F is for (Black) Forest

The Pinterest challenge I was half-assed planning for "F" did not come together. Some might say it was because I waited until yesterday evening to look for the materials I needed, and they would be correct. I was at the gym, trying to search Pinterest without falling off the elliptical machine and getting panicky about my "F" post when I ran across this:

http://thefrugalgirls.com/2016/11/
chocolate-cherry-dump-cake.html

I've made dump cake for years. It's an easy in-a-pinch dessert and I always have the ingredients on hand: a can of cherry pie filling, a yellow cake mix and a stick of butter. But in a crock pot? With chocolate and cherries? Color me intrigued.

My first hint of trouble was when the recipe didn't specify the size of the crock pot. I finally found it down in the affiliated links (5-6 qt), and I rather resent that, as it's an integral part of the recipe. I didn't know what size my crock pot was, and I turned it upside down and round and round and NOWHERE did it say the size. I asked The Google how to find it, thinking I was missing some code or something, and the only answer I got was to measure water into it and count how many cups it took to fill it (the answer is 20). 

The directions were to pour two cans of cherry pie filling into the bottom of the crock pot, then mix the cake mix with a stick of melted butter and "stir until crumbly." Is this crumbly, I ask you?!

Crumbly? Not hardly.

The next step was to "pour" these crumbles (not) over the cherries. It was so sticky, I had to use my hands to drop globs onto the cherries. My hands looked like I had been making mud pies:

The cake was to bake in the crock pot for 2 hours on high or 4 hours on low. I opted for the 2 hours on high, as it was already 8:30 and I didn't have all night (famous last words).

Globs of cake batter on top of cherries.

At 10:30, I optimistically took the lid off the crock pot. The edges looked kind of cakey, but the middle was, well, mud pie:

Poking it with a toothpick. Gross.

I checked it again 30 minutes later. Then 30 minutes later, when my husband announced he was tired of waiting and was going to eat it whether it was done or not.

It was not.

I moved some of the "cake" to the side.
It's not burned, but it sure looks like it.

I scooped some into a bowl. The cherries were like molten lava. The cake was not cakey; it was more like thick batter:

This looks NOTHIING like the Pinterest pin....

It was disgustingly sweet and I threw most of mine away. By then, it was 11:30 at night, and I left the whole mess in the crockpot, unplugged it, and went to bed. I peeked in at it this morning and it had set up a little, but it still looked gooey in the middle (and it was - I poked it). 

I got a text from my husband after he got home from work, and he determined the cake had crossed from the loss column to the win column after sitting for about 18 hours after it was cooked, but he also topped it with both ice cream AND whipped cream, so I'm not sure his vote counts.

I'm going with Pinterest FAIL, unless you have about 20 hours in which to bake a really mediocre cake.

E is for Eyes

"E is going to be for EASY," I foolishly said to myself when I saw this on Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/
260575528424208268/

The 10+ pictures included sticking googly eyes on inanimate objects to make them look like something living:

So I did this:

Please tell me you see a snowman, too.

And googly eyes were stuck on pictures of animals and people, so I amused myself to no end doing this:

Kleenex box at preschool

Pictures hanging at the photo studio
where I work in the afternoon.I think they
came from calendars.

Like this one A LOT.

My favorite work of googly art.

When I got home, it was time to googly eye the cats, because not only was there the pin of the cat (who, coincidentally, looks EXACTLY LIKE PETE) with eyes stuck on its back to make it look like an elephant, but there was this:

Snaaaaaake!!!

I chased two cats around my bedroom, trying to sneak googly eyes onto their fur, but they were onto me the minute I walked into the room (how did they KNOW?).  I distracted Pete long enough to get this:

Elephant? 

And this:

It must have been a rattlesnake, because
it kept striking....

Pete's "I'm not amused by this" face.

I tried to do stick them on Nora, but she wasn't having it. She ricocheted around the bedroom, trying to outrun the ones I stuck on her, eventually succeeding, and then tried to eat my googly eye collection:

And see this picture? The caption claims the googly eyes were put on a sleeping cat:

I call bullshit.

After what I witnessed with my two, I can state unequivocally that the cat pictured above is actually dead.

So, is it a Pinterest win or a Pinterest fail? Or half and half?

