Okay, okay, we're still going to be updating our Live Blogging post of our hurricane experience, so be sure to check on back to yesterday's post for a rundown on our latest experiences with Sandy (aka Frankenstorm). Now, on with the show!

In the event you're not familiar with the Pinterest Challenge, it's an event put on by several DIY bloggers a few times a year that challenges other bloggers to use something they've pinned on Pinterest as inspiration for their own project. The goal is to get people "doing" and to make/build/create their own version of a pin they like with a twist to make it their own. If you don't know what Pinterest is...well...click on this link, sign up, and prepare to lose at least the next several weeks of productivity. In the past, I've seized the Pinterest Challege opportunity to create a hidden chalkboard memo zone in our kitchen, as well as transforming empty wine bottles into candle holders.

Before we go any further we need to thank this Pinterest Challenge's list of gracious hosts, Sherry from Young House Love, Katie from Bower Power Blog, Sarah from The Ugly Duckling House, and Carmel from Our Fifth House.

The timing of the Fall Pinterest challenge turned out to be absolutely perfect for our purposes, as we recently completed a Pinterest-inspired project for our annual Halloween party just over a week ago. As you may already know, I enjoy going a little overboard when throwing our Halloween party, and I like to go to a little bit of extra effort to ensure our guests have a great time. I covered many of the special touches that I exercise for our party in a post last week, but there's one thing that I failed to mention.

Party favors are an integral part of our guest's party experience each and every year. I always like to send guests home with a little goodie bag of Halloween inspired treats to remember us by. Whether it's a small bag of Reeses Pieces, cookies, candy corn, or any number of "fall-ish" and "Halloween-ie" goodies, our guests have told us they often appreciate the snack later that night or the next day. 

This year I wanted to do something a little bit more unique as a party favor, something we hadn't done before. While looking around on Pinterest for a little pinsperation, I came across this great idea from Lexi Daly over at Confetti that shows how to build an Easter Smores treat using Peeps! So simple, so unique. Pure genius! 

When I saw this pin I thought to myself, "This is great for Easter, but this is simply brilliant for Halloween!" S'mores totally feel like fall to me, and Peeps now have some pretty awesome Halloween types of late. 

Assembly of this little Halloween wonder is incredibly simple. I started by purchasing all of my necessary supplies. Our local craft store had the clear bags I'd need, as well as Halloween style ribbon and stickers that would not only seal the bags but add the final flourish I was looking for. 

Next, I needed to all of my edible supplies, most notably I needed to find Halloween Peeps. This task turned out to be a little tougher than I expected. We went to Target, CVS, Wallgreens, Giant, Safeway, and several other places expecting each one to have a stocked shelf or two of little marshmallow ghosts, bats, or pumpkins, but none were to be found. Knocking out the graham crackers and chocolate were no problem, but the marshmallows were the issue. After striking out at our several locations we decided to cut out the middleman and go right to the source, the Peeps & Co store in National Harbor (in the Washington, DC area).

Yes, you read that correctly, a whole store dedicated to those little marshmallow chickens (and mow many other things). If you're a fan of Peeps, this is a can't miss location. Just look at the official Peep store's great Halloween display. We obviously had many different options to choose from.

We purchased several packages of ghost peeps and headed home to begin assembly. Here are all of the supplies we needed for the build minus the ribbon we ended up using.

Putting these delicious and festive favors together is a piece of cake. 

Alex and I created a sort of assembly line that allowed us to build all of the ghost peep smores very easily.

The first step is to break all of your graham crackers in half and place the two halves of each cracker into the bags.

With the crackers in the bag, place a single chocolate bar into each bag to the right of the crackers with the label facing out.

Finally, carefully slide a ghost (or preferred Peep shape) into the bag and rest them in front of the crackers. If you aren't careful on this step, you'll end up with marshmallow innerds smeared on the bag, a definite party favor foul.

I used two different methods for closing the bags. The first was to use the little medallion stickers I picked up at the craft store. These stickers are some of the latest Halloween items from the Martha Stewart collection, and they're really cute, in a spooky sort of way. To adhere them, I folded the bag over and used them to seal it shut.

