February's Slightly Late DIY!

Hello, Kerry here!  I'm still trying to make good on my promise to post one household DIY and one craft idea per month.  Maybe I'll be back on track by the end of the month?  I wouldn't recommend holding your breath.  This month, rather than one homemade household item, I'm going to post some different things most homes would have, and some unique uses for them.  I love these life hacks.  ;-)

Toothpaste (non-gel):  remove crayon marks from walls, remove garlic or onion odors from your hands,  buff a DVD, defog swim goggles.

Nail Polish:  secure a loose screw, stop costume jewelry from tarnishing, repair a small hole in a screen, stop a runner in your pantyhose/tights.

Dryer Sheets:  deodorize shoes, soak in a pot/pan with baked on food to help loosen it, remove soap scum and mineral deposits from the shower, tame flyaway hair.

Hand Lotion:  polish shoes, remove static cling from clothing, tame frizzy hair, use it as shaving cream.

Petroleum Jelly:  remove water marks from furniture, soothe dry and cracked paws on your kitty or puppy, treat the threads on your outdoor light bulbs to keep them from sticking, put around your nails before polishing them to help clean up mistakes.

Salt:  wash green leafy veggies by swirling them in a bowl of salt water, rub salt water on the inside of your windows to keep them frost free, clean a greasy pan easily, clean up a sticky iron.

Chalk:  clean up ring around the collar, stop tarnish on your silverware, hide a crack in the paint on your walls, keep ants out of your house.

Source material (and more ideas) here:  http://i.imgur.com/2HA3e.jpg

...5 days left??

Ah, the Christmas/holiday rush.  It's caused me to lose sight of a lot of things this month (like blogging), but it's also helped me prioritize and determine what's really important to me this year.  After my traumatic Thanksgiving, which involved crying in bed during dinner, I've decided to focus on three things to help me enjoy my Christmas day.  This list may sound selfish, but I see it as an attempt to be honest with myself about my wants and needs this year.  It only has 3 items on it:

1.  To make sure Big Dude, Little Dude, and my momma have a great Christmas
2.  To make sure that other family and friends are given meaningful gifts they will enjoy, and to make sure they all know I love them
3.  To make sure I can get away with doing as little as possible on Christmas day.

This list, particularly #3, wouldn't be possible without my youngest sister and her husband stepping up and agreeing to host Christmas dinner this year.  BD and I have hosted the last couple of years, and while I generally love doing it, I'm rather burned out and would enjoy a break.

To make sure I can enforce #3, and thereby devoting more time to #1 and #2, I have created a master list of what needs to be done before the big day.  It is scheduled, with certain tasks falling on certain days.  It involves cleaning, last minute cards, baking cookies, getting laundry caught up, grocery shopping, last minute gifts, and anything else I can think of.  I'm scheduled to clean one room a day, and to touch it all up on Saturday morning.  It factors in taking the LD to COSI, and going to Dayton to visit BD's family.  My list started yesterday, and I am already behind on it.  :-)  So today will likely be a fun-filled day of errands and cleaning, but that's okay, because it will all be worth it on Sunday.

I have this fantasy that I'll wake up on Christmas morning after having gone to bed at a reasonable hour, happy in the knowledge that we're all snuggled up under clean sheets, in our dust-free rooms.  Upon awaking, the pre-set coffeepot will have coffee waiting for me, and I'll be able to quickly heat a nutritious, tasty breakfast I prepped the night before.  We'll all troop into the living room (sparkling clean, of course) in our matching Christmas jammies, and watch with delight as our revered LD opens his gifts.  We'll then watch "A Christmas Story" on repeat all day until it's time to go to my sister's.  We may take a nap and a shower somewhere in there.  We'll warm up the Duchess potatoes at my sister's place (again, made in advance), stuff ourselves silly on ham, rolls, and fudge, and watch more gift opening.  Then we'll all troop home to our still-clean house and curl up in bed for a well-deserved sleep.  I guess I'm going to have to count on elves or fairies to clean up the gift wrap and breakfast dishes.

Will all this happen?  No, probably not.  I'm going to consider myself ahead of the game if I get the bathroom mirror clean.  But, if I can stick to my schedule, I might actually get to watch that Christmas Story marathon.

Regardless of how unrealistic your expectations are, I cannot emphasize enough how helpful lists are at this time of year!  Don't have all your gifts yet?  Get that list together and hit the mall!  Still need to wrap? List all the packages you have to wrap, and feel a little more accomplished with every thing you cross off.    No clue what to serve for Christmas dinner?  List your menu, break it down further to list all the ingredients you need, and make a late-night run to your local grocery store.  Less crowded that way.  Whatever you celebrate, however you celebrate, just take a deep breath, start writing, and then start doing the things on your list.  It'll bring order to chaos.

