Headband Holder

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and boy did we have a necessity here at our house.  On our main floor, we have a tiny half bathroom under the stairs.  It is the only bathroom on that floor, so is used for guests and family alike.  It came with a beautiful pedestal sink.  Pedestal sinks can be lovely, but there is zero storage.  If you have three little girls and zero storage, you are in for a world of hurt.  If you have three little girls with zero storage, AND a ton of hair AND about 5 billion hair accessories, you are in for a world of chaos!  One day I got a little portable plastic tower of drawers, which helped immensely!  Combs, brushes, and hair ties went in the top drawer, while fingernail polishes went in the second smaller drawer. We put all of our headbands and bows in one of the larger drawers.  Only trouble was, pulling a headband out on a busy school morning meant they would tangle together and the drawer could not close.  

The next person to grab a headband or bow would dig to the bottom and the whole mess would fall all over the floor.  We would come home from school and the bathroom looked like a complete disaster after our morning rush. It's hard standing at the sink trying to wash you hands, while trying traversing a sea of pokey headbands.   I had seen on Pinterest the idea of making a headband holder out of either an empty oatmeal box container, or a roll of paper towels.  Some of these things were crazily decorated, and a little on the gaudy side. Okay a LOT on the gaudy side.  Not only did I not want to gift wrap a roll of paper towels, I didn't want to eat 12,000 bowls of oatmeal just to empty my pretty full container of quick oats.  Suddenly.. it HIT me.  I knew EXACTLY what was a perfect head band size. Though it's original intention for use was no where near close to what I was going to use it for... but enter in the tubular toilet paper holder!!

I ran to the store and picked up one of these lovely stainless steel toilet paper storage towers for under $10.  It turns out this was the absolutely PERFECT size for headbands.  I immediately pull out by drawer of tangled headband-ness and went to work.  Look how beautiful it turned out!

A headband tower you can be proud of!

Well of course I put them in rainbow order!  Not only is it pretty, but functional.  The girls can quickly find the color that matches their outfit.  To top it all off, you can still use this thing for toilet paper storage if you want.  We actually put our flat iron and our curling iron in here to free up even more drawer space.  We also kept the brown and black headbands in the drawer (in case you were wondering about them), now that there was plenty of room.

Check out our headbands now!  It sits nicely on the back of our little stack of drawers looking all organized and easy to get to!  I so love this idea more than the other options that were out there. It's really given our tiny bathroom not only a pop of color, but solved one of our daily getting ready issues with organization!  Hooray.

Oven-Roasted Fajitas

As soon as I saw this recipe idea for oven-baked fajitas on Pinterest, I knew I wanted to try it.  What is more appealing than tossing a few simple ingredients into a pan, throwing it into the oven, and poof, an hour later, you've got yourself a Mexican fiesta?  Sounds like a win-win to me!!  But would it actually work?  Well, think of me as your Pinterest recipe testing guru, and I'm here to report... it worked DELICIOUSLY!!

Oven roasted fajitas - you're gonna wanna make these!

Okay, so in the original recipe over at Budget Bytes, they made their own fajita seasoning, I just stream-lined it a bit and used a pre-made packet of seasoning.  First you are going to need just a few simple ingredients:

1 medium onion, cut into slices
1-3 bell peppers (green, orange, red, yellow) sliced into strips
2-3 large chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips
1 packet fajita seasoning
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lime
salt, pepper, or seasoning salt to taste
cooking spray
a 9x13 or even better a 10x15 pan
flour tortillas for serving

Get out your veggies... (full printable recipe found at the end of the post)

I LOVE the pops of color and flavor bell peppers add to food!

Slice them up into long strips and throw them in a glass pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray

The whole purpose of oven baking these fajitas, is to give them a nice, roasted flavor.  They will need a lot of room for air to circulate, so I started these out in  a 9x13 pan, but then realized the peppers and onions were rather crowded.  I then switch things out to my larger 10x15 pan, and that seemed to be more conducive to roasting.  Slice up the chicken into thinner strips.  I find this the easiest to do if they are still partially frozen.

Next get your favorite packet of fajita seasoning and sprinkle it over the whole pan

 
Next, add 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Then mix together with your hands until everything is nicely coated.

Sprinkle on a dash of seasoning salt (or salt and pepper) and squeeze half a lime over the pan, and they are ready to go into a 400º oven.  By the way, the original recipe said to roast them for 40 minutes with one stir in the middle, but since my chicken was not all the way defrosted, I added a little extra time.  I roasted these for 1 hour, and stirred them up at the 30 minute mark (half way through).  When the timer dings, your house will smell so delicious.

  
Add some seasoning salt one more time and squeeze more lime juice over the pan for a nice, bright flavor enhancer.

You can see that along the edges of the pan, the veggies and onions are charred, giving it that restaurant style look and flavor.

After that, you just need some flour tortillas and place some of your fajita filling in the middle, fold it up and you are ready to serve!

These turned out fabulous!

I was worried before I tried this recipe, that there would not be enough "fajita" flavor if the meat was not marinated, but I am happy to report it had a wonderful roasted fajita flavor throughout the meat and vegetables.  We saved the left overs and it made for delicious lunches the next day too.  I will be adding this into our regular dinner rotation now due to how easy these are to whip up, and how awesome they taste.  Try this recipe at home and let me know how you like it. Here is a link to the full printable recipe. Enjoy!!