Browsing the archives for the Crafty category.

Week Nine Resolution Check In

Churchy, Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids, Marriage

Wait a minute! Nine weeks already?!

It’s almost like time passes even faster when you’re watching it. Or at least when you’re tracking what you’re trying to accomplish and finally really realize how quickly a week can fly by. We completely lost week eight to a nasty bug that tore through our sinuses. Since moving to California, we have had about one cold a year, and this year really hurt. Two out of five have sinus infections, two went mostly unaffected and the last one to catch it is still fighting it. Week nine was mostly a week of doctor and pharmacy visits and recovery and I am so grateful that we live nearby to our general practitioner, our pediatrician and a 24 hour pharmacy!

Not much was accomplished in the way of working on the blog or editing the family photo site, though I’ll go over that stuff anyway. I was sick, so guess what? I knitted a lot! Yay sick knitting! The one upside to being sick is that since I am fairly on top of things otherwise, I can slack a little when I’m sick and our lives don’t fall apart.

Here we go, week nine! I am still striving to get this out on Fridays, though that has only happened once so far. 😉

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
We were almost exactly a week ahead and then last week we were all attacked by the worst head cold we have ever had and cashed in all that extra work! So once we finish Monday’s work, we’ll work a little on Tuesday until we are ahead again. It was such a blessing to be able to not stress over school work while caring for sick kids and dealing with a pounding sinus headache.

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail.
Doing several things rushed or halfway is worse than not doing them at all. So, yeah. I give up on this one guys.

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
I made no progress at all this week, but last week I actually did get most of the index pages up for each section that was missing one and I converted a load of wmas. Maybe I’ll even end up uploading them next week! HA!

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I love it. It’s so neat!

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
Ok so I am still not on Facebook. My issue is that after three months away from it, I can see how it was bad for me but I can also see that a lot of the ‘but how will we keep in touch?’ concerns from friends and family were true. I spent a lot of unnecessary time on Facebook when I’m sure I should have been doing more productive things. Closets usually need straightening, bathrooms need scrubbing, that kind of thing. At the same time, I miss seeing my Texan girl Jennifer’s posts of her kids who I miss so so so much and I miss getting rando messages from my uncle in law about everything that is going on in our absence. There are a lot of friends and family that are just not on other social media and either don’t have a smart phone or don’t use an IM apps on their phone. Who does that, right? Most of our family, that’s who! I’m not sold on rejoining Facebook, but I’m leaning towards a totally locked down profile with no extras.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I only blogged once this week. Ahem.

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
My shopping trip to Home Depot was postponed so I could nurse my sinuses but I know what I need for the lightbox and staging! I may just give up on actually going to Home Depot and order it! This tile is meant to be a backsplash but a few of them together would make a pretty backdrop for a black plate. I also really love this black and grey tile for bright knitting. I am going to get these and a couple others to play with this month and see how they look.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight – not posted
Week Nine – coming later

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week One – Nutella Icebox Cake
Week Two – Orange Creamsicle cake
Week Three – White Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes
Week Four – Pink Lemonade cupcakes
Week Five – Red Velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese icing)
Week Six – Dark Chocolate cake with Strawberry Filling
Week Seven – Pink Strawberry cake with Strawberry Frosting
Week Eight – Dutch Buttercake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
One upside to my sinus infection over the last two weeks has been a lot of knitting! I am almost finished the socks I casted on in January and then promptly dropped for school and life in general. Then I can cast on and knit the socks I should have knitted last month. Whoops.

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
Still working on puffs!! Making a dent in the additional 100 that I need for the quilt.

I also said I was going to replace alcohol with coffee and I still haven’t had any alcohol since just before Christmas! I get my bloodwork done every 3 or 4 months to make sure my thyroid medication is still doing what it’s supposed to so I’ve been trying to meet my vitamin and mineral levels since I get to see them a few times a year. I had my bloodwork done in January and I will go back in April so we’ll see then how I’ve done so far.

