Real Women Of Pinterest: Card Holders and Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

As some of you know, there is a special place in my heart for Pinterest. I luff it. I can distract myself endlessly on there. Contained within its bits and bytes are a million and one ideas for projects and decorations and clothes and things that I would like to do. However, after several months of "pinning", I have actually done exactly zero of the projects I have found on there. Pinterest FAIL. I have followed my dear friends mep and E... as they tackle projects as part of their Real Women of Pinterest challenge and every week I am inspired but the busyness of everyday life gets in the way and somehow another week passes without me doing anything.

But that changed this week!

I present my first project:The Card Holder

Majestic, isn't it? I know, I know. You all want one. Every year we get holiday cards from all of our nearest and dearest and they wind up cluttered on every available flat surface: dining table, mantle, bulletin board, refrigerator. I needed some way to display them but I hadn't really settled on anything. My first thought was a french memo board. I've made a few and I quite like them. But I didn't want it to be a permanent installation and we are not exactly overburdened with storage here, so I was reluctant to create something that would take up valuable space the other 11 months of the year. When I saw this idea on Pinterest, I was smitten. The original was hung on a hook over a door, but we don't have a door that would be good for that, they are all either out of the way or see too much use, so I hung it on a nail in the dining room. There are a few things I would change but I'm mostly happy with it, especially considering it was almost entirely constructed of things I had on hand. I would like to point out the level of attention to detail I committed to this: I dyed the clothespins to match the color scheme. Bow to my craftiness, minions.

My next project was a recipe for a cookie exchange: Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

I'll grant you, this recipe isn't exactly rocket surgery. Basically, it's a brownie mix with peanut butter poured on top, but it's peanut butter and chocolate, HELLO two great tastes that taste great together, and they looked cute. I keep trying overly complicated recipes and completely screwing them up, so I wanted something foolproof. Well, as with EVERYTHING in my world, nothing is foolproof, and I'm not overjoyed with how mine turned out. I'm going to blame my oven. (It certainly can't be MY fault. Pfft.) I couldn't seem to get the brownies to the exact right doneness wherein the center collapses and the peanut butter goes in perfectly. But reports were that they tasted good. I doubt I will make them again, but it was a fun experiement.

So that's it for this week! If you aren't already, get thee to Pinterest! If you want to see what I'm pinning, I'm Carabee74. And to see what some other Real Women of Pinterest are creating, check out Not to Brag.