dryer sheet alternatives – help!

May 7, 2013 7 Comments

dryer sheets[source]

Today’s Works for Me Wednesday post is actually a What DOESN’T Work for Me Wednesday.  And I need help figuring out what DOES work, so I’m turing to my best resource…the blogging community and my readers!

If you’ve been following me for the last year or so then you know that I’ve started to turn into a crunchy-hippie-type tried to alter some areas of our lives to be more natural.  I’ve been using natural cleaners and natural laundry detergent for nearly a year with no problems at all.  Something that I’ve held off on, though, has been my dryer sheets.  Mostly just because I already had bought a bunch and wanted to use those up first, but I always intended to seek a more natural alternative once those were gone.

Can I just back up and say that I (more accurately my mom, since she did the laundry) never used dryer sheets until college.  I really don’t remember our clothes ever being static-y growing up, and so maybe there wasn’t a need.  But when I went to college and started doing my own laundry I discovered the frustrations of static and the wonderfulness of dryer sheets.  I’ve been using them ever since, except on Michael’s work clothes.  He has to wear special arc-flash protection clothes to work and we can’t use dryer sheets on them.  Let me tell you, that load of laundry each week is the worst because the static is insane…especially in the winter.

So a month or so ago we finally ran out of dryer sheets.  I then embarked on an experiment (mostly things I found on Pinterest) to find an alternative to keep our clothes from getting full of static.  Sadly, I didn’t find a single thing that worked.

Here’s what I tried:

  • Putting vinegar in the rinse cycle of the washing machine (vinegar supposedly acts like a fabric softener and get the static out as well) – No dice.  The clothes still had static.
  • Soaking a rag with vinegar and putting it in the dryer with the wet clothes – Again, nothing.  Michael thought the clothes smelled like vinegar, but I didn’t notice that.  However, I did notice that they still had static.  Boo.
  • Putting a ball (or two) of wadded up aluminum foil in the dryer – Nope.

After a few weeks of trying various things with little to no results, we finally broke down and bought some more dryer sheets.  And that’s what I’m using until I think of something else.

The only thing I haven’t tried yet are these felt-like balls that I’ve seen people sell at the farmers market.  They say they can be used instead of dryer sheets, but I haven’t bought any to try yet.

Oh, I’ve also heard to soak a rag with fabric softener and put that in your dryer with the clothes – I think that might work as a money saving alternative, but I’m looking for something more natural/less chemical.  I feel like fabric softener will have just as many chemicals as dryer sheets.

So…HELP!  What do you use as a dryer sheet alternative?  Is there something else out there that I haven’t tried?  I’m hoping the wisdom of the community can help me.

Linking up to Works for Me Wednesday

Filed Under: home Tagged With:

projects and things

April 23, 2013 2 Comments

Remember how we moved into a new house in October?  Have you noticed the severe lack of pictures of our new house?  Well, here’s the deal…in my too-optimistic mind I just knew that I’d have everything all put away, organized, and decorated within a matter of weeks so I could share lots of beautiful pictures with you.  HAA!!  That definitely hasn’t happened.  We’ve gotten lots of things done, but not nearly as many as I’d like.  Everything seems to take 3x as long as I originally anticipate.  So long story short, I’m not quite ready to show off any of the rooms in my house.

Instead, I’ll give you a little glimpse of some things we’re currently working on.  Now that the weather is warmer and the days are longer, we’ve been more motivated to get going on some of the project on our to-do list.

1.  We have a bonus room upstairs in between the two bedrooms that we plan to use as a craft room/office/library/future playroom.  Since we’ve moved in that space has basically just been used as a junk room for the things we didn’t quite know what to do with.  The main reason we hadn’t done much yet was because we didn’t have the furniture we needed, but over the past few weeks I’ve finally found some of the pieces I’ve been looking for and have started actually putting the room together.

Expedit bookcasesI’ve been working on putting our books on our new IKEA bookshelves.  Right now they are just thrown on there with no rhyme or reason so I can get a feel for them (pardon the huge mess in the floor).  We have plenty of empty openings that can be used for games and toys when this becomes a playroom someday.  I love my new shelves!

sewing hutchI was so excited to find the perfect hutch for my sewing machine, fabric, and sewing stuff.  It was exactly what I had imagined in my head.  Nothing is organized yet – I need to get some cute baskets and such, but I’m just so glad to have a place to put my sewing machine!

