Pinterest Moms

After working on Darrow and Ione's Halloween costumes and Trunk or Treat decorations, Cameron told me "You know, you can't post that online. Your Pinstrosity people will hate you. You can't be one of the Pinterest Moms" And I got a little offended by his comment. But I knew it wasn't meant harshly, and it wasn't worth getting worked up, so I brushed it off. Then last night after laughing over the results of Darrow's birthday cake (he requested a black cake) he said, "You can show this one!" I wasn't offended this time, but it did make me stop short. 

Can we talk about "that Pinterest Mom" for just a minute? 

You know her. The woman who just blew up your feed with the pictures of her perfectly executed themed birthday party fit for a rock star. Or she's the woman who is always posting pictures of the cute and educational things she is doing with her children. Or she's the woman who is posting about her kids quietly playing in their room while she does her hour of yoga and meditation. Or she's the woman who always looks on point and gorgeous. Or she's the woman who always has the cutest date night pictures of her and her "bae" (really...where did that come from?!) and their cute and perfect relationship. See, you do know her. 

We all know her. Or a few "hers". And for some reason so many of us feel threatened by her. Enough so that "Pinterest Mom" is becoming a derogatory term.

Now I know that there are some exceptions, but really for the most part, I don't think these "Pinterest Moms" are out there doing their thing to make any of us feel bad. That's not their point at all.

And you know what...none of them have it all 100% together. I know I don't. I know that none of the amazing women that I know have it all together. Some have it more together than others, but none of us are spotless and we all are hot messes in various aspects in our lives. But we compare our hot messes with our other's shining successes all too often. Of course there is going to be a disparity in that comparison! 

We have to stop it. Stop the comparison. Stop the "Pinterest Mom" shaming. Her success is not my failure. Say it with me. Her success is not my failure. We each have strengths. Every single one of us. We also all have thing we're not so good at. 

I make a mean cardboard Mater, but can't make a pretty cake. I take my family out on day trips, but I really dislike sitting and reading stories to my kids. I love making bouquets and wall hangings, but I can't keep my house clean ever.  Would I like my weak points to be stronger? Of course! But just because I am a crappy housewife, doesn't mean that now I can't buoy up and cheer on those that are fabulous at that. 

"Real" is such a buzzword right now. I love the movement of showing real life and not putting up a fake front, but don't get so enamored with real that you forget that talents are real too. It's okay to be a Pinterest Mom. It's okay to not be a Pinterest Mom. We all have our differing abilities!

So here's your Pinstrosity homework: 

If you find yourself putting anyone down for something they did well...stop. Stop immediately, and find a sincere compliment you can give. Even if you were just putting them down in your head, stop, and tell your Facebook friend that you love how happy her kid looks at her party, or how beautiful the quilling was on the card she just made, or how fun the sign is that she holding at her child's game, or that you are so glad they get to go on date nights. Be sincere. And soon you'll find that your outlook will change, your mindset will morph, and you will be happier! 

We can do this! We can lift each other up instead of tearing each other (and ourselves) down! 

DIY Phases of the Moon Shirts!

So if you haven't seen our DIY Geode Cake post, you can find that here! I mention it because while my cakes were cooking Manny (my New Mexico BFF) and I made shirts! They were quick, easy and SUPER CUTE!

The whole project cost me $7.88, what?!

I saw this pin a couple months ago and have been saving it for just this occasion!

http://www.livemaster.ru/topic/1363123-takaya-raznaya-luna-25-idej-dlya-dekora

Unfortunately for us the instructions were in Russian, and seeing as I don't speak Russian we just went off the picture, it seemed pretty straight forward. *Famous last words*

We had our shirts, our paint, some paper, scissors, tape, a pencil, plastic grocery bags, a circle to go off of, and little round sponge brushes.

The hardest part of this project was making the circles even in terms of how far apart they were from each other. We used two pieces of paper taped together and the bottom of a glass as the stencil.

