A post from Taylor - BACON!

My husband loves bacon. Like, REALLY, loves bacon. Like, would probably eat 3 pounds of it for every single meal if I let him, loves bacon. No exaggeration. So I was REALLY nervous to try this pin that was about cooking bacon in the oven. What if it wasn't as good? What if I messed it up and he hated it?! I can't ruin his favorite food! That would just make me a terrible wife or something, right?! (Geez I hope not.) But this pin just seemed so EASY! Too easy to be true.

Here's the pin I used, but there are several floating around Pinterest.

That pin does a great job of breaking down the process, and I did it exactly like she said. So you can reference that for the how to. Here are pics of it all:

My materials! (A Two Girls and a Pinterest Problem must!)

Not so patiently waiting...

The finished product!

Here's the thing. I was too nervous to cook all of my bacon this way. I cheated. I cooked some of it in a frying pan on the stove top while I waited for the oven bacon to cook. Then I did a blind taste test. We mixed the bacon all together so no one could tell the difference between the baked and the fried. The best part? No one could tell after they ate it either. It was a success! My bacon loving husband likes baked bacon just as much as he likes fried bacon. I win! I can cook bacon without all the mess and grease burns (Don't even worry, I have a scar on my right arm from the grease popping up at me when I was cooking bacon for him. >:l)! So glad I tried this one. And to all you skeptics, do it! It totally works. 

Note: Peggy has done this for awhile now, and she also gives a vote of support to cooking bacon in the oven. That's both of us from Two Girls and a Pinterest Problem with the thumbs up! In case you're keeping count. We are definitely keeping count.

A Post from Peggy-Laundry Soap!

Hello Internets! So let's talk about one of the many things I love about the Boy. Besides the fact that he's uber responsible, works incredibly hard and is an amazing Daddy...he also does laundry! This is something I pinned a long time ago and we've been using it for over a year. I wanted to post this because I have talked to a few people who have wondered about making their own laundry soap but for whatever reason haven't. One concern is that it takes too long, another is that it makes clothes (especially whites) dingy. But I have been using this detergent for a long time and I can tell you it works wonderfully! Don Diego is in Taekwondo and his uniform is just as white as the kids' next to him! So this is the picture from the pin:

The instructions on the blog post over at Being Creative to Keep My Sanity (that blog title speaks to my soul, BTDubs) are really quite clear. I have to say, though, that I only use 2 bars of Fels Naptha soap instead of the 3 that she recommends and I use an entire continer of Downy Unstoppables because I like my laundry soap to smell strong so my clothes smell super good when they come out of the wash. So this is how I whipped up this amazing concoction of laundry love!
Materials:

(1) 4 lb 12 oz box of Borax
(1) 4 lb box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda
(1) 3 lb 7 oz box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
(2) bars Fels-Naptha soap
(1) regular size container of Oxy Clean (I alternate between Oxy Clean Free and this off-brand which really works just as well and costs less)

Seriously, making this stuff couldn't possibly be simpler. Just open the boxes and dump it in a big container. (you can line a 5 gallon bucket with a garbage bag if you'd like, I just have this random toy tub that I use and then rinse out. It is soap after all so it's nice for it to get cleaned out every now and again!)

If you have hard water like we do (egads do we have hard water!) (Please don't judge me for saying "egads") (or for my overuse of parenthesis!) go ahead and toss in a couple of cups of epsom salt.

The only part of this process that involves exertion is the grating of the Fels-Naptha. I've heard you can microwave it and then just break it up but I am not that adventurous! I actually use a little grater (is it called a zester?) so the flakes are smaller. Honestly, though, it's not that hard. It took me exactly 10 minutes to grate the 2 bars and that included pausing to take (burnt...sigh...) breadsticks out of the oven. So I grated the two bars, reminding Poquito Tito over and over again that it's NOT cheese and please don't eat it. 

Once it was all in the tub I let the kids mix it up with their hands. (my picture of Don Diego was blurry so I didn't use it but he did most of the mixing)

Mademoiselle...

Poor Poquito Tito couldn't quite reach! 

