Halloween Apple Treat

I saw this clever healthy treat on Pinterest and thought it looked like something that a) I could probably make and b) my kids might actually eat.

Silly Apple Bites from Fork & Beans

This past weekend, I had to bring "a salad" to our parish Fall Festival. I thought apple slices would be easy and kid-friendly, and would give me a chance to try this out.

I think they turned out really well! I used peanut butter & store-bought eyes instead of the allergen-free items recommended in the original recipe. I also only made 3 because that made the plate look festive without taking too much fussy effort.

My Attempt at No-Bake Cookie Bars

Right now, my kitchen looks like this:

I was invited to a cookie exchange this past weekend. I wanted to go, but baking was not an option, and I'm too honest to try & pass off goods from the Publix bakery as my own. So I scoured Pinterest for no-bake cookie recipes.

Most of them involved peanut butter, which I know is not universally beloved. Some of them also required too much actual kitchen equipment, despite the "no bake" moniker. I currently have access to a microwave, a toaster oven, a coffee maker, a wok, (all conveniently located in the dining room) and a refrigerator (pictured above). My "counter top" is one of the doors off our old kitchen cupboards sitting on the corner of the dining room table. So I needed a recipe that was dead simple.

Photo from Cookies and Cups

No-Bake Cookie Bars seemed to fit the bill. They were made of chocolate and Oreos and sweetened condensed milk. I could make them in the microwave and the fridge, and even if I screwed them up they would probably still taste good.

And they did taste good, even though I did screw them up. My boys had fun smashing the Oreos inside ziploc bags, first with their fists, then with the can of sweetened condensed milk, then with a rubber mallet my husband brought from the garage (It's not real baking unless tools are involved; just ask Alton Brown.).

The problem arose when it came time to stir the semi-sweet chips into the white chocolate-cookie-milk mixture. Even though I let it cool for over 5 minutes, it was still too warm and the chocolate chips melted. I tried to fold them in gently, but the mixture was tough and sticky and it was hard to incorporate the chips without letting them melt completely.

Of course, I made them only a couple of hours before the cookie exchange, so the cookies didn't have enough time to sit in the fridge and set. The ones in the middle were still a little gooey when I tried to cut them apart. If I were an organized sort of person, this probably wouldn't have been a problem. But then, if I were an organized sort of person, I would have baked and frozen three dozen cookies before we tore our kitchen apart.

My considerably less photogenic cookie bars, accented by festive greenery.

I wonder where I went wrong. Should I have used a food processor to crush the Oreos instead of children wielding mallets? Should I have mixed the ingredients in a glass bowl instead of aluminum? Did I add too much white chocolate? (I couldn't find the scale to measure 10oz. precisely, so I eyeballed it.) I may never know.

Oh well. At least they tasted good. And I was able to exchange them for two dozen other delicious cookies of every variety imaginable. Not bad for someone without a kitchen!

Halloween Wreath

I was inspired by this wreath I saw on Pinterest and decided to make my own.

But after hot-gluing the plastic snakes on the grapevine wreath, I thought it actually looked pretty good unpainted. Then my husband had the idea of gluing on all the cicada skins my boys had collected. I really like the end result. It's a little creepy from far away, really creepy up close when you notice the cicadas.

Like the original blogger who posted the top picture, I also had trouble finding large plastic snakes. I was able to find small ones at Dollar Tree, and I finally found the large ones at Wal-Mart in the toy section. The wreath and the spray paint that's supposed to adhere to plastic (which I didn't use) are from Hobby Lobby.

I bought five snakes, but only ended up using three because my boys wanted to play with the other two, and I didn't have the heart to take them away.

A Moderate Pinner Is a Popular Pinner

Just because you created a new Pinboard doesn't mean you have to fill it up right away. Because although you may feel a sense of satisfaction upon seeing your brand-new board filled with pins, your followers will log on to Pinterest to find their pinstreams clogged with 100 images from the same damn jewelry site, or 50+ uncredited scenic landscape photos from tumblr. For example.

Think of your followers, and remember that they follow people other than you. People whom they actually know and like and who are more selective about what they pin. Those who pin with careless abandon may find themselves losing followers, namely, me.

Sheepish Serendipity

I just had to take a screenshot of the following coincidence of items that appeared on my Pinterest homepage today:

Happy Easter, y'all.

Best Practices for Responsible Pinning

With its usage numbers exploding, social image-sharing site Pinterest has recently come under more scrutiny. Just this week, I read about a lawyer and photographer deleting all her Pinterest boards because she was leery of the legal implications of the way images are posted and re-pinned.

It's true that Pinterest makes it easy for users to share images that don't belong to them without crediting or linking to the original source. If enough of this continues, Pinterest risks a backlash from photographers, bloggers, and other content creators. So for those of us who like Pinterest (or are hopelessly addicted) and want to keep using it, it behooves us to post and re-pin images responsibly.

After a few months of using Pinterest, here's the list of best practices I try to follow:

Check Links Before Re-Pinning

Don't just use the "re-pin" button that appears when you hover over a thumbnail on the Pinterest homepage. Before you re-pin something, click on it to see the full post, then click again to see where the original link goes. If it's just an image with no context or goes someplace shady, don't re-pin it.

Give Credit in Your Captions

When you pin something, tell your followers a little bit about what it is and where it's from. The sites you're linking to will appreciate your giving their image context and credit, and your fellow pinners will appreciate the extra information.

You can change a caption when you're re-pinning, so you can add context and credit info missing from the original pin. 

Unfollow the Worst Offenders

If someone you follow regularly pins pictures that don't link anywhere without giving any credit, just unfollow them. The more good pinning behavior is encouraged and bad behavior discouraged, the more Pinterest can be seen as a positive influence on the social media landscape. 

Mea Culpa

I admit that all of my pins don't necessarily follow these guidelines, particularly those made right after I joined the site. This is a list of best practices I've only adopted recently, inspired by all the attention brought to Pinterest by tech bloggers and others concerned about the legality of the site's business model. I like Pinterest and I don't want to see it crippled or sued out of existence, so I feel that I should do my part to avoid the problems that could bring the site down.