Mini Bloggiesta Mini Challenge: Yet Another Pinterest Project

Welcome to Bloggiesta! The mini version! Starting tomorrow, participants will be working on their blogs all weekend, accomplishing blogging tasks and trying out some fun mini challenges. If you are interested, sign up here! And if you can't this time, but think it's a possibility for later, stay tuned for our first ever week long Bloggiesta coming up March 23 through 29. Mark you calendars now. It'll be epic!

So I decided to do a little mini challenge this go around. And yes, I know, there have already been a couple of mini challenges dealing with Pinterest in the past. The first one, from Joy at Joy's Book Blog, was a basic tutorial on how to use Pinterest and just getting started from the bottom up. This was back when Pinterest was the new coolest thing! So if you yet to jump on the bandwagon and are totally new to it, check out her tutorial first.

The other Pinterest challenge we've had was from Wesley at Library Educated where she explored ideas on how to use Pinterest to promote your book blog. She shared all the fun bookish boards she's created and had lots of great ideas.

My challenge is very specific and deals with just one board that you may have created or would like to create. This board should be called Books I've Read (insert year here.) And then you pin all your reviews to the books you've read that year to that board. This is a task I do every Bloggiesta and every time without fail people will say, "Oh, I should do that!" or "Oh, I never thought of using Pinterest that way!"

So now I challenge you to create your "books read" board on Pinterest if you don't have one already and then pin your reviews to that board. Joy's post linked above should help you with pinning if you aren't savvy at that yet but basically open the post that has that review on it. And then you click on the picture of the cover of the book (because you always include that in your reviews, right?) and pin it! (Hoover over it and a pin icon might appear, or right click and see if it's there, or using the pin gadget you may have downloaded and is on your tool bar, or, if all else false, copy and paste the URL manually into Pinterest.) If you are in the actually post, then if someone else pins that pin from Pinterest, it will lead them back to your actual review. Get it? (Here's a link to my 2014 board so you'll see what I'm talking about.)

Start a new board for 2015 and I bet there's just a few books you've reviewed so far for this year that will need pinning, so it'll be easy! If you are feeling ambitious create one for 2014 books and pin all the reviews from last year. Or, just get caught up...as is my plan.

To sum up your challenge:
1. Join Pinterest if you aren't on there already!
2. Create a board for books you've read this year, 2015.
3. Pin the covers of the books you've read, making sure you link back to your review.
4. Do one for 2014 too if you are feeling ambitious (or catch up if you already have such a board!)
5. FOLLOW ME THERE! :)

Have fun and enjoy!

Let me know if you have any questions regarding this challenge. Come back and report your successes!

Pin It and Do It: Second Half Report

You can see here what I did for the first half of the month for the Pin It and Do It Challenge.

During this second half, here's what we did:

First of all, we revisited a couple of favorites. I'm calling them the RE- Pins!

Pumpkin Yeast Bread

I love this stuff! But I forgot to take a picture of our version. Here's a picture of what's on the link above, where you'll also find the recipe.

Andes Mint Cookies

We love these at our house! They have fast become a favorite, probably because they are easy, fun and very very tasty!


We had plans to do more Halloween decorating, but this is all we managed. But it was fun!


Eyes in the Bushes

We've been wanting to do this one forever! And though you get really see them very well, they turned out pretty good! (The directions when you click the link above is not what we did however. We did make eyes in empty toilet paper rolls, but then we simple put a couple of glow sticks inside them. Easy!)


Thanks Trish for the doing the challenge again! I'd say for me it was a success!

A Pinteresting Update!

I've been madly working on the Pin It and Do It Challenge! Madly!

Here's a few things we've accomplished:
(links to the original Pinterest pin, but the pictures here are proof of how things turned out for me!)

A Fruit Fly Trap!

Thoughts: It worked! Though you have to tape the paper to the jar or the critters manage to escape.


Fresh Tomato Spaghetti Sauce

Thoughts: I made a huge batch and put it in the freezer!

A Halloween Wall Hanging

Thoughts: Pretty easy! I like how it turned out. How I found time to actually do this one, I'll never know.

Witch Hat Cookies

Thoughts: Extremely easy. A big hit at the party we took them to.

Pumpkin Brownie Blondies

Thoughts: Very heavy and rich. I'm not sure I really liked these.

Spiders on the Door!

Thoughts: We had to buy spider rings and cut the ring part off. Then make sure you use the heavier round magnets. We tried the thin sticky backed stuff and it did not work at all.

Seems like we've done more stuff, but I guess it was all before the challenge actually started! Anyway, let's see what we come up with during the second half of the month!