So the kids mixed it up and I put it in a bunch of leftover oxyclean containers and took it to the laundry room. Tada! I tell you, I love this stuff so much we gave it to our neighbors for Christmas gifts!

So here's the part where I attempt to do math...

Here is the cost breakdown for all of my ingredients from Walmart:

Downy Unstoppables (13.2 oz) $6.97

Super Washing Soda $3.24

Borax $3.97

Baking Soda $2.24

Fels-Naptha $0.97 (times 2)

Stain Removing Powder (the Oxyclean stuff) $5.94

(I had the Epsom Salt onhand so that was no cost to me)

Total before tax: $24.30

I figured this makes about 17 lbs 7 oz of laundry detergent (279 oz) and you use 1-2 Tbsp per load which is about 1-2 oz. This makes the laundry soap about .08 to .16 per load, depending on how much you use. (We generally use one heaping Tbsp per load) 

This pin has been a total game changer at our house! We're spending much less on one of our household necessities and that leaves more money for my (ahem!) shopping problem. Winning!!

Have you made this laundry soap? What do YOU think about it?

A Post from Peggy-Don't Eat Pete! (The Easter Edition)

(Spoiler Alert!) We ate Pete! Okay, so awhile ago, I pinned this onto my Easter board...

...and my adorable friend Sara asked if she could come live at my house since I always pin the funnest things. I told her--and I will tell you--that just because I pin it doesn't mean it actually happens! (ahem! The purpose of this blog! Cough cough!) But I wanted to make this happen because it looked super easy and super fun. Two of my very favorite things! This project didn't involve a special trip to the store and that makes this girl happy. So, class, what do we do first? Gather our materials! I got this printable from the Benson Street blog (link). I will admit that I got a little distracted looking at all of the cute stuff she has there! I think you'll see many more posts from her blog on here..I've gotta try some of that! Anyhoo..so I printed the game sheet and grabbed some Easter M&Ms I had leftover from making cute bday gifts for my sisters in law. Now, on her blog she recommends using those delightful mini Cadbury eggs. I applaud her for her willingness to share those babies with, well, HER babies. In my ever-so-humble opinion, those crunchy, chocolatey bits of heaven were meant to be hidden from the children and eaten after they go to bed. So SHE used them, mine are stashed away where they belong!  

You will also need some willing participants. Those are also VERY easy to find if you tell them you're going to play a game and they get to eat candy.

Don Diego had a friend over so he got to play with us. 
I'm not sure what kind of a game they thought this was...

I've never played Don't Eat Pete before (have you?) so I was glad the instructions were there. First we put candy on each of the dang cute eggs

Then we sent Poquito Tito out of the room while we decided which egg would be "Pete."

He came back in the room and started plucking candies off the paper (and popping them into his mouth) 

and when he started to grab that pink stripey one, we all yelled "DON'T EAT PETE!!" super loud which made him think maybe he was in trouble and was supposed to maybe cry but how can you cry when you have a face full of chocolate? (Answer: you don't--you're too happy from all those chocolate endorphins!)

Once he found Pete, we loaded up the board with more candy and sent someone else out of the room. Here is Don Diego:

Mademoiselle...

R-Diggity...

 Even The Boy got involved! Don't eat Pete, Daddy!

This pin was absolutely, hands down a success. It was super fun and easy and (as you can see) fun for all ages. Poquito Tito is only 2 and he could play the game. Here are the reviews from some of the participants:

Me: Hey, (Don Diego), what did you think of the game?
DD: "It was very fun. It was interesting and tasted delicious. I would recommend it!"

Me: What did you think (Mademoiselle?)
Mselle: "I thinked it was perfect and I think Daddy stole it when we said "Don't Eat Pete." I don't like it when Dad eats Pete. I liked-ed that part."

Okay, so Don Diego's review is a little easier to comprehend. Mademoiselle keeps asking to play it again so I think that even though Daddy stole Pete and ate him, she liked it.

Seriously, friends..there's a few days before Easter still. Print this out and play it--even if you don't have kids, it's a fun and silly way to spend some time together. And eat candy. And there ain't nothing wrong with that.

