Pinspiring Friday!

     Have you heard about Pinterest? It's been around for a while, but I just found it and am currently addicted to the website. Pinterest is a site where you can bookmark interesting things you find on the Internet for easy reference later. You can bookmark images of recipes, craft ideas, photographs, fashion, quotes, wedding stuff, baby stuff, etc. Then you categorize the images onto different boards like "Recipes to Try" or "Home Decor" or whatever you want to call it. You can also "follow" friends to see what they think is interesting and then repin those ideas to your own boards if you like them too. Here is a picture of my boards.

     Below is a picture of what I see when I log onto Pinterest. All those photos are "pins" that my friends have saved to their profiles. If I like something I see on this page, I can click on the picture and repin it to one of my own boards. Then someone who follows me can pin it to theirs and it keeps happening over and over again. It's interesting to see what becomes really popular.

     So I've really been enjoying Pinterest for finding new recipes and craft ideas and stuff for Owen and all that, but I'm trying to challenge myself to actually do something with them. So "Pinspiring Friday" is part of that. I don't plan to do it every Friday, but I will post the results whenever I try something I found on Pinterest. In the future I will also try to post photos of my creations along with the original photos from Pinterest.  
     Recently, I started with some of my recipes from Pinterest. I have made three recipes. The first was a complete failure. I found a recipe for an at-home knock-off of the seasonal Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte (so yummy, but so expensive). It's originally from a blog called Love Veggies and Yoga. Anyway, I made the recipe at home, but found that it had too much spice in it and was overpowering. It tasted nothing like the real thing. 

    I was willing to give Pinterest a second chance (it wasn't its fault after all), so when my Tuesday morning Bible study group planned a bruncheon the other day and asked me to provide dessert, I knew just where I would search for a recipe! I chose a peanut butter cheeseball (made with cream cheese, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and brown sugar). It was easy to make for the most part, though forming it into a ball proved to be pretty tricky. I served it with green apple slices and graham crackers. It tasted fantastic (yes, I cheated on my no-sugar diet just this once) and the ladies from my Bible study loved it. Score 1 for Pinterest!

Lastly, I made us dinner using a recipe from Pinterest. I found it by searching for pins with the words "slow cooker." The slow cooker Bajio chicken I made earlier this week was found in a pin that linked to a website full of slow cooker ideas. It turned out really well and was super easy to make. 

     So those are some of my recent Pinterest finds. I have several Halloween/Fall craft ideas that I am interested in trying soon so maybe I will post about those if I have time to do them when I get back from Georgia. What's got you (P)inspired?