To change things up a bit, I finished off the remainder of our bags by using a short length of orange and black ribbon, by first gathering the excess bag at the top, and securing the ribbon around the excess. Personally I prefer the ribbon look to the sticker medallions, but both were quite workable.

Here's the final after shot of this adorable and unique favor for our guests.

After assembling quite a few, we ended up with a little Peep s'mores army just waiting to be given to our party guests. At the end of the day, the Ghost Peep s'mores were a big hit. We even saw a tweet about the favor from one of our guests the day after the party. 

Overall, the Ghost Peep Smore project was a success. It was quick, easy, inexpensive, and provided our party goers with a unique and memorable parting gift that was as much fun to eat as it was to receive. Not only did it work well for Halloween and Easter, but this idea would work for any of the numerous events Peeps now cater to. Can anyone say "Arbor Day Peep Smores?"

Would you have liked to receive this as a party favor? Was it a good use of Peeps, or would you have used a different approach? Or if you've ever made some seriously rockin' party favors, please share your secret so that we may pin and copy it. Let us know what you think.

Read Full Post

As much as I love a "free" project, the fat sticks of sidewalk chalk we had purchased from Target several months ago, though great for hopscotch games, left something to be desired in the way of penmanship chalkmanship.

Alex knows my penchant for neat handwriting, as well as my love of things that are not covered in chalk dust, so he made a noble attempt to remedy our dillemma and purchased "chalk pencils." In reality, he had purchased pastel chalk pencils, for chalk artists. Though they write on the chalkboard paint we had applied to the backs of our cabinet doors, I wouldn't particularly say they do it well.

Not to mention the sound that tends to accompany the thin tip as it jumps along marking the surface has a very Freddy Kreugerish, "finger blades on industrial pipe" melody. Trust me, far worse than fingernails on chalkboard, it makes Lulu hide her head.

I also can't forget the difficulty of cleanup. Soapy warm water plus a bit of elbow grease seems to get the job almost done, but I fear we'll always have some ghosts of meal plans and reminders past.

So after that failed experiment, and a waste of $11 unless Alex decides to pick up artistry and starts working in chalks (I don't see it happening), we're back to the chalk drawing board.

We started looking around at the various options and kept seeing Chalk Ink, and similar chalkboard pen style writing implements. These are the same pens that coffee houses, sandwich shops, and places like Trader Joe's use to make their brightly colored chalk drawings.

Photo Credit: The Barbary Coast News

They go on more like ink or paint, with consistent lines, true edges, and bright colors. The other advantage is how well they write on glass and other non porous surfaces. We were hopeful we had a solution, but there was one significant caveat.

Through our research we learned that these pens have been known to ruin chalkboard painted wood. Wood is a proud surface, and chalkboard paint over wood is still rather porous, so the ink likes to jump into those little pores and sit there forever. When this happens, you're left with a ghost image of what you had written. You're only option is to put another coat of paint on. Talk about an inefficient process.

Knowing the risk, we went ahead and ordered one of these pens. Our feeling was simple. The wood our cabinets were made of is a good hard wood. Not to mention we had painted them white, which went over a layer of primer, and then finally we had our chalkboard paint. If ever there was a chance a porous surface might not be porous any longer, this was it.

After shaking and then priming the pen with several pumps, I nervously wrote out a few items for the week, hoping we wouldn't be repainting later in the day.

After allowing the ink to dry for a few minutes, Alex grabbed a paper towel and dampened it with warm water to make our attempt to just wipe it away. We had our fingers crossed.

As you can see from the photo, the ink was gone, but wait, the paint still had an outline of the words that had been written. Oh no!

Is this what people are talking about? Had we just ruined our project? Would we need to repaint? Well, I guess this isn't a real surprise, but we're a bit neurotic. This is one of those situations where patience is key (and we had exercised none). As we were lamenting another $8 wasted and the time necessary to repaint, the water we had used to wipe the board began to dry, and the outline began to fade away. Just about two minutes later and our chalkboard was back to a clean slate, just waiting for another recipe. Success!

I'll be using this pen for sure, and I may even be tempted to pick up a few colors other than white, especially since I know the option works for our board. Who knows, with how great this stuff works, we may end up with more chalkboard covered surfaces in our house. Only time will tell.