A Post from Taylor - An Easter Egg Garland (and the dilemmas of not having a very big house)

I love holiday decorations. Maybe because my mom got really into decorating for Easter when I was a little kid. I don't know. I just love all things pastel, egg shaped, and bunny shaped. They make me happy. Since I'm a newlywed and kind of on the poor side of life, I don't have the luxury of spending a lot of money on said decorations. Thank goodness for Pinterest! I saw this pin and thought, "I could do that!" It's a garland made out of plastic easter eggs. Eclectically Vintage has a bunch of super cute ideas on their site, I highly recommend checking a few out.

You can see the original pin here, or the website with (unclear) instructions, here.

Seems totally easy right?! I was sort of wrong. It's harder than it looks. Don't get me wrong, still totally do-able. But not exactly as quick and easy as I expected. It took me almost a full hour. I was expecting maybe 20 minutes. On the bright side, there are only two materials necessary. Fishing line, and cheap plastic eggs. The website does say you can use any type of string or ribbon to tie them all together, but I decided fishing line would be the easiest to thread through those tiny holes. I don't know about you guys, but no one in my house fishes (let's be honest here, we also don't do anything even remotely outdoor recreational unless there is a ball involved), but if you don't want to spend money, anything you have at home would totally work. I thought ribbon would be a really cute addition, but I didn't have any that would match and I wanted to go as thrifty as possible. I bought the fishing line and 42 plastic eggs at Walmart for a total of $5.26 with tax. In other words, pretty darn cheap! Here are my materials:

Here's a good heads up for you; you need two strands of fishing line. I cut mine both about 15 feet long. The first thing you do is tie the two strings together at the end. Make sure your knot is big enough not to slip through the holes you are about to thread it through! Some of the eggs had holes that weren't exactly open, like this one:

I just used the tip of a mechanical pencil to poke through the thin layer of plastic covering the holes. It was the perfect size and it wasn't hard at all to poke the holes through with it. Next you open the egg you want to thread, thread one thread through each hole on the bottom of the egg, towards the inside. Then you thread from the inside of the egg out through the top holes. When you've pulled the strings both through, you close the egg. I tried to avoid doing a pattern because I'm kind of OCD about patterns and I thought a strict pattern wouldn't be as much fun as random colors. That's right, I went off the pattern grid! Be proud people, be proud. Like I said, it took me almost a full hour to do this so be warned that if you use something that is tricky to thread through the holes or if you have super shaky hands (like me) that it's gonna take awhile! At the end of this project though, I think it turned out so cute!!!

Sorry for the bad picture. My dining room has TERRIBLE lighting. See frustrations below. :)

Now to my complaining about not having a very big house. Don't get me wrong. I love my adorable two bedroom townhouse that we were super lucky to find for our first home. But here's the problem. I got this awesome garland done and was so excited to put it up. Then I looked around and realized I had no where cute for it! Well shoot. I looked at my adorable husband and asked where we should put it (you never know, maybe he'll come up with the perfect spot, right?!) No such luck. He looked at me like I had just asked him to solve world hunger. He tried real hard though! And the suggestion of around the doorframe wasn't a bad one! Eventually I settled on putting it above the dining room window, and I think it's delightful. Chalk it up to a win folks, we have another Pinterest success story on our hands!

A Post from Peggy--Peepcorn..and, Potentially, An Apology

WARNING: This post contains potentially offensive anti-Peeps and anti-butter themes. If you feel like this will offend you, please accept my sincerest pre-apologies for the offense.  But I will not apologize for hating Peeps and butter. If hating Peeps and butter is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Pop Quiz: What are the blue things in the picture above? If you answered "Marshmallowy Deliciousness" you are wrong.  Very, very wrong. Here's how we can turn these disgusting chewy wrongs into delicious chewy rights..the answer, my friends is PEEPCORN! Does this pin look familiar?

