Cauliflower Pizza Crust - FAIL

In an effort to eat more "paleo" and wheat free, I decided to take a crack at the whole cauliflower pizza crust thing.

FAIL!!

I just scoured my pinterst boards trying to find the recipe I used, but I can't find it! So frustrating.  I can't even try to tell you to test an alternative recipe or maybe help me figure out where i went wrong.  This recipe was mostly cauliflower, eggs, and cheese.

It started out looking okay

But it just didn't provide a crust that you could pick up and eat like pizza.  It tasted good (so it wasn't exactly a waste) but with this recipe I would have just as easily enjoyed making cauliflower pizza casserole, i.e. tossing it all together in a dish and baking. (which I might do at some point!)

Have you had any luck with cauliflower crusts?

$5 of Decorating Fun

Once every year I get to remind my boss how "old" he is (old in quotation marks because he's only 4 years older than I am, and neither of us are actually old) I like to do this by decorating his cubicle for his birthday. 

This year I spent a total of $5 at the dollar store, and produced fairly good results - and that included a card!

This banner was left over from last year...but you can't go wrong with one of these!

I decided against the Disney Princess theme and went with something slightly less emasculating and less obnoxious - hockey theme!

I found a package of Canadian hockey team napkins - perfect!

I also picked up some streamers, balloons and tissue paper!  Streamers and balloons are pretty obvious as to what to do with them, but the tissue paper I took one sheet at a time and grabbed it by the middle and stuck it in random crevices...like between his monitors.

So for not very much money, I was able to decorate the cubicle and still have plenty left over! 

Pet Peeve...followed up with some humor!

Alright, first with the pet peeve - "Pin now, read later"  I don't know about you, but I rarely find I have the time to go back through my pins and read them later, if I didn't already do it when I pinned it (other than for reference - like I'm going to make something or try a recipe)  I try to take the time when I pin them to visit the original site to make sure it's a "good pin" (ie the link goes somewhere, and it's the original site) I do this because I know I will likely never go back to check. 

And isn't everything kinda "pin now, read later"?  If you're not going to come back to it, why are you pinning it?

Anyway, this wasn't to make a whole bunch of people upset, it's just me venting a little because I'm sure I'm not the only one out there. 

I know I'm not the only one because I found these... (no...I did not just go and make them myself!)

This however is a real concern:

Especially because I have a board titled "Corgis" and then "Clothing DIY" It makes me think of this:


(I apologize it's only the audio, couldn't find a good video)

Crochet FAIL!!

When I saw this little cat house on Pinterest and found out it was made of t-shirt yarn I thought I'd try making one for Amy's cats. (source)

Here's mine:

Looks identical right?

Right?!

LOL.  So much for that! I did need to get rid of the tee-shirts, but I can think of much less labor intensive ways to get rid of a ton of volunteer shirts!

    

What do you do when you have a hole in your ceiling?

What do you do when you have a hole in your ceiling and everyone is coming to your house for the gift opening the day after the wedding?

You (my sister Leslie from Try to Keep Up) enlist your crafty sister (me!) to help you make poofs to hide it!

So just like at the Bridal Shower, tissue paper poofs are good for everything, right?  Right?!

Here's what Leslie and I were up against at her house:

And for scale, her lovely (now-husband, aka Mr. Try to Keep Up!) getting the ladder so I can hang the darn things!

We proceeded to make poof after poof and hang them by using thread and push pins into the joists of the ceiling.

It did a pretty good job for a quick fix and it helped make everything more festive too!

One finished shot taken by the photographer my sister hired - Randal Kurt Photography (amazing!!!)

 

We didn't have quite enough to finish the long hole, but it's a vast improvement!!  

          

Cake Adventures! Ooops!

For my first try at baking a tiered cake, I thought I could fit a whole cake mix into my 3" tall, 6" diameter cake pan....

NOPE!

This picture was about 10 minutes into baking, I was going to be in trouble!! I ended up having to ladle some from the small one into the big one!  