Ripping and Pinning

RIPPING

Sounds like I've taking up quilting again, or something. And in fact, I want to. But that is not what this post is about. This is about signing up for things! More challenges! There's so much to do!

First of all, I'm sure you all know that Carl's RIP challenge is well under way. RIP VIII in fact. Wow, that's a long running challenge! But, since my September was totally book booked, I've decided to start my RIP in October and have just the one month to try and read one or two RIP-ish sort of books. (And if you have no idea what I'm talking about with all this RIPping, please head on over to Carl's Stainless Steel Droppings and read up on the details!)

So the books I'm hoping to read this month for this challenge are:

1. Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
2. The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

And I'll probably do a bit of watching too, which means add this to the mix:

I would love to join in on the read along again, but I'm not going to fit in a re-read of the most awesome book, The Historian this month! Sadly! But if you, my readers, have an inkling to read that book, I encourage you to join the fun. Find out those details here at The Estella Society. You will love this book!

PINNING

Also going on this month is Trish's Pinning Challenge.... Pin It and Do It! I go in spurts with the pinning thing, and I feel like I'm currently on a spurt and have in fact pinned and done-d many things just in the last week.

Creamy Basil Tomato Soup

Fudgey Chocolate Chunk Brownies

Tomatillo Salsa

And coming up, I'm sure I'll be pinning and doing a lot more. My daughter wants so much to try some fun Halloween decorations, plus I need to harvest our "crop" and will find ways to do so in Pinterest, plus, maybe we'll start with some Christmas-ing too. Gasp. (P.S. You can find me on Pinterest here. Beware my boards.)

So... onto ripping and pinning. Let's get busy!

Pin It and Do It: October Episode

It's time for another Pin It and Do It Challenge! I skipped the last installment of this fun challenge, but now...October, I can do! I'm finding a renewed interest in Pinterest!  And so I plan to do all sorts of things this coming month.

To read all the details and to link up with other participants, head on over to this post at Trish's from Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity. 

I'll be committing to the second level of excitement, Pinterested, which is 4 to 7 pins.

Follow me on Pinterest here if you'd like to see some of the crazy stuff I enjoy (and let me know where to find you if I haven't already!) I plan to rearrange and rename and add boards, so hopefully that won't get too annoying to followers, but right now, it's driving me crazy... the haphazard pinning I've been doing. I've gotta get organized!

Some of the pins I plan on doing will be Halloween crafts, pumpkin/fall recipes, journaling ideas, more quilting perhaps, homemade gift ideas for Christmas, etc.

Let's get to it! Pin It and Do It!

Pin It and Do It Pinteresting Challenge Update Three: Disappearing Nine Patch Wall Hanging

I actually finished it! Now THIS is what this challenge is all about... forcing motivating a person to actually finish a project! I love it!

So I bought these squares at a quilt party my cousin hosted a few weeks ago. It was just 48 (I think) 5 inch squares... so... what to do with them?  (Hey, if you are interested in the quilt site where I got these from, I'm sure my cousin would LOVE a plug! Check it out.. My Lazy Daisy!)

I have this spot in my house, the stairwell, where I have had great plans to hang a seasonal wall hanging for every change of the seasons. At this point, I only had a Christmas one, a fall/Thanksgiving one, a Valentine one, and a flag one for the summer. I especially wanted a springy one that would work between Valentines and summer. So, that's what I decided to do with these squares.

They suggested at the party to make a disappearing nine patch, and I thought that looked easy and it was something I'd never done, so what the heck, I went for it. And then I found ideas on Pinterest and pinned them. (It's one of those getting to Pinterest through the back door kind of projects, know what I mean?)

Source: popularpatchwork.com via Suey on Pinterest

Source: quilt-it.blogspot.com via Suey on Pinterest

(I really like this second one but decided it would be too big, plus it's tons more work!)


Anyway, I'm not going to list this step by detailed step, but just show the most awesome (ha ha) pictures I took along the way.

First, figuring out how to sew up the nine patches...
arranging the squares to what looks cool.

Then I sewed them up into nine patches.

Then I chopped them up! LOVE this part.
Sew them up to chop them up!

Sewing!!

Here I am trying to figure out how to lay out the now chopped up
(aka disappearing nine patches) into a pleasing pattern.

I sewed them all up and added a little border,
and a bigger border.

And then I pinned it altogether with a back,
and a batting middle.

Then I quilted it with the machine of course,
just stitching in the ditch, cause I'm not fancy.

Next comes the binding (and the hanging tabs,)
 which I made WAY too small, but oh, well.

After handing sewing the binding to the back,
it was done!

Wow, it looks like I made it to fit perfectly!
But it was all luck!

