Pinterest Challenge - Success and Not So Much Success

Lets start with the success.  This was a simple idea that came at just the right time.  Last week I posted about the Memory Shortage I had on my hard drive.  I remembered pinning this idea from Real Simple not long ago so I pulled it up and did a little research on this great way to store photo discs.

This just clicked in my brain and was such an easy concept.  Unlike most people (or so it seems) I do not catorgerize my photos by event but rather in chronological order so the color coding of the jewel cases was not something I needed to do but otherwise I loved this idea.  Here is what my simplified version looks like.

Very simply, I burn each year on to a disc (or multiple discs depending on the number of photos) and just put an small index card on the front of the first disc.  I did buy colored cases only because they were cheaper and look more fun in the box!  The box is just a Rubbermaid shoe box which fits the discs perfectly.  I also, as you can read, have "tabs" for the professional picture discs we have had done and I save the copies of the photo pages I create as well. 

Now for the not so much success stories.  Surprisingly, they were both food items.

First up, this recipe for 3 Cheese Chicken Alfredo Bake was one of the very first "pins" and was so excited to make it - it just looked so incredibly yummy! 

I finally got around to making this last week for dinner.  Even while I was making it, it looked good but I kinda wondered what rocatta cheese would do to the texture.  I should of thought a little longer about that concept.  Really, I should have . . oy!

So, do you want to know what the best thing on the plate was?  Nope, not the pasta - it was the garlic bread.  The pasta dish was nasty nasty!  Two reasons.  1)The texture was just not good.  It was kinda chunky and not creamy - that rocatta cheese really messed with the alfredo sauce.  2)The taste - it had none.  It was very bland and non-interesting to eat.  To make it worse, it is actually an expensive dish to put together between the two containers of alfredo (at about $4.00 a container - YIKES!) and all of the cheese . . .not a good one to flop on at all!  So, I would not recommend making this dish personally but, if you want to try it for yourself click on the link I gave above and you will find the recipe there :-)

Now, for the second flop.  Amazingly, it is chocolate and peanut butter - how can you go wrong with that one?  These are called Better Than Crack Brownies which sounds like they should basically make you stand on a mountain peak and sing to the heavens after every bite, right?

So, I whipped a batch of these up with some left over Peanut Butter Cups from Christmas and this is what mine looked like:

I don't think the name suits them and that could be part of the problem - I expected way too much.  They are more like a brownie with some fudge on top.  It's one of those recipes that is just ok - not anything to make again but they weren't awful.  I will say that I used Cocoa Pebbles in the fudgy part instead of Rice Krispies and that probably impacted the texture but not the taste.  You can try them yourself, if you like, by clicking the link above :-)