We’re also “building” a craft table of sorts that I can’t wait to show you, too.

2.  We’re trying to get our garden started.  We’ve plotted it out and staked off the area we want to use, but we still have to till and plant.  This year we are going to plant a little bit of everything to see what grows well, what we like, what’s a bust, etc.  Then next year we should have a better idea of what is worth it to plant ourselves and what we will just buy at the farmer’s market.

garden planning

3.  Michael built a beehive – how cool is that?  All we need now is to get some bees to go in it.  I’m fascinated with how bees work and am looking forward to seeing the whole honey-making process from start to finish.

beehive

4.  Since way back before we were married I’ve wanted all white bedding.  I’m not sure what it is about having an all white bedroom  but it just seems so calming and luxurious.  Plus you can change the whole look very easily and cheaply just by changing out accent colors easily.  However, I was afraid that white would be way too hard to keep clean so when it came time to register for our wedding I went with something else (you can check it out here at our old house).  I liked that bedding, but I’ve always held that wish for all white in the back of my mind.  While we were at IKEA I finally decided to take the plunge and get a white duvet cover and pillow shams.  What do you think?

white beddingI love it!  Obviously it still needs a lot of work including a new bed skirt (notice the bed skirt that goes with our old bedding?), some accent pillows, and some more color in general, but it’s already looking great.  The way the white looks agains the dark wood of our bed is lovely.  I’m working on a total bedroom makeover…stay tuned!

What projects are you working on this spring?

 

 

Filed Under: home Tagged With: ,

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree

December 13, 2012 Leave a Comment

I’ve never been one for themed trees….or I guess I am if the theme is colored-lights-meets-country-meets-sentimental-ornaments-of-all-types-and-colors….’cause that’s basically what our tree consists of and I love it!  I like the idea of all white lights or a tree decorated with a color scheme, and someday if we ever have a second tree I might do one like that, but it wouldn’t be Christmas without my colorful, crazy tree.

Christmas tree 1

Our beautiful tree – I love it!  Someday I’m going to have a real tree skirt, but until I get around to making one, I just use some fabric (with small white stars on it) draped around the bottom.

burlap garland

I really wanted to have a garland of some sort on our tree this year.  Most of the ribbon I found was too shiny for what I wanted and I couldn’t find exactly what I had in mind.  You can actually buy burlap ribbon, but I couldn’t find any in the stores, I was too impatient to order some and wait for it to arrive, and I new I could make my own for much cheaper.  So I ended up just cutting strips of burlap and draping the around the tree like ribbon.  The edges aren’t nice and neat, but that’s ok with me.

burlap bowI also used the burlap and make a bow for the top of the tree.  I’ve never had a tree topper because I’ve never been able to find or make one that I like, so this is our first one and I really like how it turned out (I need to get my handy husband to trim of that top branch though, huh?)

star cinnamon ornamentGrowing up my mom made some cinnamon ornaments that smelled so amazing year after year.  I found out it is really easy (mix equal parts applesauce and cinnamon, roll out like dough, cut with cookie cutters, and bake on a cookie sheet at 200* until dry) and they made our house smell amazing!  I made a bunch of little stars.

barn star ornamentI also found these great paper ornaments at Hobby Lobby that looked like barn stars (stars are kinda my thing, if you haven’t noticed) so I gave them a turquoise base coat and then dabbed some red on top with a paper towel.

Of course I had to play around and practice taking pictures of the tree (I never can quite capture in a picture the way the tree looks in real life).

Christmas tree 2I love looking at all the beautiful lights twinkling in the dark.

Christmas tree 3It looks like the tree is glowing

bokehLovely bokeh (and coincidentally, exactly what the tree looks like to me when I don’t have my contacts in….)

A Christmas tree is definitely my favorite Christmas decoration!

Filed Under: home Tagged With: ,

simple Christmas table decorations

December 11, 2012 1 Comment

Since we still don’t even have the “normal” (aka year round) decorations up in our new house, I haven’t been super concerned about elaborate Christmas decorations.  On the other hand, since we finally have space to actually decorate, I have been wanting to do a bit more than I’ve done in the past.  I’m trying not to go crazy and buy a ton of stuff just yet, so instead I’ve been trying to shop the house and decorate with things we already have and/or make homemade decorations.

