Ho-Ho-Ho Pintester Movement: the kids can never see this.

Posted by Ethne~

NOTE: THIS POST IS NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY.  YOU’RE WELCOME.

Go see Pintester and all the genius Pintestes' holiday ornaments here - comments appreciated!

Dudes, I am a rubbish Pinteste.  Actually, I’m an awesome Pinteste, I’m just a rubbish Christmas crafter this year.

I searched Pinterest high and low for a Christmas ornament to make for this challenge.  Lori even pinned stuff for me.  Now that I am recovered from falling down the stairs (I don’t think I told you guys about that, but I did tell Pintester) I pretty much had no excuse but to try something.

I do love Christmas.  But Pinterest provided no inspiration.  I found no ornaments that I wanted to make. I was adrift.

I went to Target this week, figuring I could buy an ornament to gussy up.  Yeah, that didn’t happen either.  But a lightbulb went off.  LITERALLY.  A Phillips brand LED miniature light-up chandelier.

What to do?  Now I was Pinspired.  AS IT SO HAPPENS, the chandelier is perfectly scaled to elf-size.  And Barbie-size.

So my naughty little mind turned this lovely challenge of making a delightful Christmas ornament into an opportunity to set up a naughty Elf on the Shelf scene with our elf, Lyle, Barbie and the chandelier ornament.  And who hasn’t seen the twenty million Elf on the Shelf pins on Pinterest?  The naughty ones inspired me.  Oh, and the Bloggess’ elf stabbed her couch last year in case you missed that.

Just because you can never go too far for the Pintester, I thought that the Lyle-Barbie-chandelier scene should be set to the Red Room of Pain a la 50 Shades of Grey.  Because it’s been on my mind lately a few times.

This led to the following convo with Shaun tonight:

Me: I have to figure out some red fabric for the backdrop of the scene for Lyle and Barbie.  Do you still have that red satin robe you wore for Halloween that one year?

Shaun: I have no idea.  I know, you should have Barbie tied upside-down and naked from the chandelier and Lyle’s face can be in her crotch.

Me: No, that’s too far.  Lyle is our daughters’ Christmas spirit guide, he can’t be muff diving Barbie.

Shaun: Lyle is not their spiritual guide.  That’s ridiculous.  You could do one of him doing 50 Shades and one of him muff diving Barbie.

Me: No muff diving.

Later, I realized that my handcuff necklace (that Lori and I got for all of us on girls trip, a la Nancy Grace) is a PERFECT FIT for Barbie’s wrists.  Shaun told me to go away at that point.  Gladly, my children will never know about this exploitation of their spiritual Christmas guide.  He’ll be out for real visits in a few weeks.

So, my friends, here is my ‘Who’s a Ho-Ho-Ho’ Pintester Movement submission.

Ms. Steele, you dirty girl.

You can see the ornament here, which I think I technically have to show since that's what this challenge is SUPPOSED to be. 

The Pintester Movement 2.0: Modern Bun Re-Test

Posted by Ethne~

 

Hello Friends.  And if you’re fellow Pintestes, welcome to Wom-Mom!

It should come as no surprise to any of you that I love a good blog challenge. Lori and I have done quite a few of them on this blog, just check the ‘Popular Posts’ column over there on the right.  The best part about the Pintester Movement is that we’re only being challenged to mediocrity.  Ingenious. (Check out other Pintestes test es on her blog's Pintester Movement Category here.)

This time, our sage Pintester has challenged us to re-test things she’s already tested for us.  I took quite a while scrolling through her tests, picking just the thing to try for y’all today.  I share Pintester’s longing to achieve Pinterest perfection in all the beauty pins.  But what a joke!  No actual human can do this sh!t. (No offense to the lady who originally posted this hairstyle - the Modern Bun - from her blog, here, she seems nice.) 

The original - very classy.

Pintester - VERY CLASSY.

Pintester’s hair was too short, or something, for the Modern Bun when she tried it here.  It looks nothing like a bun.  Surely my hair, which is much longer, will be perfect?

Long, lifeless tresses.

I followed the directions from the original post EXACTLY.

High, loose ponytail

My ends look like straw, no?

And I looked effing ridiculous.  The bun part stuck up so high I looked like I had all of my Bumpits stacked one upon the other underneath it.

It's a golden shower.

I tried to bobby pin the pieces in the back, but my layers fell out all over the place anyway.

Serious.

Then the bun started falling apart.  Not even a whole can of AquaNet hairspray could save it.  Which I don’t have anyway.

Right.  One erect piece left.

It took me so long trying to take a picture with my phone that Shaun came to the bathroom door to ask if I was taking a deuce.  No, I’m doing a stupid hairstyle challenge for the blog, SHAUN (which is even more embarrassing to admit to my long-suffering husband).

I decided that the only thing left to do was to stick a pink shiny heart on my dimple, pretend I’m Amanda Bynes and take the best selfie I could.  "You're ugly!"

