pinterest round up!

i've said before how great pinterest is...but really, it's only great if you DO something about what you find there.  ohhh i've been doing, finally! :) just took a little nudge from stacie...saying i'll do one thing a week made it sound much more do-able than looking at the vast array of ideas i've collected and just getting overwhelmed. now if i was a super good blogger, i'd have a lovely picture for each of these things, but you'll have to deal with just a few and some links for the rest. :)

1. I crocheted this hat in a newborn size in grayish lavender yarn for the little bitty.  I liked how it came out, but I think it might look a little chunky on a teeny little person...we'll see.  It didn't take very long at all, so I'm not out anything by trying!

2. I made a cheesy chicken and rice with black beans bake...pretty good, though I'd definitely recommend using cream of chicken soup and using the sour cream as a garnish...I replaced about 3/4 of the sour cream with fat free cream of chicken, and it was still way to sour-cream-y for us...Jeremy ate it as a chip dip.  The kids just ate the chicken and beans out of it, but that works for me!

3. Q-tip skeletons...we did this yesterday...and I didn't have glue.  Oops.  Glue sticks kiiiiind of worked and the boys loved their spooky guys, although we didn't get quite as detailed as the directions advise.  Here are the skeletons the boys came up with:

4. Saw the prettiest pumpkins ever and got out the drill last night when we were carving.  The little holes don't let enough air in the keep the candle lit, so I had to cut out some "back doors", but I like how they look set out with the traditional ones the boys helped make.

5.  We made this little booklet to help the boys memorize some verses...I would definitely recommend giving this a shot!  Sam was VERY into this project.  It didn't work out for us to do Awana this year, and although he hasn't exactly said it, I think Sam misses it!  He already has the verse for "A" memorized...and the verse for "B" turned out to be quite useful this morning when the boys didn't want to "Be kind to one another and build each other up." -1 Thessalonians 5:11....here's ours:

5.  No picture for this, as the "before" was embarrasingly grungy.  I tried a tub scrub recipe that wasn't half bad.  I have tried plenty of homemade cleaning methods with mixed results...mostly not that great and precisely ALL the men of my family complain about the vinegar smell that a lot of them have.  But being pregnant and not wanting to huff a bunch of bleachy or chemicall-y fumes had me willing to try again.  It actually worked pretty well...I could see a difference (like I said, the "before" was reallllly bad, it's an old shower and seems to be a soap scum magnet) but it's not beautiful or sparkly.  I will say much improved, Jeremy noticed, and that is good enough for me!  I used lavender Dr. Bronner's for the liquid soap and eucalyptus for the essential oil because those are things that I already had and it smelled really good!  No vinegar in this one, so everyone wins.

I have plenty more...it's been a productice couple of weeks, but I will save more for other posts!  I am really enjoying the challenge to DO things, not merely admire them!