Tried-and-True-Pin for Valentine's Day

I've never been a big Valentine's Day celebrator. It's so close to my birthday that I'm usually focused more on those plans.  And this year I'm more focused on how to make all the sunscreen and beachwear fit into my suitcases than anything else.

But I thought it would be good to pause and say Happy Valentine's Day today! So, in case you're like me and are looking for some little way to celebrate, without a lot of commitment or to do, I thought I'd share this pin from my Printables board:

Maze printable available at Printactivities.com and pinned here on my board.

Print it for someone else or spend ten seconds alone in your head and solve it yourself.  However you celebrate (or not), there's nothing wrong with sharing a little love today.  Happy Valentine's Day!

Thursday's Tried and True Pin: Ornament Reflections

I'm going to revive the idea of trying a Pinterest pin and posting the results each Thursday.

This week's pin was a partial success, and if nothing else, it was worth a laugh.

The goal was to take a reflection picture in an ornament.

The inspiration pin - I found that the picture for this pin didn't link back to the actual photographer's site, so I searched for the photographer on the watermark, Leilani Rogers. I couldn't find that exact picture, but there were other examples on her portfolio site. Definitely more professional than I would be able to create with my cell phone in my living room, but it was worth a shot (no pun intended), right?

The inspiration pin from Leilani Rogers.

So just before I dismantled the tree, I roped Crystal into a photo shoot. Here are just a few of the many pictures to demonstrate my hilarious results:

Warming up, trying to figure out how to see my face and still take the picture.

Worse, not better.....still trying......

Crystal joined me......now I'm frustrated and beginning to giggle.

Giggling leads to blurry picture, although now I've figured out how to hold the phone and see my face.

The best shot in the bunch......two faces, nearly smiling.....I'll take it! Just wish I had realized the background was just as important. Nice picture of the TV, huh?

Good, OK, now bring in the dog. Sorry that's blurry, let's try again......

.....and again and again. Oh, forget it, I'm laughing too hard to keep the phone still.

That got us laughing harder.....

And as I flipped the camera to get our pic in front of the tree, you can see the tears of laughter running down my nose!

So, my tried and true advice: Be patient, practice, and plan to take lots of shots for one useable one. But I'm glad I thought to take the shot before I sacked the tree for the year. I plan to play with this idea again next month while we're on vacation - maybe some beach reflections in sunglasses?

Thursday Tried and True Pin: A 1-Page Sketch

My tried-and-true pin for this week is a sketch.  It was perfect for some pictures from our vacation, another page using my Counterfeit Kit.

This sketch came from Scrap That Baby. I was surprised to see the content of that blog (all about scrapping kids under 4-years old), since the 3 pictures I had used for my page were actually baby pictures, too.  That might not be quite as much of a coincidence if you usually do kid pages, but I rarely have pictures or stories of babies. Just a happy coincidence, I guess.

And here's my page. Sorry for the white box faces - need to keep baby private, since he's not mine :). We took this vacation with my friends from college, and baby is the newest, cutest addition to the group. We just haven't had a lot of kids within our group, so the baby was passed around and squeezed and cuddled quite a bit.

Finally used the stars and buttons from my September kit, along with some other Jillibean circles and letters.  The woodgrain paper is from my kit, and the other Simple Stories and Jillibean papers are scraps from previous kit months. I inked the edges of the circles with red, yellow and blue inks but then topped those colors with a brown ink so they weren't so bright.  The red dots are Want2Scrap, and I've been using them like Frank's Red Hot Sauce lately.

So, another Pinterest success story for me! Want to follow?

Thursday - Tried and True Pins

This post has nothing to do with scrapbooking, so if you're a usual scrapbooking reader, I'm giving fair warning to turn back now!

I have discovered a couple of truths about me right now:

1 -   I spend lots of time on Pinterest but rarely follow through on all the pin-ably good ideas I find there.
2 - I never meant for my blog to be all about one topic and planned to include "life, home and fun in the suburbs."  My life, home and fun are usually all wrapped up in scrapbooking, but there are definitely more things going on around here!
3 - "What do you want for dinner" is among the most anxiety-inducing, arguement-starting, avoidance-worthy question of most any day at our house. We have fallen deep into the pit of meal lethargy which leads to eating out all. the. time.  And not good eating out - I mean fast, drive-thru, I'll-pay-for-this-later kind of eating out. Yuck.

In case you can relate to any of those issues, I'm passing along three pins that are now tried and true and have helped me this week.

I went through my Recipies to Try board and tried two recipies that have been hits for us:

Meatball Sub Casserole from thecountrycook.net

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole from Six Sisters' Stuff

Lest you think we only eat casseroles, I have to say we hardly EVER eat casseroles.  Crystal is not usually a fan of the casserole.  But times are desperate, and I needed to find something different.  She got up after dinner and served herself an extra spoonful of the chicken (right off of the serving spatula in the pan), so I knew that one was a winner.

These dinners also gave us lots of leftovers for lunches, which made the time and effort worth it to me.

And the third pin is just a tip, but it worked just like it said it would:

(Picture from simplyhealthyfam.blogspot.com) My thoughts:  I can't believe how easy this cooking tip was. It's one of those "why didn't I ever think of this idea on my own" kind of ideas.  But I went from cooked  to shredded and cooled within 45 minutes (including boiling the water).  And I have oodles of chicken for meals now and in the freezer.  That's my kind of cooking :).

Hope one of those pins helps someone else! I'm on Pinterest here if you'd like to follow along.  Leave a comment with your Pinterest address if you would like another follower, too!