More funny vinyl "families"

This one was a present for my boss's 30th birthday.  He's the one who I made this for (for his girlfriend for Christmas)

The tall guy on the left is meant to be my boss, I'm the girl, and the guy next to me is a co-worker who works closely with us, but is technically supervised by someone else.  

Now before you go thinking my boss is a big jerk, let me explain.  I'm an electrical engineer, and so a large part of my job is creating drawings for my designs in AutoCad (I'm sounding really cool now, huh?)  As part of the drawing control procedure, someone else has to officially check the drawing (my boss).  Last summer, my boss was out of the office, and I was going through my drawings that he'd checked and on one of them I missed something really obvious and written on the page in big red letters was "DO BETTER!"  I BURST OUT LAUGHING.  I also realized that that's kinda my boss's catch phrase.  So "Do better" has kinda become a joke around the office.  

One of the best things about this - it cost me nothing.


I figure this probably isn't going to be the last twisted vinyl family I make.  And yes, I would take orders.  

     http://www.creatingreallyawesomefreethings.com/

Science, Learning and Fun!

The alternate title for this post is "More tales of a nerdy engineer..."  

About a month ago my boyfriend and I went to his cousin's wedding.  While we were being tourists in a neighboring city we decided to visit the science center to kill some time and have some fun!

And of course I had to take many pictures! 

I'm "driving" a tractor... they actually had a really good agricultural display area, but I guess that's what happens when you live in the prairies!

Adam playing with trucks!

More of me on the tractor - selfie style!

Using pulleys to experience your weight on other planets! There was the moon, mars, and something else I can't remember right now, I made the mistake of picking the heaviest one first... never was all that good at fractions! :P

Oldie but a goodie! Adam gives this one 4 thumbs up!

I honestly can't remember what this had to do with anything! lol

Adam getting attacked by a bear!  Ahhhhh!!!

Chillin' out with the sexy toothless hockey player! There was a pretty extensive display area with all hockey related stuff and the science behind various aspects of the game.  It was great! (In case you didn't know, I'm Canadian - eh!?) 

You could be in a bubble!!! I wasn't very successful with it :(

Adam had better luck though! I made him bubble us both :) (that's right, bubble is a verb now)

Kid's corner! Look how tall I am! (not very...I'm even standing on something in this one....)

All good things have to come to an end.  Because of the interactive nature + children I had to go wash my hands on the way out (I'm really not a germ-a-phobe, but we were leaving to go to brunch right after!)

Science continues in the bathroom "Of the several pounds of food you eat a day... about one third of a pound comes out as poop"  

HA! This actually made me lol - also there was no one else in the bathroom...I would have felt like a creeper taking a picture in there if there had been!  

Thanks for joining me on my nerding adventures!

I heart my state/province...

Have you seen these around?  They're so cool!

(The Sweet Paper House)

Unless you live in Saskatchewan!

I made this one myself :P

If you're not Canadian, you might need to click here to start laughing! 

You know you're Canadian when.....

Your green tea is endorsed by Wayne Gretzky!

Big News!

I'm not sure how many of you follow me close enough to know that I've had lots and lots of free time for crafting (although maybe it doesn't quite show on my blog!)  because I've been an "unemployed bum" since April.  

In April I finished my Electrical Engineering degree and have been searching for a job.  In the mean time I've been teaching fitness classes and crafting/blogging to keep my sanity.  

http://xkcd.com/227/

Well... now I HAVE A JOB!!  I'm super excited because it's very much what I've been waiting around for.  I wasn't interested in moving away (the next province over has a few more opportunities than here) and some of the other opportunities around here consist of living at different sites (whether it be mining or power generation) and moving from one horse town to one horse town, with maybe a 2 horse town thrown in the mix.  

Monday morning I was offered an engineering position with a small local company.

http://xkcd.com/567/

I'm going to try my hardest to keep blogging at about the same frequency as I have been, but it's going to be a rough couple of weeks at the beginning, because I start December 13 and it's Christmas time AND I'm teaching a couple extra fitness classes on top of it!  

http://xkcd.com/730/