We placed grocery bags inside the shirts to keep the paint from bleeding, we used straight white acrylic craft paint.  

After cutting out or circles we taped the stencil to the shirt and started to paint! We mostly went off of the picture, but there is a little bit of artisticness to it. It only took about 20-25 minutes in all and I seriously freaking love this shirt!

We did 4 circles down, 4 circles across. At one point in my life I knew all of the phases of the moon, but that "phase" in my life has come and gone obviously (I know Marquette would know this one!) I have no idea how many phases there are, but the 4x4 method is very aesthetically pleasing, so we went with that.

One thing I would suggest is to make sure you keep your paint within the parameters of your stencil or messy paint gets where it shouldn't. I missed and have two tiny white spots that aren't moon, but I just Sharpie markered over them and we're good to go.



We let them dry for about 2 hours and they were ready to wear!

Now we have BFF t-shirts and we are over the moon excited about them! Oh! I kid, I kid.

This would be a great idea for a birthday party, craft night or quick gift. Super super easy and they look really nice!

Happy Hump Day!!

DIY Geode Cake

Pinstrosipeeps! 

I literally have THE coolest friends. They are so good about sending me pictures that remind them of me, and most of the time they are funny and cute,but every once in a while they speak to my soul. Marquette sent me a Instagram a few weeks back that was like my soul in a cake. And I just HAD to have it. 

Fast forward to one of my other BFF's coming to visit, and we decide that we are going to tackle said project even though it may be way over our head. We fear no fail. 

This is what we decided we wanted to recreate:

Photo and Cake Credit: Charla Chouinard Instgram handle: charkala_

 

Fun fact of the day...I didn't even realize until right this very instant that this was a girl I went to high school with?! What?! Small world! This isn't the first first picture we saw of Geode cakes, but it pulled up when I did a search and was similar colors and super pretty, this was just an idea Marquette had seen and showed me on google when she came to visit. When I did the search of images for this blog post a few days ago, this is one of the first ones that popped up and just happens to be made by someone I know!

 

 

Isn't that fantastic?! So beautiful!  So I went to work, I called around town looking for gold leafing, I went to Michael's and Hobby Lobby looking for edible gold leafing and  priced some of their baking tools, and I even called some places in Salt Lake.

Manny my New Mexico BFF came and we got to work! We went to all our stores to pick everything up, we even went to three different stores to get all the rock candy we needed for this!

As for the gold leafing...I called 5 stores and went to 3 different stores and only found ONE place that had edible gold leafing. Here's the kicker...it was $75.00 for 3 ounces!! WHAT?! So...we went with a gold luster dust and gold faux leafing alternative that we found at Hobby Lobby for about $3 a piece instead. Apparently gold leafing is really only for super fancy occasions...because at my house Thursdays just aren't good enough for $75 cake décor.

 

Here's our stash:

 

 

 

We bought rock candy in light blue, dark blue, white and purple. They were SO yummy, of course we sneaked some during the process!

 

We also had blue and white fondant, generic frosting and rainbow chip cake, and then some of the supplies for the cake itself.

 

The fondant was probably the hardest part, we followed the directions and rolled it out, kneaded it and then we roped the two colors together to create a marbled affect when it is all rolled out.

We baked the cakes beforehand and crumb coated them and then put them in the freezer so they would be easier to work with and not crumble-y. When we had the fondant where we wanted it, we pulled the cakes out of the freezer and threw it on there! Getting a smooth coat on the cake was really difficult. Did I mention this is both of our first foray's into fondant?! Because it was.

 

We used powdered sugar to keep the fondant manageable, you can also use corn starch.

 

Then came the really fun part, decorating!

 

We pulled all the rock candy off the sticks and put them in ziplock baggies and then used the rolling pin to crush them to a more manageable size. The air smelled sweet during the beating part lol

 

We cut out our desired geode cave shape with a small knife, and then covered it in frosting before placing our rock candy.

