52 Pins in 52 Weeks - March Edition

I love Pinterest.  I love pinning recipes from my favorite food blogs or scrolling down the Everything section to see what everyone else has been pinning.  I love the idea of all the crafts and recipes and everything else right there at my fingertips.
Right now I have around 9,600 pins in 60 boards.  I do use Pinterest a pretty good bit but tend to stick to the boards regarding Dinner and let other delicious looking recipes or fun crafts languish unused and ignored.  This year I'm trying to get more use out of Pinterest so at the beginning of the year I created my 52 Pins in 52 Weeks Board as well as a Results Board to keep track of it.  I'll be posting my results the last Saturday of each month.

Okay, I'm just going to admit it - this month was just a hot mess.  Between illness, a handful of trivial but time consuming crisis, and picking a pin that I was just not prepared to do I got way behind.  I'm happy to say that I'm all caught up now and we're going to ignore the fact that all of these pins were done this week!

Week 10:

The Pin: Epsom Salt Bath to Decrease Pain and Stress

Reason Picked: Well who doesn't want to decrease pain and stress?  Plus I love bath salts

The Basic Idea: A mix of Epsom salts, baking soda, and lavender essential oil added to a nice warm bath.

Results: Well first off I discovered that the pin didn't actually go to the bath salts recipe in the picture so I just gave you a link to the pin itself.  I had baking soda and lavender essential oil  and picked up a bag of Epsom salts for just a few dollars.  I combined the salts and the baking soda, dumped them into a warm bordering on hot bath and added the oil afterwards.  It was a nice bath and I didn't feel nearly as achy as I did when I got in.  Whether that's placebo, just connected to the act of taking a bath or because it does help I don't know but I'm going to try it again!

Ready to Roll Up

Week 11:

The Pin: Rainbow Pinwheel Cookies from Mom on Timeout

Reason Picked:  I thought these looked really cute.  I've been wanting to try different pinwheel cookies and thought this would be a good one to start with.

The Basic Idea: Pre-made sugar cookie dough and sprinkles for a quick and easy rainbow cookie.

Finished Product

Results: I'm not a big fan of the pre-made dough so I haven't worked with it all that much.  I was surprised with how crumbly it was.  I think I rolled it out a bit too thin so the ends were just falling apart.  Most of the dough rolled up really well and was easy to cut and smush a little on the cookie sheet.  Next time I'd make the width of each colors of the sprinkles wider.  My stripes were narrower and the sprinkles blended a bit more than I wanted.
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Before

After

Week 12

The Pin: Getting Stains of Glassware from Tasteful Space

Reason Picked: As you can see in the picture on the left I have some pretty grubby glass pans and nothing I've tried has really seemed to work.

The Basic Idea:  Scrub the stains with a Magic Eraser.

The Results: The picture on the right is after about 40 minutes (or 1 episode of Supernatural on Netflix) of scrubbing.  It definitely is much much better but it did take an awful lot of work.  I think I'm just not going to worry about the stains and if I have to take something in one somewhere I spend the $12 to just buy a new one instead of taking the time and the wear and tear on my hand with all the scrubbing!

Week 13

The Pin: Greek Easter Bread from Brown Eyed Baker

Reason Picked: I loved the idea of having a traditional type of Easter bread for Easter plus I wanted to make bread.

The Basic Idea: A rich orange flavored braided sweet bread

The Results: I don't have a stand mixer so I had to add in some kneading and stirring instead of just letting the mixer take care of it all.  I also didn't include the eggs because did I mention this month has been a hot mess?  I'm sure they would be gorgeous on the bread though.  The bread smells delicously of orange and has just a very light sweetness.  More of a breakfast bread than dessert.  I didn't get as much rise as I expected but I am suspicious that  the yeast I used was a bit on it's last leg.  Regardless of that it was a pleasantly dense bread and something I plan on making again!

I'm linking up with Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads