31 Pins in 31Days: Day Seven

This pin, I pinned ions ago with great intentions on actually doing, but shopping for a plastic pig wasn't always on my priority list or fresh in my mind (now if you would have told me that I coulda shopped for a real pig, well, that would be a different story, but that's for another post).

So when I loaded up pinterest today to search for what I was going to do, I was greeted by this pin again and decided that since I was going to Michael's that I would finally add it to my list.

What exactly is this (aside from a plastic pig?).

Well, it's a manners pig.
Or a dinner time pig.
Or a "I don't wanna clear off the table or do the dishes so I better behave pig".

(And for us, it's definitely the latter).

This lil guy (or gal) sits on your dinner table.  And any time someone belches, toots, is ugly to one another, says something that's not dinner table appropriate, refuses to eat something, or anything else that gets on Michael and I's nerves  we deem necessary , they get the pig.

If you are stuck with the pig at the end of the meal, you have to not only clear off the dinner table, but do the dishes and clean the kitchen as well.

This idea posted by Organic Families is purely brilliant and absolutely perfect for the Manna's.

For two reasons:

1.  We don't always eat at the dinner table {putting my head down in shame}.  I know, I know.  It's very shameful, but there are times that the kids want to eat dinner and watch a movie and Michael and I would like to have an "At Home Date Night", so we don't always make it to the table.

I'm thinking that having a fifth lil Manna at the table would make it more fun and encourage us to sit at it for every meal possible.

2.  Okay, here is where I let the world know that we are not a perfect family yet again....we live in the country. And it shows.  Especially in Bella.  Sigh.  She just doesn't care.  She's quick to let one rip at the table and think it's the greatest thing ever (and yes Bella, I'm posting this for the world to see so one day a potential suitor just might google our family and find out one of your dirty lil secrets.  That'll show ya ;)

So tonight we were a party of five......AT OUR DINING ROOM TABLE!!

Here's our lil guy.  He hasn't been named yet, but I'm sure he will be soon.

Can you see him?  (It is Mexican Monday by the way.  Bella and I declared that we will have Mexican food on every Monday possible.  Of course we decided this while we were eating at Salsarita's yesterday oohing and ahhing over the yumminess).

Oh there he is.  Just waiting for a new friend to hang out with for the rest of dinner.

I'll tell ya what, I have never heard my kids use "yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes sir, no sir" so much in such a short amount of time (remember, we live in the south, you are taught at an early age that these WILL be the way that you respond to an adult and if you don't......well...you don't wanna find out!).

There were so many "pleases" and "thank yous" Michael and I didn't know what to do with ourselves.

and
then
it
happened!!!

a mild belch.

so mild it was barely noticeable.
but there none the less.

And the pig's new friend is......

{drum roll a la Michael G. Scott.....}

That's right.
Michael.
He got the pig and kept the pig.

The kids thought this was hilarious that he got stuck with it because of course I know they were just on their P's and Q's and terrified that they would goof.

So far, this just might be the best thing I've seen, pinned, and tested out from pinterest.

We are thinking of getting two more.

One to keep in my purse and one to keep in the car (oh especially for the car!).

We've already explained that if we had an extra pig to use at restaurants, in the car, at my mom's, at the store, etc. that it would work the exact same, but the "punishment" for misbehaving would be chores that they are not already assigned.

Dreadful chores.

This will teach em to argue with each other.
Oh.
And burp in public.

31 Pins in 31 Days: Weekend Addition...Days Five & Six

I didn't intend on combining the weekend's pins into one post, but with a weekend that consisted of:

• Two birthday parties
• One family dinner at friends' house
• Starting almost 600 seeds for our garden (yikes!)
• Cleaning off the back porch
• Going to the grocery store/Lowes/Target (twice)
• Planning/prepping for Bella's Birthday next weekend
• Date night with Michael

I didn't even think that I would get a chance to post anything.

Granted the two pins that I decided to do were easy as punch, but at least I was able to squeeze em in.

Since I needed a card for one of the birthday parties we had this weekend, I decided to refer to a sketch from Paper Crafts Connection to quickly inspire me.

I pulled out some oooold stash and made this card:

I just love using up old stuff that I hoard can't bear to part with.

Now I really had to dig for the next thing that I wanted to do because well, I'm exhausted.

So after I'm done folding about 6,854 loads of laundry, I'm going to paint my nails.

Like this:

Two layers of color with glitter sandwiched in between.  

Brilliant right?

Well, you have Stef to thank for that.

Tomorrow's pin, hopefully, will be a little bit more exciting :)

31 Pins in 31 Days: Day Four

Whew! Almost didn't make it today (I've got 20 minutes left...lol).

This weekend we  have two birthday parties.  One that Bella will be attending tomorrow and one that Mikey will be attending on Sunday.

The kids' friends are getting to an age where who knows what the heck to get them, so it's best to stick with a gift card.

And lotsa candy.