This weekend I pulled together a little centerpiece for our dining room table.

I used all items that I had around the house to make this red and white, burlap and twine tablescape.  I also think this would be a beautiful mantle decoration….we just don’t have a mantle so I had to settle for putting it on the table.

I gathered several mason jars in blue and clear and filled them with the extra branches that Michael cut off our Christmas tree.  I also gathered all the white and red candles I could find in our house.

I wrapped burlap, “regular” brown twine, and red and white baker’s twine around some of the candles and jars.

(Psst…did you know baker’s twine is all the rage this year?  Well it is and if you haven’t jumped on that bandwagon, you might want to grab you some.  I got mine from Pick Your Plum - I love how the red and white looks like candy canes!)

I had a ton of little red votive candles so I used some small mason jars and some other glass candle holders, filled them with Epsom salt to look like snow, and nestled the candles in them.

items used: mason jars (already had around the house), tree branches (cut off the bottom of our tree), red and white candles of various sizes (already had), Epsom salt (already had) burlap (left over from another project), twine (also leftover craft supplies), and baker’s twine (more general purpose craft items

Total cost: $0.00 since I didn’t buy anything especially for this centerpiece.

I think I might also like to put the centerpiece on a tray or a table runner to anchor it a bit.  I though a green piece of fabric or a pretty silver tray might be beautiful, but I didn’t have any on hand and didn’t want to make a special trip or purchase, so this is what we’ve got (for now, at least).

I just love the smell of the branches and the glow of the candles!

Filed Under: home Tagged With: , ,

Pintersting Tuesday – DIY “mud rooms”

October 23, 2012 1 Comment

Sorry for the delayed absence – did you miss me?  We moved over the weekend into our new house so I was a bit preoccupied.  I promise I will share pictures later, but I want to get some more of the boxes unpacked and a few decorations up, so bear with me.

The good news is that our bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, and the guest room are mostly upacked, put away, and usable.  Not decorated, mind you, but definitely usable.

With all new living spaces come challenges unique to that home.  The two biggest ones that we have with our home is that there are almost no closets downstairs.  The first floor of our house has the kitchen, dining room, living room, entry way, our bedroom, our bathroom, and a half bath.  The closet in our bedroom is the only closet on that level.  There is no linen closet to store all our bathroom stuff and there is no coat closet for our coats, umbrellas, shoes, etc.

Our closet is quite large so we will be storing some of those items there, but I’m still looking for some solutions.  And here’s where the wonder of Pinterest comes in.  We have this odd foyer area as you first come in that I’m trying to make attractive and functional, especially since there is no coat closet.  I’m really drawn to the built ins/lockers/mudrooms/benches and hooks that seem to be quite popular now. (If you have a better name for them, let me know…I keep calling the mudrooms even though ours won’t be an actual mudroom)  Here are some of the ideas I love:

 

 

 

 

 

I like aspects of all of them so I’m not quite sure what the end result will be, or if we will even go this route, but it’s definitely a possibility.

Do you have an area like this in your home?  If so, what do you like?  Dislike?

Filed Under: home Tagged With: , ,

how NOT to sell your house {Works for Me Wednesday}

October 16, 2012 7 Comments

So….we’ve looked at a lot of houses.  Like 30+ houses since June before finding the one. I figure that makes us kinda experts at house hunting and all that stuff.  We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly…unfortunately waaaayy too much of the bad and ugly variety. So similarly to what we did after we had visited so many churches, we’ve come up with a list of things NOT to do when trying to sell your house.  These are things that are a major turn-off for your average house-hunter (a.k.a. me) and should be avoided if at all possible.

Bonus: all tips come complete with at least one real-life example!

(Ok let’s be honest…I really just wanted to share all our weird house hunting stories with you…but if our crazy experiences serve to help anyone else then the world is a better place)

Tip #1: Leave the premises!

Having the owners of the house there automatically makes the potential buyers feel awkward and much less relaxed.  It is hard to be objective and truly take your time looking at a house when the owners are hanging around.  So just go grab a nice cup of coffee at Starbucks and read for an hour or two.

