Add switches for two new lights to an existing switch box
There are basically two ways to wire up a switched device (light, fan, receptacle, whatever).


Switch Loop
A switch loop essentially looks like:


Panel =&gt; Device =&gt; Switch

That matches your description of the existing fan/switch. Power is at the fan in the ceiling. The hot wire (should be black, at least the part from the panel to the fan) goes past the device (i.e., does not connect to the fan directly) and connects to the switch. The other wire connected to the switch is the switched hot and connects to the hot connection on the fan. The neutral connection on the fan goes to the white wire back to the panel. Or to put it all together:

Panel hot =&gt; [through device junction box] =&gt; Switch =&gt; device hot =&gt; device =&gt; device neutral =&gt; neutral back to panel

It is possible to tap into that to power other devices, but it gets messy. Don't do it when you have another source (the receptacle you identified).


A regular switched circuit
Panel =&gt; Switch =&gt; Device


This is what you want to do here. Or more specifically:

Panel hot =&gt; receptacle =&gt; Switch =&gt; device hot =&gt; device =&gt; device neutral =&gt; neutral [through switch box] =&gt; neutral to receptacle =&gt; neutral back to panel



There are a few steps involved in your specific situation:


Patching in to the receptacle


It appears that your existing receptacle has two sets of wires. One set is backstabs (== bad) and one set on screws. Since you were able to pull power for testing purposes while leaving the backstab connections on, I'll assume those wires were on screws. You need to do the following for hot, neutral and ground:


Disconnect the backstab
Make quadruple sets of wires: Wire to next receptacle (was backstab), wire from panel (what you disconnected from screws and used to test the lights), new Romex that will go to the switch box, and a short pigtail (you can make it from wire removed from a short piece of Romex). Connect each set of 4 wires with an appropriate size wire nut.
Connect the pigtails to the receptacle. Black to brass screw (hot), white to silver screw (neutral), green to green screw (ground).


At this point I would cap the other end of the Romex with wire nuts and test the receptacle to make sure it is working correctly (ideally with a "magic 8-ball" outlet tester as a quick confirmation that hot and neutral are not reversed and ground is connected.


Receptacle to switches


This is easy. Black = hot goes to the "line" or "hot" connection on the switch. But if it is a simple toggle switch - no dimmer, timer, smart anything - then it really doesn't matter which screw gets hot and which gets switched hot. White = neutral does not connect to the switch unless you have a timer/dimmer/smart something that has a neutral connection.

Just remembered - you have two new switches. So we are back to pigtails again, specifically, black from receptacle + two pigtails to the two switches. If you need neutral for the switch (dimmer/timer/smart) then you will have white pigtails too.


Switch to device


Black goes to the other screw on the switch and at the device connects to "line" or "hot" (or colored wire if there is a short wire attached to the device). White connects to the white wire that came from the receptacle (so two white wires from the two devices connect to the one white wire from the receptacle) and at the device connects to "neutral" (or to the white wire if there is a short wire attached to the device). If you have multiple devices then you can chain on to the others with more Romex.



What went wrong?

This still leaves open the question of "what went wrong with the switch that it tripped the breaker"? A faulty switch is unlikely - a simple toggle acts as either totally open totally closed - there are only 2 wires and no "in between" settings. So unless you used a 3-way switch (designed for connecting two switches to control one device), all I can think of is that you connected the hot &amp; neutral chained from the receptacle to the switch and then chained from the switch to the lights. Something like:

Black from receptacle -&gt; switch brass -&gt; black to light

White from receptacle -&gt; switch silver -&gt; white to light

If you did that, the light would be always on, as long as the switch was off. As soon as you turned the switch on, you would be short circuiting black &amp; white from the receptacle and the breaker would (hopefully!) trip very quickly.

This should solve the problems, but please read up on things a bit more before just trying different cables, switches, etc. There are situations where breakers won't trip to stop a problem, either due to existing faulty wiring or due to bad breakers. Plus there are situations where even a tiny amount of leaked current can be deadly. Safety first!