Don't you love pinterest?

I do.  I totally do.  Most of the time.  When I'm not comparing my mediocrity to insanely impractical perfection.  Or worrying that I'm trying to make my own images too "pinteresty".  Or worrying that my pictures aren't "pinteresty" enough.  Or worrying about whether or not my blog gets pinned enough.  Or seeing the same stinking pin over and over and over again in my feed.  Ok, whatever.  On the whole, I love it, and I can't imagine trying to keep track of the inspiration I find all over the way I used to... yikes.

Inevitably, you've run across a pin or ten on pinterest that are just so eye catching, so amazing, so ingenious, that you know you must try it.  

Today's yummy monday post was one of those.  Have you seen it?  It's been pinned to my "To Eat" board for quite a while now.

I know right??

Here we go...

A triumph, am I right?

Now, if I'm being fair - to whoever it was who created that idea and made it to perfection and then posted it in the stylings you can not possibly resist - I likely just did not do it right. It's likely user error - not a misleading pin.  Probably.  Possibly.  Have you tried it?

The problem is that this pin doesn't really lead to a real thing.  And sometimes I bother to look orphan pins up online by google searching the title or something, but this time it seemed so straightforward that I didn't.  I mean, the whole tutorial is right there in the pictures, right?  Not really.

To improve upon my rather disappointing attempt, I should have waited hours before layering on the caramel.  I should have used caramel candies and melted them with some evaporated milk or something instead of using caramel ice cream topping.  

As it was, my failure was so bad it wouldn't even come out of the pan in brownie shaped pieces.

It was so very sad.  And soggy.  Very soggy.  That was the worst part, the brownie batter and caramel syrupy stuff made the pretzels mushy.  Ew.  Grossest texture ever.  There were supposed to be crunchy, right?  And frankly, I don't know how to correct that.

So Even with the ideas for improvement that I've had, I don't think I'll be trying this again.  I mean, I just did so well the first time.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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And mr. said, "She's an excellent baker..."

Last week I decided I was tired of trying to figure out what to make every single Monday and wondered why we ever stopped taking turns with that task.  Was it because of my mom's disgusting hot dog decision?  Maybe.  I'll blame her.
So I tossed my phone all opened up to the pinterest ap to the mr and told him to find me some recipes.  "Whatever looks good" I believe were my exact words.
3 hours later, ok - that's a slight exaggeration - but he really did take a short eternity looking through every single pin - and apparently that's my board with the most pins - he came back with a main course and a dessert.  We'll talk about the main course later.  Tonight is about the dessert.

Long ago - so long, in fact that I don't even remember doing it - I pinned this:

                                                             Source: bigmamashomekitchen.blogspot.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

I mean, super cute, right?  Little individual pineapple upside down cakes?  Yes!  Please!  

I hopped on over to Big Mama's Home Kitchen where I studied her post about Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes in depth.

When you see something like this:

cooling off on the rack, you decide to go for it, am I right?  So I told the mr no prob and got to work.  

Everything according to plan.  Recipe easily reconstructed.  Clear instructions to follow.  Looked like perfection going into the pan.

I could taste the pinapple-y goodness already.  The minutes ticked down on the oven and my mouth started to water.

I had to cook them slightly longer than the recipe stated, but no matter.  I brought them out of the oven and surveyed their golden-y deliciousness, sniffed their yummy made-from-scratch-scent.

Following the directions, I placed the cooling rack over the cupcake tin and flipped everything upside down.

And that is what happens when you start to get cocky about your baking abilities.  Just last week mr was telling some friends what an excellent baker I am...

I served it to everyone anyway.  At least it tasted good.

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Wait a minute. I have a BLOG???

I didn't mean to take the lengthy break I did, but I won't lie.  It was kind of nice.  I love blogging as much as I love... (hmmm, no, can't write "chocolate"... nope, not crafting... "I love blogging as much as I love..." huh.  I'm stuck.) ... pomegranates.  Or even SEWING, most of the time.  And definitely ALMOST as much as reading a good book or watching Parks and Rec or Arrested Development.  So, yeah.  I love it.  That's what I'm saying.  But the break was nice.  It made things feel... slower, somehow.  Even though I was mainly breaking in order to bust out some Christmas presents in a crazy, hectic, haphazard, "why do I always do this to myself" kind of way.

