Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Experiment #2

Friday's are my day off! Before you get too jealous, I work on Saturday and Sunday. BUT this makes Friday's great days for us to have people over for dinner. It gives me all day to get the house ready and the food prepared and it is nice for guests because they don't have to worry about cooking after a long work week. This past Friday Erin and Ryan came out to spend the evening. I don't usually do an appetizer but this pin http://pinterest.com/pin/36380709459470791/ caught my eye and bacon being one of Brad's favorites, I thought I would try the recipe out.

The recipe is super simple and can be prepped in advance (which I love). I used my Pampered Chef stoneware bar ban to bake them and it worked great. They did take a little longer than stated to bake but it was worth the wait.

PINTEREST PICTURE:
Pinned Image


MY RESULTS:

VERDICT:
This recipe is a DEFINITE make again.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Experiment #1

When we moved to this house I was super psyched that I had double ovens. Then I realized that they were not self cleaning : (  I'm not going to admit how long it has been since I cleaned my ovens last, the pictures are going to give that away.

With a bun in the oven (pun intended, yes it's true) and my ovens in dire need of cleaning, I needed to find a way to safe way to clean them. My first option, leaving for a day and getting Brad to clean them with Easy Off didn't go over well . Really, that wasn't fair to subject him or the dogs to that any way. Option two was to look on Pinterest for a solution. I was able to find this pin http://pinterest.com/pin/36380709459475145/ that claimed to be "the best oven cleaner". Worth a shot I guess.

BEFORE:



The pin claims that all you need to do is sprinkle some baking soda in the oven, pour some vinegar on it, wait 20 minutes and then wipe. WELL . . . I tried that. "Wipe" is definitely an understatement. It took considerable elbow grease and a good scrubby pad to get results. Even then I had to repeat the process, and this was just for the bottom of the oven. Here's the thing, you can't just sprinkle baking soda on a vertical surface like the walls and my door. So they were still in rough shape. I turned to google and found several other "recipes" for green oven cleaners. I decided to try one that was very similar. Mix 5 tbsp baking soda, 3 drops dish soap & 4 tbsp vinegar to form a paste. I then applied this to the walls and door and let it sit for 20 minutes. With a bit more elbow grease I was happy with how the walls and door looked.

AFTER:



VERDICT:
While not perfect, my oven looks a lot better than before I started my experiment. It took a lot of elbow grease but my health and the health of my family was worth it.
As a happy side note: My nails were super white and clean by the time I was done!

Welcome to my Pinterest Experiment

Like many, in the past couple of weeks I have become addicted to Pinterest.

I was given due warning as I got the invite that I would spend even more time baking, making and crafting the things I found. It's true!!

I already blog about the recipes that I try and really enjoy it. I figured I would start an extension of that and let you all know what from Pinterest works and flops. I hope you enjoy reading about my experiment!