Scratch Tickets

I saw this post and I was in heaven. Free rewards for students are always the best. And as a kid, my siblings and I would fight over who got to scratch off the things that came in the mail (new credit cards, free giveaways, etc.) We don't gamble in my family but I would be tempted to buy a lotto ticket daily just to scratch off the silver paint stuff.

I read the directions on the original blog post And thought it sounded simple enough. I had to try it. I tend to get most excited about teaching ideas I find on pinterest than anything else.

I first printed off the tickets. I included such prizes as "switch desks with a friend," "Sit in Miss Poulson's desk during math," "Free assignment pass" and "Bring an item to school to tell the class about." That last one is a huge hit. We don't do show-and-tell anymore since we are in 3rd grade but kids always love to tell about their "special toy," "special picture," "special rubber band," etc.

After I printed out a few pages of prizes I cut out the tickets and glued them on cardstock. This is where the 45 minute commute becomes useful...at least when Camille is driving. When I got home I realized that I didn't want to cut out the tickets and then cut out the contact paper and then put them all together. So I just cut out a step and put contact paper across the whole piece of cardstock and then cut out the tickets. More efficient.

Next came the hard (time-consuming) part. I mixed the paint and dish soap (2 parts to 1 part) and started painting. I only had gold metallic paint so I used that. I wonder if, perhaps, silver would have covered better. About 2 hours later I only had 2 coats of paint on each ticket and you could still see through the paint very easily. I finally decided to try nixing the soap and using only paint to get better coverage. That worked fairly well, for the time being.

The next day, after all the tickets were dry I decided to try them out on my students. A couple kids won rewards and instead of the usual "candy from the drawer" I told them they were going to get some awesome scratch tickets that I had made! They totally bought into my enthusiasm.

This is when the effects of my impatience reared its ugly head. Since I had used plain paint on the last 2 coats...it wouldn't scratch off. I gave my kids some coins I had in my room (it's a piggy bank theme and I have a plethora of coins) and they were a little more successful at scratching away enough paint to read what the prize was but I don't think the scratching experience was as fulfilling as normal scratch tickets.

Now, not to bash the idea. My kids LOVE the tickets, even if they don't scratch well. They are 8 and 9 years old. Life is thrilling all the time. It's an awesome project. I will definitely do it again. Maybe trying a little harder on being patient and using silver paint.

P.S. I currently don't have a picture of my tickets as I sent my camera on a mission with my sister. I will get a picture as soon as I buy a new camera.

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Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

A few years ago, I went to Chicago to visit my sister and she took me to place called "Orange" for breakfast (they have since gone out of business). I got their Cinnamon Roll Pancakes and have been dying to make some as delicious ever since with no luck, but the Cinnamon Roll Pancakes from Recipe Girl looked promising. I pinned them and promised my stomach to give them a try.

Usually on Sunday afternoons, we get home from church, find our places on the floor or couch, turn on a movie and promptly fall asleep (at least Marina and I do). Yesterday, we decided to nix the movie and make the cinna-cakes for Sunday brunch. Luckily we had all the ingredients on hand, and you probably do too.

What we loved about this recipe is how simple and fun they were to make. The batter was quick and simple and the pancakes ended up being so wonderfully fluffy that I might use this recipe for regular pancakes. I think the most fun was making the designs in the pancakes. Recipe Girl made a good point when she said to let the pancakes cook for awhile before adding the cinnamon swirl otherwise you will have cinnamon lava gushing out of your cakes, and nobody likes cinnamon lava.

We doubled the recipe, and made 10 good sized pancakes (We also doubled the cinnamon mixture which was quite unnecessary.) We did the math. We each got 2.5 cinnabuns. Woohoooo!

We sat down at the table and dug right on in. Our pancakes were no works of art. We were more focused on getting these heavenly things into our stomachs then on presentation.

After about 1 1/2 pancakes our stomachs started screaming "NO MORE," but like champs we finished the 2 pancakes on our plates because our mommas taught us better. These babies were delicious but sweet. Super sweet. These are definitely going on the "Make again" list because in my mind they are synonymous with "pure, unadulterated joy."

We can always count on Maren to be enthusiastic and fun.

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Book Page Canvas

I live in the basement. The land of spiders, funny noises from above and a Harry Potter closet that emanates an unpleasant smell. My bedroom is humungo. So big that I don't know what to do with it, but I am tackling it one corner at a time. The first corner I decided to tackle is the one that greets you when coming down the stairs. So I took to Pinterest to find something I liked and found this:

Pinterest

I knew immediately that this is what I wanted in this little nook. Except I wanted to make some changes. I have that right, don't I? I use two different books with different colored pages (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Memoirs of a Geisha if you must know), and I layered the pages instead of putting them in a straight line.

I bought a canvas (using a 40% off coupon from Roberts), 2 books from the D.I. and a bottle of mod podge. I tore out the pages from the books (I should have read Memoirs of a Geisha first). Laid them out how I wanted and carefully mod podged all the pages onto the canvas trying to keep them in the same place (it wasn't successful).

A few days later I was bored (it was most likely a Friday night. I gave up trying to go out and flirt with men months ago) so I decided to get my paint on. I had picked out the quote I wanted a few weeks back from a French book I read and loved in high school called Le Petit Prince. It reads, "Mais les yeux sont aveugles. Il faut chercher avec le coeur." OR "But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart."

Pinterest

The font used in my example did not satisfy my desires. I wanted something a little more classy and straight. When someone else free paints words, I think it looks great, but if I did it, I would hate it and see the imperfections. I really liked the font from the below saying so I thought I would try and copy it. I did take calligraphy in college so this would be easy as cake.