So while going thru my "CTL P" board on pinterest, I came across the cutest lil candy bar birthday wrappers from Anything But Perfect.

The only thing that made this free printable a lil bit different was that you couldn't print it straight from her site.  She designed it for The Printable Cottage and you had to like their facebook page, go to their store, add the item to your cart ($0.00 total), check out, and then wait for the email to arrive with the link to download it.

Now with that being said, the whole process really took all of five minutes (if that), but I'm letting you know in case you are hoping that you can print these out and be out the door in two minutes.

So I got ready the candy bars ready while my pages were printing.  Michael & I had thought it was best to just pick up a large box of regular size bars at Target (I only plan on giving the kids each two bars since there will be other candy there, but I have a feeling that he wanted them more for himself...lol).

Once wrappers were printed, I filled out the "To:" and "From:" part on the back and of wrapper and got ready to tape it all up with my ATG Gun.

Voila!  A cute lil extra to an already delicious gift.   

31 Pins in 31 Days: Day 3

I actually pinned today's pin...well today.

I had some bananas that either needed to be used tonight or thrown in the garbage come Saturday and it would have broke my heart if that happened.

When I stumbled upon these, I knew that they would be perfect for a friend of mine at work who loves bananas foster.

This pin is brought to you by Sweet Peas Kitchen.  Whoda thunk that you could turn something as exquisite and fancy as bananas foster into Bananas Foster Muffins?

This recipe was super-dooper easy to throw together and I had everything already on hand aside from the rum.  I sent the hubby to the liquor store and that solved that problem (I also had him pick up some cheap vodka so I could make some more homemade vanilla extract....coming soon to a blog post near you).

Michael decided that these muffins were amazing.  I too thought they were pretty delish.  We did add a lil more sauce to each muffin than the recipe stated because we didn't get a good enough taste of it with just one teaspoon.  I'm hoping that it will be even stronger in the morning and have that good ol Louisiana taste to em.

31 Pins in 31 Days-Day Two

Here's the pin that inspired today's post

This pin is brought to you by How Sweet Eats. 

I pinned it about a week ago and on my way home from work today, I got a sudden craving for pancakes and knew that I wanted them to be extra special.  Pancakes are kinda a big deal in our house and Michael has "His Top Secret Recipe" that makes a regular appearance and I like to make Joy the Baker's Oatmeal Cookie Pancakes.  We also don't believe that pancakes are just for breakfast.

We are all about pancakes for brunch and brinner.  We don't discriminate in this house.

So I decided to throw these Cake Batter Pancakes into our recipe mix and make these for brinner.

I didn't have a yellow cake mix like the recipe called for, so I substituted with a white cake mix.  I'm really thinking that any cake mix would do as long as it is light so the sprinkles show up.

These came together quickly and I love how the batter wasn't so crazy thin that they spread too much on the griddle. 

Look at that sprinkley*ness.

I stacked the pancakes all pretty like and  used the glaze recipe that she posted along with the pancake recipe. I can't imagine pairing them with anything else.  Maple Syrup just wouldn't seem to fit (imo) and the glaze wasn't so heavy that you felt that you were just licking the inside of a sugar bowl.

I also threw on some more sprinkles because well...can you really have too many?

Everyone in our house agreed that these were DIVINE!!!  Honestly.  They are super good.  This recipe is good enough to be next to our regular two recipes in my recipe binder and will definitely make more appearances on our dinner table.


And like she says in her post, these don't have to be made for a birthday or other celebration.

 Isn't every day supposed to be a celebration?  Sprinkle up then :)

31 Pins In 31 Days: Pin 1

Day one is brought to you by The Beauty Department.

I pinned this awhile back and since I have oodles of vintage ribbon and trim, I thought this would be a great project to tackle.

Lovely trim.

I gathered my supplies which was a nice and short list.

-My sewing machine (The Beauty Department hand stitched it, even though I'm not an expert with my sewing machine, it was faster for me).

-Vintage ribbon/trim

-Scissors

-Pins

-Elastic

I folded my trim over on the ends to keep fraying from occurring (again, not mentioned in the tutorial from The Beauty Department).  Some of the trims I had picked out, already were fraying on one end, so I figured this was the safest route.

I just did a simple stitch on the folder over (which i did twice btw).

After that was done, I pinned the elastic in place and stitched it in place.

Stitched the elastic to the other side and voila!

A pile of headbands.

This was a fabulous pin and I'm glad it was the first one I picked out.  Granted I ran into a few problems with nonstop interruptions from the kids, a needle breaking, more interruptions (must get a lock for my door...lol), but all together I whipped up all of these in say 30 minutes. 

If.

This is definitely a project I will do again in the future with more trim/ribbon (I have enough of it afterall....:)

It's Time To Tackle the Clutter....

As I sit here and look at this crazy mess (aka my craft space), I can't help feel overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed with schtuff and overwhelmed with all the projects I want to tackle.
It's both physical and mental clutter and it's starting to drive me nuts.

