodium crust, low sodium sauce, zucchini, and fresh mozzarella cheese.
2. Assemble pizza with the aforementioned items. Cut the zucchini as thin as you like.
3. Bake in the oven for the suggested amount of time on the pizza crust package.
4. Remove the pizza from the oven and let it cool down a bit.
5. Enjoy and allow your taste buds to thank you.

Seriously. That's it! Boyfriend suggested putting a little oil onto the zucchini to prevent it from drying out-- but I didn't feel like it was necessary. I think next time, I will sprinkle a bit of romano cheese onto the pizza once it's out of the oven.

YUM-O!

Lunges and Lace Zucchini Pizza Bites

Naturally, once I used the search terms "zucchini" + "pizza"-- you can imagine what I found next:

The Original Pin

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivE6S4V4kNcCcjVITxx0JoK4othOUQ8B83dzd-R3UN5CuT0t2OJCOyUdNMhX1b4h6QDiF7_JD-Ozo3KZxWmGUE-qQRxb25wCfea_sxSziKGHrCDG11sNNr-Qn5uAIeAn-rCrl7xyhvRsQ/s1600/2013+-+1.jpg

Why hadn't I thought of this before? Seriously! Nicole over at Lunges and Lace wrote a post about these surprisingly delicious little snacks here.

The Pin Win

Here's what I learned about this recipe:

• Perhaps the most "difficult" part of this process is getting the right amount of pizza sauce on each slice of zucchini. Going from WAY TOO MUCH to not nearly enough was incredibly easy. I think there were only one or two of my zucc-izzas that had the perfect ratio of ingredients. However, I'm not dissuaded in the least. Next time, I will whip out an actual measuring spoon if I have to.

See? The cheese to sauce to veggie ratio is totally off. This here is a science, friends.

• In Nicole's instructions, she said that she had these little guys in the oven for 7 - 8 minutes. Whoa nelly! That certainly was not the case for me. I had to obsessively watch them in the oven so they didn't over cook (much like Marquette did in the Mozzarella Chee'se Bits post). I think that I yanked them out of the oven after about three minutes (and part of the time the oven was open). I didn't want the zucchini to become soggy and overcooked. There were slightly raw still when I removed them from the oven, perhaps that had something to do with the short baking time.

I was obsessively watching these. OBSESSIVELY.

• I'm 100% not recommending these as a replacement for pizza, if you are a lover of bread (which I am). What I mean to say is-- no one is going to eat these and think to themselves "Wow. These taste just like pizza. I'll never need to mess with that crust-ness again." Definitely not going to happen-- since you can still taste the zucchini when these are cooked. But, if you like zucchini and you like pizza, these are a delightful snack. The boyfriend even gave them a thumbs up.
• Since Rob (the thumbs up giving boyfriend) must keep his salt intake REALLY low, so these were an awesome low sodium snack. You'd be surprised how much the sodium stacks up, even when you're trying to make a pizza at home, with low sodium ingredients.

Katie's Perfect Zucchini Bread

What would this post be if I didn't include zucchini bread? I have been calling this "zucchini loaf" since it's very, very sweet. Eating this for breakfast was like eating non-iced, breakfast cake. I was over the moon!

The Original Pin

Look at that photography! Beautiful food photos always grab my attention first.

The Pin Win

Little heart shaped zucchini loaves! Just in time for Valentine's Day!

This recipe made six heart shaped loaves and a small bread pan (C'mon, you know I don't know the measurements of it) full. We were scarfing this tasty treat down for days on end. Mmm-mm-mmm!

What I learned about this recipe:

• My Ninja food processor is AMAZING for this recipe. I popped the zucchini into it and blended it until it was the consistency of apple sauce. I measured out two cups of the puree (instead of just shredded zucchini) and I was really pleased with the results. I forgot to take a photo, sorry!
• The next time I attempt this recipe, I may end up fiddling with the temperature. The bottom of the loaves were slightly browner than I would have preferred. They were completely edible and not even remotely burned, that is just a personal preference that I have (see photo below).
• This recipe deserves walnuts. Without a doubt in my mind, the next go I have at this will include walnuts.

