Homemade Creamer and other Completed Craftiness

Where've I been?  Honestly... I'm cheating on my blog.  Pinterest has become something almost consuming it it's hold over me.  I pin all the time.  I pin the bath, I pin when I'm cooking, I pin when I'm cleaning, I pin while watching TV or movies, and I even manage to pin while having conversations with my husband.  I think I have a problem.

Pinterest is so much less work than a blog, you see.  You just make boards and stuff things there in categories that may only make sense to you.  I've started so many recipe boards and money saving type boards (like DIYs for cleaning supplies, furniture, sewing, and hygiene).  If I try something and like it, I move it to a different board, so it's easy for me to find again.  If I don't like it, I move it to yet another board, so I know not to use it anymore.  It's pure awesome.  A few of my pinned projects have made it over here, but I think I've been extraordinarily neglectful of my blog over the past several months.

While not a pinterest project, I have added a few more diaper covers to my stash while I was away.  My husband is so tickled with these things.  He brings me chocolate every time I finish one... I am not sure if that is incentive to make more, or if I should stop before I gain even more weight with this pregnancy escapade than I already have.

This has also been completed while I was away.  The sideboard is made of scavenged pallets.  I love it all unfinished and rough around the edges, especially with my cast iron hanging above from a likewise rough shelf/pot rack.  B made them both, and he seems to think it's a bit odd that I just love that they're not quite true, that there are knot holes in them, and that there aren't two boards of the same color among them.  It makes me happy.  He wants things to look nice when he makes them, and even though the materials are really primarily responsible for the finished look, he gets frustrated when he can't make crooked boards make straight lines.  He gets over it because I just love it!

These are my answer to canisters.  I spent $24 total on a case each of half gallon and quart jars.  I'd love to have some gallon jars for flour and sugar, but the half gallon ones work out fine.  Wide mouth jars have a big enough mouth to easily get a 1/4 c measuring cup in there, and I am pretty sure a 1/3 c measuring cup would make it, too.  I can scoop out what I need without having to lug out the big buckets underneath where I store the bulk of my bulk dry goods.  The shipping tags were only $3.99 for a package of 100 from Office Depot, and the jars came from Ace Hardware's website, since it seems to be impossible to find half gallon jars in stores when it's not canning season.  I think they're super cute, and they fit right in with my primitive/rustic storage.  I also love the fact that they're not $20 each like the glass canisters at the store.  The lids and rings won't last forever, but those will be cheap and easy to replace when the time comes.  I'm happy with them.

These were a pinterest project.  Dollar Tree baskets ($1 each), and cotton print fabric on sale 30% off at Hobby Lobby.  I spent about $12 on the whole project (not counting the glue sticks, since I already had those), and ended up with 4 fabric covered bins for the price of one (or two if you're lucky) from Wal-Mart. I hot glued some cute little painted wood cut outs onto the sides.  There's a motorcycle, a tiger, and a guitar. Somehow when I was in Hobby Lobby, I forgot I had 4 baskets and only got 3 embellishments, but it works out since one of the baskets really isn't very visible in it's place on the bottom shelf of the changing table.

This actually might deserve an entry to itself.  It is another pinterest project that I have altered and tweaked over the past few weeks until I have almost exactly what I want.  It's liquid French Vanilla coffee creamer, and it's way cheaper than $4 per bottle.  The original recipe I found on pinterest called for a can of sweetened condensed milk, milk, and real vanilla.  Yes, it honestly did taste better than mine.  Mine, however, can be made for even cheaper, and all the ingredients can be bought in bulk and used for plenty of other stuff (like cream of anything soup mix, homemade bisquick, and homemade instant oatmeal packets, for a few).
I use:
1.5 c powdered milk,
1 c sugar
2.5 c hot water
5 T imitation vanilla flavoring.

