“Pinterest Fail” is not a phrase I utter often. I feel like I’m pretty good at picking out projects that are realistic, fun, and ones I’ll actually do, either for myself or with the kids. Today was my first fail.

It seemed innocent enough. Indoor snowmen! Two ingredients! It came from a blog entitled “Modern Messy Parent,” but that’s me! I’m modern! I’m a parent! I embrace mess!

The photos from the blog looked realistic: A cute little one mixing the cornstarch and shaving cream in her box, happily playing, probably singing songs from Frozen…

I mean, look how cute! The kids can do that!

Griffin has been bugging me for weeks to break out the cornstarch and shaving cream, so I finally did it. Here’s how ours turned out:

Thank goodness I set this up on the front porch instead of at the dining room table! What this picture does not show is the trail of cornstarch and shaving cream mixture leading from the kitchen to the porch to the ultimate removal of this project to the sidewalk. Now I don’t get too crazy about mess (I let my children use glitter and Sharpies, for goodness sake!), but this. was. everywhere. In minutes, I was on my hands and knees with the dustpan and broom muttering, “fail, fail, fail.”

In the end, to be fair, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. The kids had fun, and it was a fairly easy clean up once it dried a little. So perhaps not a big fail. Just an I-might-be-hyperventilating-during-this-fantastic-experience-I’m-providing-for-my-kids fail.

I will be removing that pin from my collection.