D is for Diffusing With A Strainer, I Kid You Not

I have curly hair. Sometimes, I straighten it (depending on the weather). Sometimes, I do the beachy wave thing (by the way, my hair NEVER looks like that when I'm actually at the beach; rather, it looks more like whipped sphagnum moss). Beachy waves are also weather-dependent. Most of the time, I wear my hair curly.

That may sound easy to someone with straight hair ("Oh, how lucky, you can just let it go and it has all those curls."), but the truth of the matter is curly hair has to be handled very carefully or it frizzes. It takes various hair products and careful drying and following the #1 rule of curly hair: DON'T TOUCH THE CURLS ONCE THEY'RE DRY.

I found this pin on Pinterest, and I was all in:

First problem is I'm 200 miles from the nearest Ikea, the source for the strainer, so I had to resort to a dollar store strainer. It was slightly smaller than the one pictured, but my hair is also a good four to six inches shorter than the girl's hair in the picture, so I figured it would come out about even. Here's how it panned out:

Ends of hair in the strainer first. Check.

Lift strainer to roots. Check.
Blow dry through strainer. Check.
Turn off dryer and move to next
section before turning back on. Check. 

  

Look disappointedly at frizzy, straggly results....

Continue to move strainer and dry
other sections, hoping against hope
that beautiful curls REALLY ARE forming
under the strainer....

Resign yourself that this is the best
you're going to get. Show husband, who
says, "Well, I'm not sure what you are
going for, but I'm not impressed, if
that's what you're asking."

Contrast the Strainer Method with the Dyanne Method:

Use diffuser intended to gently
 dry curly hair and not one intended
to strain spaghetti noodles. Check.

Turn off dryer before moving to another
section. Check.

End result: curls that are not frizzy
not very frizzy and don't look as though
they were dried with a spaghetti
strainer over your head.

Pinterest fail.

C is for Creepy Baby

My first two posts of the A to Z Challenge were very middle-of-the-road, i.e., dull. 

That's over now.

I want to give thanks to my very funny blog friend Amy at Banana Wheels for the inspiration for this post, especially since, when I saw the pin, I immediately sent it to her before I had even considered doing the Challenge.  (If you would like to see the birth of the original Creepy Baby, and you really should do yourself a favor and do so, please read about it right here.)

Okay, so here's the pin:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/
260575528424155905/

Here's the problem with the pin: it's only a photo. No directions, although, really, how hard can it be to replicate?

I can tell you not hard AT ALL, but that's because I have the best daddy in the world and he helped me.

We bought the dolls at the thrift store:

The one on the right laughs. Maniacally.

Feeling very much like a brain surgeon, I marked
the heads and my dad scalped them removed the
tops with a Dremel. My husband texted this
to my kids - they were appalled.

Heads removed from bodies (we crossed from
being brain surgeons to being Dr. Frankenstein).

Upping the creep factor.

Assembling the rest of the supplies.

Kind of wishing I had put down some newspaper
at this point.

NAILED. IT.

My husband said this was, technically, a Pinterest win, because it did turn out like the pin. However, he said it is NOT a win for the house, because he is completely creeped out by the whole thing.

You know what this means, don't you?

My herb garden will be expanding as soon as I make another trip to the thrift store....

B is for Balloon Tennis

I teach pre-kindergarten five mornings a week. I have two classes; one meets on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and the other on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The kids are energetic and fun and say HILARIOUS things, and I'm always searching Pinterest for crafts and activities to use with them. We have turned out some pretty cool stuff thanks to Pinterest, like these:

X-rays made with glue and liquid watercolors.
Messy, but cool.

Grass seeds planted in the toes of knee-hi nylons.
Messy, but cool.

Messy, but cute.

Then there was this activity, where we made
a rainbow with colored water and paper towels.
TOTALLY cool and not one bit messy!

You get the idea.

I have, oh, probably HUNDREDS of preschool projects pinned on my Pinterest boards. Obviously, there's not enough time to get to all of them, so most of the pins languish on my boards. I am well-intentioned but kind of lazy. This one, though, THIS one, I should have done years ago:

https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/
balloon-tennis-gross-motor-play-activity/

All it took was a trip to the dollar store for flyswatters (2 fer $1) and a bag of balloons. I took the kids to the gym, told them the rules were to try and keep the balloon up in the air by hitting it upwards with the flyswatter and not hit anyone with a flyswatter in the process. 

