Computer Problems!!!!

My computer has been giving me fits all week long. I have spent most of the day trying to fix things and at least I can now get in to post! GRRRR!
Watch for a REAL post tomorrow!
Debbie

Laundry Soap

Have you tried the homemade laundry soap that has been on pinterest? This is another recipe that Kelsie and I made, and I love it! Being Creative to Keep my Sanity is the website we used.

Head over to the blog for her great tutorial!
(the pictures are also from the website.)

Here is what you need to make the soap

1 4 lb 12 oz box Borax (2.15 kg or 76 oz) found in the detergent aisle

1 4 lb box Arm & Hammer Baking Soda (1.81 kg) found in the cooking aisle

1 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda 55 oz (3 lb 7 oz) found in the detergent aisle

3 bars of Fels-naptha soap, found in the detergent aisle,(you can also use pink Zote soap instead--available at Home Depot)

2 small containers of oxyclean or store brand oxyclean (try to get about 3.5 lbs total (1.58 kg)) found in the detergent isle.

You should be able to find all of these items at your grocery store, for about $20. You only use 1 Tbl. per load, so it lasts a LONG time.

To Make:
Grate the Fels-naptha soap (with a cheese grater)
Toss all of the ingredients into a 5 gallon bucket lined with a garbage bag
Shake or stir well
Store in a jar or a bucket and that is it! So easy and so cheap!

I have a high efficiency washer and this soap has worked fine...not too sudsy!

Debbie

DIY Soft Scrub Cleaner

I found a recipe for this wonderful cleaner at Live Renewed Homemade Soft Scrub for Bath and Tile

Photo by Stacy @ Delighting in the Days

Stacy has an entire guest post at Live Renewed, about cleaning the bathroom effectively without using harsh chemicals. It is well worth reading.

She says:
This recipe is adapted from the recipe for Earth Paste in Clean House, Clean Planet by Karen Logan (page243). It is quick and easy to put together and effectively cleans the bath (hooray). Make this in small batches because it can dry out and harden when stored. This recipe makes enough for two to four uses. Keep any remaining mixture in an air tight container.*

Ingredients
3/4 cup baking soda (slightly heaped)
1/4 cup castile soap (I use Dr. Bronners Peppermint)**
1 Tablespoon water
1 Tablespoon vinegar

Method
In a bowl, combine the baking soda and castile soap. Add the water and stir with a fork.

Lastly, stir in the vinegar. The mixture will fizz a little. Stir to make a nice soft, paste-like, consistency. (This is important – the vinegar must go in last or else the scrub will be like sludge instead of a creamy paste.)

Scoop out the scrub with a sponge and start cleaning.

This scrub can also be used to clean the toilet.

* Mine has lasted fine in an airtight container. I just stir it with a fork before using
**I used lavender castile soap

This scrub works great on my stove when something spills over, and I LOVE how it smells. You can make it up in less than 5 minutes!

Happy Cleaning! (Is that an oxymoron?)
Debbie

DIY soaps and cleaners

Kelsie is getting ready to move away so her husband can go to medical school. They are very frugal and do an amazing job managing their money! Kels went looking online to come up with some CHEAP cleaning supplies and she found some awesome websites! Each day this week, we will share a website and the product we made from their recipe. You can make most of them for pennies and they work just as well as the real deal. So grab a friend and have a girls night out making cleaning products...we did it and it was great fun!
Debbie

Homemade Fabric Softener from thefrugalgirls.com
Hop on over to thefrugalgirls.com to see the rest of their great homemade products!

By Heidi on October 18, 2010

"If you’ve been wanting to cut costs on Fabric Softener… try making Homemade Fabric Softener!
What You’ll Need:

6 cups HOT water
3 cups white vinegar
2 cups Suave Refreshing Waterfall Conditioner {or other favorite scent}

What You’ll Do:

Mix conditioner & hot water well, until conditioner is dissolved completely.
Add the vinegar, and mix well.
Store in a large container {empty fabric softener container, empty large vinegar bottle, etc}
Pour into a downy ball… or use approx. 2 tbsp. in the fabric softener spot in your laundry machine… then wash!"

Note: You can also add a few drops of essential oil to make the good smell stronger. I made this once before, a few months ago, and I didn't like that I could still smell the vinegar. This time, I added essential oil, and it does not smell so much like vinegar. I also used a Downey ball this time, and it seems to broadcast the softener better.

Valentine goodies

Hi there! Today I am posting ideas Kelsie found on pinterest for yummy Valentine treats. Be sure to click on the websites to get recipes and more ideas!
Debbie

From: goldenstatefruit


Cherry Chocolate Kisses

From: thecurvycarrot

Pound Cake--cut pound cake into circles and cover with pink frosting

From: bit.ly

And finally...lots of great ideas at this valentine party site!

From: //http://amandaparkerandfamily.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentine-soiree.html

My Cute Christmas Present

When I opened my stocking this year, it had NOTHING in it,(except what I put in it!) Kelly came running in with these flowers in his hands, saying, "Sorry, I forgot to put these in your stocking!" He welded old horseshoes on to rebar to make the flowers, and they were as tall as me! I think that they are so adorable "planted" in my front flower garden. (He had to drive a stake into the frozen ground before we could plant them!)
I am a lucky girl!
Debbie

Organizing Ideas

Do you use Pinterest? Pinterest is an online bulletin board where you can store ideas--it is so cool!

Have you ever found a great idea online that you were going to use later, and then when you go back,you can't find it!
Pinterest can solve that.