Examples:

  • Bad: Driving away from the house but telling us not to worry about locking up because you’ll “be watching from a distance and will see when you leave”.  Creepy.
  • Worse: Staying on the property but going outside to work in your garden.
  • Absolute worst: Being on house arrest.  Following us around and telling us all the great things about your house while simultaneously telling us about your ankle monitor.

Tip #2: Avoid overly quirky decor.

You don’t have to completely rid your house of any personality, but use an objective eye (or ask a friend or your realtor) and remove some of the more obnoxious and/or potentially distracting things.

Examples:

  • Cherub mural covering the living room ceiling

  • Pink lights in the bathroom

(Same house as the mural…and the house was vacant so the pink lighting would have been an easy fix – just change out the bulb!)

  • Bedroom full, and I do mean FULL of dolls – dolls all over the bed, in display cases all around the walls, pillows embroidered with dolls, and more
  •  Naked pictures.  Enough said.

Tip #3:  Clean Up!

Your house doesn’t have to be spotless – we realize that there are people living there.  But please don’t let it be a dump, either.

Examples of things to avoid:

  • Half-eaten bowls of cereal sitting out.
  • Dog toys strewn all over the living room
  • Tons of whisky bottles stashed in your kid’s closet…yes, we do look in the closets…not to be nosey, but just to see what the closet space is like.  So don’t think you can hide stuff there.
  • Having a showing before you’ve removed the old couch off the front porch or the litter from the yard.

Tip #4: Make sure your house doesn’t smell bad.

You may have to ask a trusted friend to be honest with you because you may be immune to the smell yourself.

Examples:

  • The house that smelled so strongly of cat pee that I could smell it even before we had walked onto the front porch.
  • The (multiple) houses that smelled so strongly of cigarettes that I had to leave the house even before we finished looking at everything.

Tip #5:  If your house DOES in fact smell, DO NOT try to cover it up with air freshener   That just makes is even worse.

Examples:

  • The house that tried to cover up the cigarette smoke with air freshener, which made the smell so bad that when we left I had to spit in the bushes and then get some gum in order to get the taste out of my mouth.

Tip #6: Remove all pets or at least alert us to the fact that they will be there.

Many people are afraid of pets, and so even if Fido is the friendliest dog around, they may not know that and be totally unable to look at the house because they’re afraid Fido will eat them.  It is my opinion that cats can be left if they must (but make sure you let us know they will be there), although then we have to worry about making sure they don’t escape when we leave so it still isn’t a great idea to leave them there.  Dogs should always be removed or else put in a cage.  Even tied up or fenced in isn’t good because we’ll probably want to look at the yard.

Examples:

  • Cats sitting on the bed very stealth-like that scare you out of your wits when they move
  • Dogs in the yard that run up to your car and bark as soon as you pull in
  • Huge scary dog inside the house (another instance where someone was at home when we got there) that lunge at you through the screen door.  This was the most terrified I’ve been in all our house hunting experiences.

Tip #7:  If you have renters staying at a house you are trying to sell, check up on them periodically to make sure they haven’t made the house un-sellable.

Example:

  • When we went to the house mentioned above with the huge, scary dog that lunged at us.  There were several people there when we got there (that thankfully rescued us from the dog) and said they would go out in the yard while we looked.  It was one of those things where you couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, but you just a feeling that something was fishy.  The bedrooms were completely empty but there were beds set up on the sunporch and in the living room.  There were broken refrigerators and things scattered around inside the house.  I don’t know what the deal was, but there must have been some sort of drug operation or meth lab going on in there.  Come to find out, the people staying there were renters.  I have no idea if the owners of the house realized how badly the way the renters were living was effecting how we viewed the house.

Tip #8: Keep the house at a comfortable temperature

I know you want to save money, but if the house is too hot or too cold then we will be uncomfortable and want to leave as soon as possible.  If it’s the dead of summer then crank that AC on!  An hour or two of running your AC won’t kill you and it will be a welcome relief as we come in from the heat.  Likewise in the winter, make sure the heat is running.

Tip #9: Make sure we are able to get in to your house

Example:

  • At one house, the special lock thing that only the realtors can get in to was on the handle of the door, sandwiched between the “normal” door (I have no idea what to call it) and the storm door (the glass, flimsier one that is on the outside).  The owner had locked that storm door, so we could see the realtor box but we couldn’t get to it because it was locked in.  Not good.

