I Pinned It...And I Did It, Too!

I am sorry to disappoint you, but it seems I must go along with the masses and include a post about Pinterest. There is some symbiotic relationship between blogs and Pinterest, as of late, where blogs inspire pins on Pinterest and Pinterest inspires posts on various blogs. There are a few projects (out of the massive amount of possibilities on the site) that I have undertaken, and I would like to share them with you.

Freezer Meals

I started out by pinning this post from Mama and Baby Love. After seeing her take on the idea, I did some research and found recipes on other sites, as well. With the upcoming addition to our family, I thought it might be a good idea to try my hand at readying meals in advance. My friend, Bekah, and I went on a good-sized shopping trip and spent most of a Saturday making freezer meals. What we ended up deciding on, since it was our first attempt, was to make several slow cooker meals, one casserole, and several quarts of spaghetti sauce with meatballs. We had so much fun!

Here are the results of our shopping excursion.

Half of this will make it to my mouth, eventually! :)

Bekah and I were feeling pretty accomplished at this point.

I am not quite sure that I would do this again in the same way. It was fun and helpful cooking with someone else, but doubling and sometimes quadrupling everything turned out to be complicated at times--especially when it came to countertop space, mixing bowls, and the like. But it was a good learning experience, for sure, and a fun time of just hanging out. Since then, I have doubled some of the meals I make in the evening and frozen the second batch. In the future, I think it would be fun to start a freeze-and-share group with several other girls! In case you are wondering what we have made, here are the majority of the recipes we used. We also used a couple of brisket recipes Bekah had, but I do not have those in my file, yet.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

When I saw this, I just had to try it! We had made homemade liquid detergent before and did not like the results. This was a powdered version, and it piqued my interest.

Recipe and photo are courtesy of Being Creative (to keep my sanity).

We have been using it for a couple of months now, and we love it! Our landlord had to replace our old washer and dryer with a new, front-loader high-efficiency unit, and it still works well. When friends of mine threw me a baby shower, I thought it would be cute to surprise them with samples of this laundry soap as a thank you.

Cupcakes in a Jar

My church also threw me a baby shower, and I was looking for another homemade thank-you gift I could make for the ladies. I stumbled upon (no, actually, I searched within Pinterest) this little number from Cakies.

Red velvet cupcakes in a jar! 

I found the printables for this and the laundry soap on various sites.

It was such a fun idea, and I had a blast--although I stayed up way too late layering cupcake and frosting!