Getting things done: check!

Pinterest.

It has become one of my most favorite hobbies since taking the plunge and deciding to stay home with Wyatt fulltime. I've only been home 4 months, and before then I didn't understand what Pinterest was, but I've done a pretty good job of filling various pin-boards up.

I love to spend my Saturday mornings quietly pinning away {or pining away? pardon the pun!} as many great ideas as possible.

The hubs thinks I'm wasting my time, but I try to assure him-- "Don't worry!" I say, "I'm not wasting our Saturday morning-- I'm busy planning out the rest of our life!"

He doesn't find that cute or amusing. ;-)

But of course, I can't really blame him, as 4 months of pinning has turned into LOTS of things I WANT to do or try... but I sometimes think that I will never get around to any of it!

So today, instead of pinning things, I decided to take one thing and move it to a new pin-board titled "Done!"

Tomorrow will be Wyatt's first birthday party-- we had to reschedule his original party because he had a nasty virus that kept him feeling puny the entire week. So, instead of demo-ing 40 different ways to style my hair or how to create a Christmas tree using a tomato cage, I thought I would try something simple that I could use tomorrow for W's birthday guests.

{Recipe original to My Handmade Life}

 And no, before anyone starts flipping out, "What?! You're feeding children jalapenos!?!?" I am NOT feeding children jalapenos.  As a matter of fact, there really won't be many children at the party, as Wyatt is turning 1 and he hasn't quite gotten his social game together quite yet.

Instead, we're having lots of family over, SOME children, but they are mostly cousins. {and most of them would probably LOVE to eat this treat!}

Since I pinned this recipe, and it totally belongs to someone else, I'm not going to rehash the directions. Sally from My Handmade Life has already done an awesome job of that, and I would never dream that I could do a better one. For the complete recipe, please go HERE and check out her original recipe!

Here's my play-by-play rendition of the recipe. SIMPLE:

 And here are some things that worked for me {that I didn't notice on My Handemade Life}:

• Although the cream cheese was room temperature, I popped mine into the microwave for 30 seconds. This helped with mixing a LOT.
• I used powdered sugar. I did this because I always feel like granulated sugar makes things gritty. I'm probably imagining it, but I felt like the powdered sugar mixed in better.
• I sprinkled my work surface with flour, plus my rolling pin, plus my hands. Just a little trick I learned from my wonderful home-ec teacher back in high school. 
• I didn't worry so much about rolling the dough out huge to begin with. Instead, I just flattened it out, added the cream cheese mixture and rolled it up.
• To get the long roll of cream cheese goodness, I played 4 years old again and made a really large snake. {Surely I'm not the only one that rolled play dough out to extraordinary lengths to create snakes. Right?}
• Sally from My Handmade Life had a great idea with the halving over and over again to create the 16 pieces. Worked like a charm.
• I cooked a small batch to taste-test.
• I rolled the rest in wax paper, stuck them all into one zip-loc, and am going to finish chopping them tomorrow before my guests begin to arrive.

Well, that's how I spent my Friday morning! I hope everyone's week has went smoothly and I pray that everyone has a magnificent weekend!

|MrsG