My Weekly Pintrest Roundup

For a long time I fought the pressure to join Pintrest.  Finally, and inevitably, a few months ago I caved and joined.  Now, I am obsessed with doing something with all the things I've been "pinning".  So, I decided to do a weekly blog roundup of my projects inspired by Pintrest.  Some turned out really great and some made me want to pull my hair out and scream..... I may have actually done the screaming part.  So, without further ado, I give you my Pintrest Weekly Roundup....

These little "burgers and fries" were a huge hit with my nieces and nephews (as well as with a few adults).  They were super cute and very yummy.  The bun is a cupcake cut in half and the burger is a brownie.  The ketchup is made out of butter cream icing and the fries are sugar cookies.  Yumm!  My red ketchup did not turn out super well because I ran out of colour paste so it's a bit pink.  I was kind of in a hurry as well so I left off the yellow mustard icing and the green lettuce icing.  The website where I found these was awesome because she had free printables to make the little baskets to put the burger and fries in (you can't really see them in this picture) which made it even more cute.  You can see the VERY nice original version here.

Some of you probably heard me rant about Jello cookies.  These are them.  SOOOO good..... if you like Jello.  If you don't like that super tasty fake fruit flavour created by Jello then these are probably not the cookies for you.  If you do love that taste then imagine Jello slamming into ultra yummy buttery sugar cookies.  Addicting!  Here's the recipe.

I brought these Strawberry Lemonade Bars to our preschool board meeting this week.  I was surprised how quick and easy they were to make.  Even my husband, who does not eat most baking, enjoyed these.  He lit up when I came home with a few still on the plate.  They are a very summery tasting square and they are a nice alternative to squares that almost always contain chocolate (not that I mind chocolate squares!).

                                                 

This is not a picture of the Can of Dates I made but I realised that I never did take a picture of mine.  Recently I planned a wedding shower for a close friend of mine and this site inspired me to have the ladies at the shower help create a Can of Dates for the bride-to-be.  At every table there was a stack of scrapbook paper cut into squares.  The ladies were each instructed to write on the back of the cute paper a date idea for the couple.  At the end of the evening I collected all the papers and put them in a glass canister I found at the dollarstore.  I put a cute little label on the canister and gave it to the bride-to-be at the end of the evening.  There were some really great ideas that came in and it was a big hit with the bride.

One of L's preschool teachers retired this year so all the kids were asked to contribute one page to create a little going away book for her.  I am such a sucker for anything that involves hand prints or footprints and I have so many art projects with prints pinned that I just had to try one out.  L loved helping to make this.  To ensure that the prints did not come out too goopy, I decided to use a paintbrush to cover L's feet with the paint.  She laughed and laughed as I was painting.  I'm not sure if the laughter was caused by tickling or if she just thought it was so silly that I would paint her feet with a brush.  By using the paintbrush to apply the paint we were also able to give the "flower" portion of the picture two colours.  It turned out super cute and I just wish that I had made one for us to keep.  My inspiration came from here.

This was the project that made me scream.  SOOOO frustrating!  It was a good thing they turned out quite nice.  These were an end of the year gift for L's preschool teachers.  Theoretically, it's an easy project.  All you do is wrap a glass vase with pencils and tie them up with a ribbon. *#!?.  It's not that easy.  I put some hockey tape around the vases and then put some Gorilla Glue on the tape to stick the pencils to.  I thought this was a good idea because when they got sick of the pencils they could just pull them off, take off the tape and use the vase without having to scrape glue off of it.  I still think that was a good idea but getting over 30 pencils to stand upright at the same time is NOT an easy task.  After I got a hold of my temper I figured out a smart way to do the second vase.  One day I will have to put a tutorial on this blog to help anyone else who tries to do this project.  Luckily, her teachers really liked their gifts and L was very proud to give it to them.  The beautiful peonie flowers are from our garden and opened up just the day before we needed them, thankfully :)  Oh, and credit for this idea must go here.

Well, I think that may be enough Pintrest plugs for now.  Needless to say, I am really enjoying all the things I am finding and I'm sure this will not be my last Pintrest Roundup :)