If you're interested in using this type of chalk ink, I think the key here is the hardness of the surface the paint was applied over. Even if you're putting the chalkboard paint over a porous surface, you should still be okay as long as you have many layers of paint and hard wood under the chalkboard paint. Another option that may work is to apply an oil based primer before the chalkboard paint. The oil based primer should make a porous surface more consistent.

I know several other people chimed with knowledge of these pens in on our previous post, thanks for that! Your feedback helped us land on a winning choice. But does anyone else have any particular preference or experience? Has anyone inadvertently ruined their chalkboard by using this type of pen? I'm just curious to see the experiences of others in this matter.

Update - Four Months Later

Harumph! Now that we've used this pen for a little while, we're sad to report that it has permanently stained our chalk board paint. The pen erased easily when you write and then erase within a few hours. But if you leave the writing on the paint for a few days, it leaves a ghost of the writing that simply can't be erased. Looks like we're going to be having Tuna Casserole for the next few years. Just wanted to let you all know what to look out for.

Did you enjoy reading this post? Want to learn more about our first-hand experiences with other tools, devices or items used throughout our renovation? If so, check out our complete list of product reviews in our Toolbox Tuesday section. 

Note: We weren't compensated for this review. We simply want to share good products when we see them, and hope that learning from our mistakes can help save you time, money and frustration.

Read Full Post

But as the weekend wore on, I couldn't stop thinking about the Pinterest Challenge, wondering if there was a small project I might be able to tackle in just an hour or two. Something that could be a fun break from the overwhelming project that is our bathroom renovation. Something that I could officially check off as done, and begin to appreciate immediately.  

I made a deal with myself. I decided I would take on the Pinterest Challenge if, and only if, it was an idea I had previously pinned, I already had all the supplies on hand and therefore wouldn't have to run to the store, and it would only take an hour or two. After perusing my pins, I landed on my "Great Idea" board and decided upon the idea of creating a chalkboard space for my kitchen to help with menu planning and outstanding errands.

When I do my grocery shopping, I add sale items to my list first, then I determine 2-3 recipes I'll make that week and fill in the ingredients I'm missing. Lastly, we round it out with other items we're out of or purchase on a weekly basis (bananas for instance). After making my list, I jot down the recipes for the week on a scrap of paper or post it note and stick it to the side of our refrigerator. This idea was born from my frustration with my better half. Although I do most of the cooking and tend to get home from work first, on the off occasion he beats me home it would annoy me that he claimed he "would have started dinner but didn't know what we had to make." My solution: post the week's recipes in a visible location for all to see. Although we both find this system useful, it doesn't always look so nice having recipe clippings and post it notes all over your fridge.

That's where this week's Pinterest Challenge comes in. I had long been admiring the menu chalkboard project idea from Heather of WhipperBerry (and her tutorial on creating a chalkboard menu). I loved the concept, but wanted to tweak it a bit. 

First of all, I wanted to be able to conceal my chalkboard space so it didn't add more visual clutter to my kitchen. If I had a true pantry, I'd probably want to use the back of my pantry door for this, but given I use an upper cabinet as my pantry, I settled on painting the inside of these cabinet doors. After all, this isn't the first time we've painted our cabinets, so I felt fine trying this, even if it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.

Implementation was simple. The supplies needed are:

• window or surface cleaner
• paper towels
• painters' tape (we used Frog Tape)
• chalkboard tape
• foam brushes

We already had all of these items on hand, and had nearly a full quart of chalkboard paint. The chalkboard paint was leftover from the labels I created for my wire storage baskets when we reworked our basement stairwell into a coat closet. In a matter of minutes, I had these supplies gathered and was ready to begin.

First, Alex and I wiped down the interior doors to clean away any grime, grease, or residue that can accumulate on kitchen surfaces. This is an important step before we started painting, otherwise the paint was likely to not adhere properly.

Next up, we carefully taped off the area we wished to paint, making sure to firmly press down the tape along what will be our wet edge.

With our surface taped off, we applied the first of four coats of the chalkboard paint. You can see from the photo below, this paint goes on very thin and streaky, so multiple coats were a must. 

After applying all coats of paint, we carefully peeled away the tape, revealing the outline of our new chalkboard areas. 

