Friday Favorites - Top 5 Pins of the Week

Since there's not much going on in my life right now -- not that I'm not busy, it's just boring busy at the moment -- I decided to round up a few favorites from my activity on Pinterest this week.  I'm still waiting for that job to open up where all I do is browse Pinterest and pin all the things.  Until then, I'll just share a few of my favorite things that I added to my boards this week.  

Don't worry I won't judge -- I won't know! -- if you just scroll down to see the pictures of my kids you know are that the bottom.  

-ONE-

Mossimo Jessica suede strappy boot in cognac

I need a new pair of boot-cut jeans boots.  And I have a Target gift card from Christmas burning a hole in my pocket.  These might be a winner.

-TWO-

Ribbon & Twine Wooden Letter "wreath"

This is actually a really old pin that I came across and thought I already had it pinned, but I couldn't find it.  The image doesn't even show up on the original linked blog post HERE -- but it's originally from Etsy, I believe.  

After taking down my Christmas wreath, my front door is looking awfully bare.  I'm not sure I have the patience to wrap all that twine around a letter S, and I'm kind of over burlap, but I like the idea.  I might be able to just paint one... either way it's giving me some inspiration -- and the desire to go to Michaels.

-THREE-

Original Source

My neighborhood kids club is meeting soon to plan a Valentine's Day party for the kids.  I'm pinning all kinds of ideas for activities and treats for this little event.  I love these little magnet clothes pins and they seem really easy to make.

-FOUR-

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Emily starts kindergarten this year.  I know it's still seven or eight months away, but I am the type of person that needs to mentally prepare for these types of things (wait til you get to #5 below).  So I've started pinning all kinds of tips for getting your child ready to go to kindergarten, and other sites that list things she should know/be able to do when she starts school.

-FIVE-

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Like I said before, I like to mentally prepare myself for things REAAAALLLLYYYY far in advance.  It's kind of fun -- I like to live vicariously through Pinterest boards sometimes.  So we have talked about taking the girls to Disneyworld.  Right now they are 4.5 and 18 months old.  I know there are tons and tons of fun things to do at Disney for kids those ages, BUT since it's such an expensive trip (and I intend to really "do it up") I wanted to wait until they were a little older to really appreciate (and hopefully remember) the whole experience.  Our target ages are 9 and 6.  Yep, that's 4 years away -- plenty of time to SAVE UP for what will probably be the biggest trip we take as a family for a long time.  So while we're saving, I'm also dreaming -- and pinning.  

As promised... a couple pictures of the girls.  These were from yesterday, when we were getting all our cold weather gear on to brave the single digits.

Super blurry because she thought it was funny to run away from me while I was trying to take her picture; but look how cute, all bundled up :)

And then, of course, my model.  Who is supposed to be getting her coat, hat & mittens on... 

They were both happy and smiling because there was still snow on the ground.

 And I was all:

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Today I'm linking up with Momfessionals for Friday Favorites, 

and with Hello! Happiness (et al) for Five on Friday

Happy Weekend!!!

Three Delicious Meals - Food Review

I was going to do separate posts for my "May Challenge" food reviews but I'm kinda feeling like this: 

{Classy Sweet Brown}

So I'll just sum it up for you.  In the last week or so, we have tried three of the recipes I pinned:  BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Taco Lettuce Wraps, and Pepperoni Pizza Quesadillas.  

They were all delicious.  We made a couple tweaks, added/subtracted a couple non-essential ingredients, and Emily decided to make her pizza quesadilla open-faced (aka just a pizza on a tortilla). 

So here we go: 

Cheapest plates ever.  I found four of these at Target about 7 years ago for 75 cents each. They are melamine and completely trashed -- but still cute.

The $14 pork shoulder I bought (I don't remember how many lbs it was, but it fit snugly in my regular crock pot) made SO much leftovers.  YUM.

The recipe says to shred the pork and then put it an a whole bottle of BBQ sauce in the crock pot and cook a bit longer.  I decided to get a bottle of this amazing sauce from a local BBQ place and at $5 a bottle I kind of wanted to be a bit more sparing. Plus the place I got it from normally serves up their BBQ plain and you add your own sauces, so we just did it that way.

We made the fries by just cutting up a few potatoes lengthwise and coating them with olive oil.  We shook on some Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning, and baked them at 400 for about 30 minutes, turning every 10 so all the sides get nice and crispy.  Soooo yum.

My favorite all-purpose side dish -- fruit salad.  (yummy yummy)

We used Pampered Chef's Tex Mex Rub for the taco meat in the lettuce wraps.  That stuff is so good.  Side note: I never realized how much I loved sour cream.  Bad news.