It was FUNNNNN!!! 

They lasted about fifteen minutes before wearing out. 

A definite Pinterest win.

A is for Acai Bowl

I wimped out last year and didn't participate in the A to Z Challenge (truth be told, I didn't participate in ANY blogging for many a month). Early last month, though, I took a deep breath, signed myself up for the Challenge, and then blabbed to everyone that I had done it and now there's no turning back.

I'm continuing my tradition of re-creating Pinterest pins (a challenge within a challenge). There will be recipes. There will be crafts. There will be household hacks. There will be health and beauty stuff. Is it a Pinterest win or a Pinterest fail? I'll have my opinion; you're free to have your own. Aaaaaand go!

Last summer, I accompanied my daughter to her freshman orientation at University of Arkansas. It was two days of too much information, but they did feed us. Our meals were at one of the dining halls, and let me tell you, dining halls have changed TREMENDOUSLY since I was in college. My dorm had one cafeteria line where you got an entree and vegetables (take it or leave it). There were desserts. There was a salad bar. There was always cereal available and bread and peanut butter, and there was a soft serve ice cream machine. That's it. THIS place at UArk had stations for pasta, pizza, sandwiches, entrees (a station with meat and another with vegetarian options), burgers, salad bar, OMELET STATION AT BREAKFAST (we weren't there for breakfast and I don't even LIKE omelets, but still). 

There was also a room that had only healthy options, very earthy-nutty-crunchy, and we ended up sitting in there for one of our meals. My daughter noticed that they had smoothie bowls with acai berries and seeds and stuff, and we got one to try (and although she will deny it, my daughter called them "ah-key bowls" and that's what I thought they were until I Googled it for the purpose of this challenge). They were really good, and I thought about them off and on for months.

I found this on Pinterest:

https://www.dinneratthezoo.com/acai-bowl-recipe/

Similar to what we had at the UArk dining hall, so I decided to give it a try.

Let's talk about acai berries. For the record, it is pronounced "ah-sah-EE"  and NOT "ahh-key" and they are touted as a superfood that will cure all that ails you. They are also Big City food, and if it weren't for a recently opened organic food store here, I wouldn't have been able to get the #1 ingredient in my smoothie. As it is, at $6.95 for four frozen packets of acai berry puree (each good for two servings), I will have to go back to walking on the dietary wild side and forego this superfood (and probably any other superfood for good measure).

Sorry, I cut the top off before I took
the picture. My bad.

My husband had to be my guinea pig, and as he waited for me to prepare his acai bowl, he armchair quarterbacked EVERY STEP of the process. 

"It has to be made in a blender?" "Why does it have to be in a bowl? Why can't we just drink it?" "Are you putting chia seeds in it? Have you ever used them before? They swell up when they get wet!" "Put some honey in it to make it sweeter!" (Should have listened to him on THAT one.) "The big thing now is Greek yogurt in a bowl with stuff drizzled over it. Why can't you just make that?" (BECAUSE THAT'S NOT TODAY'S CHALLENGE!)

In spite of the EXCELLENT advice and commentary, I followed the directions and mixed up the acai puree, vanilla Greek yogurt, honey (it DID have some, just not enough), frozen strawberries and blueberries, apple juice, and banana:

Ingredients in the blender.

Whirr! Whirr!

I poured it into bowls and topped it with almonds, blueberries, chia seeds, flax seeds, and pepitas. I meant to add fresh raspberries, which I bought just for the occasion, but I forgot to put them in....

There you go.

The verdict? I liked it, except it was SOUR. I'm guessing that's the fault of the acai puree, which, again, I don't think was worth the cost. But I liked the contrast of the icy smoothie with the nuts and seeds giving it texture, and I liked eating it with a spoon, and besides, you can't suck the chunky parts through a straw anyway. (By the way, the directions called for the frozen acai puree to be broken into pieces, but it was like trying to crack open a black walnut, and after beating it with the handle of my kitchen shears with little success, I threw it in as-is and it all broke apart in the blender.)

My husband's verdict? "I don't know what the point of it is. Why don't you just drink a smoothie?"

I think it's pretty clear who is the cool cat here and who isn't.

My verdict? Pinterest win!