Starting tomorrow, May 1st, I'm going to start working on that.

Here's how.....

Tomorrow starts day one of Céline Navarro's Get Messy Class over at Studio Calico.  I'm super excited for this class because I love to get messy (clearly.  look above :) and I'll be creating a mini.  Two of my favorite things.

While thinking of what I was going to make my mini about and surfing around Pinterest (and deciding that I had waaaay too many things pinned), it became clear as to what my mini will be about.

Creating a pin a day!

Each morning, I will surf my boards and find something that I want to cook, bake, create, scrap, or even experiment with an idea that I thought was brilliant.   It can be absolutely anything that I have pinned and will probably change throughout the course of the day (based on time, etc).

Once I settle on what I want to do, I have until I go to bed that night to complete it.  No excuses.

The other catch is, I have to use what I already have on hand. I will not purchase not one thing for this experiment.  I will keep this in mind when choosing my pin or make adjustments and use what I have on hand.  Obviously, I have way too much crap!  It's time to start using it up instead of hoarding.

After I complete my pin for the day, I will then snap of pic of it (which will probably end up on instagram), print out the picture, and scrap/smash what I did in the new mini.

This is going to be a HUGE challenge for me.  It's been about a week since I've really focused on finding some creative time for myself and I'm kinda tackling a couple projects in one, however, I really think that this will be good for me.  It will give me that creative stress released I really do need on a daily basis, I will use up some of this crap I have, and will tackle some of the projects/idea I've really wanted to do since I pinned them.

Does anyone out there want to join me?

You don't hafta do 30 days, you could tackle a week, ten days, 23 days really.

If you wanna join me (aka be my support buddy as well), leave me a comment.  I'd love to follow your progress too!

Sea Salt Honey Butter Popcorn

I'm not really a popcorn junkie.
When I go to the movies, I'd rather have a box of Dots or Twizzlers than a big ol bag of buttery popcorn.

But every now and again, I get a major craving for it and when I do, watch out!
I probably really the most unladylike popcorn eating girl on the planet.
I shovel it in.  And I mean in the worst possible way.  Like if i don't get this popped corn in my belly this nanosecond I'm going to combust way of shoveling it in.

So last night, I was going thru my pinterest board "let's eat" looking for something to bake actually, when I stumbled across a recipe for sea salt honey butter popcorn.

I decided that instead of just pouring the sea salt honey butter on top of microwave popcorn, I would do it the old fashion way and cook it on the stove.  I followed cookie & kate's instructions on popping the corn on the stove (Michael likes to make it this way too but he was busy with homework and I didn't want to bother him).

After the oil got good and hot, I threw in the kernels and waited for this to happen

mmm....popped kernels!

Then after it was all popped, I separated it b/c I knew that Michael probably wasn't going to want the fancy butter.  So I pretty much did 1 T. of melted butter with 1 T. of heated up honey (to make it thinner), mixed it up, poured it on the popcorn and tossed on some salt.

Needless to say, I was shoveling it in!
This is some really good stuff.  Has the sweetness of kettle corn but it's different if that makes any sense.  This is definitely some popcorn that I would make again.

So yummy & sticky good!

I Love Games Mini

Here's a mini I did in 2009 devoted to my love of playing board/card games.

I used a scrabble board for the cover (front and back) and just used cereal boxes that I covered in scrap paper for the inside pages.

PinterTest Kitchen

I'm addicted to pinterest.  Like crazy addicted to it, but fortunately, I don't just pin.  I also create what I pin (granted, I haven't quite had the chance to try out the 4,415 things I've pinned but I'm working up to it :)

I'm also super addicted to instagram (find me: elizabethmanna).

So when I saw on instagram that jessica had a series on her blog called

I knew I had to jump on board!!

This week I made some healthy breakfast cookies that I saved to my "let's get physical, physical" board.  I did this b/c I'm back to hard core weight watchers and doing a couch to 5K program (more on that in another post).

So here's the inspo for the cookies I made from chocolate covered katie.

I altered the ingredients slightly.  I threw in some mashed baked sweet potato, added some honey, a sprinkling of sweetener, and a dark chocolate chip on top when they were done.

And here is what mine looked like

The verdict:

I thought they were pretty tasty.  Granted, I'm the only one that thought so....lmao.

No one else would touch em (well Michael had a bite, but he wasn't a fan.  He's not a fan of anything not covered in sugar).

They are NOT sweet at all which Katie tells you in her original post.  This will not taste like a regular ol oatmeal cookie.  Even with the lil bit of sweetener that I added, you couldn't tell that I had.  Having the lil dark chocolate chip on there helps though.

But for a lil healthy cookie, I would def. make these again.  Next time I'd like to try em with some applesauce maybe and 1/2 the recipe since I'm the only one who likes them.

Also, I've been storing them in the fridge.

Can't wait for PinterTest Kitchen next week :)