MYTH BUSTERS - Pinterest Style ;-)

I have had great intentions of posting weekly (but weakly won).

Gotta say I love PINTEREST.  It is an easy and convenient file cabinet.  But I have learned (from MANY sources-cooking shows, blogs, friends, magazines, Pinterest...) that not all that glistens is gold.  (I can not tell you how many recipes have not met the expectation.)
Usually if I try a recipe that is not for us, I delete it or throw it away.  (I do keep a list of Internet recipes-and the sources- so I don' fall for them again.) 

But ideas?  Well, we are "MYTH BUSTERS".  (Actually we tried them with hope.)   Following are a few ideas you WON'T find on my Pinterest boards.  (You can check out my boards/follow my boards here, or by clicking on the Pinterest logo on the right of my blog.)

DISCLAIMER - These are our results and opinions.  We hoped that all the ideas we tried would be successful.

1  Make your own Febreeze/air cleaner.  This is a cheap and easy replacement.  (And I had the correct empty spray bottle.)  I tried it.  It worked so-so.  I usually spray my bed linens in the morning.  After the 3rd day of my homemade spray, I found a problem.  There were dried spots, that were powdery, lots of places.  BUSTED
Note to self - Buy more Febreeze.

2  Hard water cleaner.  We have very hard water where I live.  I frequently end up with white mineral residue in my dishwasher.  Have you read the cheap solution of running an empty dishwasher with a $.15 pack of Lemonade Kool Aid?  For us, it did not work.  My dishwasher looked the same.  BUSTED
I do have have a (more expensive) product that does work for me.  I use Lemi Shine for cleaning my dishwasher. (I use it with dishes and dish soap in it.)

3  Cinnamon scented pine cones.  Ha ha.  First I needed pine cones.  There are plenty in our neighborhood.  But, a big snow storm was coming.  So I paid a daughter ($5.00) to take my grandson (paid $1.00) out to collect some-quick.  My sister was visiting and we went hunting for the cinnamon oil.  We tried health food stores ($$$), craft stores (1 squirrelly brand, 1 sold out brand), and finally found 2 kinds on the cooking row at Macey's grocery store.  We bought them both for about $6.00.  (I can make lots of batches ;)
We soaked the pinecones (to get the bugs out-yuk0, baked them (much longer than the "recipe" called for), were very generous with the (strongest) scent, and waited the 5 days.  (My sister was still visiting :)
They smelled wonderful when we opened the bag.  We put them in the perfect basket.  They still smelled wonderful, if you put your nose in to smell them :(  BUSTED
I bought 2 bags at Winco grocery store (that were soooo nicely scented) for (wait for it) $2.98 each!!!

4  (This was a sad one)  Vinegar spray as window de-icer.  Mix 3 cups white vinegar with 1 cup of water and spray it on your windows at night for a frost free window in the a.m.  (Or spray window in the a.m. to get rid of the frosted windows.)  It never worked for me.  (I even tried straight vinegar.)   I tried spraying everyone's car windows the night before.  :-(  I was picking up my sister from the train station another time at 3:30 a.m..  We got up to frosted windows, which I sprayed.  :-(  I tried again as we were leaving the train station. :-(  
Our cars smelled like vinegar during the week of my experiments. :-(  BUSTED

5  Dry skin cream.  My feet/heels are exceptionally dry.  I wear sandals year round.  They never get better, summer or winter.  They bleed and peel.  UGH!  (I have tried udder creams, bag balms, Vaseline.......)  So I tried a recipe from patchworktimes.  I made a 1/2 batch using 8 oz. of a store brand baby lotion (about $2.00) , 4 oz.Vaseline (already had some), and 4 oz. vitamin E cream (2 4 oz. jars Fruit of the Earth vit. E cream for under $5.00).  (Thank you, Lindsay for picking up my ingredients.)   It said to beat it together, but I just had my husband stir it well.  I liked that that left it creamy, but with teeny beads of Vaseline.
I rubbed my feet (and hands) for about 3 nights, and wore socks to bed.  Done that before.  (See above)  WOW!  It works great.  Now I use it as soon as a problem starts (which is really too late ;)  If I use it regularly I also have far fewer of the edge of my fingernail problems.  CONFIRMED

These are only our opinions and results.  We did not intend any specific pin/pinner or blog post.

I will do another webisode of Myth Busters - Pinterest Style next month.

As a side note, I figured out that I used/made/did a bit over 10% of my Halloween Pinterest Board for Halloween.