(Side note.  Honestly, why DO I do this to myself?  I've mentioned the biting off more than I can chew thing more than once, but EVERY.SINGLE.CHRISTMAS is just ridiculous.  I procrastinate.  Even when I do start early - which I did this year - there is still too much on my list, which overwhelms me, which leads to procrastination, which means there's still too much on the list, which overwhelms me more... and it's a horrible, vicious circle.  Every single New Year, I tell myself this year will be different.  And every single December is WORSE than the LAST.  This year I even decided to MAKE the "big" gifts from the mr and I to our two kiddos (which you saw peeks of on instagram if you follow that kind of thing.)  Why am I insane?  No, really.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.  I am LIT-erally insane.)

Despite the harried quality to my gift-making and the incredibly late nights (which included painting a toy kitchen until 4 in the morning on Sunday the 30th) I felt less pressure and stress.

My blogging absence started, in part, in conjunction with me learning about the shootings in Newtown Connecticut.  There were so many times I started to write posts - posts about the shooting, posts about what I was feeling, posts completely unrelated and more Christmas-y in nature - and I couldn't do it.  In my head I could compose just precisely what I felt I needed to.  But sitting down to the computer somehow felt wrong.  And the longer I avoided posting about the tragedy, the more wrong it felt to post anything at all.  I am hardly the person to speak on tragedies such as this - I am obviously not the person most touched, most affected, most grieving - and I acknowledge that.  I hope my attitudes in response to what happened make some sort of sense regardless.

We traveled to Utah to spend Christmas with the mr's family - something we haven't done since moving to Wisconsin.  We've been back around Christmastime, but never FOR Christmas.  To sum it up (which in no way does it justice, but does help keep this particular post from turning to epistle proportions) it was an incredibly snowy, restful, kid-filled, exciting and fun time - with some minor downers (like a canceled flight,  a sick cousin and glasses lost on the plane), but all in all a pleasant time.  As you've already guessed, this added to my absence considerably as well.

I don't mean to presume that you've noticed my disappearance over the past 2+ weeks, or missed my crafty endeavors, but felt I owed an explanation nonetheless.

And now, I come to the true point of this post, which is to say that all of these recent experiences combined as a catalyst for rethinking my approach to this blogging gig.  (Which I still totally love, by the way.)  
Recently I was reading a post on the Vintage Revivals facebook page in which Mandi asked what sorts of things readers were looking for from the blogs they read in the coming year.  I was intrigued, and spent time looking through the comments.  In short, it seemed that people wanted less "filler posts" and more good stuff.  By filler posts, I don't just mean the mundane, "hey I'm busy right now.  What are you all up to?  Here's a picture of an awesome crate I scored at the thrift store" posts that you slap up to fill your week.  I mean people wanted more REAL LIFE from the blogs they read, and I admit to posting precious little of that.
I think I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself to post for my readers, because all the "big time bloggers" let us know that we must establish a blogging schedule and post often so our readers know what to expect of us.  I don't want to rub anyone the wrong way, here, but so what?  I love my readers.  You're the reason I do this, no denying it, but I have to think if my time is so valuable, then so is yours, and quite frankly, you probably have better things to do than look at a picture of my great aunt Ethel's plaid fabric nicely folded on the shelf that I recently inherited.  Right?
What I'm trying to say is that I believe I will try to cut myself a little slack this year.  Not a lot, I'm still going to be present (until Christmas time comes again, obviously) but a little. My family deserves that, I think.  And I'm going to try my hardest to post more Tales From the Crib (if for no other reason than that they are my sister's favorite posts and my mom IL really likes them).  And I'm going to try to get back to the roots of this here blog - which was partially showing you like it is; mistakes, flub-ups, failures and all.  This is no perfectly charmed life over here (as if the egg painted carpet and the tour of my first floor didn't give that away.)

So what can you expect this year?
Well, we'll start with some "top 10" stuff, because that's the cool thing to do.
We'll still have Yummy Mondays, some easy, some not - posted Monday night.
The week will still have about 2 project tutorials, sewing, crafting, kids stuff, whatnot.
The end of the week will have some kind of writing attached - Tales From the Crib, more likely than not, but perhaps other musings and some installments of What Not to Say?  Yes, I think so.
I'm still going to try my ongoing series that I started - A Chemist in the Kitchen for one, and the whole Pinteresting Party thing.  
And I'll also try to post some photos - some instagram and some not - usually on Sunday.

So, basically, what I'm saying is that not a lot will change.  I'll stick to roughly the same schedule.  But I'll give myself some leeway, and I'll know you understand - since I warned you and all.  More writing, more real stuff, more good stuff, you know.
In short, you won't want to miss it.