Don't ask why we broke out the "good" plates for the least fancy dinner of the three.
The melamines were probably sitting in the dishwasher..


This was probably THE easiest of the three extremely easy meals we made.  You could probably even skip the first step of frying the pepperoni to crisp it up, but it did make for a good layer of grease in the pan (even after I drained it) to brown the tortillas nicely.  See how I pretend like I know how to cook?  And if you look closely at the picture, I attempted to get artsy and sprinkled some parmesan "shake cheese" on my little plop of pizza sauce.  It backfired and a huge clump came out.  BUT it tasted SO good.

I think I may have mentioned already just how EASY all of these meals were to make -- so simple that even I couldn't really screw them up.  Yeah they're not exactly healthy, but when you need a quick dinner and you don't care about calories, these are top contenders as far as I'm concerned.

Oh btw, these recipes are so EASY and they were all exactly as yummy as they look.  :)

Pardon My Pinterest... Food Review

Cinnamon Roll Waffles

Last week (or the week before?) I said I was going to try these cinnamon roll waffles I found on Pinterest.

From ladybehindthecurtain.com 

Well, I sort of made them last week.  For some reason, the cinnamon rolls I got were smaller than hers, so they didn't turn out as big & scrumptious looking.  And I skipped the corn syrup & water and just drizzled the cream cheese frosting over the waffles and then put maple syrup on them.  Here's what mine looked like:

So basically mine were just a cinnamon roll in the shape of a waffle.  But still delicious!  Next time I'll try the big ones and see if they come out better.  I feel like mine were a little dry/tough because they were small but thick.  And my waffle maker is weird and the timer doesn't work so I had to guess and I think I left them in too long.  

Guys... I don't cook.  But I do like to position my food next to fake flowers and take pictures and then post them on instagram.  

I said I was going to do this recipe review thing each week, but if I'm being honest, I don't got time fo' that.  So my goal is one new pinned recipe each month, two times a month if I get ambitious.  

Next up, I'm going to try one of these Winter Go-To Crock Pot Recipes from Poofy Cheeks.  The tater tot casserole sounds about right...

Now I'm starving and it's 9:30am...

Pardon My Pinterest -- Holidays

Sooooo... I still haven't gotten around to making the cinnamon bun waffles, but I did buy them... Hoping maybe tonight or tomorrow night we can make them (we have been having breakfast for dinner once a week for the past month or so -- an excellent new tradition if you ask me).  

BUT, I have been Pinning like it's my job lately (I so wish it was).  I've been cleaning up my boards--deleting some I don't pin to anymore, consolidating pins into broader board categories, and adding boards for each "major" holiday.  

So here are some examples of the stuff I've been Pinning: 

Halloween Board

Cute printable

Excellent life hack

Thanksgiving Board

Printable

So totally and completely making these
(Google image)

Christmas Board

Not sure if they meant to get the Journey  song stuck in my head or not...

The Santa Clause, ELF & White Christmas - mandatory.

Fun craft with the girls?

I also created boards for Valentine's Day, Easter, St. Patrick's Day & Fourth of July.  I really want to be one of those moms who bakes and does crafts with her kids.  And decorates her house according to the season/holiday/occasion. Since it's not New Year's yet (thank god!) I'm making this a Fall Resolution.  Hopefully it won't go the way of every other resolution I've ever made... Womp wahhh.

Pardon my Pinterest...Food

Every once in a while, I like to go through my Pinterest boards and clean them up.  It's funny to look back on what I pinned and sometimes I think "why the hell did I pin this?"  Or I pin something I want to try and then never look at it again.  But I'd like to change that...

So I was looking through my "Yummy" board and I decided I want to try to make at least one pinned recipe each week (or at least whenever I can).  Then I'll do a review post detailing if it was good/worth the trouble, if I made any changes or substitutions, and if I think I'll ever make it again.

First up, this isn't really a recipe, but since I don't have a lot of time (or money for buying a bunch of ingredients I don't have on hand) this week, I'm going to try these Cinnamon Roll Waffles:

Lady Behind the Curtain

MMMMM.  Looks so good.  And I just happen to have a waffle iron gathering dust... Going to try to make it this weekend, then a review will follow.

Follow me on Pinterest here.

Follow my Pinterest "Yummy" board here.

(My plan is to eventually take ideas from my crafting and organizing boards and post some projects.  Especially since Christmas is coming up and I'd like to do some homemade gifts from the girls to their grandparents.  Stay tuned...)