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Week Six Resolution Check In

California, Crafty, Domestic, Homeschooling, Kids

Every week, I’m looking at my goals for the year and going over my progress one at a time in an attempt to help me achieve them. I intend to do these on Fridays, but I’ve only managed to get it out on a Friday once. This weekend marks the end of the 6th week, the year started on a Wednesday so for this purpose and for counting cake weeks, I’m totally ignoring that week. 😉

I skipped last week because the transition from homeschooling through the local school board to doing it through California Virtual Academy has been more challenging than we had anticipated, but I think we are ironed out the issues in our schedule.

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
This was my original resolution related to school and then we started a new program (which we love, hooray for California Virtual Academy) and our goal became to stay on top of the new schedule. After two full weeks of this program, we’re finding a groove and we are able to get a little ahead of schedule to allow for some wiggle room and we have found time for review to make sure the new concepts are really sinking in. Today we were working on some assignments due on Tuesday (we don’t have classes or assignments this Monday), so we are barely one day ahead, but given how challenging the move from standard to advanced curriculum has been I think a day is pretty good. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we’ll be an entire week ahead. 😉

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter an email.
I hate to admit that I can’t follow through with something but it’s so much worse to do too many things half way. I’m learning my limits and I’m changing this resolution to sending everyone an email on their birthday. The idea behind the resolution in the first place was to stay in touch with long distance family and friends outside of holidays.

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
I went to start working on this last week and I came across a whole lot of messy code I had left for myself. My husband made it easy to include php files for me (because he is the raddest) making updating so, so, so much easier, but I am going through my folders of pictures to untangle the mess. It should be another few days of sorting through it all before I can actually start adding new photos and videos.

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
Still doing it, it’s so cute!

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
Still not on Facebook! It’s funny though how many people are almost personally offended and ask how we’ll be able to stay in touch without out it! You can just email or text or even use Instagram or Twitter or Tumblr! I have also been asked what triggered the decision to quit, like it had to be some big event and my solution to it is quitting. Really, it all boils down to a pretty simple concept that we all already know. Without Facebook, the shelf life of some friendships (and most acquaintanceships?) would be a lot shorter. It is such a cultural norm to add acquaintances on Facebook from your neighbors to people you haven’t seen in 10 years to randos from the gym and on and on. I had quite a collection of acquaintances that I really didn’t want to have, but every time I deleted someone, I’d get a message from them asking why I deleted them. As if knowing that we haven’t spoken, even online, in years isn’t reason enough.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
Yikes, I only blogged once this week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I have been looking online at Home Depot to find some plain tiles to use as backgrounds in food photography. Still need to research more.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week One – Nutella Icebox Cake
Week Two – Orange Creamsicle cake
Week Three – White Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes
Week Four – Pink Lemonade cupcakes
Week Five – Red Velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese icing)
Week Six – Dark Chocolate cake with Strawberry Filling

10. participate in sockdown 2014
I mentioned last update that January’s techniques were lace and intarsia, and that I went with lace since I’m still fighting with epic intarsia socks. I have hardly knitted at all in February – I haven’t even finished January’s socks! Tonight is a marathon knitting fest, if I finish January’s socks this week, I’ll cast on and try to finish February’s socks.

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket, maybe another 90 or so to go? I laid out my 360 puffs to see how big the finished blanket would be with just that many and decided I’d need about 100 more. I’ll check again when I have another 100 to add.