Lastly we put our "gold leafing" on the cake and threw some luster dust on there for good measure.

 

 

 

 

Here is our final result!

 

Not too shabby for our first fondant cake EVER. It's not perfect by any means, and the more I look at it, the more I tend to find faults, but it's a cake not a Saint, so who cares if it isn't perfect?! It was REALLY sweet, but it was good and it was just really fun getting to do this project with a friend!

Are any of you mavericks with fondant?! What are your secrets?! Share below!

 

Happy Monday all!

 

Simple DIY Luau Decorations

Not too long ago I was helping come up with the decorations for another youth stake dance (this seems to be a reoccurring theme in my life, but I sure love it!). This time, the theme was a summer luau. Pulling ideas from Pinterst, past dances, the store, and the closet of old decorations that was passed down from previous youth leaders, we had more decorations than we had time to put up. 

Time. Now there was an interesting part to all of this. 

I was excited for this and headed into town to do my errands, pick up final supplies, and head to the church cultural hall to start decorating. I got all the way to Walmart (because that's our choice around here), 20ish miles away, and discovered that I didn't have a cent on me. My wallet was back at home. 

I couldn't really do anything without it, so back home I went and got the wallet. That was nearly an hour wasted. 

But finally I got the last supplies, got to the church and began unloading my car and searching the closet for any luau supplies (which there were buckets full...literally buckets). About half an hour after I got to the church, our President arrived and I went out to help unload her car, only to discover that I'd let the door close behind us, locking us out. See, being the only one at the church for just a little bit I'd only unlocked the one door long enough to get in and then closed it behind me. We were locked outside with no keys to get back in. Along with the church keys were our car keys and our cell phones. There was no way to get in touch with anyone who could help! 

So I went to a nearby house where I knew a church member lived hoping they'd have keys. And they were gone. We were getting ready to start canvasing the neighborhood when out of the corner of my eye I saw the missionaries leaving a back door of the church. We'd had no idea they were even in there! We dashed over there like crazy ladies (which we might have been getting close to at that point), and they let us in the door so we could get back in and decorate. More time lost. 

So in the end I didn't end up making the palm tree, or the palm leafy backdrop, or a few other things. But you know what...the kids had a great time, they ate almost all the refreshments, and it was a positive activity, so it's okay! 

I did get a few decorations made though! I want to share two of them with you because they are super easy and super cute! 

The first was our tiki pole.

I found this idea on Pinterest, linking back to the Design Sprinkles blog. Not wanting to ruin the paper bags, I used masking tape in a loop on the back of each face part to attach them to the bag. Beign in a hurry, I didn't make all the cool different shapes you see on the original bags, but these did the job well!

I had the idea to drop battery operated lights in them to make it a glowing tiki pole. Great idea, but it didn't work. The bags were too thick. I think next time instead of doing a tiki pole, I'll do tiki heads, luminary style with lunch bags so that they can glow all around the room. How cool would that look?!

We also found that if you stacked more than 4 of these up, it fell. So we ended up with 2 small stacks rather than one large one.

The other quick decoration I want to show you are our mini tiki torch lanterns.

These were a mini version of the lanterns found on the Design Sprinkles blog. I had a stack of 5" squares of scrapbook paper that I used for this. I followed the original instructions (folding in half to get a crease, and then cutting strips evenly around the paper, leaving a margin on top and bottom). Next I wrapped one margin end of the paper around a battery operated tea light and taped it in place. I couldn't find our scotch tape and didn't want a chunk of masking tape visible, so I stapled the tops closed. Not the smoothest look, but it sure did the job fast to use the stapler. These looked really cool out on the tables and glowed nicely!

After the dance we threw away the face parts of the tiki pole, but were able to keep all 6 of the bags for future gift giving, and the paper from all the tiki lanterns. It was all easy to put together and quick clean up!

