Laundry Update

So recently my friend Kim asked for a update on the homemade laundry detergent. Since i was needing to make a new batch i figured now was the time to fill you in on what i thought. The first thing i would say is that it is so fast and easy to make, especially when you have little helpers. I watched the clock and from start to finish, grating the soap to putting the lid on the finished bucket, it only took 30 minutes to make. Fast right?

We discovered after the very first load that our clothes were not only clean but they were softer, and i don't use any fabric softener ever....it was just the wonderful result of the detergent. So far i have no complaints...it really does clean and it lasts a long time and it is inexpensive besides. There is little to no scent, which i don't mind. My mother has been converted and says the same, things get clean and are softer. And my sister was also planning on making some of her own.

The kids love helping...Avery said it was like prairie day when they had to make their own soap. She even asked if we could make our own shampoo...i am going to look into that but am not sure. So, Kim when are you going to make yourself a batch!!!???

Trying Homemade

Do you know what you do with all these little ingredients..?.. you make homemade laundry detergent! I have been wanting to do this for a really long time. I should have taken a picture of all the laundry soap bottles i have been saving for this.

Before Avery was even out of her jammies she was wanting to know what i was doing and if she could help. So i put that girl to work grating the soap.

After breakfast she ran upstairs and got dressed, including her apron. We have been giving thought to doing Prairie day once a week or every other and this was a great start because you know those pioneers did not go to the grocery store to buy laundry detergent...so we talked about this a little while mixing it up with apron on.

We found a easy to follow recipe at A Familiar Path, and her links directed me to this blog where I found her recipe simple, fast and fun. Initially i was nervous that i might have messed it up because it was pretty thin and had bubbles on top, but as the day went on and it cooled down it began to gel and thicken. Now i have to do a test run. I am terrified that i am going to walk away and then find my laundry room overtaken with bubbles.

And i did not need to save those bottles because as it is now it will probably not transfer well....perhaps i will just be scooping it out of the big bucket.

Changes

When we think about making changes within our family to be more environmentally friendly i know that we have to make those changes one step at a time. My sister and i talk about this a lot, the idea that you can not necessarily make all the changes at once. You make gradual changes, that way you are not totally overwhelmed. SO over time we have made some, like cloth instead of paper napkins, lots of recycling, washing and reusing plastic storage bags, hanging clothes on the line, using no phosphate in detergents and a few more. But this is our latest change. We got rid of our emission making lawnmower and now are the proud owners of this beauty...a push mower.

We don't have a very big lawn, so that helped when making this change. Even better, the kids can help mow the lawn! I love this bottom picture of Mitchell. He looks so concerned about all the clippings in the bag. It makes this great whirring sound when you push it. I must admit that it was fun to use. Chris was laughing at me as i was jogging across the lawn with it. It is good to be able to teach this to my kids. They are very aware of their environment and nature and we had a long conversation in the car the other night about how we can stop pollution. The conversation was brought on by one of them asking ,"what can i do to make pollution go away?", after we had smelled a stinky car and mitch wanted to know if that was pollution he could see coming out of cars....my basic answer was this, that we should just start by making the little changes and if we all do that someday it will add up to big changes and maybe we can be part of the difference. Now Mitchell says he is the nature police...aka ranger.

Christmas Thrill!!

We laid out a plate of cookies for Santa... with a note carefully written by Avery. We even included a little cheese since we were snacking on it as we made the plate!!
This was a smaller and more simple christmas for us. I confess that it was a little more than i had intended. i really was trying to stick to the poem "something they want, something they need, some kind of toy and something to read"...it was my intention, along with doing lots of homemade gifts. But the move cramped my brain so severely that i did not remember to even buy gifts for my children until 3 days before christmas. yikes!! it was a close call.
But they were thrilled despite my personal efforts being thwarted. Everyone had a good time, you can see. I love the faces.

they were moving so fast i barely was able to get this picture.