After giving the paint a full 24 hours to cure, we were ready to put these babies to use.

Applying a little chalk allowed me to see the project in action and the potential this offered in keeping us just a little more organized.

I'm going to use the left side as a way to remind myself of greeting cards or thank you notes I need to send, or gifts I need to purchase. 

The right hand side will now serve as our weekly menu board (this will ensure Alex has no excuse when it comes to preparing a meal or two).

You could also use this as a place to list emergency phone numbers for babysitters (or in our case, pet sitters), schedules, or any other info that you tend to need often and in the kitchen. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could add categories, days of the week, or headers on each chalkboard in either paint or adhesive letters. For now, I'm going to leave it plain until I'm confident this is how I'll continue to use this space. 

And finally, to make this little project even more useful and fun, I ordered a set of chalk pencils to help make sure we have writing utensils on hand without the need for messy chalk sticks laying around. I saw these on a recent trip out to the Napa Valley and thought they were a great idea. Now that I have a functional chalkboard space in the kitchen, I felt I needed to pick up a nice multi color set. Life is better in pastels.

Update: Ok, so we received the pencils that Alex ordered for me...they won't work. What Alex thought were chalkboard pencils in pastel colors, were actually pastel chalk pencils. Do you see the distinction? Yeah, these are chalk pencils an artist might use and are not for chalkboard writing. They do write, but you need warm soapy water to clean them off. Sorry if we led you astray. We're working on a new idea and hope to have a little more info on it next week. Oh well.

Thanks to Young House Love, Centsational Girl, Bower Power, and Ten June for inspiring me to muster up the time and energy to complete this fun and useful project. That extra nudge was really what I needed! 

Read Full Post

• How To Make a Wine Barrel Stave Candle Holder 
• The Perfect Napa Valley Vacation Itinerary
• Old Town Alexandria is Starting to Look Like Napa 

Well, we're back at it, but this time we're doing it in the name of the Pinterest Challenge.

If you're not familiar, the Pinterest Challenge is being hosted by Sherri & John at Young House Love, Katie at BowerPower, Erin at Hi Sugarplum, and Cassie at the Great Indoors. The goal is simple -- take something you've pinned that you find inspirational, do your own version, and put your own spin on it. Easy enough, right? Well, have you see how many cool and inspirational things there are on Pinterest? Just picking one thing to make might actually be the hardest thing about the challenge. 

Over the past few months I've been pinning things with a wine bar/wine country feel to it on a pin board called "Cheers". (If you're not already following us on Pinterest, what are you waiting for? We have a ton of cool stuff we've shared.) It's my dream to have a functional and cool wine bar to entertain people and share a little wine with some friends. During my Pinterest perusing, one of the things that repeatedly caught my eye was the creative use of empty wine bottles.

Link to original Pin

In my opinion, wine bottles are quite elegant as far as containers go. Their shape, color, size, and look evoke memories of vacations, celebrations, fun times of the past, and good times to come. But after they're spent, I always feel a little bad throwing them in the recycling bin, especially the special bottles whose corks were popped for celebratory reasons.

Link to original Pin

Though I absolutely loved the bottles I saw on Pinterest, and love love love the majority of the things in the Napa Style catalog (and I also love chef Michael Chiarello, but that's a different story), there were two major issues. The following pinned photo is originally from the catalog pages of Napa Style.

Link to original Pin

The first, size. The bottles Napa Style is selling start at the three liter sizes and go all the way up to six liters. Six! Our house is tiny, I can't imagine where a giant bottle like that would even fit without looking ridiculous.

The second issue is price. Starting at $99 and topping out at $249, these bottles, though very pretty, are well outside of my price range for used bottles. Call me crazy, but my preference on price is "free" or perhaps $0.05 cents in Michigan.

Rather than order large and expensive bottles, we set out to turn a few of our own smaller wine bottles into creative candle holders that could adorn our future wine bar or our outside entertaining area.

We started our project with two bottles, one standard 750ml wine bottle and one 750ml sparkling wine (champagne style) bottle. The goal was simple -- cut the bottom of the bottle off without shattering it into pieces and maiming ourselves. Though the bottles were full, we took it upon ourselves to drink them...in the name and spirit of the Pinterest Challenge. 

