Easy Breakfast Solutions

Every week at work, we have Breakfast Club Friday. It's a voluntary thing where someone in the group is responsible for bringing 20 other people breakfast on Friday morning. It ends up that you go about 3 times a year. Not too bad. When I signed up, I had all the intention in the world of being a bagel, fruit & yogurt kind of gal....then came Pinterest.

So this week it was my turn to feed the crowd. I decided to check out my Food For Thought board on Pinterest to see if I had anything that would fit the bill. I came up with these two ideas:

LINK for Eggs

The egg sandwiches could not have been any easier. I did not make and freeze them as the poster did, but I did make 20 people's eggs for their sandwiches in 20 minutes with little to no mess!! Good enough for me! Spray down some muffin tins, crack 2 dozen eggs and bake for 20 minutes. Couldn't have been easier. They came out perfectly and everyone was impressed!

LINK for casserole

THIS...THIS was the hit of today! Who would have thought? I have been complimented all day on this dish and handed out the recipe to half a dozen people. It was very easy and even better, I was able to do all the prep work the night before.

The recipe calls for an 8 inch baking dish. Since I was feeding 20 people, I used my larger rectangle dish. I thought I could easily double all the ingredients but that turned out to be too much!
Here is what I did:
1.5 bags of frozen hash browns
2 cups of shredded cheese
1 whole onion
16 ounce pack of turkey bacon
16 ounces of fat free condensed milk
1.5 eggs 2 tsp of seasoned salt
AND Cooked it 15 minutes longer

Overall, it really was delicious; I went back for seconds as did everyone I spoke to. I will definitely be making this again.

Happy Pinning!

Felt Cookies & Icing

I, along with my best Pinning friend, discovered that Pinterest is fabulous in preparing for Christmas. As you can see in previous posts, we found plenty of holiday decorating ideas on Pinterest! I also found these - Felt Cookies with Frosting.

LINK

I decided these would be a perfect gift for my God Daughter. She is just under 2, loves hanging out with her mom in the kitchen and playing pretend. I waiting months to Pin this after I found it so I could keep it a secret from her mom :)

Overall, I love the outcome of the project. I found all of the materials for this at JoAnn Fabrics and even combined, relatively inexpensive. The original poster used a cute wooden box from Michaels that they painted and decorated. I knew my 2 year old God Daughter would want to carry her box around, take the lid on and off herself, etc. So I opted for a Rubbermaid type box from Target. It’s safe for her little fingers, see through so she knows what’s inside and portable for little hands.

I found the accessories at a local store, I bought a mini rolling pin, mini oven mitt and mini baking sheet.



Entire Finished Product



Cookie Close Up

Obviously, the sewing part of this project took the longest, but I am slow and was distracted watching TV :) I did need a sewing machine to do the outside of the "dough" to clean up the edges and secure the two pieces of felt.

Happy Pinning!

Mini Mason Jar Sewing Kit

When I saw this Pin, I decided to give it a try considering I have lots of these little mason jars in my kitchen (leftover from homemade baby food days). I have a sewing machine and lots of sewing stuff around, but I hate having to dig through it all for a simple project or a quick button fix.

The only thing I bought extra for this project was what I put IN the jar; I bought mini threads of spool in all different colors that would fit well in this jar. Otherwise, I had the jar, fabric, stuffing and hot glue at home already.


Link to POST

I ended up making two of these, one for myself and one for my Pinning partner in crime, Tiffany. The hardest part of this project is getting the fabric glued down flat enough to screw the top back on. I managed to accomplish this for both jars, but the lids do require some pressure when screwing them on each time. Besides that, its handy to have thread and needles available and portable in the house. 



Finished Product!

Happy Pinning! ~ Valarie

Tub & Shower Cleaner

In an effort to improve my footprint on this earth and be green in a new way, I decided to try creating my own cleaning spray. I saw this pin and loved it for its simplicity; all you need is three things:

1. An empty spray bottle

2. 12 ounces of white vinegar

3. 12 ounces of blue Dawn soap

LINK to POST

The ingredients (minus the bottle, I reused) cost me about $3. The time to put this together took about 3 minutes, you have to heat the vinegar for about 2 minutes first.

Overall: This is a quick and easy pin.

PROS - As a TUB and SHOWER cleaner, this is actually fantastic. I sprayed down the tub, let it sit for about 10 minutes and all I needed to do was wipe and rinse and my tub was sparkling clean.

CONS - The original post boasts this cleaner can also "clean sinks, appliances and just about anything." I beg to differ. The Dawn ingredient causes this product to extra soapy. Maybe the inside of my sink, but definitely NOT the counters or outside edges. I tried a countertop, it was a pain to rinse off a bunch of times to get the soap off. I couldn't imagine spraying down an appliance with this stuff.

A week later - The bottle is settling a little bit which makes me think you'd need to give it a gentle shake before each use. The suds are at the top, a cloudy mixture in the middle and a clear blue liquid sits at the bottle.

I would recommend this as a green way to clean your tub and shower, but not anything else in the house.

Happy Pinning!