My Very Own Pinterest Fail, Halloween-Style!

I've heard the stories of Pinterest fails… crumbled cookie dough cups, frizzed out attempted 'beach waves,' my-3-year-old-painted-stars-on-my-nails nails, and everything in between. And let's be honest - some of the crap you see on Pinterest can't seriously be THAT easy, now can it? (Especially when it comes to nails.. because who could possibly think dotting teeny globs of different colored nail polish onto a micro pinkie nail is a job for a sane person? But I guess that confirms my insanity; I still attempt those damned cutesy dotty nails!)


Seriously? Yep.. that’s tooootally doable. In my hours and hours of spare time. That I totally have.


http://pinterest.com/pin/193373377720450905/

WHAT is this, and WHY is it labeled “super easy!” ???


http://pinterest.com/pin/143411569354101334/

I have made these several times. Looked. Nothing. Like. These. Ever.


http://pinterest.com/pin/180847741256955656/

But I digress… Now I have my very own Pin-fail to be proud of. And it’s Halloween-themed. All RIGHT!!

Last year I decided to forego the actual carving of pumpkins, and used an idea I found on a blog somewhere – it looked something like this:

http://pinterest.com/pin/174303448047618710/

It was so quick and simple - I glued black and silver sequin up and down the indents of the pumpkins. I even wrapped the stems in the sequin. They looked fabulous! If Pinterest were around back then, I would’ve posted the pics and bragged like hell. Too bad I don’t have a single friggin picture of THAT, because this year I have a well-documented case file of my failure. Don't worry, it really looked like the pic above!

I found these great pins featuring chevron-painted pumpkins:


http://pinterest.com/pin/32440059786771219/



http://pinterest.com/pin/32440059787352063/

Simply tape, paint, peel, and place on your porch for the Pinniest-happy porch on the block! I already had a few different paints in gray and white, as well as the cheapo-brushes. I picked up 12 dollars worth of pumpkins (yes, $12.. there may have been a slight human error in calculations at Wal Mart), and I was ready. Here we go…

I started with two pumpkins:

I measured the first one to see how long my chevron-ified tape chain needed to be.

Then I made chevron-ified tape chain using side of my craft table as a base. (I also tried another way to do this, by just making the chain right on the smaller pumpkin, but it went all cattywompus and the end didn't match up to the start. The side of the table kept everything in a straight line.)

 

Tape chain: complete! This took a bazillion minutes, people. A bazillion.

 

 

Then I applied the tape to the pumpkin. It takes some maneuvering to get it on there without a lot of overlap, since pumpkins are natural things, and aren't perfectly flat or rounded in the right spots.

Smooth down the edges so you get a nice seal, so your paint won't leak through. This wouldn't matter in the least bit later... ::sigh::

Two stripes done! At this point, I'm realizing carving the things would've been about done by now. And my belly was rumbling. Uh oh...

 

 

After HOURS of working on the taping, I was finally ready to paint. Well, actually I still had to wrap the stems at this point.

Finally! Paint on the damn pumpkin. This is just one coat. After two, it was looking pretty freaking sweet, and I was very proud of myself! But I was also starving, as I hadn't counted on 3 hours of time going by before I would get my butt off the garage floor... My hungry ass forgot to take a pic after I put on the second coat.

 

 

- - -

After eating dinner... I went back out to paint a second coat on the bigger of the pumpkins and peel the tape off of the smaller one. Wa hoo!! My hours of work were going to pay off!!

 

 

Annnnnnnd, there went 4 hours of work, down the tubes. Wow. I've had Pinterest hair, Pinterest wreaths, Pinterest recipes not really come out as planned... but never have I had literally hours of work, undone in 2 seconds flat.

 

 

 

And if you're wondering if I tried other methods to peel the tape off, the answer is yes. I peeled fast, I peeled slow. I peeled off of the dry pumpkin, and then tried peeling off of the still-wet one. Nada. The paint came off like, well, like latex paint, because that's what it was. Ugh.. Next time... I'll just spray paint and be done with it.

This is after scraping away the majority of the paint the next day after work. I got most of it, but they're still looking pretty sad, with flecks of white paint all over them like bird poop. I still have the splotchy failures sitting on the porch, where they will stay until I can figure out what I can do to salvage them.

Ever experience anything so sad? Please share your Pinterest fails and make me feel better!

 

By the way, while I was crying over my pumpkins wondering what other Pinterest failures were out there, I stumbled upon PinterestFail.com and EpicPinterestFail.com. I think I'm gonna submit my sob story. Go check them both out - there are some nawesome fails out there, and you can really learn a thing or two about which too-good-to-be-true Pins are lurking on the boards!

 

 

 

It's Not Who You Are...