Truth be told, real vanilla would make a big difference in flavor.  It's more intense and really shows off with the coffee, but it's also a LOT more expensive.  That big bottle of imitation vanilla was just a few dollars at Sam's.  Real vanilla is several dollars for a tiny little bottle that you'd use up in a single batch and dramatically increase the cost of making this, thereby defeating the purpose.  Put it all together, stir it up good, and put it in a container of some sort.  I reused a liquid creamer container I'd saved.  It only take a few minutes to mix up, and the dry ingredients have a really long shelf life.  I have no idea how long it keeps once mixed.  Ours never lasts more than a week with both of us having a couple cups of coffee each morning.

Recipe Holder - pinterest inspired

Please ignore the clutter in the background.  I'm getting ready to make dishwashing detergent, and got side-tracked.  My brain is so completely squirrelly lately that I am amazed I ever finish anything I start.

Have any of you seen this pin?

A friend of mine pinned it, and I repinned it thinking it a fabulous idea, if fabulously tacky.  It's been floating around in the back of my head for at least a few days.  I was trying to think of ways to make the hanger not look like a hanger.  I know, it's perfectly functional, but... I don't like it.  I also don't like my recipes getting icky.

I used to keep my recipes in one of those static page photo albums.  The clear laminate protects the recipe from kitchen effluvium, and they're easy to rearrange.  The only aggravation I have with those is you can't easily flip the recipe over.  I like to jot notes about alterations, substitutions, additions, and their results on the back of a recipe.  Sometimes the recipe is just too long to fit on the front of a card.  Sometimes I have two related recipes on one card (i.e. I have a recipe for two cupcakes, and on the back of the card I've got recipes for two servings of icing).  So, the static pages are a mixed blessing.  Something else I tried was just a binder with clear page protectors in it.  But that doesn't let me put more than one recipe in a pocket, unless there's nothing written on the back of either one.  Same problem.  So I like the concept of the hanger... just not the execution.

B likes to make things with wood.  He usually has scraps leftover.  I am a pack rat, and he's not always great about picking up his leftovers, so we have quite a lot of odd scraps of wood floating around in the storage room.  They also lay in the yard for a while before my inner pack rat wins out over my desire for him to clean up his own messes, so some of the bits of wood are pretty weathered.  I like weathered!

One of the scraps was only about 1 x 1.5 x 8 inches.  It seemed perfect.  A bit of twine, a sharpie, some picture hanging do-dads, and a couple clothes pins looked about like all I would need.  It turned out I used a stapler, too.  I wish my handwriting was neater.

 The picture do-dads went in the top, and I tied a couple nooses through them to string the twine.  B had a great idea to keep the recipe from flopping - attach the clothes pins to the back of the board somehow.  Well, I wanted them to be mobile, because not all my recipes are the same size/width, so we stapled the twine to the sides to create a tight line across the center back.

 Bird "helped" me tie the nooses for the string I intended to hang it by.  There's enough slack were I can easily flip the board over to read the back of the card as well.

So far it seems the best place to hang it is from the little cabinets above the stove hood.  With the cabinet door open, it hangs at eye level, and doesn't interfere with me getting stuff out for cooking, because the only things in that particular cabinet are the mosterously large insulated drink jugs B and the Pup got from 7-11 last year.

I thought about painting it, or using stencils to make the writing a bit neater.  But I decided that i would probably forget about it out drying and never finish it.  Really, my brain is that bad these days!  Besides, it fits right in with my bag drying line and my laundry sign, which are neither one very frilly, just twine, boards, and in the case of the laundry sign, a bit of paint.

Playing with Power Tools

So, I decided that I'd skip the sorting of the basement if favor of playing with B's power tools.

While the cat's away the mice will play!  At least, that's what I've always been told, and it sure seems to be true.  While he's home, I'd defer to him in the power tools and carpentry department.  After all, his dad was a carpenter and woodworker, and B worked with him a lot.  This makes me feel like my paltry experimental attempts at cobbling something together are probably gone about bass-ackwards and crookified.