Let's take a moment to discuss how cute this pan is. Can you see the indents left on the bottom of each of the loaves? I LOVE this pan, why didn't I buy a second one?! I found this at Ross: Dress for Less for only $6.99!

Well, I've made myself sufficiently hungry in writing this. Another trip to Mekong Market for zucchini is certainly in my imminent future.

Have any of you tried these recipes before? If so, what did you think? Is there anything that you do differently? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Enjoy your day of rest!

Your faithful min-strositeer,

Rachel

Show and Tell Saturday: Harry Potter Party Stuff

I've mentioned before that I work with the teenage girls at church. This past Wednesday was our start of the year activity where we welcome in the girls turning 12 (the program is for girls 12-18) and talk about what we're going to do for the year. This year we decided to go along the route of Harry Potter. 

About 2 weeks before the event we handed out invitations to the girls based on this idea (for any non-Harry Potter people, in the books the mail is delivered by owls deliver):

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/71283606575087223/  

We worded our invitations to be like the Hogwarts acceptance letter, printed it out on off white paper, rolled it up and secured it with a clear hair tie. For the owls we blew up the balloons, drew on the owls with permanent marker, and then just stuck the end of the balloon in the hair tie to attach it to the invitation. They were all pretty excited to get their owl invitations! 

For the front display table we used things we found around our houses...and it pulled together famously! We'd been so focused on the treats and what we were going to say in the program that we forgot about decorations until that day. We were so tickled to be able to just go around our house and grab things on our way out the door, and then to have it pull together so perfectly. We had old books (some 100+ years old), "owl" cages, a graduation tassel, a nice pen set in a wood case, a feather quill pen, candles (we can't light candles in our church building due to insurance reasons, so they remained unlit), pressed flowers, an old kaleidoscope (because it looked awesome!), a sword (for the sword of Gryffindor) pictures, and other odds and ends. Since it was a church event we added in pictures of Jesus and religious books as well (if you want more on the scoop of the whole program and how we tied it into church-we worked hard to keep it church appropriate and leave out the wizardry part-you can check that out here). 

After the program we had refreshments off the Honeydukes Cart (the treat cart on the train that takes the students to Hogwarts). We got that idea from this pin we found on Pinterest:

http://catchmyparty.com/photos/1429138

Here's our Honeydukes cart/table:

Here's what we had on the table:

Magic Wands:

Pretzel sticks dipped in melted chocolate and rolled in sprinkles (from this site). These were SO yummy. I loved the salty against the sweet along with the crunchiness.  

Chocolate Frogs:

Here's a size reference for you. 

I ordered a frog mold from Amazon to make these. I figure with a little boy in our lives now, a frog mold will be fun (chocolates, jello, ice, etc.), so I just got it for me to have at home (and it really was a decent price). I got the 2lb bag of melting chocolates made for those chocolate fountains and that made 32 frogs. These disappeared fast! 

 Anti-Dementor Chocolates:

Hehe...I just made a connection...a dementor's "kiss" sucks out a person's soul...a chocolate kiss protects it apparently. Bahahaha, love it.  

Jelly Slugs:

Gotta love gummy worms. Those have been a favorite since I was a kid!

Levitating Lemon Drops:

Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans:

Jelly Belly sells actual every flavor beans, but at $2.25 for a small box we couldn't afford enough for everyone. So we just got the regular assortment of Jelly Bellies and used those. 

Fizzing Whizbees (aka caramels): 

 The recipe for these can be found here. Super easy and yummy!!

Butterbeer:

I didn't get an actual picture of the butter beer. But it pretty much looks like cream soda with whipped cream on top...because that's just about what it is. We used this recipe for our butterbeer. We thought the flavor of the extracts was way too strong. Most of the adults didn't like it, but the kids thought it was alright. If we were to make it again I'd just use butterscotch flavoring and not add as much as the recipe calls for. 

So there's the basics of our Harry Potter Pin Win! It was so much fun, we all went away happy and excited. Can't wait for October/November when we get to try pumpkin juice and the pumpkin pasties at the end of the year activity. Mmmmm!!!