Cooking and Cleaning

Kerry here!  Today, my Dude has spoiled me by doing all the cooking.  I got to do the clean up, but I personally think I came out ahead of the game.  So, because tomorrow's a holiday, because my Little Dude gave me kisses and said, "I love!" each time, and because it's too good not to share, here's what the Dude cooked, and what I used to clean up with!

For breakfast, we had Berry Berry Pancakes with hash browns!  For the pancakes, you'll need 1 1/2 c. flour, 3 1/2 t. baking powder, 1 t. salt, 1 T. white sugar, 1 1/4 c. milk, 1 egg, 3 T. butter, melted, and 1 c. blueberries.  Take the dry ingredients and sift them together.  Make a well in the center, and pour in the milk, egg, and butter.  Mix it all until smooth.  Heat and grease your griddle or pan.  Right before you're ready to cook them, fold in the blueberries (feel free to adjust the amount of blueberries to your liking).  Pour out batter in 1/4 c. amounts onto the griddle, and cook until golden brown on both sides.  For the topping, slice enough strawberries to fill 1/3 c.  Place in a bowl with 1/4 c. whole raspberries.  Add 2-3 T. of white sugar, and gently mix.  Again, feel free to increase or decrease the amount of berries and/or sugar to meet your needs.  Butter the hot pancakes, and spoon on some of the fruit topping.  Simple, and crazy good!  For the hash browns, all the Dude did was to use the food processor to shred 2 potatoes.  He used paper towels to squeeze out the excess moisture.  Then he added 1/2 of a bell pepper and 2 small tomatoes, diced, mixed it all together, and fried it on the griddle.  For the last minute or two of cooking, he topped the hash browns with cheddar cheese.

This evening, he made homemade oatmeal cream pies, and I almost cried with joy.  He found the recipe on allrecipes.com, and while they were damn good, we think we can tweak it a bit.  I linked the recipe for anyone who wants to give it a whirl, but I'll post our version once we play with it.  I think we can make the filling a bit differently, and I want to mess with the baking instructions.  But...mmmm.  Make sure you have some milk on hand!

Now, after all that cooking, I got to clean.  I also tweaked my cleaning supply stash, and came up with what I think are some effective, safe supplies.  For my general surface cleaner, I used a large spray bottle.  I put in 3 T. baking soda, and 1/4 c. white vinegar.  There will be fizzing, so just wait it out.  Once things settle, add 1/2 t. dish liquid, then fill the bottle slowly with hot water.  Leave a little room in the bottle to swirl the contents before use.  It cut grease, cleaned up sticky surfaces, and didn't leave a weird film or odor behind.  If you wanted to, you could add 8-10 drops of your favorite essential oil.  If you do have a spot that needs more scrubbing, make a paste of baking soda and your dish soap, and use it like you would Soft Scrub.

My window cleaner got tweaked, but I think it's a lot more effective now on the LD's sticky little prints and smudges.  Use 1/2 t. dish soap, 3 T. vinegar, and 2 c. water.  Mix it in a spray bottle, shake it up, and clean your glass!  You can use newspaper on your windows  with this spray for a streak-free finish.  And, to freshen up your fabric, here's a fake-it Febreze recipe.  Use 3 T. of your favorite conditioner, and 2 T of baking soda.  Put into a spray bottle (just reuse that Febreze bottle that's laying around with a spoonful of liquid left in it), fill up to the top with hot tap water, and give it a good shake.  I ended up using a yummy ginger-scented trial sized conditioner, and it was awesome!

Happy eating/cleaning!

A Slightly Delirious Post About Cleaning

It's 6am on a Sunday, and I've been wide awake since around 4:30.  Before that, it was LOTS of tossing and turning.  I finally surrendered, and have played about 12 games of mah-jongg, caught myself up on Regretsy and Facebook, and am now considering a bowl of frosted mini-wheats.  This has been going on for a little over a week now.  Unfortunately, I made two crucial errors last night-I drank soda, and forgot my melatonin.  *le sigh*

Since I'm too loopy to remember if I'd posted this before, I've been making and using my own household cleaners.  B. got to try the homemade detergent before I did, but I have homemade fabric softener, glass cleaner, and a multi-purpose surface cleaner, as well as some baking soda for everything else.  I went on a massive cleaning kick yesterday and scrubbed the place down, and it was a great opportunity for me to really compare what I made with what I used to buy.  Guess what?  I couldn't tell a bit of difference, except for the lack of fragrance that's added to most cleaners.  But things were squeaky clean!  When I can focus a bit more, I'll post the actual blends I used.  My only complaint was that the homemade glass cleaner wasn't enough to power through the Little Dude's "artwork".  If there is a crayon and a clean window in the same building, he will find a way to make the two meet.  I should have stopped him, but my inner teacher kept chirping at me that he was exploring his environment, it's easily cleaned, I'll stifle his creativity, blah blah blah.  But my point is, why are we spending tons of money on chemicals, when we can safely make the same things at home for pennies?  Sorry, Mr. Clean, but we're breaking up.  It wasn't me, it was you.