But, since he wasn't here to tell me how to do it better, I played around with scraps of stuff, and I think it turned out pretty good.  The only gripe I've got is the feet are a bit uneven, but I'm not about to stick my hands close enough to a spinning blade to shave off the itsy bits that would even them up.  He can do it when he gets home if it bugs him.  :-P

I save everything... you know this.  So does it really surprise anyone that I save the scraps of wood leftover from B's carpentry projects?   While I was going through some boxes today, I found some old upholstery foam that I'd bought ages ago.  It came in a four pack, and I only needed two of them.  So, naturally, I socked the other two away for some other something someday.  I also had a scrap of gingham check fabric that I kept meaning to turn into a kitchen curtain, but kept putting off because B hasn't gotten around to making the rest of the curtain rod brackets, yet.  I found a rectangle of what I think is birch, and a couple of ends from some 2x4s in the shed.

Wouldn't you know, each end of 2x4 was 36 inches long?  four 18 inch legs, just waiting to happen.  But, I got to thinking, I know I'm not great at working with wood.  I've had no practice at it.  So I thought it might be more stable if I used 8 legs, like L's by splitting the 2x4 in half.  I didn't do such a great job at that, because 2x4's are not 2x4's anymore, so I was off by about 1/4 inch or so.  I also didn't want to have to try to match up the corners and all that stuff, so I just put two legs kitty-corner on each corner.  When I got the legs on, I realized it was going to be way wobbly, so I used the leftover strips from where I cut the 2x4's long-wise as braces.

I cut my foam to the size of the seat, and had two scrap pieces left that just happened to be half the width of the seat.  Triple layer cushy awesome :-)

Then, I just wrapped the fabric over the padding and the seat, tucking the corners sort of like hospital corners when making a bed but not so neat, and used my staple gun to tack down the fabric.  When the fabric gets too dirty or worn, it'll be really easy to pull of and change out.

Our Not-So-Paper-Towels and a Bag Line

What I accomplished yesterday... 

When I worked at the sheriff's department, t-shirts were an everyday requirement.  In summer, we had to wear white v-neck t's, and in winter, we had to wear black crew necks.  I have dozens of t-shirts.  Some of them are being kept for grungy work, cleaning days, and sleep shirts, but a lot of them are becoming something new.

I've been saying for a while that I was going to try to cut back on paper product use and disposable stuff.  Cotton is the component of nearly every kitchen towel and rag in existence.  It's not necessarily *the* most absorbent in t-shirt form, because there's not a lot of lift or pile, but I figured they'd make good cleaning rags, napkins, and paper towel substitutes.

Our Daily Bread

Most of the people I've talked to agree that baking bread is cheaper than buying it.  Most people also agree that it's way better for you, since you actually know what's going into the loaves.  And -- drum roll -- you can pronounce all of it.  I haven't bought a loaf of store bread in over a month.  I think I bought the last one back around the first of January.  I can't vouch for it being cheaper, necessarily.  We eat more bread now, I think.  We eat it for breakfast, lunch, dessert, sometimes at dinner, as a random snack.  It's just that *good*!

I have a recipe that Ms. Terri gave me.  It was for sandwich bread.  It was tasty and simple, but homemade bread goes stale so fast we ended up not eating it all.  I didn't toss it, but it got delegated to the freezer for future use in stews or as breadcrumbs.  So, I went in search of ways to make my homemade bread last longer.

The two loaves made with Ms. Terri's recipe

I stumbled onto this:  Our Daily Bread in a Crock.

If you don't want to follow the link, it's bake as needed artisan bread.  It is SO GOOD!

3 c warm water
1.5 tsp dry yeast
2.5 tsp salt
6.5 c all purpose flour

Yep, that's it,  Four ingredients.  Mix the water, yeast, and salt.  It doesn't need to activate, just toss the flour in on top of it, stir until it's just blended together and pulls into a ball.  You may need more or less water, depending on weather.