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Week Three Resolution Check In

California, Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

Every week, I’m looking at my goals for the year and going over my progress one at a time in an attempt to help me achieve them. I intend to do these on Fridays, but you know…

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule stay on top of our new homeschool schedule and attend social events
We have been struggling with wanting to send our kids to school so they have a ‘normal childhood experience’ and with wanting to keep them home because we have seen the benefits (both academically and socially believe it or not) that have come from homeschooling. We have finally found a hybrid alternative with an online virtual school. We finished up our last day with the LAUSD’s ISP program on Friday and we start the new program today! We have chosen this both because while the kids are still at home and have our full support, they are lead by teachers online which is especially helpful for our oldest who is in his last year of middle school and will soon be tackling subjects I’m a little rusty with. Trigonometry, anyone? And also because this program has field trips and social events with the whole group which is really the only thing lacking in the program we are were using. There is a high school graduation ceremony and even proms, sporting events and dances. Who knows if they will want to do any of that, but having the option is what matters. I’m changing this resolution because as far as I can tell, you can’t get ahead of schedule with this program. If one of the kids understands a concept already or catches on right away, they are able to move on to the next concept. Once we start I will be better able to know how to word this goal!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
I think I will make a little page to keep track of the birthdays and the cards we send out to see it coming together. Last week we sent out cards to my dad and Melissa. This week we sent out cards to my husband’s long time friend Jon and the first friend I made online (waaay back in 2001) Nichole. I should note that these four always get birthday cards. I am usually really good about this until sometime in March or April. Then I tend to totally forget about it. I know, terrible! So far, so good!

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
It is so embarrassingly behind! I haven’t touched it at all this year. :/

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I’ve been keeping up with just writing a line about what we did each day! This will be especially cute next year so we can look back and see what we were doing a year ago. Cute! I got index cards and a date stamp, and have been pretty good about making notes every day.

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
I currently only use social media as ‘soverydomestic’ and so most of what I post and do is blog related (though really, since this blog is mostly about what I make and do, it’s kind of the same thing).

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I blogged 4 times last week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
Next week? I didn’t even think of this much this week.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week Three – Neapolitan Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
This month’s techniques are lace and intarsia – and since I’m still working on my Ravenclaw Pride socks, I went with lace. The pattern, Anna, is a 10 row repeat with something a little different on the first row! You knit two stitches together, leave them on the left hand needle and then knit just the first stitch and slip both new stitches off. What? Really simple and looks good. It has a 33 row cuff which is something that would probably dissuade me from wanting to knit these socks, but once I saw the cuff coming together I loved it!

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket

I also planned to replace alcohol with coffee, I thought it was a great idea and then my husband who drinks alcohol only once every few years, suggested we start having a drink with dinner. We had both recently read about a slew of health benefits to having one drink a day. So maybe we’ll alter that to having one a day and try to make it fun? I should note that 27 days into the new year and neither of us has had any alcohol so who knows which way we’ll go with that.

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January Socks

Crafty

One of my resolutions this year (#10) is to participate in Sockdown 2014. It technically goes from August to August, but I’m aiming to participate from January to December. Hopefully, I will keep it rolling after that. As soon as I started knitting, I wanted to learn to how knit socks because it seemed so cool – I still think it is so cool! Five sticks and a really long piece of string = socks. So neat!

Each month sockdown has one or two techniques, two designers, and a mystery sock. You can pick any one you want, and there are a lot of options there. This month the two techniques are lace and intarsia and I went with lace. I picked Anna by Barbara Richardson. It’s knitting up nicely! I mainly work on it while I sit and watch our oldest at jiu jitsu at night and then late night when everyone else is in bed. Gotta fit it in whenever I can!

I am aware I’m a day late for Work in Progress Wednesday – let’s just gloss over that and I will explain why I’ve had big plans but have been stumbling a bit tomorrow. 😉

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Resolutions 2014 Edition

California, Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

I’m a big fan of setting goals and working hard to achieve them. Some of the biggest goals I’ve had and achieved were not resolutions at all, but I do love the ‘fresh start’ feeling of January, even though it’s already 1/4 of the way through the school year and doesn’t really actually change anything. Ahem. I love January! Resolutions are fun and I usually set a few for the blog and for my knitting and so far I’ve come pretty close to doing what I set out to do. The only times I really fall short of the goals set in January is when I unexpectedly set harder goals halfway through the year and kick my own butt to reach them. You know, like moving to a different country or homeschooling.

