Graphic Artist, Writer and Girl Geek
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Posts Tagged with ‘bulletin boards’

Pinterest Inspired Cooking

February 28, 2012

Oh, Pinterest. What have you done to me? Seriously, Pinterest is a trouble maker! I find myself either looking for things to repin, or searching the web for things to pin. Constantly! You know you got it bad when you look at Facebook and think, “FB needs to be prettier.” while you pirouette towards your craft scissors. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But in my family’s case right. Cause Pinterest got me cooking some food they really liked. First up,

Stuffed French Toast

I’m not really a fan of french toast — I don’t like the taste of egg, but this was ridiculously good. You could also easily make it sugar free. The way I did it here was cut big wedges of french toast, slice into them halfway, fill with a cream cheese/jam mixture, stuff with strawberries, dip into your egg mixture, and pan fry. For detailed instructions and the full recipe, you’ll need to head over to the Tasty Kitchen. Or you could visit my Breakfast board on Pinterest :)

I also gave the Six Sister’s Stuffed Pizza Bites a shot and they were fabulous! It was a quick easy meal that I could customize for all the tastes of our family. I just added the toppings that we all liked and allocated areas of the pan for each person. Next time I’ll probably use toothpicks to mark these spots. In 30 minutes with a side of salad, you have a decent dinner! For the full recipe, please visit the Six Sister’s blog.

Now the Bubble-Up Pizza I had been drooling over for a while. The image I pinned for it looked so good! Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly a hit. As the recipe recommends I used ready to bake canned biscuit dough and I think that was the problem. Even though the recipe states it’s very light and fluffy, you know that the biscuits are heavy. And you feel it when you’re eating this dish. If I made it again I would definitely either use the ready made can pizza dough I used for the Stuffed Pizza Rolls or my own dough recipe. It looked good, though:

To give this baby a try, please see the Quick Dinner Fixins blog. 

 

 

Pinta Party Results!

February 27, 2012

A bunch of weeks ago (feels like forever but it’s actually been only two) I suggested that all you all who are addicted to Pinterest, like me, put your addiction to good use. The goal was to make something you had pinned so that you weren’t just a, *whispers* e-hoarder. Horrible that.

Anyways, some of you decided to be more and commented on my ‘I’m Pintaddicted, now what?’ post with your creations.

Here’s a recap:

Kimberly from My Heavenly Days, the woman responsible for my addiction to Pinterest, has just started her blog which is a huge accomplishment as it is, but she also took up sewing. Which has made my life miserable. Really. Just unberable. Because dammit, I now have a Pinterest board dedicated to all things sewing-ish. In all fairness, Kimberly got sidetracked from her lifelong goal to never sew, either, but here we both are. Now she’s making ridiculously cute PJ’s every other day and I’ve ordered a sewing machine. The horror!

This is what she made for our Pinta Party:

DIY Pajamas

To see more fun projects that Kimberly has planned, please see her Sew Fun board on Pinterest. And be sure to visit her on her new blog, My Heavenly Days. It’s going to be one to watch!

You know when you’re thinking of having a baby, everywhere you look there’s a pregnant woman? Well everyone is a sewer these days! And my good friend Rebecca is no exception. In fact, she’s even taking sewing lessons. Which is obviously a much more practial approach to learning to sew. Unfortunately I don’t do practical or easy. Gonna just sew once my machine gets here cause I got some catching up to do! Life and limb be damned. This is what Rebecca made:

Book Slings

 

Aren’t these great? She told me that she would frequently hear things falling along the side of her kids’ bunk beds in the middle night — here’s hoping these great slings solve that problem! The tutorial can be found at the Penny Carnival blog, but you should probably follow Rebecca on Pinterest just to be safe.

And the sewing projects don’t stop there! Sagi decided to make a really cool,

Infinity Scarf

Great scarf, Sagi!

I also participated. Well I think I actually over participated because I made a whole bunch of things. Which I will post over the course of the week, but I want to show you one of my favorite & simple finds on Pinterest — regrowing your green onions. Apparently if you save the bottom of the onion — you know the white part with the stringy roots, and put them in a glass of water that you change every 3 days or so, you will have endless green onions. Don’t believe me? I didn’t either! Let me show you:

Indoor Gardening

Pretty awesome, huh? And they grew so fast! At first I didn’t even notice the little stumps from Day 2! I did forget to take pictures on Days 4 & 5 but you didn’t miss too much ;) I love tips like these and have several more like these in my Landscaping/Gardening board! Be sure to check it out!

And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for my post about my food related Pinta-party “projects”!

If you didn’t get your party project done in time don’t fret, I’ll be hosting these little parties frequently! Happy pinning, guys!

I’m Pintaddicted, now what?

February 10, 2012

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article about Pinterst and how to use it. But what do you do now that you’re a Pinning wiz?

Well, I’ll tell ya! It’s time for a Pinta-party!

My friends, who like me are pintaddicts, have their boards filled and are frequently pincrastinating, hording more and more useful, wonderful, beautiful pins. One problem. We can’t let our significant others and/or loved ones believe we’ve taken one pin too many off that Pinterest ledge. We must show them how Pinterest is changing our lives. Solidarity, brother! Arrrgh, sister! *fist pump*

It’s time for a Pinta-party! Dammit, I love saying that!

Inspired by this post, which of course I found on Pinterest (PINNED IT!), I figured it was necessary for us to have our own little Pinta-Party!