The magickal properties of plain white vinegar

I know I've been missing in action lately.  I have a really good excuse!  Really!  

B had knee surgery recently, so I've been trying to take care of him as much as possible lately.  I've learned something about myself during this period of convalescence.  If he is home, I don't get nearly as much done as I usually do (or ought to).  I have a tendency to want to entertain him while he's around.  I know I should get off my butt and do something constructive, but it's just so much more fun to watch TV or movies, or play cards, or aggravate him... I mean, umm... mollycoddle him.  Yeah... 

Anyways, back to the point.  

Vinegar!  It's awesome stuff.  My Gramma used to use it to clean with all the time, but I really didn't know it had quite as many uses as it does.  I use it to clean in the kitchen, especially, because I don't trust the harsher chemical cleaners on counters and tables where I make food.  I also use it on the floors, because apparently waxed hard wood does not really like chemicals all that well.  They make the finish cloudy looking.  Vinegar brightens it right up.  

I recently bought a couple gallons of vinegar from Sam's club.  It came in a cardboard box that had some interesting tips on it.  I was already aware of some of these, but others were new to me.  So, since the whole idea of this blogging gig is to share info and ideas, here they are:

Fleas!!

This is my kitty.  You all have seen her before.  She's been scratching a lot lately, and everywhere she lays for any length of time there is a black dandruff when she gets up.  I thought it looked ominously like flea dirt, but just knew that couldn't be right.  She's an indoor cat 24/7, 365.  She's been outside a few times.  In a cat carrier on her way to the car.  B and I walked her on a leash when we were making the trek to Texas so she could stretch her legs and have the opportunity to go potty, if the mood struck her.  She's never had fleas before.  N-E-V-E-R!  So I just knew my baby didn't have fleas.

Well, she does.

Apparently they have come in from outside just to find her.  The strangest part of it is, B and I haven't been bit or seen them.  I am irrefutable proof that vampires do not exist, because anything and everything that sucks blood loves me.  I can be sitting in the midst of a group of people, none of whom are getting bitten by anything, and I'll have a swarm of blood sucking creatures flocking around me like a Thanksgiving Day buffet.  I've had what I thought were a few bug bites, but just a few.  B hasn't had any.  This is most unusual since he has the same problem of being tasty to blood-suckers as I do.  But because of the scratching and the appearance of what I was certain just could not be flea dirt no matter how much it looked like flea dirt, I decided that L'il Bit must have a bath.

She is *such* a good girl.  I've said that on here before, and I will say it over and over.  She doesn't like baths very much, but she tolerates them, and no matter how much she probably wants to scratch, she barely lays the tips of those wickedly sharp talons against my skin.  She doesn't even leave marks.  She just cries and tries halfheartedly to get out of the water.  She props her forefeet up on the edge of the tub or my arm and just tugs a little.  I've bathed many animals over the years and quite a few cats. She is far and away the best behaved cat in a bath I've ever had.

When I got her out of the tub and cuddled her in a towel to dry, I rolled her onto her back to check her white belly.  She isn't crawling with a massive infestation, but there they were.  Great big ole nasty fleas chewing on my baby.  I didn't wash her with anything special today, because I didn't know for sure she had fleas, but today begins the regimen.  I'm going to try to get her to eat a little garlic every day.  I'll probably sprinkle some in her food bowl since I don't currently have any tablets.  It changes the make up of the oils in their skin, and supposedly makes them less tasty.  I honestly have no documented proof that it works, but I've used garlic in combination with other home remedies for deterring fleas, and until now she's never had any, so I believe that speaks for something.

