Blog Archives

Although I’ve discussed my Pinterest failures and my Pinterest “meh” experiences, I don’t think I’ve written about any of the successes I’ve had. I recently made a wonderful chocolate, PB oatmeal cookie — and I even took a few liberties. I love recipes that have room for experimentation, er, laziness.

I swapped out crunchy peanut butter for flavored stuff from PB Crave.  I also only had instant oatmeal. The result was quite soft and not as pretty as the pictures in the recipe but tasty. Even Samantha, who claims to hate oatmeal cookies, wanted me to bring more. Mom had a hard time quitting shoving them in her mouth. Pretty good compliment.

I mean, they’re no-bake, but I still slaved away over a hot stove. ;)

Listen, I’m no better homemaker or whatever it is, but I am starting to think that all those pins are fake. How do people make these amazing recipes and use miracle cleaning tricks and get them to work? Because, for the most part, I cannot. I’ve made a few recipes that were a little disappointing, but this last Pinterest-inspired activity I attempted was the miracle pan cleaning posted on One Good Thing. It seemed easy enough. Peroxide and baking soda aren’t hat hard to find, and my pans could use a little TLC. I was soon making a paste and putting it all over my cookie sheets. I forgot about ’em and assumed I would come back to some clean pans, but they looked exactly the same an hour+ later.

I decided it was all me, so I slathered on some more ingredients and let them sit even longer. I came back and nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Now, my peroxide might’ve been less than potent, so it’s not like I was necessarily misled, but I’m starting to think that Pinterest is full of more misses than hits. Tricksy internet.

Do-it-myself, that is. I kept seeing all these sunburst mirror tutorials made with a little hot glue and some clothes pins. Everyone kept saying how easy and cheap it was to make. Everything was at the dollar store. I was convinced that I could do it, too.

So I headed to the dollar store and found me some clothes pins, but they had no mirrors I could use. Michael’s had some, but they sure weren’t $1. While there, I picked up some wood glue and some scrapbook paper for decorate the shit out of my future mirror. This sure was more expensive than everyone else’s project, but I figured I could decorate the clothes pins with pretty paper until I found a mirror. Of course, I needed an utility knife to finish it off.

I went home and glued a bunch of paper on a bunch of clothes pins, but that’s not any fun, and I couldn’t find the right mirror, so I stopped for a while. The other day, I randomly found the right type of mirror at the dollar store and picked it up, so I finally sat down glue my pins onto the mirror. I found out/remembered a couple things:

• Hot glue is hot
• I sure use that burned finger for everything
• Hot glue is also messy
• Apparently, it’s harder for people–like roommates–to remember that having two pairs of scissors allows you to keep on for non-food stuff. Mine was nice and sticky from popsicles. Yay.
• Lining up clothes pins is a little harder than I figured
• The whole thing wasn’t much fun

I lucked out, I had exactly enough clothes pins and hot glue to finish the project. It’s drying, upside down, and I’m afraid to move it. You see, the glue acted less like glue and more like little silicone grips. I think it’ll work fine. I mean, it’s not like the pins will fall off. Maybe I should have gotten better glue. This is only a glue gun and sticks from a 100Yen store in Japan.. from like five years ago. Does hot glue go bad?

Anyway, let me know if you want pictures. I don’t think I like this whole project after all. Everyone else’s look so much better..