Show and Tell Tuesday: Pinterest Finds and Fails

Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope y'all had a wonderful Valentine's Day weekend spent with people that you love! We had a great weekend that was made even better by Johnathon having a three day weekend! I even took a blogging break myself yesterday so I could enjoy having all my people under the same roof for a third day in a row!

Instead of a Tasty Tuesday recipe today, I am linking up with Andrea over at Momfessionals for Show and Tell Tuesday. Today we are sharing Pinterest finds and fails! 

I'll be honest, I have a real love/hate relationship with Pinterest. On one hand, it has given me countless clothing, home decorating, party, and child craft ideas that I would never have come up with on my own! The flip side is that it can definitely give you a complex when you try and recreate a Pinterest pin and it turns out not at all like it's supposed to. Also, I feel like it may be giving me unrealistic dreams for my future home. However, I like to remind myself that Pinterest is inspiration that you can take and apply to your own life, expertise, budget, space, closet, etc. and isn't always meant to be an apples to apples comparison.

With that said, I feel like most things that I "pin" these days are all home related. Johnathon and I lived in a rental home in the DFW area before we moved to Kwaj. Because we knew we would be moving to Kwaj, we didn't really put much effort into making the space our own. And speaking of Kwaj...all the houses on Kwaj are pretty much the same, and leave a lot to be desired in the "homey" feeling department. Seriously...our walls are cinder block. Our floors: vinyl tile. Jealous? Whenever we move back to the states, buying a home will be the first big item on our to do list, and needless to say I have had PLENTY of time to figure out what style I would like in my future home. I can't wait to have a home that we can truly decorate how we want and invest time into.

Here are my top pins for things I would like in my future home:

1) GAS LATERNS

A walkup front porch with a gas latern...LOVE!

A hobby obsession of mine is pretend house hunting on Zillow. I know we aren't buying a home right this second, or even next month, but I seriously love just looking at homes out there, going through the pictures, and deciding what I would change to fit our particular design aesthetic. If only I had a dollar for every time I've told Johnathon, "I LOVE the front of this house....the only thing I would do is add gas lights!" I just love the look of dark gas lights against a white house. Plus I think the way gas lanterns flicker makes the front of a house look really inviting and cozy. 

2) IVORY AND BLACK KITCHEN

 

I kind of feel like I'm cheating on my white cabinet/grey counter top combination, but if I could do one dream kitchen, one way it would be ivory/cream cabinets, with neutral/beige counter tops and black drawer pulls. It just looks a littler warmer and more inviting to me than the white/grey kitchens that you see so much these days, and I like that it is a little different take on a lighter kitchen!

3) OPEN CONCEPT KITCHEN/LIVING ROOM

Gaslights and an open floor plan...yes please!

Why this isn't how all houses are laid out is beyond me?! I've always wanted a kitchen that looks directly into the living room. We spend so much time as a family in both locations, and I want to be able to see and talk with everyone while I cook! Also, I apparently really have a thing for 1 big island that lots of people can sit at, as well as neutral tone living areas! If loving neutral color palettes is wrong, I don't want to be right!

4) WIDE PLANK WOOD FLOORS

I just think these are a nice twist to traditional wood floors. They really bring a rustic, warm feeling to a home that I just love! 

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that my dream home may or may not be a cross between a Pottery Barn catalog and a La Madeline restaurant. Not sorry.

 

Besides home inspirations, I'm also starting to really use Pinterest to find activities for Hadley. Hadley just turned one this month, and I feel like she is finally getting to a age where I can begin to do "learning crafts/activities" with her outside of playing with her everyday toys.  I found this website off of Pinterest that had lots of great activities for one year olds, and toddlers a like! I can't wait to try these with Hadley:

1) Clipping Toy: Hadley loves the clip on our dog's collar and on her stroller, and I feel like this would really work her gross motor skills and keep her engaged for a LONG time.

 

 2) STICKY PAPER: Hadley loves the feeling of different textures so I think this is right up her alley! Plus, she really likes examining leaves and grass, but always ends up putting them in her mouth! Putting the leaves on sticky paper would totally allow her to check out the leaves without the culinary finish she so often seeks!

3) EDIBLE FINGER PAINT: As mentioned above, pretty much everything these days goes in Hadley's mouth, so this would be a great way to get our arts and crafts on without having to constantly be pulling her fingers out of her mouth!

Finally...it wouldn't be a true Pinterest post without sharing a recent Pinterest fail with you all. Let's set the scene shall we?! Hadley's first birthday...Kwajalein has a bakery, but it is nothing to write home about. Sarah and Lindsey (who were the co-hosts of the joint birthday) and I decided we would dream big and make the smash cakes ourselves. How hard could it be?! I know a woman on island who makes fancy cakes with the icing roses on top, and she was nice enough to lend me her piping tip to make said fancy, rose icing. We decided to go with a pink, ombre cake like so:

I'm going to go ahead and say that mistake number one was icing this cake after we had one or two cocktails during our party set up the night before the big day. We decided that it would take too long to mix four different colors of pink icing so we nixed the ombre idea and just went for a pink rose cake. Fine. The second problem came when I cut out two circular sections from a rectangular cake I had baked the day before. I didn't have the right sized round pan to bake the correct size and shape cake that I wanted, so I figured I could just cut out the size and portion that I needed. Result...the cake was lopsided. "No worries...I'll just correct it with icing!" I thought. Ah, the icing...

For reasons unknown the icing roses, when piped onto the sides of the COOLED cake, did not want to stick and began sliding down and off the cake. (I even started from the bottom)! Sarah and I both got so frustrated that we just abandoned all original dreams of icing roses, and just spread some Pepto-Bismol pink icing across the cake, threw some sprinkles on for good measure, and called it good! I was still slightly ticked off that the icing had the nerve to slide off MY cake, so I did my best to still put roses on the top of the cake, but the result looked more like wads of chewed bubble gum than actual flowers:

Mine would be that lopsided wonder in the back! ;)

Hadley's cake in all it's glory!

 And just in case there are some more visual readers out there, that prefer a side by side comparison...

#nailedit

 Your welcome.

I'm not gonna lie...my failings in the cake department got me down for a hot second. I would love to be that mom that got the pink, ombre rose cake right on the first try. Instead I'm the mom dying laughing at how truly terrible Hadley's cake turned out. And since she's my daughter...I can only hope she will look back on this blog someday and laugh right along with me! I could let my Pinterest fail get the better of me, but watching this little face enjoy the heck out of her lopsided, Pepto-Bismol cake was all the affirmation I needed...

So if you have a Pinterest fail that's getting you down, never fear...I promise there is at least one fail that is even worse better than yours! :) Happy Tuesday friends! xoxo