And rest assured, in December 2013 there will be a sudden and "unexpected" break, from which I will return in January with apologies, self-proclaimed insanity and promises to do better.

Glad we cleared that up.

*Be sure to check the right sidebar for all the fun parties I link to!

How to Totally and Completely Botch Even the Simplest Blog Tutorial on the Web.

This is not a recent project.  This is a project that was never going to see the light of day.  This is a project that I wanted to hide forever - big fat failure and all.  BUT, in light of the “Sew and Tell” challenge going on over at “A Craft A Day” (Check out that little button on my Inspiration Board over there for more info...) I came to the eventual decision of full disclosure.  And in full disclosure, I will admit to you that this project is actually months (and months) old (See, I tried to hide it away...) I mainly disclose this because there is no way I could lie about it, based on the below pictures.  Why?  Well, 1) mini now has hair and 2) There is at least four feet of snow all over the ground with such frigid temperatures there’s no way she’d be out galavanting without a parka on.  So now you know.  This took place in September.

Now, on with the tutorial, which I have entitled, “How to Totally and Completely Botch Even the Simplest Blog Tutorial on the Web.”

You will need:

a computer (to first find the tutorial and then promptly ignore it)

Lots (and lots) of “impatience”

Quite a bit of “overestimating your abilities”

A somewhat poor memory

If you are awesome at sewing, this tutorial is probably not for you.

Ahem.

First, see a super-dee-duper cute tutorial for sewing on one of your favorite blogs.  For my example, I will be using the Circle Skirt Tutorial from Made.  

Next, skim through the tutorial and think to yourself, “Wow!  That looks so easy even I couldn’t mess it up!”  

Tip:  This should be the moment that you become weary.  But, since you are using quite a bit of “Overestimating your ability” in this tutorial, you will either ignore the doubt or become completely and blissfully unaware of it.

Get distracted by children waking up cranky from naps.

(Yes, this is an essential part of the process.  Though, if you don’t have small children, other distractions could be substituted.  Like the oven timer going off, or the door bell ringing, or the cat throwing up, OR - as in my case - ALL OF THE ABOVE.)

Go to your crafting/sewing area hours later and think to yourself, “Hey, I should try out that circle skirt.  That was cute.”

Realize that in order to review the tutorial, you would first have to wait for your husband to get off of the computer.

Here’s where the “impatience” comes in.  Become very impatient.

Decide that skimming the tutorial was enough to do what needs to be done.

Lay out your fabric.

Remember there was some kind of mathematic equation that Dana laid out in the tutorial for measuring and cutting and some way you were supposed to fold the fabric so it was easier to do.  

Shrug.

It probably wasn’t essential to the success of the skirt.  You can measure and draw a circle - all you need is a marker and a string!  Easy.  Besides, you never liked math, anyway.  

See?  More impatience.

Follow the “tutorial” laid out in your “somewhat poor memory.”

Ta-da!  You have officially botched up even an EASY tutorial!

Oh, you can't tell, you say?  Really?

How about this:

And this:

Oh, heavens.

By the way.  Here’s another tip.  It may benefit you in the long run to make ONE right choice throughout the process.  For instance, I chose to use fabric that I had mistakenly felted in the wash.  That mistake turned out to my advantage because I didn’t need to hem the horrible skirt after it was obvious I had completely botched the whole project anyway.

Amazingly, from this angle, it doesn’t look so horrible.

Unfortunately:

To make it wearable, I flip the elastic to the inside, so most of it is hanging down on the inside and only a small part of it (the part that is underneath that HORRIBLE, UNEVEN stitch) is actually visible - flipped up instead of down.  Then you can’t see that stitch at all.  The only downside to this is that you can see the unfinished spot where the ends of the elastic are sewn together.

Good thing she’s so cute, people don’t really notice.

Why am I sharing this with you after so many months of trying to hide it away?  Well, as I mentioned, Deidre, from A Craft A Day is having a Sew and Tell Challenge - in which you sew an outfit using only items that are thrifted or from your stash (or in my case, both).  I was going to make something for bug, but then I realized that I wanted to conquer this circle skirt once and for all.  AND furthermore, I wanted to do it for myself.  That’s right.  I’m attempting this big fat fail again.  I’m sewing for me.

And this time, I printed out the tutorial and brought a calculator.

Because I don’t want to end up feeling like this about my skirt:

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