A Pinteresting Wednesday: Pinata Letters

Welcome to A Pinteresting Wednesday here at Just Another Day in Paradise.

I love Pinterest.

Who doesn't.

I especially love Pinterest for planning parties. I have a whole board for general party ideas. I also make a new board for every party that I have coming up.

The most recent party--A Turning Uno Mexican Fiesta

I referenced my Mexican Fiesta Party board quite a lot for ideas and jumping off inspiration.

Quite a few of the ideas I used were from a Mexican Cinco de Mayo wedding posted on Ruffled.

I pretty much loved every detail. E.V.E.R.Y. detail.

One of the details I loved the most were the pinata letters. The idea seemed so simple and I loved how they looked.

So I set out to make a set of Pinata Letters.

I bought letters at a craft store.

I bought tissue paper in all the right Fiesta colors.

I unfolded individual sheets of tissue paper and cut strips following the fold lines.

I folded all the strips in half lengthwise and ran a gluestick across the top to stick the top together.

Repeat with all the colors.

Cut little strips at the folded edge, 2/3 the way down towards the bottom.

Once you have cut all the strips it is time to glue the strips to the letters. Start at the bottom. Glue and wrap one layer at a time. Then layer another one so the ruffle is just above the bottom ruffle.

I did two layers of each color.

Repeat until the letter is completely covered. I used five colors total. Sometimes you have to wrap creatively. Once I got to the top I wrapped over the excess edge like a birthday present and glued it down.

One letter down...

...a few more to go.

Hubby said I should give a disclaimer that this project might take a little time. Eh...nothing a few episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond can't take care of.

Gotta say, it was totally worth the time.

Do you use Pinterest to help plan your parties? Man it is such a great place for PINspiration.

Don't forget to get your fashion on and

enter the GIVEAWAY to win a voucher for a pair of 

Firmoo designer prescprition OR

non prescription glasses.

A Pinteresting Wednesday: Hard-Boiled Eggs in the Oven

Welcome to A Pinteresting Wednesday. The day of the week where I share a project I have accomplished or a tip I have tried off of one of my Pinterest boards.

This week I am actually sharing a pin I saw but never pinned. Don't ask me why.

Sometimes I am all like, "That looks cool. I can remember where to find that. Feeling too lazy to pin it." Then inevitably I do forget.

Then I am all like, "Hey Lady, why didn't you pin that. Didn't you remember your brain has the retention of a small gnat." 

Thank heavens Pinterest has a search field. Yippee.

On to Oven Hard-boiled Eggs.

Easter is very quickly approaching. Time to start thinking about Easter eggs.

I know plastic ones are so much easier. Plus you don't have to worry about losing one somewhere and facing a rotten egg weeks later. Especially if you are like us and more years than not it is too cold to go outside.

Rotten eggs in ones house is not a great thing.

However, I still can't help making traditional hard-boiled Easter eggs. For one thing, I get to eat hard-boiled eggs which I love. Then Hubby gets to make egg salad sammies...which I DO NOT love, but he does. Lastly, and MOST importantly, my kids get to dye Easter eggs, which they look forward to every year.

No, I did not make these eggs for Easter I am not that crazy...crazy yes, just not that crazy. I made these for our Seusstastical Celebration two weeks ago.

When making them, I followed the instructions found on Unsophisticook.

I put a dozen eggs in a muffin tin and put them in a 325 degree preheated oven. I cooked them for 30 minutes.

A little heads up, when they are done they have little brown spots on them. They come off immediately when you put them in the ice water.

Or you can skip the ice water step and let them rest for about 20 minutes. Then when you dye them the brown spots will also come off then.

They are perfectly done. Creamy, yet cooked through.

YUM.

I loved cooking eggs this way, I didn't have to heat up any water or have any pots out. I also didn't have to worry about the shells cracking.

Glory be, Hallelujah!

I will let you know, that while I like this method Hubby prefers to STEAM his hard-boiled eggs. You can find how to do that HERE.

I would love for you to follow along with all my Pinterest adventures.

A Pinteresting Wednesday: Better Smelling Towels

Welcome to yet another A Pinteresting Wednesday. I haven't tried one of my pins of my Tips, Tricks, Good to Know board for awhile. I figured it was time.

Funny enough, this was actually from Hubby's boards (there was no actual link since it was pinned from an iphone so I can't direct you, sorry), but this is something we have both been wanting to try for a long time.

So try it we did. Obviously bringing out my inner Yoda.

We have these towels.

We have had them for a pretty long time. Some of them were even wedding gifts.

Explain to me the reason why towels you wash for years with delightful smelling detergent just end up smelling dank, old, and frankly quite nasty after awhile.

I pretty much hate it. 

Nothing worse than being all clean and then drying off with a stanky towel.