Tip #10: Be specific with instructions about alarms

If you have an alarm, give the realtor very specific instructions on where it is located and how to turn it off!

Example:

  • We went to one house with an alarm.  Our realtor had been given the code, but wasn’t told where the alarm panel was located.  When we got in the house we couldn’t find it to turn it off.  Turns out, it was in the pantry (who puts an alarm panel in the pantry anyway?!?) and we didn’t find it in time to shut it off, so it started going off.

Like I said before, I just had to share some of our crazy experiences with you and so I wrote this post in a bit of a jesting, facetious manner.  However, since these are real things we actually saw then there must be some people out there who don’t realize these are no-no’s.  Don’t let that be you!  Take our advice to heart if you are going to try to sell your house!  You can’t control what the potential buyers ultimately think of your house, but you can at least make it not offensive to them.

Let’s recap.  Keep it neat, a comfortable temperature, and odorless (or else a pleasant odor – think cookies, not pee).  Remove yourself, your pets, and any really quirky decor.  Leave good instructions, if necessary.  Then sit back and let your charming house do the rest of the work!

Fine print: No houses, pets, doll bedrooms, owners on house arrest, murals, pink lighbulbs, or scary renters were harmed in the making of this post.  However, some may or may not have been mocked closely observed.  Extreme house hunting is for professionals only and not for the faint of heart; don’t try this at home.

Linking up to Works for Me Wednesday

Filed Under: home Tagged With:

why I no longer subscribe to Marie Claire + the motherhood double standard

August 9, 2012 11 Comments

[source]

I have never been a Marie Claire reader.  The only reason I got a subscription in the past few years is because I found one of those crazy good deals where it was like $4 for a year or something.  I didn’t really know anything about it, but I figured for that price I could check it out.

To be honest, I’ve never been crazy about it.  It’s mostly high fashion where I usually lean toward more practical clothes.  But it did have articles about Project Runway, and I love me some PR so I liked that part.  I usually flipped through it every month, read a little bit of it, and that was that.

Now, most magazines have things in them that as a Christian I do not agree with or endorse.  Marie Claire is no exception.  They write lots of things that I don’t agree with, but I’m old enough to determine that for myself and move on.  However, when I read the May 2012 issue, I just reached my breaking point.  I decided I would no longer be supporting them by paying for or reading their magazine.  Here’s why:

The May 2012 issue had an article called Motherlode.  You can read the whole thing here on their website if you like.  The article was an interview with an author, Elisabeth Badinter.  She wrote a book (which Marie Claire did say was controversial) called The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women.

This is what got me – in reference to women who have a higher education but who choose to stop working after they have children, Ms. Badinter says “it’s this absence of vision in the middle of their lives that I find infantile.  I’ll say it: infantile.” (emphasis mine)

Yes, you read that correctly, she says that women who choose to be stay at home moms are INFANTILE.

I was furious.  Not because I think that all women should be stay-at-home moms.  I realize that is not the right choice for everyone.  I realize that some women can’t financially do that, don’t want to do that, or are single moms who have no choice.  I am not here to dictate whether you should work or stay home, that is your decision.  I know what is right for me and my family, and that is all that I need to know.  (I just wanted to clear that up, lest someone think I am bashing working moms…that is definitely not the case)

What infuriates me is that Marie Claire, which is all about women’s rights and woman-power and being whatever you want to be, is basically saying “Oh yes, you have the choice to be anything you want to be EXCEPT a stay at home mom.  If that’s your choice then you are an idiot.”  I’m sorry, but if we’re going to be all “women can do anything they want”, then shouldn’t being a stay at home mom be one of those choices?

Here’s the deal.  I’m not a stay at home mom.  In fact, I’m not a mom at all.  But I might be someday.  And guess what?  I have a masters degree.  I’m highly educated.  And to tell me that if I choose to stay home with my children that I am infantile…I don’t think so.

But the sad thing is, it’s not just Marie Claire who has this double standard of “be whatever you want to be, except the ‘traditional, old fashioned’ mom”.  Sadly, this thinking is everywhere.  It was about this same time that Hilary Rosen stated that Ann Romney, a stay-at-home mom, had “never worked a day in her life”.  I typically don’t care about or keep up with politics, but I did hear about that and it made me MAD.  Over and over again people imply (or state outright) that it’s stupid to stay home with your children.  That its not a “real” job.