Two years ago, I listed all of my goals for the year (2012) in my blog sidebar and achieved almost all of them. Last year, I blogged a list of goals for 2013 but I didn’t add them to the sidebar and I mostly didn’t do them. I think I need the visual reminder. This year I will add them to the sidebar and use that to keep track of them. 🙂

I think I will even set aside a day once a week where I post about them and how it is going. I have noticed that while most of my new visitors are not so into commenting, you’re there and knowing you’re reading is helpful motivation.

Personal Goals
1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
5. quit social media that’s not blog related (this is part of a bigger move to be more present in all of my relationships)

Professional Goals
6. blog 3-5 times a week
7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography

Fun Stuff
8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 (inspired by Miss James)
9. bake a cake every weekend (hoping to match my record in 2009 when I baked more than one pie every weekend)
10. participate in sockdown 2014 aka knit as many socks as possible (technically it goes August to August, but you can jump in whenever)
11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt, I have all my puffs knitted I just have to piece it together

Miscy changes that are not really resolutions…
I’m replacing alcohol with coffee this year. Which really isn’t much of a stretch for me since I used to never drink at all and now my California bestie is more interested in coffee than cocktails!
My doctor gives me a print out of my blood work, which is new for me as none of my other doctors have ever done that, and I’m a little obsessed with stats, so I’m working on my vitamin levels and cholesterol (it’s not bad but it would be nice to make it even better).

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Knitted Advent Countdown

Crafty, Kids

I’m late to the game on this one, but it was just too cute and too fun to wait till next year!

While stocking up on yarn in November for my annual knitting marathon (every evening in November and December) at Knit Picks, I came across this pattern for Smitten, a Holiday Garland and, naturally, I bought everything I needed for it that very second. So so so cute!

From http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/smitten-a-holiday-garland

Rounds 1-8: *K1, P1 repeat from * to end of round (8 rounds of ribbing)
Switch to stockinette and begin the body of the mitten
Round 9: K3, M1R, K6, M1R, K6, M1L, K6, M1L, K3 (28 sts)
Round 10: Knit
Round 11: K12, M1R, K4, M1L, K12
Rounds 12-15: Knit (4 rounds)
Round 16: K12, M1R, K6, M1L, K12
Rounds 17-19: Knit (3 rounds)
Round 20: K12, M1R, K8, M1L, K12
Rounds 21-22 Knit (2 rounds)
Round 23: K12 and move them onto needle 1, K10, move the remaining 2 stitches on needle 2
onto needle 3 for safe keeping (12-10-12)
Work back and forth on the 10 stitches on needle 2 to make the thumb.
Row 1 (WS): Purl
Row 2: Knit
Row 3: P2TOG 5 times
Break yarn, leaving a 6″ tail.
Draw the tail through the live stitches of the thumb, pull up and secure.
The tail will be used to sew up the side of the thumb when finishing.
Continue Round 23 by attaching the yarn at the beginning of needle three and knitting all of
the stitches on it.
Rearrange stitches evenly on three needles and mark start of round if needed. (8-8-8)
Round 24-30: Knit (7 rounds)
Round 31: SSK twice, K6, K2TOG, SSK, K6, K2TOG twice (18 sts)
Round 32: Knit
Round 33: *K2TOG repeat from * to end of round (9 sts)
Break yarn, draw tail through the remaining stitches, pull up and secure. Hide tail inside.
Using the tail on the thumb, sew up the side of the thumb. Yarn can be knotted with the cast on
tail (mid-round 23) at the thumb joint to secure. Hide the yarn ends inside.
Fold the end of the i-cord to the mitten cuff and sew in place with the cast-on tail to form a loop
for hanging. Weave in (or hide) all yarn ends.