Nailed it.  PS, no, I do not normally have a double-chin.  PPS, Shaun asked me why I had a heart on my face when I came out of the bathroom.  Oh, you know, I'm fancy, or possibly pretending I have my cheek pierced.

The Pintester Movement - Homemade Jewelry Cleaner!

Posted by Ethne~

Holy $h*tsnacks, dudes, Pintester is having a challenge!  It’s the Pintester Movement, y’all. 

You know Lori and I love a challenge; as a matter of fact, we love finding Pinterest challenges, like here and here, and reporting to you guys about it.  Our husbands also love when we do these projects.  Like, they throw up in their mouths when they hear a new craft is afoot.

This is a dramatic reenactment of the look Lori and I receive from our husbands when we tell them we have a new project to do.  Gracias to this tiger from the Omaha Zoo for his mad skilz at husband-facial-impressions.

But unlike normal challenges, Pintester practically begs you to FAIL at pins.  That’s not the full truth.  I’m fairly certain she said she’d take successes and failures from us Pintestes, but since lots of her tests are flops and I enjoy laughing at her flops, I figure TEST FAIL is a fine goal range for the Pintester Movement.

I wanted to keep in the spirit of Pintester – my interpretation anyway. She tests stuff she pins that is either so stupid she has to try it on our behalf or stuff that we all wish we were already trying ourselves.  Throw in a whole lot of substitutions (she doesn’t go out of her way to buy ingredients for tests), some alcohol and (my fave) a lot of cussing and you’ve got a winner.  So for picking my test, I wanted to use something I had already seen/pinned on Pinterest and wanted to try; and I didn’t want to have to go out of my way to procure ingredients.  Also if the test failed, that would be totally rad.

I looked at a few baking options and narrowed down to these delicious-looking sugar cookies or homemade peanut-butter cups, but I’m not total crap at baking, so there wasn’t enough of a window for failing.  I therefore decided on a few projects related to cleaning (which I am crap at) with baking soda.  One involves making homemade jewelry cleaner, originally pinned from here.

I wear my Pandora bracelet, wedding ring and a right-hand ring every day.  I never take my rings off unless I’m making meatloaf.  They could use a cleaning; the Pandora silver is pretty tarnish-resistant (they made their own sterling silver concoction apparently, no lie) but I still wear it everyday so it's probably loaded with germs for starters.  (I didn’t clean the charms because the reviews for this cleaning recipe said that it can remove the intentional oxidation/black shading on stuff like my charms and I didn’t want that to happen.)

I cooked 1 cup of water for 2 minutes in the microwave, and prepped my cereal bowl with a piece of tin foil to fit in it.  When the water was ready, I put it in the bowl, added the 1 T salt, 1 T baking soda and 1 T Dawn dishsoap and stirred it around till it was mixed up.  Then I put the tin foil into the bowl and placed my jewelry pieces on top of it.

 

I let things sit for the full 10 minutes.  While it worked its magic (and it worked, check out the pictures), Shaun said, “why do you always do stuff that smells like farts?”  He wasn’t kidding.  Whatever was going on in that bowl smelled like a$$. 

That black stuff on the cloth rubbed off the bracelets.

Pretty!

So, since this test totally worked, and I completely recommend it, I’m sorry to report that it’s not a fail.  To make up for any disappointment, I’ve attached this here link to when I tested that homemade leg wax on myself.  That was proper failure.

SPRING PINTEREST CHALLENGE: DUCT TAPE FLOWER PENS

Posted by Lori~

Ethne revealed her Spring Pinterest Challenge mini-gnome here (adorable), and now it is my turn.

I was busy planning a craft stress-free zone for final's week at my little city, ND college when the challenge came from our favorite blog YOUNG HOUSE LOVE to pin something and "actually" make it!  And so, I took my craft planning station, hit Pinterest, and came up with some duct tape crafting...in particular duct tape flower pens.  PERFECT FOR MOTHER'S DAY TOO!

My inspiration, found here.

It really was simple, and thank you Alison for being my hand model!  Not only that, but Alison really is an expert at duct tape crafts...so thank you for helping!

Cover the end of your pen in duct tape (or all of it) leaving a point at the top.
This will act as the center of your flower.

Start creating petals, leaving a sticky end.  Basically cut a smallish rectangle
and fold the corner in creating a point (AKA petal).

Attach the petals to the pen.

Using another color of duct tape, fill in the petals (every other)
until you are satisfied with the fullness of your flower.

I opted to spread out the petals!

There you have it!  Thank you YHL for the motivation.  I told Ethne to have the girls make these!

SPRINGTIME PINTEREST CHALLENGE: Wee Fairy Garden Gnome!

Posted by Ethne~

It’s springtime Pinterest Challenge* on one of our very favorite blogs, Young House Love – and amazingly of all, it’s actually feeling like spring up here in big city, MN.  I was looking at my Facebook pictures yesterday (I don’t get on there much, sorry creepers) and we had snow on the ground on April 23^rd.  Insanity.  I just about lost my mind, no lie. *The Challenge is actually posting on May 8th, but Lori's doing one of these too, so we're doing my day first.  Link up to YHL on the 8th if you wanna see what everyone else tried out for spring.