Citrus oil is supposed to be good for getting rid of all kinds of adult insects, because it's a gentle acid that won't harm pets, furniture, floors, or children, but it's persistent.  It destroys the shell on insects, causing them to die.  So, I peeled the last three oranges, cut the peels into small bits and simmered it for about 30 minutes to get as much of the oil out as I could. The resulting citrus oil solution got sprayed over every exposed inch of hard flooring in the house.  This is unfortunate, because I *just* mopped yesterday, and now my floors are all sticky-ish.  It's not a bad sticky, but it's sticky.  *sigh*  I am also out of oranges, and pack rat that I usually am, I didn't save the peels from all the oranges I've cooked with lately.  Grrrr... this is why I generally never throw potentially useful stuff away!

I've sprinkled Borax over all the rugs.  I don't know precisely why this is supposed to be helpful, but it was recommended on multiple sites.  It was recommended as a deterrent, and to kill adult fleas.
Now my biggest worry is the quilts.  I can wash my store bought comforter in the washer with hot water.  If it messes it up or makes the colors bleed, c'est la vie.  But I don't want to ruin my quilts.  I think that maybe one of the reasons we haven't been getting bitten more is because of the quilts, actually.  I've stored them in cedar for years.  The bedroom smells faintly of cedar whenever I change the bedding out.  Or it did... until recently.  See we have a linen closet here, so I didn't see any need to store the bedding downstairs in the cedar chest (which I currently use as an entry bench).  But now I am thinking that I may have to supersede convenience with practicality.  Cedar is supposed to be really repellent to bugs.  I haven't got a clue why, but I am certain it works, because I've lived places where moths ate highways through the stuff in my closets, but nothing ever bothered the stuff in the cedar chest.  So... I reckon I'm going to have to rethink my storage.



B saved the cedar sawdust from building our desks, too.  It's damp, because someone left it out when they got something out of the storage shed and it rained, but I think I can spread it out in the sun to dry.  Once it's dry, I'm going to spread cedar shavings between the mattresses and under the foam topper.  Maybe that'll help keep them from nesting in our bed and bedding.  Katie is mailing me some flea drops, too.  She said they worked well for her cats, and she had a couple doses left over.  L'il Bit is sensitive to that sort of stuff.  I put some flea medicine on my cats once after a move as a preventative measure, because the people who lived in the house before us had an indoor/outdoor dog.  L'il Bit and her mom both got violently ill.  It scared me pretty bad.  My other cats didn't seem bothered by it, other than not liking the damp spot between their shoulder blades, but I haven't ever used chemical flea treatments since.  But I'm going to try this stuff and see if it works without making her ill.  If it does, I may convert back to chemical treatments periodically since the house isn't sealed well enough to keep the fleas from coming after her.

I just absolutely DESPISE fleas....

Make-do Monday - T-shirt Tote Bags

For a change, a project I didn't knit or crochet.

I love my chest freezer.  It's awesomesauce.  I can go to Sam's and the commissary once a month (with varying side trips to the grocery in between for the stuff that is just bound and determined to run out at off times), stick everything in my freezer and pantry, then crawl back under my rock for another month.  I actually like living under a rock.  Too much interaction with too many people makes me very cranky.  I get cranky enough all on my own without having the additional help.

Maybe some of you out there are more disciplined than I am, but when I get home from a shopping trip and am divvying up goodies for the freezer, fridge, and pantry, the goal is to get it done and get on with something else. I usually try to at least keep plant matter on one side of the freezer and protein on the other, but it doesn't always work out that way.  Then, when I am rummaging through looking for something in particular for a meal, or hunting for that leftover baggie of spaghetti sauce that I just *know* is in there, stuff gets all shuffled around, jumbled up, and becomes a right mess of frozen edibles all piled haphazardly with no semblance of order.   No, there are no pictures.  I didn't want a record of my slovenly freezer floating around.

I was over reading Dee's blog post about organizing her freezer, and it looked like a no-brainer.  Duh... I'm supposed to be pretty intelligent, so why didn't I think to do this before?  But, all of my baskets are wicker.  I have too many baskets according to some, but I just keep finding things to use them for.  I have a few smaller cardboard boxes floating around from packages and moving, but I could see that becoming a problem eventually, because none of them are that waxed cardboard.