I was pretty excited to be able to use my stash of christmas fabric to wrap their gifts this year. it was so nice and such a relief to me to only have half a brown bag of garbage instead of the usual giant plastic garbage bag. I will do that again...and again....i better go get me some more fabric, on sale of course!!

Aunt Colleen did have a homemade holiday and made these great superhero capes for the kids... thanks Aunt Colleen.

Who knew that a calendar could be that exciting, but they loved it!! Mitch loved his hammering toy....real nails and a hammer is a 4 year olds dream!! He has been playing with it constantly. I would gladly take the sound of hammering over the noise of obnoxious plastic noisy toys.

Green Guilt

WARNING! crazy Leslie moment to follow. Did you know that they have psychiatrist/psychologists now that are "green". Green, like they are treating all of us out there who have enviornmental guilt. You know, you want to make some kind of a change but are totally overwhelmed by the enormity of it, then you are eaten up with guilt hoping that you are making the right decisions. i confess, sometimes i think i should see one....i get the guilt over silly things. Like for example, i had these old undershirts that i was going to throw away. I kept throwing them in the garbage can and then coming back and taking them out because i just had this nagging feeling that i could find a new life for them...something else that they could be. It would have been easy to just toss them but i conquered the guilt and cut them up to make cleaning rags. Reusing and i don't have to fill a landfill with all my paper towels. Phew, i feel much better now.

Homemade

"Making our own" has been a regular topic around here. Sometimes it feels healthier and sometimes it seems more frugal. Yesterday i made a trip to the grocery store with Avery and the whole time she did not stop talking about how we should make things from scratch because it is better for us, and that we should not eat so much sugar(amen little one, we are trying), and that wheat bread is better for us than white(we will give it a go since she is the one that does not like wheat), and then some. So when we walked down the salad dressing aisle i was about to get some and she announced that this would be something that would be better if we made it ourselves....homemade, from scratch salad dressing. Ok!!! I remembered that i had seen a simple recipe for dressing on this great blog. I have made something like it before but it had been awhile. So....

Last night for dinner we gave it a try. I was doing it myself but then i thought i would get Mitch in on the action. He was getting a little antsy before dinner and getting into trouble so it just seemed like a good idea to give him a project to keep him occupied. I sat him down and made him my official dressing shaker. He did the job well. Chris and I thought it was great...the kids ate it even though it is very different from the white dressing they are used to. It is nice to make changes even one little one at a time.

Crafty bits...

look at it...isn't it cute and so so tiny. A little mini pincushion ring. I think i am going to store it away in Avery's sewing box. I just love how tiny it is.

The idea was from and inspired by a blog post i had seen at this blog. It is adorable. I thought that if i tried doing it with a yo-yo instead of cutting a little piece of fabric and then trying to sew it on that it might be something i could possibly make. It worked. And the base of it is one of those little milk/cream carton sealers that you pull to open. What a good way to reuse something. It fits right over your finger, and as a bonus the little plastic piece on the inside keep you from stabbing yourself in the finger every time you use a pin.

i made another bag too, surprise!. I hunted high and low for fabric to use on this one and could not find anything i was happy with...but this little green floral was way at the bottom of one the piles on my fabric shelf, and it spoke to me! Use me it said....so i did.

Headband Happiness

i saw this project a few weeks ago(here) and wanted to give it a try. It seemed like a fun and easy idea. I always wish i could think this stuff up, but it seems i can only follow directions. Yesterday i gave it a try. I think it took me a whole whopping 15 minutes of work. The only thing that is keeping me from making a ton more for Avery and myself is that i am terrified of my sewing machine. In my opinion it is very tempermental and i am always afraid of projects that have much thickness to sew through....it clunks a little. This was made from scraps of a vintage pillowcase. I had some left over from a sheet swap i joined. It is reversible too. I think she loves it. She even planned todays outfit around it.

My Bag of Tricks

I love a surprise....I love a surprise visit, a surprise package in the mail, and i really love a surprise sale! But I don't like a sewing surprise. Because that can never be good! But this time i was thrilled with a sewing surprise. It made me smile. It was so unexpected!

