Hopes for Future Projects

So I haven't posted as often as I normally do this week. I've been pretty busy and next week is looking like that is not going to change a lot. There's been a lot of stress at work, the kids have been eating me out of banana's and milk so I had to make two grocery store trips and Brielle missed her bus one day and another day she was there for  Jr. Beta meeting getting ready to go to the state conference. It's been hectic. Katherine has been sick this past week but just with a cough and runny nose so nothing to keep her home with and it's taken lots of lemon tea with honey and lemon water with honey but we've gotten it to just a very occasional cough but her upper lip is chapped the poor dear. I think I started trying to get about the same thing but I'm pretty stubborn so colds generally leave me alone.

I keep looking outside and thinking to myself. Oh it's pretty! And then I open up the door and I freeze! The sun is nice and bright but it's 33 degrees. I think Kentucky weather is teasing me! Bad weather, bad! No cookie for you!

Next week Brielle goes to the state conference and Katherine has the Daddy Daughter dance to attend; so I'll be bustling around trying to get everyone sorted and prepped.

I am planning some projects though and I was told that the money my husband gave me the other day was actually for valentine's day since he never got me anything so now I have some cash to get what I need I just need the weather that I need to do it!

The first one has to do with these open framed cabinet doors. Yes, these are cabinet doors my mother-in-law gave me and apparently she is giving some to everyone because by the sounds of it she had quite a few of them. I want to either stain them or paint them. I haven't quite decided. I was thinking about trying that penny stain that I saw on pinterest but I remember watching something about that and it only works with older pennies and then I realized I don't even have any pennies! Darn it! I have four of these so I was thinking 1 of them made into a memo board one of those one's you've seen online lately using fabric, batting and ribbon but because these aren't picture frames they don't have a back on them so I'm trying to decide between cardboard backing which is easy enough to make or if I want to wait until this summer and cut some wood backing to make it more stable? I don't know! I was also looking at the ideas for fabric wrapped tin to make it magnetic, chalk board paint and the last one I don't know. Getting a piece of glass cut for it would be expensive. I was thinking I could get some really funky designs and take down the posters over the kids desk and put these up instead.

Ah and here is my next project. What I really want is a pressure canner but my mother-in-law handed my husband a 12 qt pressure cooker. Now mind you this is after the second cleaning just to get it that pretty. It had half an inch of dirt crusted on the inside and outside and I found a dead preserved lizard in it! EWW! I've been doing a lot of reading on pressure cookers and pressure canners so I'm going to see if there is a way to use a pressure cooker for canning because that is what I actually really want to do. I'm going to clean it up some more and then I'm going to test it out because that's the only way I know of to check to see if the seal is okay.

I'm also wanting to play with soaps some more. I've been doing more reading on different types of soaps and reactions. According to one site my addition of baking soda actually was counter productive. It's hard to say. I also know my friends really like liquid soaps better so I'm looking into that. It's all very research driven right now. I will say this though I've taken my dish soap down to 1 TBSP per load and it seems to be doing just fine which means it is a huge cost saver but I'm still not 100% impressed with the quality of the dishes. After 5 loads or so they start to show some fogginess but that's okay for right now. They are clean at least. Now if I had to rewash them I'd be jumping up and down and yelling!

That's pretty much it. As you can tell my head is spinning and I'm trying to take the day off for the most part. I'll try to catch up on a few things around the house that have fallen to pieces but no real plans to go out and do anything. Some time off would be good for all of us. This is the first weekend in nearly two months Brielle hasn't even had homework on the weekend! So relaxing is in order!

-- Maybe I'll get back my knitting I put it down two weeks ago and haven't gotten back to it yet.--

Have a great weekend folks!