Reading through the comments, I saw that one person uses those cloth shopping totes.  I have fabric.  I can do that!

But, I'm also not feeling motivated to make half a dozen tote bags.

But I have t-shirts and tank tops!

No... I really don't throw out nearly as much as I should.  And this is a perfect example of WHY!

I have a pile of plain white and black t-shirts from my time at the sheriff's office.  I still wear them, occasionally.  I mean, who doesn't ever have a really scrungy job to do and they don't want to mess up any of their good t-shirts by accident, or when I dye my hair, or sometimes as a cleaning rag.  But in all honesty I have too many.  I don't need a dozen white t-shirts.  And the tank tops... well, they haven't fit in quite some time.  I keep saying one day I am going to drop enough weight to finally get into them, but the truth is, I was the smallest I've ever been (high school size) the month I moved to TX.  If they didn't fit then, they're just never going to fit.  And, what's a tank top but a tote bag with an unfinished bottom?

All I did for the tanks was sew the bottom hem together, and the straps became instant handles.  Fabulous!  Took all of a minute, and that included threading the sewing machine.

The t-shirts took a little more time.  I cut the sleeves off, and then enlarged the neck to make a wider mouth for the bag.

Yes, I used black thread on the white t-shirts.  It's ok, my frozen foods won't care.

All the bags wad up nice and small, so I can cram them inside each other when (LOL as if) they're not in use in the freezer.  They can become shopping bags at Sam's, or wherever, and I can chuck them in the washing machine if something happens to leak, bust, or otherwise get messy.  It's not quite as orderly as nice stackable baskets, but this was no additional cost to me.  I had everything I needed right here at the house, and the only thing that I actually paid for at one time or another was the t-shirt itself.  Since said t-shirt is five years old, and had holes worn in it, I'd say that I've already gotten more than my money's worth of wear out of it.  :-)

While it may not *look* all neat and pretty, I can reach in and grab my chicken, veggies, leftovers, pork, fruit, boiling meat, etc. in one grab.  The smaller odds and ends are still just in the baskets that came with the freezer, but they don't ever get any more plentiful than that.  There's also a handy shelf in there that holds my beef, since I try not to cook with too much red meat for B.  My freezer is so much easier to navigate now, and I didn't have to go shopping to get it that way :-)  Happy day!

Now.... how long will this last?

A backlog of Thrifty Thursdays and Make-do Mondays

Even though I've been off the internet for the past two weeks and the housework has slid while we were on our staycation, I couldn't just completely sit still.

I think I have figured out my Gramma's fried apple pie recipe.  The magic is the filling.  The crusts are just biscuit dough, but I have a few kinks to work out before I post that recipe.

I made two rugs for the bathrooms.

I got 80 lbs of this olefin yarn for around $80 after shipping and handling.  Included in the box were also a few random spools of much higher quality yarn.  I got a 10 lb spool of merino lace ($10 for 10 lbs where normally I would pay $20 or so for less than a lb), there was a baby cake of white flannel, and another spool of sea green lace weight yarn that I don't know the fiber type.  It was a helluva deal.  The problem was I couldn't knit with most of it.  Olefin is the stuff carpet is made of.  It's a double thread with tufts of stuff between and twisted.  Knitting with it caused all kinds of bunching, breaks, and other pains in the rear that made it worthless as far as I was concerned.  I was not happy since the mystery box had been billed as a knitting selection.  The spools of lace yarn more than made up for the price, but I didn't have any idea what to do with these spools of crap.  I refused to throw them away.  

One day I decided to try crocheting with them, and viola!  It worked!  

They were both done similar to granny squares.  I am not an accomplished crocheter by any stretch, so they are asymmetrical and a bit lumpy around the edges, but for tromping on, they work just fine.  