Since I super hate Peeps but super love marshmallow popcorn, I was excited to give this pin a try. This is how I did it. First, of course, I gathered my materials:

Peeps, popcorn and margarine. This is where the second potentially offensive content comes. I hate butter. I know that margarine is like chemical cancer, I get that, but butter is gross. Unless the words before it are "I Can't Believe It's Not" you will never see it in my house. I use margarine interchangeably with butter. Blog friends, this is a dirty fact about me that you're just going to have to get used to. I apologize in advance for my offensive use of margarine. Back to the pin! (P.S. Here is the website that has the full instructions..gotta give credit where credit is due!) So I gathered the stuff (please don't tell my grandmother that I am not using Orville Redenbacher popcorn. She'd be extremely disappointed!) First, I  popped some popcorn. I probably only really needed 1/4 c unpopped popcorn for both boxes of Peeps. This is my kids' favorite part! 

I popped the popcorn whose brand shall not be named and then I took the kernels out because we don't have dental insurance. 

Now, since I'm not super awesome at reading instructions, I didn't quite get to the bottom of the pin that says how much butter to use. So I used half a stick. The pin says 2 tsp. If you do this, for heaven's sake, only use 2 teaspoons! So I melted the butter in a pan and then added the Peeps.

I just stirred and stirred and tried not to enjoy the fact that those gross little chickens were melting into nothing. 

Stabbing the mixture while muttering, "Melt you disgusting pieces of marshmallow grossness!" will frighten the children. Um, trust me. So I mixed and melted and poured it over the popcorn.

Mixing..mixing...

Mixed!! Tada! I let Mademoiselle taste it to see how it worked out.

I asked her how she liked it--she thought for a second and said, "I like it! It tastes like ducks!" Now, I feel like I should be honest with you here. She's never actually tasted ducks.

I have to say, although I've never tasted ducks either, that if they taste like this I am a fan! This stuff is delicious! It tastes great, it's super cheap to make (it'll be even cheaper after Easter when they're practically giving those nasty things away!), it's quick and it's something the kids can help make. This pin was DEFINITELY a success!!

A Post from Taylor - Intros and Some Easter Egg Dying

Hello internets! :) I'm so excited to get my first post up for you today. We've decided here at Two Girls and a Pinterest Problem to tackle all of those pins with themes to keep it all organized. Don't worry, if we have something totally blog worthy unrelated to our current theme, we'll still post it. We're not very good at keeping juicy secrets anyway! As I'm sure you can guess, right now we're doing an Easter theme.  Shoutout to Peggy for her awesome Easter egg wreath. In keeping with that, I tried out McCormick's recipe for some really vibrantly colored Easter eggs. Here's their recipe, it's been floating around Pinterest for quite awhile:

Check out the pin here!

So I gathered up my usual dying supplies. I prefer to use the disposable cups because, well, I like my mugs to stay the color they're supposed to be. Grabbed my trusty vinegar and food coloring and got ready to start.

Now, McCormick's website didn't give the usual warning of not using vinegar with the pink colors. Well... I wish they would have! Me, being my naive self, didn't even think about it being a problem. Any of the recipes that used pink or purple food coloring, should have been done without vinegar. It doesn't mix very well with the other colors when you use vinegar, I highly recommend just water. Luckily the disposable cups I purchased did have the warning so I could figure out what was wrong. Unfortunately, it was too late. And the colors did still turn out really beautifully. You can see especially on the purple one there's an odd texture to the color. That's from the vinegar. In the end I used 1/2 cup of warm water, 1 tbsp. vinegar, and left the eggs in for about 20 minutes. 

Here's the final product! Not the exact colors McCormick gave, but overall I think they turned out really well! Again, on the Apricot, Raspberry and Deep Purple colors; I should have done just water, I think they'd be a lot better if I had. Overall though, I deem this pin a success story! Especially because even my hubby had fun seeing the "cool" colors I was able to produce. Apparently he thought he was too "cool" (or maybe it's old...) for Easter egg dying. Thanks McCormick for proving him wrong!