If women deserve to be whatever they want to be and do whatever they want to do, then they deserve for one of those choices to be a stay-at-home mom.  Period.

Ok, I’m stepping off my soapbox now.  There is no moral to my story.  I don’t know how to change society’s views on this subject.  I just needed to get this off my chest.  Apparently this is just one of the few issues that really gets me riled up and I felt the need to share.

What do you think?  Am I the only one, or do you see the double-standard in our society too?

And in the interest of ending on a semi-humorous note…

Source: jokideo.com via Elissa on Pinterest

Filed Under: home Tagged With: , ,

the ever popular Dawn + vinegar shower cleaner {Works for Me Wednesday}

July 24, 2012 3 Comments

If you’ve been on Pinterest for any more than two minutes, I’m sure you’ve seen the pins for the Dawn+vinegar shower/tub cleaner.  I told you a couple of weeks ago that I had mixed up a solution of it and would let you know how it worked…well I’ve since tried it out and want to share my thoughts with you.

This is the pin that I’ve seen the most…and the one that got my attention (but notice that although there is a big difference between the dirty side and the clean side, there is also a shadow that makes it look really really drastic – just fyi).  Also, several of the teachers I worked with raved about how the Dawn+vinegar had worked for them.

 

I felt optimistic since so many people had said they had good results but I was still a little skeptical – surely it would take some effort to get it so clean.

So I mixed up my solution – it was super easy: heat 12 oz white vinegar in the microwave for 2 minutes, add to 10 oz of blue Dawn, shake to mix (after this first mix you shouldn’t have to heat or shake it anymore…until you make the next batch…because there will be a next batch!).  You can go here to see several different people’s versions (they’re all pretty much the same, but just in case you need some extra reassurance).

Then I sprayed it all over my dirty tub.  I let it sit for about three hours and then wiped it down.  I used a scrubber sponge, nothing special like a Magic Eraser, just a basic ‘ole sponge.  I would wet the sponge, wipe a section, then rinse (it gets pretty sudsy because of the Dawn).

I. Was. Amazed.

You know the soap scum you get on the sides of the tub?  The kind that takes a body builder’s strength to clean off?  The kind that you just swipe over with the cleaner when you don’t want to scrub for hours and you know it’s still there but you figure, hey at least it’s been sanitized (or is that just me?).

Well, that nasty soap scum came right off – no elbow grease required.

I am not even kidding you.  It just took a few rubs with the sponge, a little rinsing, and I had my whole tub cleaned.

I know…I’m as shocked as you.

Cleaning the tub has always been one of my least favorite cleaning jobs, mainly because I felt like it took forever to get it really clean.  No more!  I can now clean the tub thoroughly with minimal time or effort.

I’m also trying it out on my shower curtain – you know how the curtain liner gets all mildewy and gross at the bottom (or again, is that just me?  I sure hope not, if so then I’m incredibly embarrassed for you to know that my shower curtain liner gets all kinds of funky nastiness on the bottom – in lovely colors like pink, black, and orange…).  I have sprayed the mildewy yucky spots with my solution and I’m going to let it sit overnight and try to wipe it off in the morning…fingers crossed that it works!

*update on the shower curtain* – The next morning I wiped off the shower curtain with a wet sponge.  Quite a bit of the black stuff (I’m not sure if it was dirt or black mildew) came off, but the pink and orange mildew didn’t budge.  So obviously this Dawn and vinegar solution works well on soap scum but not so much on mildew.  However, after I cleaned off the part with the Dawn and vinegar, I was able to get the curtain almost 100% clean by spraying some Clorox spray on the mildewy parts, letting it sit for a little while (maybe an hour, possibly less), then putting the whole curtain in the washing machine.  I washed it on the delicate cycle using some bleach (about 1/4 cup).  That got almost everything off the curtain and I was able to hang it back up looking nearly as good as new!

Have any of you tried this yet?  How did it work for you?  If you haven’t jumped on this bandwagon yet, I command highly recommend you mix up a solution of this and give it a try in your tub.  Then let us know what you think!