B's birthday is coming up, and he likes to fish.  The problem is he doesn't like toting his backpack when he goes fishing, because he has to take it off to get to his tackle.  A regular tackle box would still have to be set down and picked up constantly, because he likes to walk the shore instead of picking a spot and sticking to it.    He mentioned he was going to go buy a satchel.  I jokingly refer to it as a man-purse.  I offered to make him one.  

I think it turned out pretty good.  It's got two lined interior compartments.  I used remnants of skeins I already had here at the house, so I didn't have to buy yarn.  I used scraps for the lining, and the strap is an old belt that the buckle was broken on.  :-)   I carved the fish toggle out of a scrap of cedar that was left over from when B made my desk. 

And yesterday while I was stomping around the kitchen in a horrible mood, I dropped an egg in the box of my Gramma's cast iron cookware.  I was planning to save the refinishing of the cast iron for summer, because I figured the super dry Texas heat would be almost as good as an oven for expanding the iron and allowing grease to soak in.  There wasn't enough room in my oven for all the pieces.  

But.... the egg changed my mind. 

Before scrubbing

The iron was really rusty.  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to save it or not.  It had been in storage for untold years, and Georgia is so damp everything rusts or rots eventually.  It was also super dusty.  The dust had stuck to the seasoned skillets, meaning I had to strip the top of the seasoning off at the very least.

I used straight vinegar and steel wool.  I could've used a solution of vinegar and water, then let them soak in it overnight.  But where was I going to soak them?  And that would've stripped off all the seasoning making me start from scratch on them.  That is not a prospect I was keen on.  I've tried to season fresh cast iron before, and it just sucked.

Before Scrubbing. 

After scrubbing

After Scrubbing

When they were completely dry, I rubbed them with crisco all over.  (inside, outside, bottoms, handles, everything)  Then I put them in the oven at 250 for three hours or so.  After that, I turned the oven off and let them cool slowly as the oven cooled.  

I think they made an amazing recovery.  I haven't cooked with them, yet, so I don't know how they'll taste or if the seasoning is thick enough.  I  may need to do a few more layers before they're as good as Gramma used to keep them, but I am so tickled that they are going to be usable again.  I was worried that they would be delegated to a nail on the wall and a sad tale of how Gramma used to cook in them.  

I made a teddy bear had for Fin's coming arrival.  He's got all kinds of silly cute clothes, but I wanted to give her something for the new baby, and the yarn was just sitting there staring out at me between the slats of my basket begging to be a teddy bear hat.  

And I thought that I would commemorate the amazing organization of my spice cabinet (temporary though it will assuredly be).  Top right = refills in back, bakings/sweets spices up front as well as baking needs (yeast, baking soda, baking powder).  Middle right = all my savory spices, and bottom is breakfast munchies (granola bars, poptart crisps), and the waffle iron that I was absolutely stoked to get off the counter.  Left top has some baking goodies overflow, and the rest of the left side is dedicated to warm drinks (coffee, tea, cocoa) and their fixin's.  I completely reorganized my pantry, too.  I didn't take pictures of that, but it is equally orderly and segmented.  I know this won't last past the end of January, but at least for a while I can find absolutely everything with ease and precision.  

An Update: Make Your Own Laundry Soap

So, I finally ran out of the laundry detergent that was given to us when our neighbors down the way moved out.  The same ones that gave us the couches and a grill.  I may not run out of dryer sheets until the middle of next year.

I rinsed out the cap from the empty bottle of detergent and decided to use that as my scoop for my homemade detergent.  I wrestled with the lid of the bucket, trying really hard not to accidentally tip the darn thing over.  Why do they make those lids so flippin tight?  I needn't have bothered.  When I finally got the lid off my bucket, I was looking at dry bubbles.  You know, like you see in the top of your pancakes when it's time to flip them?  Dry.  Dry??  My liquid detergent had turned into something solid.  I was dumbfounded.  Immediately, I sent a text over to my friend Rey asking if that was supposed to happen.  She says it happens to hers all the time, but seems to be worst when it's chilly out.  Just stir it.