You request an invitation at www.pinterest.com. They will send you an email and you get a "pin" control in your bookmark link. Log in to the site, and click on your account (right hand corner of page),there is a drop down menu--click on the link for boards.You can create any number of boards. Some of my boards are: kindergarten teaching ideas, what's for dinner, Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day, etc.

Then when you find an idea you want to save, you click on pin (from your bookmarks), and pin the picture onto a board to save. The coolest thing about pinterest is that when you view your board and click on the picture, (your idea), it comes up with the website link. Click on the link, and you go straight to the blog or website.

You can also search pinterest to look at ideas others have posted. This is a great resource when you are looking for something specific: ie. valentine decorations, ideas for achievement days, craft projects, what to make for dinner. When you see an idea on pinterest, put the cursor on the picture and you will see the option of repin. Click on repin, choose your board and click pin it. It will show up on your board.

When you search pinterest, you can type a subject in the search box, or scroll over "everything" to search for a particular subject. You can also click on everything, and you will see a mix of pins.

(Image from Golocal.com)

Be aware, however, that when you click everything, you will see some things that are not desirable. Some people post things that have rude language, and pictures that are offensive.
I still click everything,though, because I like to see the variety of pictures. I always find ideas that I didn't know I was looking for!

So there you have it...pinterest in a nutshell!
Try it out and you might get addicted!

Organizing Your Home

I found an awesome site that teaches you to organize your home, by competing a house cleaning project each week. If you sign up, you will receive an email each Monday detailing the week's challenge. I love how it breaks your house up into small pieces and I have found each challenge very doable.

Here is the challenge for this week:
Week #2 Organized Home Challenge: Kitchen Drawers and Kitchen Cabinet
This week's challenge is all about kitchen drawer and kitchen cabinet organization, where you will both declutter and organize things in a way where you can easily access what you need, when and where you need it.

photo from:thedecorologist.com

Head over to Home Storage Solutions to read about the challenges!

A Wider Blog Space!

I hope that you noticed the difference in our blog today! I finally got rid of the skinny layout. Wahoo! I found a wonderful post that tells you how to do it. Head on over to The Letter 4 (here) to to read the tutorial. As you can see, I haven't figured out how to center the title yet, but I have Haylie working on it. I will let you know when I figure it out. Enjoy! Debbie

More Organization Tips

I love organization--my mind just works that way!
I saw a great idea a long time ago on pinterest, for a business planner that used sticky notes. I decided to make a modified book to organize my life. Here is what it looks like.

I started out by dividing my life into all of the sections I could think of: physical, church, school, education, gifted blog, etc. etc. I wrote each section on tabs and divided my book into two pages for each section.

I glued a sticky note holder onto the back.

I write each task that I need to complete, on a sticky note and put it in the section. When the task is completed, I just pull the sticky note off. I carry the planner in my purse wherever I go and it has worked marvelously.

Hello Everyone!

We are back! Debbie successfully finished her Master's Degree. Kelsie had her sweet little baby girl, and Haylie moved her family to a new state. We have been crazy busy, but we are back. We plan to post nearly every day, so come and visit!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

If you are like most people, you have a handful of New Year's Resolutions that you are working on. I know that I have my share of them. This year, I have been reading a lot about, "making those resolutions stick," and I have learned a lot of interesting things that I want to share with you:

1. Write it down
Make a list of your resolutions and keep it somewhere where you can look at it often. If you are still trying to decide what resolutions to choose, Tsh,at Simple Mom,has some great questions to guide you...click here to go to her post.)

2. Break the resolution down into small pieces.
This idea was one of those ahhh experiences for me--it just made so much sense. There is another great post at Simple Mom that tells you how to accomplish this. (If you do not read the blog at simplemom.net, I would highly recommend it--they are amazing!) Here is a little bit of the post: "Kaizen is a Japanese word that means very small, continuous change. It’s little drips of water that fill a bucket over a long period of time, not a firehose in a few minutes." (Click here to read the entire post.) She explains how kaizen works, using the goal of waking up one hour earlier each day. She advocates setting the clock 2 minutes earlier each day. So...on the first night,if you usually get up at 7 a.m., you would set the alarm for 6:58 a.m. The next night, you would set your alarm for 6:56 a.m. You continue this process for thirty days,and ta da! you are getting up an hour earlier. Isn't that easy?
I put this into practice with exercising. It seems like I do really well in this area for a while, and then I go for a long time without a steady exercise routine. So, for the first week, I decided to exercise two times during the week. This week, the goal is three times, and eventually I will go at least five times a week. It seems so doable, and it gives me days to mess up at first, and still make my goal as I change my habits!

3. Write down your mini-goals.
I made this little book to keep track of my steps toward my resolutions.

The composition book has 100 pages, so I dedicated two pages to each week. I wrote the dates on the top of the page, and then all of my mini goals for the week, ie. exercising three times this week, and reading my scriptures at least three nights before going to sleep, etc. It has really helped me to record my little steps and work on successfully accomplishing my goals.

3. Tell yourself that you are not going for "Perfection," but for "Improvement."
This helps a ton if you are a little bit of a perfectionist like me! I choose not to focus on perfection, but instead on improving! I can keep going if I believe that the goal is improving--this leaves wiggle room when life gets in the way of the best laid plans. I do not have to be perfect in completing goals, I just have to be doing better each week.
One of my favorite quotes is by Joseph Smith. He said, "Direction is infinitely more important than speed." I love this thought!

Let's all head the right direction and improve ourselves day by day!
Debbie