Fun and easy! Though you should know, I am not a perfectionist and when it comes to quilting, sometimes that can be not so good. I had some issues with this for sure. I unpicked a couple times, and the binding is too small which messed up the corners, but that's okay. The Amish make mistakes on purpose you know! See, now I don't have to worry about that!

Now I have a springy looking wall hanging ready to hang just as we approach summer and it's time for my patriotic flag one! Of course.

How are your Pinterest projects coming along?

Pinterest Challenge Update: Cowgirl Cookies

So I had hopes to do more this week on the Pin It Do It Challenge than just the one project, but there was no time for quilting, which was the other project I've been working on. Maybe this weekend?

Source: bakerella.com via Suey on Pinterest

Anyway, I did the Cowgirl Cookie gift jars for little Mother's Day presents. Here's the link to the original post complete with instructions.

These look easy, do they not? But I had issues. I did two of them and had one wide mouth jar and one regular. Well, I ran out of room! Even though I was packing it as tight as I could as per the instructions! In the wide mouth jar, I managed to squeeze in the last sugar layer... barely! (No room at all for the pecans!) But there was no hope for the other one as you can see here:

Needed to fit in a half cup white sugar,
and all that was left was the brim.

So I dumped it out, found another wide mouth jar, and started over again. What a pain. Anyway, in the end they turned out pretty cute, don't you think? Well, at least I think so. Not sure what the moms thought when they got them. It was sort of a luke warm reaction. Oh, well.

I did make the cookies too... and they were YUMMY! Forgot to take a picture though.

Oh, and P.S..... if you want different colors of M and M's on off season... Zurchers has them! (Is Zurchers a Utah place or country wide? I've no idea!) But they are expensive! Sheesh.

I was going to make something for book club from Pinterest, but ended up going with good old standbys.

I'll be back next week to let you know if and/or what I manage to fit in this week crafty-wise!

Pinterest Challenge Update: Two Projects Done!

This week I really got in the mood to work on some crafty projects and then it just sort of took over. I've been missing this part of my creative life, and so I've really enjoyed trying to get it back again, using Trish's Pinterest Challenge as an excuse.

Source: designspongeonline.com via Suey on Pinterest

The first project we did was the Calendar Journal. I first saw this when Kailana of The Written World posted about it here. You can also find out about it here on the original post. The idea is to take index cards and date them for each day of the year, then use old postcards to divide them into months. Then each day you write something you did that day, labeling it by the year. So after many years, your index cards will be full of stuff you did on that particular day for all those years. Make sense?

Anyway, I thought it would be a good project to do with the girls, and they agreed! But I must say, we took the idea and totally changed it up. Here's what we ended up doing:

We decided we wanted more permanent sturdy containers for the cards, so we went to Hobby Lobby and ended up with these tin boxes with handles, which we then painted and sticker-ed up. Then, we got stacks of both white and colored index cards (which we didn't cut in half as suggested in the original instructions) and divvied them up between us. Then, instead of using postcards, we decided to create our own month dividers. My 13 year old daughter created them using google images and photoshop. I just picked a handful of pictures from our files and got them printed. Then we laminated them. Also, instead of using a date stamp for all the index cards, we just sat and hand wrote the dates on them all while we watched TV one night!

The supplies: white tin box, stickers and stacks of cards.
Cost: Tin boxes: $6.50
Stickers: $3.00
Cards: $3.00
Printing of photo dividers: $2.00

Here's Toto painting her box.

This is how the cards fit into the box... perfect!

Toto's finished box.

Toto creating her monthly dividers on Photoshop.

Here she is writing the dates on the crads.

JJ finally joined us and is putting stickers on hers. She didn't paint it.

Here's my finished box, vintage style.

JJ and Toto show off their boxes.

JJ's finished box.

Here's what our divider cards look like... Toto has the monthly themed ones,
I just have random fun pictures. JJ has yet to make hers.

Here's what it looks like with the dividers and a couple of example cards.

We had a great time doing this together, and I hope we can all keep up with writing our one thing down each day, for years to come!
___________________________________________________

Source: annies-eats.com via Suey on Pinterest

The second thing I did from my Pinterest board was make this for dinner one night. It's called Black Bean Lasagna, and the family enjoyed it, but they did say, "It tastes very healthy." So you can take that however you'd like! (Here's the original link to the recipe.)

The casserole in progress... bean mixture, canned tomatoes, grated cheese, lasagna noodles and salsa.

What it looked like all put together before cooking....

.... and after cooking.

I currently have projects three and four in progress, so I'll save those to report on when they are done! But one of them has to do with quilting! Wahoo! I can't wait to show you!

How's your crafty projects coming along?