Tried it Tuesday: Pie Cookies

Yesterday we were invited to a neighbor's house for a Fourth of July Barbecue. Not wanting to show up empty handed, I looked around to see what I could make and kept coming back to a pie. I love making pies! Pies can be a mess though and only go so far with a crowd. 

And then I remembered some pins I'd seen in the past few years. Pie Cookies. That sounded yummy and easy and I figured that'd be perfect. Kids eat cookies great, they require little serving utensils, and it'd help the pie stretch more to give everyone a bite. 

So I searched on Pinterest for "pie cookie" and a plethora of pins popped up. Most of them were apple pie cookies, but I did see a few cherry or strawberry pie cookies as well. I opened up 5 of the recipes at random and read through the instructions and found they all were basically the same. 

Roll out the dough. Cover in pie filling. Top with dough. Bake. Stuff your face. 

I could do that. 

I used my normal pie recipe and did a double batch so I'd have enough for a bottom crust and a top crust.  All the recipes said to use your favorite recipe or buy the pre-made dough from the store. Either is fine!

If you are a video kind of person, the video below will explain the rest of what I did (and next time I'll dig out my tripod! I've totally got to work on my video skills if I'm going to do more of these-and make sure it's not a shaky hands day for Cameron). If you're not a video person (like me!) and would prefer to read, just skip and I'll explain what I did!

Once I had my dough rolled out I sliced one into thin strips for the lattice top. I tried to go with 1/2" strips so that the lattice pattern would be visible on the cookies. After the crust dough was all prepped, it was time to add on the pie filling. I was pretty sure one can of filling was going to be too much, but it fit well and spread out much more thin than I thought it would.

And then it was time for the lattice top. I forgot I don't like doing lattice tops. So time consuming and frustrating, lol. But, I got it on and done. And then it came time to cut the cookies. 

I was sure this would be one of a few places where problems would arise. It just didn't seem like it'd cut neatly without the filling oozing out all over. But I was wrong! They cut nicely and the top and bottom stuck together well! 

But then I ran into a problem I hadn't thought about. All the in-between pieces of crust. Normally with cookies I could just squish it back together and re-roll it, but now it had apply pie goop all in it. So much pie crust and filling there wasted. :( I used my 3" round cutter and got 11 cookies out it. 

I went to pull out the parchment paper to keep the mess contained and found we were out! So tin foil had to do. It worked, but not as good as parchment paper would have. I plopped the cookies on the pan with a metal spatula and then put them in the oven at 475. 

This is where I expected the next mess to come from. I was sure that the filling was going to leak out the sides and create a horrible goopy mess. But when I opened the oven about  minutes later I was shocked. There was little mess! They'd worked! Perfectly! They popped off the foil easy and went to the cooling rack intact. I couldn't believe it! 

But then I had the problem that I only had 11 cookies to take to a barbecue. So I decide to try a second batch, only mix it up a little. I did the double crust again, but this time I didn't cut the 2nd layer into strips, I left it intact. And for the filling I opened up a jar of my homemade blackberry prickly pear jelly and spread a good thick layer over the crust. Once the jelly was spread out I then put the top crust on and pulled out my 1 1/2" cookie cutter. I got way more cookies out of that and had much less waste. Before popping them in the oven I cut a slit in the top of each cookie, and even took a fork to some of the edges to try and seal them together and make them look more pie-ish. 

These leaked a little more than the apple pie cookies, but I made sure to take them off the pan and foil and transfer them to a cooling rack immediately after pulling them out of the oven so that the leaked jelly didn't have time to adhere the cookies to the foil. 

These ones were a HUGE hit and were gone well before the apple pie cookies. And fast enough that I realized that I never got a nice styled finished picture of them, darn it! But real life shots are always good, right? 

So, a pin (or set of pins) that I expected to be problematic totally turned out! And they were yummy!! I think I'll make more of these more often!