I drew my lines, penciled everything in then painted the words on. The whole process took about 2 hours and I am pretty pleased with the results:

Below is my little nook all gussied up. Please note the panel on the wall on the right. That controls the water for the entire row of townhouses I live in. If you mess with me. I will not hesitate to shut it off. I like the nook, but am not in love with it. I wish I had a better perspective on scale and color and pretty much all things interior design.

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A Spray Paint High

Our kitchen was blessed with hot hot hot pink walls and dark cabinetry. At first it was a sight for sore eyes, but I think us ladies have really grown to love the walls. Because of these walls, we didn't want a lot of color besides punches of teal here and there. We have 2 shelves above a counter and figured out what to do with the lower one, but the high one was a mystery. Jerika and I found pinned items that had to do with coloring Mason jars and vases, and we decided to give it a try.

Our inspiration:

thesinglenester.com and thecolorfullivingproject.blogspot.com

One boring evening while Maren and Jerika were away having fun. Marina and I decided to tackle this project we had been putting off too long. We ran (actually we drove) to the local picked over D.I. and filled our arms with glass vases galore. Other peoples trash = our crafting haven. We bought 9 $.75 vases and we splurged on 1 $1 vase. We lead a crazy life. With our vases in hand, we shimmied over to the Home Depot and bought 3 cans of $.94 spray paint. We got home and were greeted by Maren and David who were excited to help with the project. We cleaned the grime off the vases and took them to the backyard to paint. We were all surprised with how well the $.94 spray paint covered the glass (although we heard it sucks on wood). We brought them inside and had David do the dirty work of arranging them while we all stood back and told him to move something "1 inch to the right" "switch the one over there and the one over there."

The entire project cost us about $13 and took us only 1-2 hours. You can't even tell the vases aren't white ceramic!We are 100% super pleased with the final product and even decided to spray paint a wooden mallard and stick him up there...Apparently ceramic animals are all the rage, so we decided to make a mock. Can you spot the 3 items that are real ceramic? Hint: they match.
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Parmesean Knots

I am obsessed with eating and I find a lot of joy in cooking. It's a wild circle and a miracle that my BMI is not 58. I pin more food than anything, so most of my posts will probably (no, definitely) involve food.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into these Parmesean Knots from Real Mom Kitchen I pinned them immediately and knew I must try them one day. It turned out that Maren had also pinned them, so this carb delight can only be called fate. As I was preparing my frozen raviolis last night for dinner I remembered I had all the ingredients for these knots. The only substitution I made was I used Pillsbury Bread sticks instead of Biscuits. Hey, it's what I had on hand. I live life on the edge, I know.


These knots may be one of the simplest upgrades to bread sticks and it sure makes a heckuva difference to my taste buds. They were simple, delicious, and I will make them again. Maybe one day I will master the beauty of the the original bread stick knot, but in the mean time my Boy Scout approved knots will have to do. Don't mind the crappy picture of my knots on a greasy black plate. Maybe one day I will pin a food photography page. Until then we can all just take a deep breath and deal with it.

-Kim

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Homemade Butterfingers...Toothsome or Tasteless

Tried by Marina and Maren
You may have come across this pin on pinterest:

The blog it came from raved, "I don't eat a lot of candy, but I l♥ve Butterfingers. When I saw this recipe on the Taste of Home forums, I knew I had to give it a try. Everyone on the board said it tasted just like a real Butterfinger. The best part - this recipe only has three ingredients! "
Too good to be true? We had to try it. Sadly, we did this on a slow Saturday night. Yes. I did say Saturday.
We followed the instructions exactly as found on the blog above...or as exactly as we could get. Melted the candy corn. Added in the peanut butter. We didn't have a single container of PB to scoop from so we had to estimate 16 oz. and mix two types of peanut buttery goodness. We let it sit in a pan to cool.
We also came to the realization that we didn't have enough candy coating or chocolate chips to do the job so we had to run to the store to pick some up. Luckily, on our trip we happened to run into Camille and the newly acquired husband. Good times had by all on aisle 9.
When we returned home we found the PB centers had cooled sufficiently to cut. They were a little difficult to cut and we found them to be a bit crumbly. We microwaved the chocolate and dipped.
We ended up with bite-sized bits. It was too hard to make them much bigger and in the end I think we were thankful. I personally found them a bit chewy. The thing I love about Butterfingers is the crispety-crunchety. But flavor-wise they did taste pretty close to the real deal. I, personally, couldn't get over the viscosity of them and we ended up giving most of them away. It was a fun project but probably not something I would make frequently.
End product (with our professional lighting and photography crew: Me holding up a sheet while Kim took the picture with her digital camera, set up under a light in the kitchen. We're legit.)

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Welcome to "Our Interest in Pinterest"

Everyday men and women around the world stare at hundreds of pictures on Pinterest thinking, "this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen!" "Oh whoa! I want to do that!" and then we never do anything about it. How much of Pinterest can we actually trust? Is that crock pot meal as delicious as it looks? Will this perfectly coordinated outfit board look as good on me as it does on the invisible body? Will this homemade cleaning product really miraculously clean my carpets? Can my hair actually do that in less than 5 minutes? Is this home craft as easy and cheap but looks like I bought from Pottery Barn?

So here we are, 5 simple women taking on Pinterest projects that we have pinned and writing reviews on what we have done. We have no experience, a crappy point and shoot camera, and some extra time on our hands.