So this week I decided I would try to make my towels smell better.

I gathered up a handful of our towels.

I ran the towels through two loads.

First I ran the load with no detergent, just 1 cup of white vinegar with the water temperature on hot.

Once the first load is done, then I ran a second load with detergent and 1/2 cup of baking soda, again on hot.

After two runs through the washing machine, you dry them like normal.

Bam.

No more dank stank.

Fluffy and now with a refreshing clean smell.

So the lowdown to getting better smelling towels:

First Time: Run with no detergent. Use 1 cup of white vinegar and HOT water.
Second Time: Run with detergent. Use 1/2 cup baking soda and HOT water.
DRY

Now enjoy renewed towels.

Oh thank you Pinterest for making me a better housekeeper!

What has been a favorite tip or trick that you have pinned? Do share!

I would love for you to follow along on Pinterest and stay posted on the fun.

A Pinteresting Wednesday: Avengers Tee

Don't forget to go and enter the Flirt Earring GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to another A Pinteresting Wednesday  where I share a project or tip I have recently done and crossed off one of my Pinterest boards.

This Avengers Tee idea from Cheri and I am Momma has been sitting on my Projects to Do board for almost a year. I can't believe it sat there for so long.

This is why I started A Pinteresting Wednesday people! There are so many great ideas that are sitting there waiting to be tried and accomplished.

I am so happy that this is the pin that got crossed off this week.

So is he.

Middle LOVES the Avengers. He was even partied it up for his birthday Avenger style.

In her tutorial she provides the image. I just had to save it to my computer. She used her Silhouette to cut out a stencil on freezer paper. I used my Silhouette to cut the image out of flocked t-shirt vinvyl (which I get from Expressions Vinyl).

I had to manipulate and change the images slightly to get them to cut out cleanly. Now I have the saved image and can make Avengers shirts for my other Little Men, who of course requested them upon sight of Middle's.

It is pretty rockin'.

Perfect for my own fierce little superhero.

Thanks Cheri for the image and the idea!

One pin down and only 2,857 left...hahaha until I pin something else in two minutes.

A Pinteresting Wednesday: Brownie Point Teacher Valentine

I had so, SO much fun making these valentine's for the boys' teachers.
 
I pinned an idea for using a brownie box mix and a "Shooting for Brownie Points" tag from Lauren McKinsey Designs onto my Valentine pinboard.

I really like her tags and the idea was insanely cute.

While I loved her idea, I really wanted to make brownies and I wanted to package them differently.

I designed a label in PicMonkey, my online photo editing best friend. They have some fantastic Valentine's overlays, like that arrow. SO cute!

I had these white lunch bags and I remembered reading somewhere (probably on pinterest) that you could print on lunch bags.

So through some trial and error I figured out how to print my newly made Valentine label onto a white lunch bag.

I kind of love it a lot. I will probably be doing this super neato trick again.

In order to make it more of a treat bag instead of a lunch bag, I cut off the bottom and then stitched it closed with a decorative zig zag stitch.

Then came the brownies....

Oh the delightful brownies.

This is my new favorite recipe and if you keep reading, you just might find the recipe at the end.

The brownies are dense and truffle-like.  They are rich. They are glorious.

I tripled the recipe and decided cutting out heart-shaped brownies would be perfect.

Look at all those delicious and cute brownies.

I packed them up first in cellophane bags and some washi tape.

Then I slipped them in the paper treat bags. I folded over the top and, again, used washi tape.

Now they are all ready for Thursday. Hopefully they will earn my Little Men plenty of brownie points.

Did you use Pinterest this Valentine's day? As always, Pinterest is full of ideas. I would love for you to follow along and join me in my Pinterest adventures!

And now, I think I promised you a brownie recipe!

Truffle Brownies

Printable Recipe

1 2/3 cups 63% dark chocolate chips
3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
3 Tablespoons water
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1/4 cup flour

Preheat oven to 325. Line an 8x8 pan with foil, with enough excess to allow you to pull the brownies out by the foil when they are done.

Heat chocolate, butter and water in a microwave-safe bowl for one minute. Stir well. Continue to melt at 30 second intervals, stirring each time until melted and almost completely smooth.

Stir in the sugar and vanilla. Next beat in the eggs one at a time. The batter will be smooth and glossy. Next stir in the flour until just combined.

Spread the batter into the foil-lined pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes until a slight crust forms on the top.The center when tested should still be slightly moist. Place the pan on a cooling rack and allow to cool for about an hour and then either refrigerate for 2-3 hours or freeze for an hour.

When they are set, remove from the pan by lifting out the foil. Then cut the brownies. If they are still too tacky to cut, put them back in the freezer for another 30 minutes.

Enjoy with a glass of cold milk.