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Last year, for Halloween I decided to make something fun for dinner - you know something off Pinterest. For those of you who are not familiar with Pinterest, it's where you go to get craft ideas and recipes for things like meatball birds in a nest of spaghetti, broccoli poodles and hot dogs that look like little octopi. You can learn how to turn rice into the head of Hello Kitty and eggs into zoo animals. On the non-food end of things, you can learn how to tie a scarf that looks like Rapunzel's braid or turn ordinary household items into a castle.

So I went to the store and meticulously shopped for items to make my ghoulish gourmet meal. And, oh was I excited to unveil my Yummy Mummy Meatloaf!

Then . . . "What is it?" my guest asked.

"What do you mean, what is it?" I shot back. "Tell me what you think it is."

"A goat?" she offered. "Yes, that's it, it's a goat wrapped in Swiss! How clever!" She took a fork and poked at it. "But a Halloween goat . . . I don't get it."

"Get away from my mummy!" I yelled.

"It's a goat," she insisted.

She meant it. Hours of wrapping white strips of cheese around the meaty body of a mummy had somehow morphed into a goat at 375 degrees.

It's not my first Pinterest failure. Last Thanksgiving I made Pop Tart Tiramisu. I have no idea what I was thinking. It turned out to look like a rainbow. A rainbow that threw up. My nephew took one bite and announced "Um hello? Pop Tarts? Really?"

But that was nothing compared to my attempt at hedgehog cupcakes or bunnies driving motorcycle Twinkies.

So I was much relieved to find out recently that there is actually a website for Pinterest flops. It's called Pinterestfail.com and its tagline is "Where good intentions go to die." It turns out hundreds of other people have attempted Ho Ho houses and 82-layer Eiffel Tower cakes with less than ideal outcomes. In reality it turns out for every "Nailed it!" there are approximately 12 "This bad boy will never see the light of days."

What, then, keeps drawing us back to Pinterest to undertake these challenges? I can't even figure out how Velcro works and I've never turned my TV on because the buttons scare me. Yet, somehow I think I can master Yummy Mummy Meatloaf and wind chimes made of forks.

So after my friend adjusted to the idea that we were eating goat for dinner, I brought out a lovely dessert tray of darling little marshmallow ghosts to top off the meal.

"Oh look," she gushed, "These are cutest snowmen ever!"

Keep that up and after dinner we're knitting kitty sweaters and making bird feeders out of pop bottles...

- Holly Kelsey-Henry

Holly Kelsey-Henry is the owner of DownWrite Creative in Wisconsin and makes her living as a writer - some days more profitably than others. She is a former award-winning journalist and still writes for newspapers and magazines.