I knitted them up over the course of a few nights at the end of November. You just knit 24 tiny mittens, feel free to use whatever colors go with the room you’re putting this in or just whatever makes you happy. I used six different colors, so I made four of each. I used Knit Picks worsted weight yarn Swish in Serrano (holly red), Rouge (pink), Honey (yellow), Gulfstream (bright blue), Dublin (green) and Amethyst Heather (purple). Each mitten has it’s own little i-cord knitted into the cuff to hang! Then you knit a long i-cord to hang them all from, I also used Split Rings to mark the countdown.

Knitted Advent Countdown
Knitted Advent Countdown
Knitted Advent Countdown Knitted Advent Countdown

Instead of putting candy or toys inside (we have a few advent calendars, our kids are big on counting down and we didn’t want to add any more trinkets or candy to our lives), my husband and I dreamed up 24 fun activities and opened these cute little characters in Photoshop and got to work. We printed them, cut them out, rolled them and tied them with red curling ribbon. Then we stuffed each mitten with an activity! The kids have such a blast picking out the activity for the day and since we know what they are, we can make sure we are prepared for them!

Knitted Advent Countdown
Knitted Advent Countdown

When we’re done, I’ll post pictures of all the activities we did! Here is the list:
1 – write letters to Santa
2 – make paper snowflakes
3 – make paper chain dolls
4 – bake bread
5 – make cinnamon ornaments
6 – read Christmas stories
7 – Christmas movie marathon
8 – make homemade marshmallows
9 – paint Christmasy pictures
10 – make hot chocolate balls
11 – have an M&M race (more on this later)
12 – make Borax snowflakes
13 – decorate a gingerbread house
14 – play minute it win it games
15 – make snow globes
16 – make botttlecap snowmen
17 – make gifts for each other
18 – make window clings
19 – make gingerbread and star garland
20 – try a new recipe
21 – make a huge blanket fort in the living room
22 – watch The Polar Express and drink hot chocolate
23 – play reindeer games
24 – read The Night Before Christmas

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Salt Dough Gift Tags and Ornaments

Crafty

Salt dough is great for making super cute personalized gift tags or you can make ornaments and decorate them however you want! I have made this recipe into so many different shapes for both gift tags and ornaments. Our girls made really elaborate, sparkley, seriously blinged out ornaments to send to their grandparents and aunties back home and I will post those later this month. I made some bright red gift tags a couple of years ago for the kid’s friends at school. There were a lot of steps to it, but most of the time was in waiting for the paint or mod podge to dry. I made the dough, cut out a zillion stars and painted one side red. Waited for them to dry. Then painted the other side red. Waited for that to dry. Then I used a paintbrush to paint on the initial of the recipient in glue and covered it in glitter. Waited for the glue to dry. Covered that side in mod podge. Waited for that to dry. Then I mod podged the back and once that finally dried I tied some red yarn through the hole to hang them from. So cute! Seeing them again makes me want to make more!


This year for gift tags I’m going more rustic because of a really cute alphabet stamp set I found on Etsy. I bought them specifically to use with food so while these gift tags don’t really count as food, they have never had any ink on them so there is no residue. If you choose to use stamps for letters try to wash off any ink that may be stuck inside them first.

Salt Dough

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup water

This is incredibly easy and while I always start with this general recipe, I also always add more flour. Preheat the oven first, to 250. Just mix the flour, salt and water with the hook attachment on your mixer or by hand for a few minutes and then turn it out onto a floured surface and keep kneading it until it’s elasticy. You will likely need to add more flour to make it smooth. It will be sticky, don’t panic, just keep kneading in more flour until it’s almost like play doh. Now you can roll it out and cut out whatever shapes you like. If you’re going to use stamps or something to make indentations in the dough, do it before you bake. Don’t bake glitter or other embellishments because they will end up melty and gross, not at all cute. Also, make sure you poke a hole in the tops of these babies before you bake them! A plastic straw is the perfect size.

 

Bake for about 2 hours and then let them cook before you paint, glitter, mod podge or whatever.

