Tonight I became one of my favorite people in the whole world.  Mary Poppins!

That was my favorite movie as a kid.  I cried the day that I found out that Julie Andrews really had strawberry blonde hair (I think I was in 6th grade).  I love the scene where she sings “spoon full of sugar” and they “tidy up the nursery”.  I don’t know about you, but getting my kids to help clean up is like a form of ancient Chinese torture.  Many times I hate to fight it and know that I can do it faster and without the weeping and gnashing of teeth, therefore I just do it myself.  I know that I am enabling my kids but I like to look at it from the perspective of saving them from the Evil Queen (me) who comes out when they take forever cleaning up and fight the entire time.

Rewind to last week.  I was going through all of my old magazines that I had dog-eared the pages of cool things I wanted to do/try and pinning them to Pinterest so I would have an easy way to find those good ideas and put them to good use instead of sitting ignored in a file folder downstairs.  One of the things I came across was from FamilyFun magazine.  It was a way to get your kids to clean up.  (Tried to pin, but couldn’t find it!)  So, I tried it out on my kids tonight.  Guess what?  GENIUS!!!!!!!!  My kids cleaned for 30 minutes straight and were begging for more.  Now they are nicely playing together with all of the toys they discovered during our “game”.  JACKPOT!  Are you catching my excitement?

Here is what you do:  Grab a flashlight (or headlamp my case).  Prepare the kids that you are going to play a game.  Shine the light on something that needs get put away.  Have the kids race to grab it and put it away.  That is all.  Seriously…. my kids were fighting over whose turn it was to clean up.  My house looks really good.

If you are not on the Pinterest bandwagon, you are missing out.  Of course, I have a million (okay not quite that many) pins and have only tried some of them, but I am working on it.  There is one thing that has caused me to wonder on my many pinterest wanderings and that is…….how do all of these women have time to do all of this crap amazing stuff.  Do they not sleep?  Do they not have children?  Do they just hole up in their house (with the occasional daily trip to the craft store)?  Are they made of money?  Do they have a wife housekeeper that does all of life’s daily drudgery?  Maybe they don’t sleep?  Whatever it is, I am amazed!  I feel like most of the time I am just trying to keep up with the laundry and the kids’ school and activities.  Perhaps when my kids are older and I win the lottery I will be able to do more projects.  For now, I am kind of a once a month (if I am lucky) type of DIY person.

I have found some really amazing things on Pinterest.  However, I have also found lots of equally UNamazing things.  Meaning that it looks amazing and then when you try it, but it was a total waste of time and money.  I am going to go through my experiences in Pinterest.  For specific links to pins, check me out on Pinterest (at Lisa Coombs Lord).  I have created two new boards “tried and failed” or “tried and AWESOME”.

Let’s start with the bad news.  Any sort of pin that involves using glow sticks to make things glow in the dark: Fail.  Most of the science experiments in general: Fail.  Microwaving something to “clean your microwave”: Fail.  Many of the other “homemade” household cleaners: Fail.  Most of things that didn’t work for me, I deleted, but from now on, I will be moving them to the “tried and failed board”.  Any pins that you have tried that have been an epic fail?

Now for the good stuff.  What has been good?  The Coca-Cola cake.
DELICIOUS!  Lots of butter, but delicious.

The Taco Ring.

Well, let’s just say that the 4 year old who won’t eat ANYTHING asked for seconds and thirds of this easy and delicious recipe.

Hot dog octopus.

Another favorite of the “I go to bed hungry most nights of the week because I won’t eat my dinner” 4 year old.  In fact we had it for dinner tonight!

So, that is the skinny on Pinterest.  Let me know if you have found any new favs and check out my pins!

Lisa