I took this picture of my flowers on my table with snow outside on 4-23

Springtime means that Ethne goes ape-crazy over gardening.  I daydream over what I’m going to put into my pots and my teeny little garden.  I’ve been on Home Depot’s online garden center asking their expert for help pairing the perfect plants – they said put perennials in with annuals in my pots (say what?!) for more selection (I asked for options besides petunias and geraniums).  FYI, if you join their online garden club, you get a $5 off (a $50 purchase) coupon just cuz.

The crowning glory are the girls’ fairy gardens.  Anything in miniature is awesome, from the wee fairy furniture to the itty-bitty plants – I’m in heaven.  The girls are WAAAAY into the fantasy of our yard’s fairies.  This year we decided to be more detailed - I tried to go to a fairy gardening seminar with them but it was a sit-down class, not hands-on, so we had to leave before I learned anything (the girls weren’t interested in a slide show from the arboretum, despite my pleas) - this left me with the internet. 

There’s a lot of kitsch out there, and some of it is pretty junky.  I think I’ve figured out what plants to use – we’re not going crazy with some of the true miniature plants I’ve found at places like this here since the MN weather isn’t temperate enough to keep them alive.  But I think I can achieve the whimsy with plants that will live in MN fine and that won’t break the bank.  I’ve got some serious plans y’all!

For the Pinterest Challenge, ya gotta check out what I pinned.

3/4" tall - I.COULD.DIE.  Find him here.

Ya, that’s pretty much what I thought too.  Cutest ever.  Except he’s $17 and I have two kids.

So I said to Whit, surely we can make this little shaver ourselves?

You bet.  I stole two of the girls’ Squinkie toys, painted their clothes red and blue and crafted pointy gnome hats out of the clay you mold and then harden in your oven – it comes in a zillion colors from JoAnn for a couple bucks.  It worked great because I whipped the hats up at the same time we were making wee clay veggies for KD’s fairy garden since she wants her fairy to have a vegetable garden.  You read that right.  And just to keep you coming back, wait till you see the teensy shepherd’s hooks Daddy made out of a coat hanger.  Gah!

I just used the $1 acrylic paint pot from JoAnn - then sprayed them with clear spray paint when they dried to seal the color - we'll see if that works!!  Here, the girl's legs are still Squinkie green, not gnome blue.  The boy was originally all Squinkie green.

 

Glue gun affixed the clay caps to the gnome heads.

Aren’t my girls’ Squinkie gnomes just the cutest?  Not your traditional Travelocity gnome, it’s true – they’re more the Gnomeo & Juliet type.  But they are totally perfect for the fairy gardens of two little rascal twins named KD and Easy Mac.

I raided Shaun's tool cabinet and found two screws - glue gunned to the gnome feet and they will stay put in the garden now!

Sneak peek.

PINTEREST CHALLENGE: MAGNETIC CHALKBOARD SPICE CUPBOARD

Posted by Lori~

As you already know, I had BIG PLANS to have this project done yesterday to link up to one of our favorite blogs, YOUNG HOUSE LOVE, and their Pinterest challenge.  However, this project took longer than expected.

First up, a shout-out to friend and WOM-MOM follower Reagen for the idea/inspiration.  She always said she would paint my spice cupboard and turn it into a chalkboard.  LOVE THAT IDEA!

The spice cupboard was originally an ironing board cupboard.
However the change was already made before we bought the house,
but we have made several updates!  WE LOVE IT!

Next up, a shout-out to Pinterest and the many inspiring photos and ideas. Some of them included:

click here

click here

click here

Why the delay?  Actually the magnetic paint took much longer than indicated on the instructions.  After reading other blogs (even YHL) and experimenting with magnetic paint, Ethne and I both knew that I would need to do at least 6 coats of paint to make it more magnetic.

I ended up doing 6 coats of magnetic paint (honestly not sure if it really mattered--4 coats seemed to be similarly magnetic) and it really still isn’t as magnetic as I would like.  I have come to realize that I will not be able to use super heavy items.

I also managed to get 2 coats of chalkboard paint on.

The next step is to let it set for 24 hours and then chalk it (or spread chalk all over it and wipe it down with a wet sponge).   You are then ready to go.

I actually am still mid-project because I want to wait the full 24 hours prior to chalking…and of course, I always wait until the last minute to start a project.

In addition to turning my spice cupboard into a magnetic chalkboard, I also managed to move what used to be a match holder by my fireplace (never used, because we always use a cigarette lighter) to the spice cupboard and it will work great to hold my chalk.  The best part is that this item cost me next to nothing. I actually purchased it at a flee market.

THANK YOU YHL FOR THE INSPIRATION!  I love it!