My Epic Pinterest Fail and the Ensuing Discovery

Have you ever walked into a store and just been hit over the head with a glorious aroma that makes you want to weep angel tears of joy? I have always wondered how certain retail establishments get their mystical, magical fragrances. Recently I came across a pin that said that I could make my own house smell like Williams Sonoma simply by sautéing some lemon, rosemary and vanilla, so I gave it a try last week.

Now my house smells like a
Willams Sonoma that's burning
to the ground

My experience was not precisely what I expected. The lemon and rosemary overpowered the vanilla completely, even when I put in double the amount of vanilla. Instead of smelling like a pricy purveyor of pots and pans, my house smelled like I was preparing to cook some fish. So I decided to dump some brown sugar in the mix to amp up the sweetness. I never achieved a Williams Sonoma scented house, even though I simmered my mixture for an hour. It smelled vaguely nice if I stuck my head over the pan, but the smell was not permeating the rest of my house as promised. I decided I would burn off the rest of the liquid and then just throw the lemons and rosemary in the trash, so I turned the heat up to high to boil it off quickly. As always happens in my house, I was distracted by my children and completely forgot about my pan of aromatic vegetation and sucrose until about 20 minutes later when I smelled smoke. I ran into the kitchen and found the contents of the pan on the verge of spontaneous combustion, so I quickly turned off the stove and doused the pan with water. So now, instead of a lovely aroma that evoked visions of shopping and copper utensils, my house smelled like a rancid volcano erupting with scorched lemons and burnt sugar. On top of that, I was stuck with a saucepan that had half a centimeter of charred sugar cemented to the bottom.

I tend to find humor in my foibles, I don't get easily embarrassed by my failures, so I turned to Facebook to share the hilarity of my idiocy and get ideas of how to salvage my one and only quart sized saucepan. My best friend's brother reminded me that oven cleaner could be used to remove bad scorches from pots and pans as well as ovens, and I just happened to have some! So I ended up using Easy-Off to remove the scorches, and burning candles to get rid of the nasty smell... which is what I should have been doing in the first place rather than trying to extract essential lemon and rosemary oil on my stovetop. So if you are ever curious if you can make your house smell like your favorite retail establishment, I would highly recommend a trip to Yankee Candle instead. And the next time you create a tiny Mordor on your stovetop, remember my Pinterest fail, and turn to Easy-Off.