There are so many ways to dress these up and so many other kinds of dough you can make for different kinds of ornaments. We are going to do some crafty kitchen experiments this weekend to see what kinds of dough work the best.

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First Day Teacher Gifts

Crafty, Kids

Today is the first day of school across the LAUSD – for the homeschoolers as well! In our case, we check in with one elementary school teacher and one middle school teacher so we have the same teachers as last year! Fun! I pulled together a couple of sweet ideas I had pinned a while ago to usher in the new school year right.

A lot of homeschoolers don’t like working with their school boards, and I’m not really sure why. I love having teachers to go to with questions about the kid’s work and also being able to work closely with them in an independent study program is wonderful because we can tailor projects and activities to fit them while at the same time working in a school situation that comes with report cards and transcripts!

One of our daughters, Wee One #2 has been working hard over the last year to fast track through second and third grade. She has just a couple of months left in 3rd grade and then she’ll be able to start on 4th. Thankfully, we have the same teacher until 5th grad to help us get through the process! She’s a really sweet person and a great teacher!

She drinks coffee and we have a similar sense of humor so I thought she’d both find this gift funny and useful. It a 16oz Starbucks mug filled with Starbucks instant French Roast coffee packets. The little note is a reproduction I’ve seen all over Pinterest – a little something to get you back to the grind. That’s delicious cheese, amirite?!

The VIA packets are shorter than the cup and didn’t look very pretty at first so I turned a paper Starbucks espresso cup upside down in it and put the packets on top of that so they stuck out more. I have yet to knit with this yarn, but I used a little Biggo yarn in Dogwood Heather from Knit Picks to attach the note (which is just cut out and backed onto brown card stock).

First Day Teacher Gifts

Our oldest’s teacher has been amazing in helping us with the transition to homeschooling a middle schooler, which is an entirely different beast than homeschoooling an elementary aged child! He has the same passion for art that our son has so they hit it off right away. So much in fact, that he’s comfortable calling him if he has questions about an assignment or if he just wants to clarify something. Such a great benefit to independent study!

I hope he likes this little something, I know he likes plants and since he’s working with older kids whose attention can be even harder to hold than small children, hopefully his note will speak to him. 🙂 Teachers plant seeds of knowledge that will grow forever. I went with a cactus since it’s pretty hard to kill them and it went with the whole ‘forever’ theme!

To decorate the pot the cactus came in, I glued pages from the world’s most pathetic dictionary* (the word teach isn’t even in it) to the sides and attached his card stock-backed note with some backyard rope.

First Day Teacher Gifts

I mention that it was a terrible dictionary because the idea of ripping pages from a dictionary (or any book really) totally horrifies me. It had no words between tea and team, for example. It also had a ‘computer terminology’ page at the very back with terms like ‘USB’ and ‘internet’. My husband insisted I laminate it so he could take it to work with him because he is a hilariously ironic dude when he wants to be.

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Homemade Laundry Soap!

Crafty, Domestic

I have seen recipes for homemade laundry soap around on Pinterest and some of my favorite blogs for at least a year, and while I made soap with my girl Vanessa last year, I had never attempted to make it. Last week I hit the bottom of my 2 gallon tub of bulk laundry soap and texted my dear friend Sammie for her recipe because she’s been making and using her own soap for a while and has had great success.

Initially, I was going to use a liquid recipe because I only use liquid soap but Sammie and I had both read that oftentimes the liquid soap gets gloopy and stuck together. So, powdered it is, and then my husband had the idea to mix the powder with a little water before adding it to the washer. Perfect!

Homemade Laundry Soap
The recipe for it is insanely easy. Just grate two bars of Ivory soap and mix it up with a cup of washing soda and a cup of Borax. Seriously, that’s it!

Homemade Laundry Soap
Homemade Laundry Soap
Homemade Laundry Soap

What really matters to be, aside from the obvious savings, does it work?

