Home Made Laundry Soap

First off, I had to figure out where to get these ingredients. I was told to check Wal-greens...no luck. After calling around I finally found them rather closer to home than I had hoped...our local ACE Hardware store. I was so happy! The Borax was from Wal-Mart and the Washing Soda and Fels-Neptha from ACE.  Here's how it goes:  Put 4 cups of water in a pan and heat almost to boiling. Shave with knife or grate with cheese grater the bar of Fels-Neptha into pan. The finer the grate, the better it dissolves. Dissolve all the soap. If you don't, you might come across a small slimy lump when you hang up the socks...just a thought.  I previously picked up this bucket from, obviously, Sam's Club bakery for free. They have nice sealable lids. So in this I put 3 gallons of water. Add the dissolved soap-in-water, stir and add 1 cup washing soda. Stir. Add 1 cup borax, stir till all dissolved and well mixed. Let set overnight. It gels up pretty good so stir it up good before you use it....or use it lumpy if you like lumps. Use about 1 cup per load. I use one of those green scoops from a former Tide laundry detergent. That's it!! It's SO EASY! I don't think it took me over an hour and that was with kids so without kids, perhaps 1/2 and hour? How does it smell? I think it has a fresh lemon smell to it. I tried to add about a half a bar of lavender scented soap but the lemon overpowered it and I can't tell it's in there. I'm thinking of trying SOMETHING for scent...just for fun. :) 

Here's the recipe if you don't like to read through my scribbles to get it:

1 bar Fels-neptha  (some say any kind of good bar soap but this is esp good for laundry)

1 cup washing soda (not baking soda, there is a difference)

1 cup borax

Put 4 cups of water in a pan. Heat almost to boiling. Shave soap with knife or grate with cheese grater into water. Stir till all the soap is dissolved.

Put 3 gallons of warm or hot water into a 5 gallon bucket or really big pot. Then mix above water/soap, and washing soda into water. Add borax and stir till all dissolved. Let it set overnight. It will gel so stir again before use. Use about 1 cup water per load of laundry.

For anther great tutorial and a slight variation, go to Living Simply

Flower hair clips

I found this handy dandy idea on a blog...credits will come when I track it down...so commenced to try it. So easy and sooo cute when done!
 I'm not so good at pictures when in process so I'll try to explain.



Find some scraps of material, kinds that will melt easy. White and very light will end up with a brown tinge on the edges.
I cut random (meaning they weren't perfectly symmetrical) circles out of the fabric. Each one smaller or larger than the others.
Then light a taper candle or one that you can easily get to the flame. Melt the edges and lightly the center of the fabric. The fabric will curl and at times the wrong way so, if you don't mind burnt fingers, quickly turn fabric in while still soft and warm-hot. Some I melted more than others to give a more petaled look.

With a glue gun I glued each layer together, smashing the glue flat so there wouldn't be a bump in the center. One of mine I glued a button in the center but the others I simply burned my fingers with a very small piece of fabric.
Then I glued them to a plain hair clip. Best to put glue on open clip then press flower to glue. If it's closed, it's easy to end up with glue blobs where it will catch the hair and that makes little girls yell. (how well I know)
I also made individual petals and glued them to a small, round piece of denim to hold them together. I didn't get a photo of that one. Neither did I think to get pictures of my flowered girls in their Sunday best but I got Belle to model quick in her pjs last night. :)
Another thing you can do is clip it to a head band which is what I do for my short haired little girl. Cut about an inch strip off the leg of a (clean) pair of panty hose or stockings. When you stretch it it will curl up and you won't see the raw edge. Slip around head and put clip in place.
Its called a free hair day! I would have thrown the hose, tossed the too-small-for-any-good material and the clips were lying about unused.
Now, where else can I use these flowers?

More in that Pink room

I struggle so much with my girls room but it's slowly coming together. The struggle is the color. I have never been into pink, at all. Period. But they begged and I gave in. Every wall is pink and Belle even wanted the ceiling pink but I put my foot down, no! There will be no pink ceiling.
The latest decor was a cool idea from Thrifty Decor Chick . I instantly thought of the girls empty wall space and decided it was what I needed to do. She has a much better tutorial but here is what I personally did.
I used regular pine boards from Home Depot cut square. Ending size is about 9 1/4". With leftover chocolate brown paint, I painted the edges.
Then, out of my creative memories supply I took all my pink shades and picked out nine that went together.

 

I used ModPodge for the adhesive. "Paint" the boards with the glue, then place paper on top. I also"painted" over the top of the paper. No, I did not escape small bubbles but they are small enough you don't see them unless you really look for them. I nailed them directly to the wall...which was scary because it's that old plaster and I could hear the plaster falling down the wall...yikes, I hope they hold!

In the end, I get this....

Me; through someone else's eyes

A dear friend wrote this of me...after I talked of making some fun looking vintage dresses.

"I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a woman clothed in a poofy, frilly, vintage dress, standing in a certain place with her face from her own house and a paintbrush in her hand. A great burden upon her back for she had many ideas in her head but could not tackle them all at the same time...to be continued...", she wrote.

I so often feel just like that! So many things I could do, would love to do, but how can I do them all?

Bird in Branch

I did it! I gave myself a sore neck and a headache and finished. I have to hurry so I'll just leave the pictures to tell tales. Oh, and I am falling in love with the birds.

Make your Monday

Wall Scrawls

This is the first wall design I attempted and succeed! It's a wall in our church nursery. Rather than do the typical nursery wall art we went with modern. The opposite wall is that delicious chocolate brown. It really felt like we were putting pudding on the walls! 

   

I'm not as happy with this one. I take a picture I see somewhere, usually vinyl wall art, then attempt to draw it on the wall with a pencil. Naturally, it doesn't get exactly as the picture because it's fatter here, longer/shorter there... This one got more tweaked that I liked since I got it too close to the door. But, it's there on my girls' pink wall in brown. 

My latest is in my kitchen. I wasn't too sure I could do it but turned out better than I thought. It's not done yet. There is a bird and a few more leaves. The pencil doesn't show up in the pictures so you'll have to wait for it to be painted to see it completed.

You never know what you can do until you try! I wasn't sure I could do it so never tried. Somehow I felt more brave when I did the nursery walls. Perhaps because it wasn't in my own house? 

The next place to be endangered by my pencil and brush is our bedroom. There is where I feel insecure because I want it "perfect".

Birthdays

 

To kick off her birthday fun, several days in advance I helped them make salt dough hearts to make necklaces for birthday friends. They had a blast!

After I dried them in a low heat oven we commenced to painting them....

I did not get any more pictures of the girls making them because it got a little intense! Using little foam stamps, they put flowers on them. Some looked like blobs more than flowers. Tori was so excited about the stamping that her hands were shaking and she could barely let me help her!
I painted them with modge podge to seal the paint. Then we strung hemp through the holes for the necklace.
On the table I lay them out by her cake. At her party she gave them to her friends and then again on Valentines day took them to church for the friends that weren't at the party. 

 My princess with her princess cake. She loved it and yes, I made and decorated it. I am not so good at taking pictures while decorating a cake so you just get the finished product!