Obsession. Addiction. Call it what you want.

WOW....I'm thinking this post is gonna need some tweaking since I'm a little rusty here. I can't believe that the last time I posted was July of last year. Why hasn't anyone told me they missed me? Or wanted me to write a new blog??? I'm kidding, I have heard from you many times telling, demanding, pleading...that I write a new blog post, but for whatever reason, time and life has interrupted my writing. So bare with me as I work out the kinks...gotta remember how to do this, but I'm sure it's like riding a bike, you never forget.

In this post I want to introduce my new love, my new obsession, my-eyes-are-shutting-because-it's-midnight-but-i-just-want-to-pin-one-more-diy-idea....Pinterest. For those of you living under a rock and who have never heard of Pinterest or Pinning....drag yourself from under that dark hole my friend and find out what you have been missing out on! Lately whenever I make something, be it a craft or a food, someone is sure to ask me...."where did you get that idea? Pinterest?" It has sort of taken on a life of it's own in my crafty world.

Now Pinterest can make me feel a like a depressed schizo at times. Sometimes I feel like the craftiest person around who can give Martha Stewart a run for her money and then other times I feel like OMG...how did someone manage to do/make something so fabulous, I could never in a million years do something like that. One minute I feel happy when I find pictures of places where I have travelled and they bring back wonderful memories but in the blink of an eye my mood swings and I'm drowning in a Pinterest funk because let's face it...I'm a stay home, unemployed mother of 3. I'm never going to frolic on the beaches of Bora Bora or sleep in an underwater hotel or eat exotic food in a restaurant hanging above the Chang Jiang River in China. I'm not exactly sure when I started following the website. I think it was sometime over the summer while I was home in NS on vacation. But I wasn't truly a fanatic until about November...and then holy moly, all hell broke loose. I started pinning things here and there, not really pinning anything in particular, just something that I would see and like. I didn't even really know what to do with the damn thing once I did pin it. But eventually I got the hang of it and realized that you could create boards and browse categories and really the options are endless. So now I have 12 boards and 415 pins. I have 102 followers and I follow 103 different pinners. If this all sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, then all I can say is...get with the program!!

So Christmas was interesting because that's when my obsession kicked into full gear and I was re-creating everyday something new that I had seen on Pinterest the night before. From desserts to gifts to appetizers...you name it. If you all are facebook friends, you saw the album I posted with Wilson's nightly shenanigans. Wilson was our Christmas Elf on the Shelf, but he did much more than sit on a shelf...he created havoc in our house and most of the ideas, I got from other pinners who were having as much fun stress as I was.

By the time Christmas rolled around though, I was SOOOO over Wilson and trying to think up new scenes for him, that I just wanted him to die a slow and painful death so that I could end it.

He apparently didn't take the hint because he was around again the next night. Booze and prescription pills are not the answer to your problems folks!!

So back to more pins....everyday I found myself at the grocery store with my list of ingredients for something new that I was determined I was gonna make. If you look at my boards, the pins with food in them are the largest. W.O.W.....Word of Warning....do not Pin late at night when you are hungry or when you are trying to eat sensibly, because that is when you are going to find the yummiest looking cakes, muffins, cookies and pies...hell even flattened cauliflower for a pizza crust looks good then! Buy everything on my list, and then some, get home and re-create the pin. Now for the record, everything I have decided to make has turned out amazing and yummy, so this is not helping my crazy-pin-insanity. Had I made a few things that turned out to be disasters, I may have scaled back on my ambitious cooking and baking spree. Oh hell, who am I kidding, no I wouldn't have!!! Carb induced coma...coming right up!

So to now show off and brag about some of my copycat pins...prepare yourself

This was apple butter. The before picture in the crock pot...and below, the after simmering 8+ hours. YUMMY on home made bread.

This was an ooey gooey breakfast pastry ring, but no matter what it looks like...and it was compared to dog droppings...it was delish and my kids begged me to make another one right away.

 Another fun yummy craft was the heart lollipops. My friend Tiffany had made me one last year for my birthday, so I guess I didn't originally see the idea on Pinterest, but I followed through and made them after having the directions in front of me.

These Santa hats were the hit of a party I took them too. So easy and how adorable are they!

 These marshmallows cupcake also were not an original idea off Pinterest. A friend from home, Holly, had posted pics awhile ago of these cupcakes that her kids had made with a babysitter. I was in awe of them when I saw them on her fb page and they were sooo easy to make. They were however time consuming and I had sugar all over the floor, but they were super yummy and a hit at my husbands mini birthday party, although it was stated that they weren't very manly!

This was a yummy sandwich that I had seen one day and decided to revamp it to fit my likes and what I had in the fridge. It was so good that I made it for lunch one afternoon when I had the WooWoo Sisters over and they all LOVED it. So it passed the taste test. Avocados, tomatoes and mozzarella.

So that's it for the food part....please wipe the drool from your chin, it's so unbecoming! I have made many other things including honey balsamic glazed carrots, ginger cake with warm caramel sauce, tomato/mozza/basil caprese appetizers to name a few, but seriously...I can't take pictures of everything I make!!

Some of the more crafty things I have copied from others who come up with these amazing ideas:

This was the first thing I attempted and I decided to take this on as I was hobbling around on crutches the day after knee surgery. What was I thinking? They turned out so great that I made a smaller pair, added some votive candles and Voila. Instant mantle decorations.

Fun times in the tub for Mad Man. Glow sticks cracked and thrown in the bath water. A word of caution...don't crack too hard or the glow stick will explode leaving you covered from head to toe, including eyelashes, with glow in the dark liquid. This may or may not have happened to me!!

A cute Christmas decoration. A note to Santa along with a "house" key.

This is a wall piece I made for my friend Kati as a Christmas gift. It was an empty frame, I filled it with some pictures of her family and then used scrapbook paper to put in the other empty frames and typed on them the days of the week. It now becomes a family weekly activity dry erase board.

These cute Sundae bath gifts were made originally for Brooklyn's friends on our street but then someone saw them and asked me to make her 8 so she could give them out as gifts. I gladly made 8 more and delivered them the next day!

There are so many ideas for teacher crafts that I may never again buy something at a store! These were made for all the teachers with M&M's. There was a cute tag attached with a poem about teachers and m&m colors...it would make more sense if I had a pic of the poem....but I'm a slacker!

The kids thought this was hilarious. Made this at Christmas for Janie, our next door neighbor. A box of Ho Hos and Ding Dongs. The attached card said, "Ho Ho Ho. Merry Christmas from the Ding Dongs next door" Seriously....I couldn't come up with these ideas on my own!!

This last one was an idea I got to run a paper bag through your printer. I was going to order expensive thank you tags for Mad Mans birthday party but tried this first and it turned out super cool

So there you have it. My copy cat Pinterest ideas. With Valentines Day and Easter coming up...I'm sure to be busy! My latest accomplishment is painting a chalkboard wall in my kitchen. The paint is drying now as I type. I snagged this idea from my friend Sarah, who is a photographer extraordinaire. She isn't as funny as me, but she does have her own blog. Check out her work if you are looking for a fabulous photographer. Here are just a few of the many that she snapped of my kiddos.

If I haven't convinced you yet that if you aren't on Pinterest, you are missing out on a life changing addiction, then you might as well crawl back under that rock where you were living.

One last picture. Because Pinterest has turned me into the next Martha Stewart, I feel that I should have a craft room that looks like this:

Instead, I have a craft space approx. 2ft by 2ft that looks like this:

I need to work on that.