Source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/29509566/its-not-who-you-are-that-holds-you-back
I saw a post from Women at Forty where the author (who I'm assuming is someone in her 40s, but I'll be honest - I located her post in a search for the above graphic) took an honest look at herself - what she is guilty of telling herself that she is NOT, and then what she IS (and those things are harder to tell yourself - why is that?)

What I am guilty of telling myself that I'm NOT:
perfect
great at balance
organized
a daily exerciser
tall
smart enough
generous enough
strong enough
a perfect workout picture on Pinterest (and will never be!)
super confident

What I AM (and need to do a better job of remembering):
loved by many
admired
openminded
a woman with faith in herself, her loved ones, and the world
positive thinking
a FABulous self-stylist
kindhearted
one who tries to be better every day
one who appreciates beauty in everything most everything
sassy when needed
honest
a good listener
a great talker!

I think I'll make myself a deal - when I'm feeling bummed about the things that I'm NOT, I will pull out the list of things that I AM... and read them over and over again until I'm dne with my pity party! Sound like a plan?

Living Room Decor

My headings are the most boring headings in all the land.
Anyway...

Time to post pics of what the living room has been looking like lately. We had the sectional separated into its 3 pieces for a while. It worked in some ways, but not in others - we couldn't use 1/3 of it (the chaise part) because there is no cushion (Peegate 2010, ahem... Pepper... We still haven't gotten it replaced, but that's the plan. Ugh. Pets!)

I digress. So, the chaise was out in left field by itself, and basically was only used by the cat, who would get up there regardless of what we wanted her to do. I admitted defeat and threw a towel on there, so at least all her little hairs aren't imbedded into the couch base.

Real life - blankets strewn, towel on the cat's lounge chaise lounge, laptop hanging out on the couch, ya know... the exciting life we live.

Adding on to the wall, frame by frame. I need to find something un-frame-like to break it up a little.

The mantle. I'm pretty happy with it, even if leaning the mirror came from plain ol' laziness when we moved in. I've had the wrought iron thingy since my apartment days, and I like it leaning there :) The mercury glass candle globe-y things were from TJ Maxx, as well as all of the candles. And the wooden candle lantern was on clearance at World Market for $8, because it had a small scratch on one piece of the glass. The non-scratched ones were $20!

The giant, wood-framed mirror was a lucky-as-hell $14.99 Target clearance purchase from when I worked there in college. It was originally part of that limited Global Bazaar line $150, and a lady returned it while I was working at the Guest Service desk. It just so happened that all the Global Bazaar stuff was marked down to 90% off - they were clearing it out, and all that was left of that section were single cloth napkins and weird odds & ends, and this lady walks in with a kickass item! I saw her walking up to the desk and called dibs. Huge Target perk there!

A you-are-not-a-photographer pic of my newest little pretty thing up there.

This is just to the right of the TV. I still need something to go on the other side...

I do have this, which doesn't have a home yet. It's been sitting up in the entryway on the console table. (You can see our paint samples here - I'll post that when I actually get around to cleaning taking the pictures!)

And here is the TV stand we found at HomeGoods. We needed something on the small side, since we didn't want the room to be completely filled with furniture. I want to get some low-profile shelves (like the leaning kind) to go on either side at some point.

So, that's it for now. I'll post more as we go along :)

**UPDATE**

So I had a root canal done Monday, and afterwards I was feeling so great that we wandered over to some of the shops nearby. My endodontist's office just happens to be right next to one of my favorite shopping areas because they have pretty much every store I love: Target, World Market, Pier 1, and of course...a HomeGoods/TJ Maxx combo store. The funny thing is, I don't really remember wandering around shopping. This morning I was trying to remember when we got our newest stuff, and it's only then that I realized it was only YESTERDAY! I was on some major painkillers. (Which is why the rest of the afternoon was spent getting sick. Gross, I know. Toooo many painkillers!)

Anyway, I'm glad I was feeling so great immediately after the appointment, because we found a great deal on one of those folding stair-step styles shelves at Pier 1. It was the floor model, and it had some dings in the back, so we asked for a discount. You'll never see the back, but Pier 1 doesn't have to know that; they gave us an additional 15% off :)  Woo hoo! Here it is, in our living room, alongside the entertainment console:

With the discount, it came out to around $127! I've been eyeing a shelf like this for the side of our console forever, and I see them everywhere - but I always hold off, because they're usually at a much higher price, like this one from Pottery Barn:

http://www.potterybarn.com/products/studio-wall-shelf/?pkey=ccabinets

So cute, but at $299, it's definitely out of my price range. Our patience paid off, and our white shelf came out about 57% cheaper than the PB design!

Bathroom Chaos

Finally got serious about getting the cabinet organized ok my side of the bathroom. It always looks worse before it looks better, right??