A Post from Peggy - Disclaimers and an Egg Wreath

Hello friends of the Internets, I'm Peggy and I'm so excited to be able to provide the first post for our little blog! Before I jump in, I feel like there are a few things you should know about me: 1. I do not own a DSLR. I will probably always take pictures from my iPhone or the sweet little point-and-shoot that has served me well over the years. Maybe one day, I'll post Pinterest-worthy photos that will awe and inspire but not today. Or tomorrow. Probably not next week either. When the day comes, believe me, you will know. 2. I am NOT Martha Stewart or even her distant cousin! I'm a girl who likes to craft. Sometimes this stuff turns out GREAT and other times, well...other times my projects are so hideous my 4 year old rolls her eyes and I know she's thinking she could have done a better job. If nothing else, I'm genuine. I will always show you my finished product, no matter how embarrassing it is!

Okay, disclaimers out of the way, let's get to it! So I saw this pin from Tatertots and Jello on Pinterest and thought it looked totally cute. One of my good friends just bought a new house and I thought it'd be fun to take it to her as a housewarming gift! 

So this wreath uses white plastic Easter eggs, which the pinner says can be obtained at Hobby Lobby. Not my Hobby Lobby. Or Target. Or Wal-Mart. Or Michaels. Or Jo-Ann. Ask me how I know--I hauled my kids in and out of each and every one of them! Feeling especially stabby I finally settled on the plain colored eggs you can find ANYWHERE for next to nothing.  So I brought everything home, grabbed a Diet Coke (a crafting necessity) and got started! First I gathered my materials:

• A foam wreath
• Some colored burlap
• Washi tape
• A cute little pinwheel
• Ribbon
• Glue gun and glue sticks

First I decided to cut that wreath in half. Naturally (because I have a Pinterest problem and nearly all of my sentances start with "I saw on Pinterest...") I got this idea from a pin that said if you cut the wreath in half, you get two wreaths for the price of one and it lays better against the door. I'm all over that! So I grabbed a knife and started hacking away..

and then THIS happened

 the wreath started cracking! I decided it wasn't worth it (I'm not always terribly ambitious..) and started wrapping it with ribbon.  Then I ran out of ribbon before it was even half-covered..sigh..and busted out that cute burlap. I wrapped the wreath like so 

my hands aren't really that distorted and freaky. I just needed to both hold the wreath AND take the picture!

because pink is cuter than foam-green. I wrapped it all the way around, keeping it as tight as possible and then used hot glue to fasten the end. 

See the delightful way the hot glue stuck to my finger? Yeah, 

sometimes I forget that my fingers aren't invincible to heat 

and every time the lesson ends with me muttering words I don't 

want my kids to hear their mother say!

Then I called my best friend Camille and we caught up while I wrapped washi tape (as per the pin instructions) around the eggs. This is a little tricky, since washi tape on round objects tends to wrinkle. So keep it as tight as possible and smooth out the wrinkles the best you can with your finger.

Then I started gluing those suckers on, keeping the wreath flat against the table so it would eventually lay flat against a door, and starting in the middle. I kept gluing them on, going outwards until I realized I was about to run out of eggs and I wasn't even halfway through. (I swear I am cursed!)

Luckily I bought two bags of eggs but it took FOREVER to washi tape all of those puppies so I decided I'd just have taped and non-taped eggs and I'd arrange them so it looked like it was supposed to be that way. Gluing, gluing...

GLUED! With that done, I snipped off the handle of the pinwheel, glued that on and then tied the ribbon around the top in a cute little knot. Tada! Egg wreath!

I really need to wash my door. Don't judge.

So in retrospect, I probably would not have washi taped the eggs.  I think that's a good idea with the white plastic eggs to add a pop of color but it just wasn't necessary with the colored eggs. I also would have used a different colored pinwheel that contrasted more. Meh. Woulda-shoulda-coulda..

Here is the cost breakdown of this project:

• Wreath 3.97
• Colored Burlap 4.97
• 2 packages of plastic eggs at 1.97 each=3.94
• Pinwheel 1.00
• Items that I already had onhand-Washi tape, glue, ribbon

Total for this project was 13.88+tax.  I probably could have purchased something similar with a 40% off coupon but then I wouldn't have the satisfaction of telling my cute friend I made it myself and I wouldn't have this blister on my finger that gives me some major street cred in the crafting world. I'm like the Gangster of Glue, but don't be intimidated. I put my washi tape down from the left to the right just like you do.

Until next time!