Honestly? I feel that it works better than any other laundry soap I’ve ever used. I know that seems crazy, but I think it’s the washing soda really lifting the dirt off. I washed three different loads of laundry to put it to the test.

In my first load with this soap, I washed Wee One #3’s laundry. She basically spends all her free time either painting up a storm or playing in the dirt in the backyard. There was a shirt covered in day-old paint and a dress covered in serious dirt from earlier that day. No pre-treating with either, I just threw all the laundry in the washer, topped it with 2 tablespoons of soap mixed with about 1/2 cup warm water. Everything came out bright and clean and smelled just clean without smelling like that fake clean smell, you know?

The second load included a pair of my husband’s pants. He is always brushing up against the truck when he gets in and out of it and ends up with grease on his pant legs on the regular. Ugh. Regular laundry soap almost never gets it out on the first try. Usually, I just pretreat it before I wash it, but that’s not really the most convenient thing. So this time around I put the rest of his laundry basket in the washer, topped it with the same 2 tablespoons of soap mixed with about 1/2 cup warm water but I also rubbed some of that soap into the grease on the pants. This grease had sat for at least a day, maybe two before I did this. I saw it start to lift off as I rubbed the soap into it. Whaaaat? That’s pretty incredible!

The third load was all about smell and maybe sweat stains too. Apologies to Wee One #1, who is not at all wee anymore. He just turned 13 and took up jiu jitsu early this year. He puts in a lot of hard work and training four days a week, and you know, that leads to a lot of sweat! So I was hoping for both a clean smell and no yellowing of the fabric! Guess what? It totally worked! It smelled clean without the factory clean smell and his gi is as white and sparkly as when he got it!

This recipe is officially a win. I’ll never buy laundry soap again, it took less than 10 minutes to grate the bars of soap and mix it together. One box of washing soda will do several batches, one box of Borax will do even more and you can easily buy bars of soap in larger quantities, but even at 3 bars per package, three packages would do more than four batches. Keeping extra bars on hand just means when you run out, you can easily make more right away!

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Tissue Paper Puffs

Crafty, Kids

Today, I am linking up with Keeping it Simple, Skip to My Lou, Boogieboard Cottage, Craft-o-Matic, Making the World Cuter and C.R.A.F.T. There are so many creative and fun projects in these link ups!

I have a soft spot for old school birthday parties at home. I mean, yeah we have had a few Chuck E Cheese parties in our day and it’s always really temping to just throw a few hundred dollars at an indoor playspace and hit the bakery but you know me. I … just … can’t. I really love the feeling of a houseful of kids, homemade decorations and a crazy towering homemade cake. Originally, we had planned a party in Santa Monica at Pacific Park and we ended up getting passes for the girls and doing that as a family, and throwing an old school party at home instead.

Wee One #3 invited her little posse of four year olds and when I asked her to pick a color she picked ‘rainbows’ so I went with a mix of mostly primary colors.

These puffs were originally inspired by Martha’s puffs, but these are so much cheaper and so so easy!

Total cost for each puff was only slightly over $1, and these made really big puffs. All you need is a package of tissue paper, a pipe cleaner and a length of ribbon to hang it from. There were 20 pipe cleaners in the package and about 15 yards of ribbon on the spool!

Tissue Paper Puffs
For each:
1 package tisse paper
1 pipe cleaner
1 length ribbon
scissors

First flatten out the tissue paper and then accordion fold it until it’s all folded. Secure it in the middle with a pipe cleaner.
Tissue Paper Puffs
Cut points at each edge and then separate all of the layers of tissue paper. This is the most tedious part and it’s not really all that tedious.
Tissue Paper Puffs
Now, hang them up all over your place! If you use an assorted package of paper, you’ll end up with multicolored puffs like these!

Tissue Paper Puffs

I made this cloud-like puff by not cutting points at the edges, all the other steps are the same.

Tissue Paper Puffs

These last two were made with solid sets of paper and the same method as the multicolored ones with the points. So cute!
Tissue Paper Puffs
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