Don't Just Pin It : French Toast

Hubs' birthday always falls in the middle of our busiest weekend in December so to cram in a little celebratin' he asked for a birthday breakfast.  With french toast.  French. Toast.  I do not prefer french toast, but it isn't my birthday so I turned to my new BFF, Pinterest and searched "french toast".

This yummy Vanilla French Toast recipe looked good.  And it was!  

My variations: used 1% instead of half-and-half.  The batter quantity makes more than 8 slices, it could have done an entire loaf.


 I also scored this divine little French Toast Sandwich variation for me and my aversion to all things maple.  How lovely! I could eat the french toast with my family and avoid even a single drop of maple syrup.

My variations:  I used fresh french toast instead of the frozen toaster type.  Raspberries instead of blueberries.

Another fun birthday morning breakfast enjoyed by all.

Even Mr. Picky Pants.

Except for this guy.  Exhibit A: pouting head hang.

Happy Birthday, Hubs.  You really do become more irresistible each year.  

All that gray hair...mmm mm mmmm.

Since I seem to have a pattern going of Pinterest related experiments they're now categorized and have a spot in the sidebar.   Not that it makes a difference, just sayin.

This, that, and the other.

I told myself only one more cup of coffee and then I have to get off my duff and do something with this quiet morning I'm having.

After nursing most of the family through a stomach bug, doing mountains of laundry covered in a sloppy sick baby vomit and poo, and stripping beds filled with sick germs I'm home yet again on a Sunday with a baby who has giant rivers of yellow snot running down her face.  To say I'm feeling a bit isolated and shut-in would be a gross understatement. I'm straight up losing my mind.  Could I have tried to sneak Franny into the nursery at church with a snotty nose?  Yes, I probably could.  Then I think about all her tiny little friends and imagine them getting sick, and then their mommies having to miss work because we passed on the rotty snotty, and their little friends at daycare getting sick, and their siblings, and, and..... I just can't be that selfish.  Even though I would pay good money for some adult interaction and an hour without someone hanging on me or whining for something.  This is the stuff of life.


So you asked to see pictures of my new hair.  *sigh*  You people know I hate posting pictures of myself because I never know what to do -- do I smile? make a face? try to look broody and thoughtful?  It's all so ridiculous and silly.  But I tried, so many odd angles.  Too much under-eye wrinkle and dark circles in macro setting.  So you get one "eh, it's not terrible" shot and one that says, "enough already just take a picture of the hair and be done."

As an added bonus you get to see yet another crazy blue room in my house.  And the bottle of Pine-Sol recently used to scrub down the most recent area of vomitous glory.  It's been a great week to be me.

So the hair, I'm okay with the color.  The cut...I am struggling.  It looks like a bubble, it's more layered on the sides than I wanted and I can't iron it flat enough.  I feel like I need to pull up some mom jeans and strap a purse around my shoulders.  But it's just hair.  It will grow.  

We all know now that I'm a big Pinterest idea monger, so of course I used the idea for a masking tape car road all over the living room for Jack's car themed mini-birthday party.  Everyone has seen that pin right?  It was on every Pinterest page for about week.  I had to use 2 different colors of tape but it still worked. I was super excited and thought the boys would go nutso.  

No.  It was a huge waste of tape. At least in Jack's crowd of 4/5 year olds.  This is the extent of use it got.

Instead it was the big plastic Hot Wheels sloping track that we've had for four years.  The one that constantly falls apart mid-race.  It was a hot item.  Sigh.  It was a good reminder of how grown ups can over think children's parties.  

So yeah, the coffee is not gone from my cup but it is ice cold now.  Better get going.  Hope you have a healthy household this week filled with lots of adult conversation.  And if you think of us whisper a little prayer, will ya?  I'm really feeling worn thin from all of this.

Don't Just Pin It : Garland

I saw a cute idea on Pinterest awhile back for a fabric scrap garland.  I wanted something to decorate my huge empty mantle for Thankgiving next week.  And I have no money to spend.  Voila.  Thank you, Pinterest.

I went to my scrap bin and pulled out all the fabrics that had fall colors in them.  It didn't matter what the design was, I was looking for colors.