(Oh and fyi, I did not take a before and after picture of my tub.  I love y’all, but not enough to show off dirty tub.  Sorry.  You’ll just have to take my word for it.  But I promise you won’t be sorry)

So anyway, using Dawn and vinegar to clean my tub works for me!

Linking up to Works for Me Wednesday.

Filed Under: home Tagged With: , , , ,

High Five for Friday

June 15, 2012 4 Comments

Friday, Friday… here are some of the good things from this week

1. Our little garden seems to be thriving (except for our aloe plant…it’s all brown and yucky).  I clipped some of the basil, oregano, and parsley to use in homemade pizza sauce.  We also have gotten five tiny tomatoes!

I’m not sure if these are called cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes…the label on the plant when we bought it just said “poppers” so I don’t quite know what to call these.

I do hope our other big tomato plant gets some tomatoes real soon so I can quit buying pounds of tomatoes at the farmers market.  And to think that I used to not like tomatoes…

2. I made my own hand soap this week!  I had pinned a tutorial on Pinterest about how to make your own hand soap, and since one of my 2012 goals is to make homemade laundry detergent, I figured I might as well take a crack at making hand soap too.  It turned out really well.

I turned these two bars of soap into that gallon of hand soap plus one pump bottle (that had already been filled prior to this picture)

I’ll refer you to the tutorial for all the details, but I have to tell you that this very easy and cheap.  The hardest part was grating all the soap – my arm was killing me!  It’s definitely worth a try if you want to save some money on soap.

3. Tonight some of the ladies from church are having another scrapbooking night.  I missed last month’s so I’m really glad I get to go tonight.  I got a bunch of pages done last time and I hope to be that productive again.

4. Grasping for Objectivity.  This is probably the funniest blog I’ve ever read.  I laughed and laughed and laughed as I read until I’m sure Michael thought I was cray-cray.  I have absolutely fallen in love with Rachel and her sweet family (Hi, my name is Caitlin and I’m a total blog stalker…).  Like a nerd I went back and read through all her old posts…I just couldn’t help it!  They were so hilariously great!  Her post about Mom Jeans is probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.  Also, the conversations she has with her daughter (seen here) make my sides hurt from laughing so hard.  Check them out for sure.

5. I got this month’s quilt blocks done this week.  Just like most things, the more I practice, the better I get (although having to rip out seams and re-sew is still just as frustrating as it was when I started!).  I can’t wait to see my completed quilt at the end of the year!

Linking up to

Photobucket

Filed Under: about me, blogging, home, sewing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

dream home

May 1, 2012 Leave a Comment

So now that the end is in sight in regards to selling our house, I’m allowing myself to get excited about house hunting here in Bowling Green.  I’m much more excited about it this time around than the first time we looked for houses (in Lexington) – not that I wasn’t excited then, it’s just that now I know more of what I want.

Anyway, since I have houses on the brain I thought I’d share some of the pictures I’ve pinned on my “Dream Home” board on Pinterest.

Source: google.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

 

I love these cabinets!

 

I like the idea of having a white kitchen with a colored ceiling

 

Hello, books!

 

I love looking at kitchens and bathrooms more than any other part of the house – and I think this kitchen is gorgeous

 

Can you even imagine having a closet this big?  Swoon.

 

yet another kitchen – a little dark for my taste, but still lovely

 

I will have a craft room someday!

 

obviously I really liked this loft because I had it pinned three separate times…

Source: hgtv.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

 

nice

Source: houzz.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

 

look at all the shelving!

 

more shelves

 

such a fantastic porch!

I think one of the greatest aspects of Pinterest is how visual – it really helps me notice trends of things that I like, especially when it comes to clothes and house decor.  I may only pin a few clothing or house things per week but when I look at the board as a whole I start to notice that I pin clothes that all have a similar shape or kitchens that all contain similar elements.  For example, while I was collecting pictures for this post I noticed that almost every kitchen picture I pinned (and there are lots!) has white (or light colored) cabinets and a large island in the middle.  Obviously that is something I’m attracted to and will take into consideration as we look to buy (or maybe build someday) our next house.

Feel free to check out more of my “Dream Home” pins here.

Filed Under: home Tagged With: , , ,
«Older Posts

To the Top