Saturday, November 12

Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub and who do you think they be?

I have said it before and I will say it again: Once you have Oregon in you it's hard to shake it out. That smell of trees and mold in the Portland airport. The way you can spend all day inside without feeling bad when it rains. That no one uses an umbrella, but they still wear flip-flops. Yes, I am a hippy.

Today, maybe more than any other day, I demonstrated my true hairy-legged ways. I made dishwasher soap and laundry detergent from scratch.

If you'll allow a little aside; for my birthday I was given a book called "Planet Home" by Jeffrey Hollender. There are great ideas for cleaners, reducing waste, composting and the like. Included in the book was a reference to an article I recently read about fragrance in products we use daily (ie. wall air fresheners, laundry soap, cleaners in general). It stated something to the effect that there are 500 different types of "fragrance" used in commercial products. Of those 500, 50 or so are known carcinogens. Wait for it: and those 50 do not have to be on the label of the items we buy daily.

Excellent. Now, I don't know about you, but let's just say the next time I see Cancer I'll be giving it a swift kick in the balls. That's enough for me to make a change.

That leads me to my Crafternoon today. I decided since I don't know what "fragrances" are in my household cleaners and the like, I will faze them all out one by one. We ran out of laundry soap this week and Matt was all about making the leap.

After some thorough interweb research, here is what I came up with:

1 cup Borax ($4.99)
1 cup Washing Soda ($4.98)
1 bar of soap (I used Vegetable Soap scented with Shea Butter) 2 bars/$3.99


Grate your soap bar.

Combine your soap bar, Washing Soda and Borax and whisk until thoroughly combined.

Each load should take 1 tbsp of detergent, two if you have a rough and tumble toddler. I ran my daughter's clothes through and they came out super clean; as if I had used a Name Brand detergent! Whoo! 

Next up? Dishwasher soap.

Sunday, November 6

Only four months later.

I am winning at craft blogging. I imagine that those of you who follow this blog, or stumble across are super stoked the see that I have, perhaps, something new to say. After four months. No biggie.

Today was the first day I've been in front of my sewing machine in at least a month. I don't have a to-do list right now, and without that, I tend to spend the majority of my days watching what's left of Soap Operas.

But, today was different. There are no Soap Operas on on Saturdays. Even on Telemundo. So, instead I pulled out some fabric and crafted up a quick baby doll dress for Gator's baby. She seemed to love it, turning the baby over in her hands for a full 15 seconds before she told me she was all done. Ah, toddlerhood.

I've started in on a couple other things that I've been lusting over at Pinterest. That site is as addictive as Facebook without feeling so voyeuristic. Thank goodness new different obsessions.

Look forward to hearing more from me soon; especially with Christmas in seven weeks. Yeah, I said it.