I was making this bag in fact with a surprise sale on that brown linen...and the circles are re-purposed dinner napkins that i got at goodwill(calling them reused makes it sound like they were dirty, but no they were brand new). How cool is that? I was not using a pattern. I just started cutting and got all my pieces sewn together when i got my surprise....it is reversible!! It was a total accident. I love it when stuff like that happens.When you reverse it you have this very substantial pocket now on the inside. Yeah!! So, Colleen, is about this size good?

Now i must give props to my third bag model of the week. I had to put this last picture in because he was now modeling only the way a three year old does. He was tired of standing so nice, and taking pretty pictures....here he was about to pitch it right into the grass!

Reuse and Recycle

We traded out our summer clothes with our winter clothes, and had the beginning of the summer fashion show to see what still fit and what didn't. Avery was sad that her favorite pink shorts did not fit her anymore. So, we decided to recycle them, and make them into something new. With a little help from me, and her super duper Hello Kitty sewing machine we made them into a new bag for collecting treasures when we go on walks, hikes or geocaching. These pictures were taken right before she and Chris went on a all afternoon geocaching adventure to Peebles Island. Avery picked out the strap and rick rack to get sewn on it to make her strap...all color choices were her own! Here is a little bit from our guest blogger..."I had a really fun time making my bag. It was fun because i got to choose the stuff for my strap, and that day i was really excited because i got to go on a trip with Daddy with my new bag. I made it from my favorite pair of shorts, because i wanted to keep them. So mommy had the idea that i could make my own bag out of it." All we did was turn those shorts inside out, I drew her a straight line on the fabric to guide her sewing. She made the straight stitch, and we cut the extra off with a rotary cutter. Sew the strap on and presto, you have a brand new treasure bag!! Good job Avery.

First Taste

It is here!! Our first veggie pick-up was today at the CSA farm.

We got spinach and mesclun(we think), bok choi, radishes, romaine lettuce,cilantro and fresh eggs(grass fed and free to roam), with a little note inside that said they were laid with love by Becky, Debbie, Peggy and Jenny.

Here are the kids having their first taste. I sliced up some radishes and we went for it. As you can see, they were a little too spicy for M.

My goal is to eat our way through that box before next weeks pick-up on Wednesday. I think we can do it.I am feeling good about it! I have been checking out all kinds of sources to find recipes for what to do with what we have(thanks Colleen...she is a veteran box getter and has much more experience). I hope that i will have some exciting new recipes to share here. As for tonight, we promptly made a salad and enjoyed every bite!

Fun at the Farm

Sunday we were able to go to the farm and meet the farmers who are supplying our vegetables this summer. We joined a CSA (community supported agriculture, for those who may not be familiar with that acronym) back in March. This farm has 300 plus members and has 150 acres to farm naturally. We received a invitation this week to meet the farmers and tour the farm. We were all pretty excited to go. It is beautiful there. Quiet and peaceful, down a long winding country road, past a waterfall and several other little farms. Idyllic! We really felt that getting local produce and supporting a local farm this way was a step in the right direction for us. I think we were right. We get our first box this week. I am excited and nervous. Imagine all the things we might have in there every week, that we maybe have not heard of before or have at least not cooked with before. But maybe the kids will have a new favorite vegetable because of this. Even if they don't i am certain that they will have lots of wonderful farm experiences there this summer. The farm really encourages families to come and visit, maybe have a picnic...which i am sure we will get to do more than once since we will be there once a week at the least. We also have the opportunity to help on the farm, either with weeding, harvesting or making the prepared vegetable boxes. Chris is most excited about the working part of this. The kids are really excited to feed the chickens and visit the goats. Yesterday we watched the kids play in the water for awhile, but Chris could not stand it, he had to take his shoes and socks off and get right in there with them. That is when they found the little "crawdad". Cute little guy, huh? I love the picture of Avery and Mitch walking down that dirt road. You can see he had a great time in the water by the wet pants. He kept forgetting to bend, not squat, in the water. Silly baby.