So I stirred, and I stirred, and I was up to my wrists in the stuff because it had solidified all the way to the bottom of the bucket.  Kind of like magic, water seemed to return to the bucket.  I never got all the lumps out of it, but it returned to something resembling a sort of oozy liquid.  So, if anyone out there is thinking of giving it a go and you open your bucket to find jello where detergent once was, it's ok.  Just stir.... a LOT.

Now, I need to go out in the yard and finder a stronger stick, because the one I have is apparently just not going to hack it much longer.  On the bright side, I had my hand in that soap for quite a while, and the worst I can say is my skin is a bit dry feeling.  No itching, no burning, so strange slimy residue that refuses to come off no matter how long I rinsed.  Pretty awesome :-)  And Rey usually breaks out from laundry soap, but she's been using this stuff for months now (she's on her second batch), and no one in her sensitive skinned family has had any issues with it.

Make your own: Laundry Soap

I snagged this from Rey at The Peasant and the Pea.  So, it's been tried out by someone I personally know and trust.  She got the recipe originally from Tip Nut, I believe.  Anyways, all the  materials cost about $8 (give or take depending on where you shop and what you buy.)  

Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent

2 quarts of water

4 cups grated bar soap  

4 cups Borax

4 cups Washing Soda *washing NOT baking*

4 gallons of water

A clean 5 gallon bucket with a lid.

That does not say four bars of grated soap.  It says four cups of grated bar soap.  There is a fundamental difference.  It only took me  two and a half bars of Ivory to get my four cups of grated soap.  I grated it with a very fine cheese grater.  

My first question to Rey was:  What the hell is washing soda and where the hell do you find it?  Wal-mart apparently, and possibly the drug store, or you might have to check online.  Wal-mart had it where I live in Central Texas, but they only had Arm & Hammer.  I would've rather had an off label, but such is life.  Borax is also something that you don't always encounter, but at least I knew what that was from my Gramma.  I was also able to find it at Wal-mart.  You usually find both of these ingredients near the Oxy-Clean or other laundry boosters.  

I still have a good portion of each box left, though I am not sure if I have quite enough for a full second batch.  I would say you can get at least one and a half batches out of each box, thus reducing the actual total cost of each batch.  

Heat your 2 quarts of water to a simmer, and slowly --- very slowly --- add in your grated soap.  I was using a rubber spatula to stir, and I used the rubber spatula to scoop up some soap and stir it in.  Once all the first scoop of soap was dissolved, then I got another scoop.  Rey discovered the hard way that if you dump all the soap in at once it melts into a lump, and you have to stir forever to melt it down.  I think the total scoop/stir/melt process only took about 20 minutes.  If that.  

Dump your hot soapy water into your bucket, and add the Borax and Soda.  Stir until it is as dissolved as it is going to get.  The 4 gallons of water I added in 2 quart batches.  The water needs to be hot-ish in order to dissolve everything, so I used my sauce pot and heated it up on the stove while I stirred what was already in the bucket.  Not to boiling, just hotter than tap water.  Stir, stir, stir.  Everything will eventually get mostly dissolved.  Clap the lid on it and put it by your washer.  Use 1/4 c per load.  Stir before each time you use it, because even though we stirred it well, solids will settle.  

I got a stick from the yard for a stirrer after the water got too deep for my spatula, that way I wouldn't have to dedicate a kitchen utensil to the laundry.  

Five gallons of laundry soap for less than $8.  It lasted Rey (who has a family of four) for several months.  She crunched the numbers over on her blog, and the results were about half as much as buying Sun laundry detergent, which is one of the cheapest ones.  You can make it smell prettier by adding essential oils or soap scents (purchasable from most hobby and craft shops) if you like.  

You can use the same recipe, only without the water, for a powdered detergent, but I like liquid for rinsing cleaner.