The What

Find something you’d like to make, build, try, cook, paint, organize, etc. based on a pin from one of your boards. It can be anything you like, no project/goal is too small so have fun with it. Now make it. Build it. Organize it. Okay, you get the point. Then come back here and leave a comment in this post with a link to your blog where you posted your creation or if you don’t have a blog, post an image along with your description in your comments. The point is, just make something and show me.

The When

How about 2 weeks? Have your project done by Feb 24th! And don’t forget to come back here and leave a comment to show off your mad crafting/cooking/organizing skills!

What I might get serious about,

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photo collage-15blog

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Who’s with me? If you are, pin it, share it, like it, tweet it!

What’s Pinterest and How Do I Use It?

January 24, 2012

Recently, Pinterest has become an obsession of mine. And like any good obsession, it became necessary to infect all my friends. Pinterest is currently invite-only so I sent out invites to all my friends who I thought would enjoy it.

*crickets*

Having checked up on a few of them, and seeing their Facebook statuses (Facebook, pfft. As if!), I realized that a little tutorial may be in order.  For starters, let me give you a little background information so you can grasp the magnitude of this ‘Pinning Movement’.

Pinterest (rhymes with interest *wink*) went live with a closed beta in March of 2010. Soon there after they progressed into an invitation-only open beta and then made regristration possible through an email request. Their coup de gras over the social media giants seemed to have begun shortly after Time magazine published Pinterest in its “50 Best Websites of 2011″ column in August 2011. And in a few short months, in time to make it a special Christmas for the people at Cold Brew Labs Inc (the company that owns Pinterest), the site entered the top 10 social networks according to Hitwise data with 11 million total visits per week.

From inception to an estimated value of 200 million in just 2 short years? It’s safe to say Pinterest has gone viral.

So now that you know where Pinterest came from, let’s talk about where it’s going and how you are going to take it there.

It would have been nice to have something like Pinterest when I was a teenager. Actually it would have been nice to have the internet when I was a teenager. Actually, maybe not…nevermind. It’s only with my recent Pintefest (yes, I’m making up new words as I go), that I remembered tearing out images from magazines and sticking them up on my wall by my bed as a teenager. I would put up pictures of jewellery, clothes, shoes and purses (I loved them then, too) and one image of an indian wedding dress that I swore I would marry in. Well I lost all those pictures, they were just a silly little girl’s attempt at collaging or ‘pinning’ (wink) her favorite things, but the image of the wedding dress I had up on my wall for years still haunts me. I never did find that particular lehenga that I fell in love with as a girl. Had I pined it, I’d have it at my fingertips in seconds.

In a world gone fast…everything, Pinterest comes in and gives you a beautiful quick way to visually display what you’re about. Pinterest is the make-up in a makeover. We are curating the internet, one pin at a time. I poke fun (har har) at Facebook with the graphic I made (above), but the truth is that Pinterest doesn’t replace Facebook or Twitter — it’s in a class all of it’s own. It’s not about friends, or who ate what for lunch, but an opportunity to focus on what’s important to you — a Me Collage for adults. That’s what I love about it.

What’s a Pin?

Well anything. Anything you want to remember or look at — a visual representation of a thought, idea, concept, or just a beautiful photo to be exact.  You know the idea of bookmarking websites you found interesting? A thing of the past — you pin it now. A movie you want to watch, pin it. A tutorial you found really helpful, pin it. A recipe you want to try, that’s right you’re getting the hang of this now, let’s say it together — PIN IT! But your pinning goals need not be so lofty, you can simply pin images that are visually pleasing — anything goes.

What’s a Board?

A board is a bulletin board or a collage, a Me Collage! Remember those? Well now you can create one digitally. It’s a way to organize all of your pins into one nice neat little peg board. As a mom, I may own a few peg boards and I can tell you that pinning my kids’ field trip notices isn’t nearly as fun as pinning images of where I’d like to travel. Let’s just take a moment to let our minds drift off to sunnier, quieter places… Nevermind, the kids are screeching and shattering my illusion of peace.

But don’t stop there! The board possibilites are endless. Currently I’m trying a Netflix board.  Because Netflix doesn’t have a queue to add movies that I want to watch, I started a Netflix board, or what I call my, What to Watch board. Because I pined the image from Netflix (opposed to finding the image through Google images) when I click on the image later I’m taken directly to the page where I have a description of the movie and can play it. See how a pin works like a bookmark?

I have the standard My Style board, Quotes board, and Home Decor board. And one of my most favorite boards, my Eye of the Needle board – a testament to the power of Pinterest as I am not a seamstress, actually swore off sewing, but am purchasing my first sewing machine today! I’ve been reformed!

How to Get Started

1. Get yourself invited (leave a comment here and I’d be happy to help) or request an invitation here: http://pinterest.com/landing/
2. Add the Pin It button to the bookmarks bar of your browser (the area under the URL address field): http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/
3. Start pinning by either finding pins yourself (ie: browse the internet) or use the Pinterest search button to find what others have already pinned!
4. Have fun and don’t stay up until 1:30am every night pinning. You might have pretty boards but driving your kid to school will become unsafe.

 

Hope you found this post useful! If so, please leave me a comment with your own pinning experiences or tips! You can also pin this post by using the button below ;)

Gotta go take a nap, so I can pin later!