We had seen methods to cut bottles that included everything from scoring the bottles with a glass cutter to heating them with a blow torch and dipping them into a cold bucket of water, but all seemed less than exact and a little dangerous. For our project we decided to give the good ole wet saw a try. We did quite a bit of looking online but couldn't find definitive proof that a wet saw would do the job we wanted it to, so we figured we should figure it for ourselves.

The fist step was to set the fence on the wet saw to give us a good guide to rest the bottom of the bottle on. Our approach was to begin cutting the bottle and then slowly rotate it into the blade. The blade would take a little bit at a time from the bottle until it just dropped off...or at least that was the plan. 

I love it when a plan comes together. It was a success, and at long last, here's the actual video evidence that it is possible to use a standard wet tile saw to cut a glass wine bottle.

I hope it goes without saying, but be sure to wear your eye protection when working with tools like this.

As you can see, you just need to take it slowly, rotate the bottle as evenly as possible, and you can easily remove the bottom from a wine bottle. Once the bottom is cut free, there's going to be a good amount of glass residue still inside the bottle. Using a bucket of water, simply rinse out the inside of the bottle so you don't end up getting any glass pieces on your hands.

Because of the shape of the bottle there was a small bit of a glass bump left on the cut line. We used a tile file to shave it down a bit and were left with a nice and smooth cut line that wasn't sharp or dangerous.

Next we let the bottles soak in the bucket of water in order to loosen the labels. 

After a quick wash and thorough dry, we were in business. 

With our bottles ready, we set them on our dining room buffet with small candles.

We breathed a sigh of relief, figuring that the hard part was over and now all we had to do is set the bottles over the candles.

Wait a second, not so fast.

After lighting the candles and putting the bottles over them we hit our first small speed bump with the project. To this point we've only seen this type of thing with much larger format bottles, like the 3+ liter bottles. It seems the necks on the large format bottles are large enough to let the heat of the flames out while allowing fresh air in for the flame (remember, fire needs oxygen). However, these 750ml bottles have a bit more difficult time letting the candle breathe, causing the flame to go out after about 30 seconds.

We solved this by allowing the back of the bottle to sit just off of a coaster it was sitting on, allowing air to circulate. Once this was done the candles stayed lit without issue. I also think this will work well on our slatted outdoor table, or in a garden where the ground the bottle is sitting on is uneven.

You don't need much of an air gap at all to make it work. Making a quick and easy base with two pieces of 1/4" thick wood will also solve the problem. It would elevate the bottle enough and allow air in between the two pieces of material.

These bottles will also make excellent candle holders outdoors on breezy nights, the flame fully protected from the weather to ensure it won't go out. 

One final step we took to put our little twist on the project was to personalize the bottles using a Posterpaint Sharpie. Depending on the occasion, you could write a message on the bottles.

These can be anything from wine inspired greetings to a note about a celebration associated with the given bottle. You can use them to denote what is being served from a table, as seating cards, or just as a way to spice up a gathering. And best of all, you can wipe the messages off and alter them to your heart's content.

So there you have it, our Pinterest and Napa Style inspired "wine bottle candle holders." Overall, a project that was not too difficult, quite inexpensive (I'll actually go ahead and say "Free" since we already had all items on hand), and one that will work well for a variety of events and settings. I just can't wait until the weather starts to get nice and we can have people over for a wine evening in our garden. Maybe we'll make a large collection of these candle holders in various sizes and colors and decorate our back yard and patio with them. I'm not sure what I like better, the end result or the journey to consume the necessary amount of wine to make the project a reality.  

And in case you're wondering, the wet saw does a pretty good job of cutting, but it doesn't leave a nice and finished edge (at least not with our blade). So you really couldn't use it to create wine bottle drinking glasses without a bit of grinding and polishing.

So what do you think of our wine bottle candle holders? Not too shabby of a little project. And best of all, we're reusing something that would otherwise be a recyclable! 

Are you currently inspired by anything on Pinterest that you absolutely need to try for yourself? Maybe you're even taking part in this very same Pinterest Challenge? Share some of your ideas and likes with us, we'd love to see what you're working on.

Read Full Post