The Day I Learned to Love My Machine...

Way back in 8^th grade, many years ago (24 years, to be precise, and it won’t be discussed further, thanks) I took a Home Economics class.  I learned many skills that I still use, such as how to make a mean French toast, how to cross stitch a sampler, and how to starch and iron a dress shirt.  However, I totally failed to grasp using a sewing machine.  I tried to make a simple, straight skirt, and ended up sewing it together.  Next, we made stuffed animals.  I sewed my hair to my teddy bear.  I was bad enough that my home ec teacher, bless her, tried to console me by telling me that “not everyone is cut out for it”.  I’ve been scared to try since.

Fast forward those 24 years that I still don’t want to think about too much, and I am now the owner of a sewing machine.  Big Dude’s aunt gave it to me about 2 years ago, and it has sat and gathered dust until today.  I have friends who are divine costumers, and while I have envied their abilities many times, I have never tried to learn.  But today, I hauled it out to try hemming up some baby wipes.

My darling 2 year old, Little Dude, has been having some chronic diaper rash, and we finally linked it to commercial baby wipes.  We decided to try homemade wipes for him, and I am pleased to say that the rash has cleared up nicely since we started.  However, the flannel wipes tend to fray, and I was getting sick of picking bits of flannel lint off of our clothes, floor, and LD’s backside.  Since the idea of hand sewing 48 wipes wasn’t appealing, I hauled out the machine.

It took me longer than I care to admit to figure out the very basics-how to get power flowing, how to get a stitch started, etc.  But I did figure it out, and I sewed probably 4 or 5 wipes before I realized that there must be some way to regulate how the fabric feeds through.  So I whipped out the manual, which conveniently comes in both English and French, and began to flip through.  I saw that there was something called a presser foot, but couldn’t figure out how to lower it.  So I soldiered on, sewing a few more, until I caught sight of a lever on the other side of the machine.  Behold, the presser foot was down!  My loopy and irregular zig-zag stitches took on a more uniform appearance!  I sewed happily until I ran out of thread on the bobbin, and managed to finish all but 4 wipes.  It’s probably a good thing I ran out of thread, because I now want to sew EVERYTHING.

In case this inspires you to want to sew everything, making your own wipes and solution is easy as pie!  All you’ll need to start is a half-yard of flannel, and a pair of scissors.  Simply fold and cut your flannel in halves until you have a decent stack of wipes sized pieces.  Once you have your stack, whip out your trusty sewing machine.  Choose a nice stitch to go around the edges of your wipes.  A chain stitch would work, or something similar.  It’s a little time consuming, but very cheap and easy.  If you really want to skip all the cutting and sewing, inexpensive baby washcloths will also do the trick.  I bought the flannel almost solely because of the cute monkey and soccer ball pattern.

Once you have your wipes down, make your solution!  I use 1.5 cups of water, 2 T of baby wash, and 2T of baby oil.  Putting the oil into the water before you put in the soap seems to keep the bubbles down to a minimum.  Put it in a spray bottle, and either spray directly onto baby, or onto the wipe.  If you prefer a pre-moistened cloth, simply cut the solution recipe in half, stack your wipes into a Tupperware container or wipes tub, and pour directly onto the wipes.  Let it sit about 10 or 15 minutes, then flip the stack over.  Whenever you use a wipe, make sure you squeeze out the excess back into the box.  If your wipes seem to be drying out, just add another batch of the solution.  I store my used wipes in a large Ziploc bag, and machine wash them in hot water. 

These make a really cute (and frugal) baby shower gift!  Find an appropriate fabric, wrap the finished wipes up with a cute ribbon, and put a matching ribbon on the spray bottle.

If you don’t know anyone who could use baby wipes, but you still have the urge to sew rectangles, you could make homemade fabric softener sheets the same way!  Only difference is, you’ll definitely need a plastic tub to store them in.  For the fabric softener solution, use 3-4 c. water, 1 c. white vinegar, and 1 c. hair conditioner (cheap is fine to use!).  Mix them in an empty, clean plastic jug, give it a good shake, and pour some over your stack of sheets.  Whenever you go to use a dryer sheet, flip the stack first, take the top one and wring it out, and toss it in with your clothes.  The vinegar smell doesn’t linger, don’t worry.  When you go to use the next one, flip the stack again before getting one.  Just add more solution as needed!  This can also work with a Downy ball, but you’ll need to thin it out a bit more first.  You can use either water or vinegar to thin it.

There you go-easy, cheap, and green ways to both clean your baby’s bottom and soften your clothes, and an embarrassing story about me, too!

K.