After trimming down the odd shapes and tails, I used my rotary cutter to slice them into 11x2 strips.

I cut a bunch of strips trying to balance color and pattern.  Every so often I tossed the pile like a bowl of salad to see how the balance was looking.  If it looked too white I added some bolder pieces, etc.

I tied them with single knots around a string of twinkle lights.  You could be completely Type A about this and tie them on in a designated pattern but I tried to space out bold, light, subtle, dark, and types of pattern as I went along.  If you had my life there would be no time for Type A.

After tying on for awhile I hung it up to see if I liked it.  It's a tedious project and uses a lot of fabric.  If I didn't like it there was no point in continuing on, right?  So far so good....

I tied and tied and tied some more.  Then I cut more fabric and did some tying.  Instead of doing the entire string and allowing the garland to swag on the mantle I called it good when it was the same length as the mantle ledge and strung the remainder of the light string behind the garland.

I think I like it?  I need to mess around with it a little more, but whatever.  The mantle looks better than it did before.

A few tips:
1.  Cut a lot of fabric.
2. If you run out of the fabric you've been using and need to incorporate new colors/designs into the garland go back and squeeze a few into the areas you've already tied.  It would look really funny to have one group of fabrics for half the garland and a whole new grouping on the other half.
3.  Cotton fabrics are usually printed on one side and mostly white on the other side.  It takes a little bit of twisting and tweaking to get it looking how you want it-- with the colored sides out.  For a low maintenance fabric garland that is saturated with color use solid fabrics that are the same color on both sides, not printed fabric.

Pinterest

Forget Facebook.  I have a new internet lover and his name is Pinterest.  All I have do is look at pictures of random things and "pin" the ones I like.  No human interaction required, hahaha...ahem.

One of my favorite things I've found, besides photos of my sewing projects pinned on random strangers' boards- holla!, is the recipes.  I'm forever looking for something interesting to make that isn't too "out there".  I've got me some picky palates at the table and I don't have a lot of cooking time each night.  Our menu also has to appeal to a variety of maturity levels ranging from "eats all things with fingers" to "if it doesn't resemble a breaded chicken nugget I won't touch it."

Thank you Pinterest and pinners for sharing all your recipes and photos.  We've been eatin' delish this week.  Let me share a few.

First was Chicken Enchilada Pasta.  How can you go wrong when you combine pasta with Mexican food?   I honestly don't think I've cooked anything THAT amazing ever in my whole entire life.  This isn't hard to do because I'm not a terribly great cook anyway, but this was restaurant dish material.  I made one modifications for ease and quickness-- I used canned chicken breast.  Also, in my excitement I accidentally wrote down the requirement for enchilada sauce incorrectly, I'm not sure what the difference might have been if I'd not forgotten the extra can of green sauce.  It was still fantastically amazing and tasted even better as leftovers.  We topped ours with sour cream, and chopped avocado.  Next time I'll sprinkle with chopped fresh cilantro.

A few days later we had Loaded Mash Potato Casserole.  Holy wow, it was fantastic also.  My only thought for next time is that it would make a better side dish than a main dish.  Or maybe it's meant to be a side dish in the first place and I assumed that because it was called a "casserole" that it was meant to be the main dish.  Either way, super delish but lacking umph that a slice of ham or bbq (fried?) chicken would provide.

And as I type this I'm sipping on a warm mug of this: Nutella Hot Chocolate.  Warm, creamy and very easy as long as you don't scald the milk.  Whisk!  Whisk it, I say!  The only thing missing?  A huge squirt of Redi-Whip.

Also?

I plan to buy some of THESE.

Find a way to make my mom crochet THIS for me.

And I'm trying to decide whether or not THIS will look super cute and fun OR like I've wrapped wads of torn up fabric scraps around my child and called "boutique".

And I do have plans to make a version of this dress.  Oh yes, I can feel it.

It's Wednesday!  Hooray!  Only a few more days until I get to enjoy scuffing around the house with my favorite guy all day.  Who cares if there are four monkeys tearing the place apart, just having him around feels like a holiday.  And I've been promised that some stank nasty bedroom colors will be painted this weekend.  Woot!  Before and after photos to come.