The Good, the Bad and the Ugly! Adventures in Cleaning Recap

So I've posted a lot of things recently and my most posted on series I suppose you'd call it is Adventures in Cleaning.
It's been a little while so I wanted to give some updates on these items.

Adventures in Cleaning Series

• Laundry Stain Remover - So the jury is still out on this one. I think it did a pretty good job for the impossible task I gave it and the it went over to a friends house for her to try and she said it seemed to do well but I haven't heard from her lately and I don't have it back yet to test again myself. I did notice that it liked to separate so you had to make sure to shake it a little. I would also note this is ammonia based which means KEEP AWAY FROM BLEACH! Otherwise I think it's a keeper. If something changes that opinion you all will be the first to know! 
• Dishwasher Detergent - Failure! I tested for two or three days straight changing amounts trying to get the fog to go down. Problem 1. It likes to clump I solved this on day two with the rice. Problem 2. The lemonade seems drawn to each other and oddly enough different ingredients start separating even though it's powder! Weird! And last but not least Problem 3. Fog! Even after all my experiments the inside of bowls and glasses are clean but for whatever reason the outside gets soap scum, fog and it gets thick! I think I have given up on making my own.  
• Laundry Detergent - Cheep, efficient and has not spiked up any skin allergies. I give this an A+ and it is something I will definitely make again.  
• Cleaning Soak (SUPER Scrubber 9000) - This is my #1 go to when I need to soak the stove grates for gunk I can't just wash off. I've gotten kind of lazy as of late with how it put it together and while it doesn't matter too much you can just throw everything in the sink and darn near at any measurement but the original cleaned the best and I need to stop being a bum and wondering what is wrong even though it works well it isn't ass efficient and that's 100% on me for not mixing it correctly and just tossing random amounts of ingredients into the sink when I get busy. 

I could have sworn I had done more but if I have it's been lost in my posts. I hope to keep up with my adventures in cleaning and even if it's not DIY maybe give a few products the thumbs up. Ones I know I personally swear by are:

• Magic Erasers - Where were these all my life! I have rust and everything in my tub from where I was trying to scrub off soap scum. Now I use a magic eraser and no more damage! I wish I would have known about these! I generally use the off brand and have never had a problem either. 
• Lysol Mold and Mildew Remover - Though I haven't bought some in a little bit I've been just trying bleach solutions because the chalking around my bathtub is notorious for build up and I'm missing my Lysol! You spray it on, walk away for a little bit, walk back and clean it off and things are white again!  Like I said not even a bleach solution works the same so I'm not sure what the Lysol has added to give it that extra umphf. 
• Bounce Dryer Bar - Now I know I can work with dryer sheets and it will be fine and I've even thought about trying to soak a cloth in fabric softener but the dryer bar is my guilty pleasure where I stick it and just forget about it. I don't have to worry about my husband or children forgetting or dealing with all those little white tissues.... ever walk out of the house with one stuck to you? I have! On more than one occasion!

I think that's about it for product placement right now LOL. I did get a sample of some electronic wipes soon so I'll have to try those out too! 

It's My Birthday and I Can Snore If I Want To...

Not really... I wish I could snore but my husband kept me up all night with his snoring so I got about 4 hours of very interrupted rest which means I'm spending my birthday with a headache.... wonderful.

So what have I been up to this week... well a lot of work. I was able to catch a problem (that I didn't know was a problem) at work so I got lots of pats on the back and praise as it's given us time to order in the correct parts for a piping project.

I thought about going in Monday but instead I became determined to fix my paper shredder.

I then started working on a new craft and finished it up today. 

It didn't come out as well as I had hoped but it was my first time trying to make a burlap wreath. By the way burlap smells dead up like motor oil!

Just a quick check-in I think I wanted to write about something else but truthfully my head hurts so much that I can't think clearly.
I'm heading out to meet the ladies from work for my birthday lunch and then out to dinner with the family this evening. I was going to bake my cake but I think I'll cheat and pick one up instead. 

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Go Fly A Kite

We had a very nice weekend weather-wise though Saturday was a bit rough for me because I didn't eat late into the day and that always throws me off with headaches and the like. You'd think would have learned by now.
Saturday we kicked the kids outside to play and I got two of my flower beds weeded. The girls had fun constructing things out of bricks and cardboard to play like an obstacle course with their remote control cars and even though it was in the low 60's we still aired out the house some.
I told myself today I'd get caught up on the house since I didn't yesterday between not feeling well, weeding, cooking out and family movie night but I didn't get to it today. Instead of cleaning we told the house to go fly a kite because that was what we were doing on this blustery day in our neighbors field.

I hope everyone else had a great weekend! And remember the house will always be out there but times like this is what is really important!

Adventures in Cleaning: DIY Stain Remover

It's Friday! Horray! Oh yes it is finally Friday again!
So I ended up working some extra time during the week which meant that I got off early today. I had no clue what to do with myself though so I wandered around the dollar store for half an hour and then the grocery store and picked up a couple odds and ends for cleaning.
On the 18th I am showing a friend of mine how to make laundry soap and in our discussions I learned that she likes to use Shout on stains. Now I don't really use stain removers very often so I thought to myself.... well surely there is a DIY for this and the truth is there are a LOT of them! You'd be amazed on how many laundry stain remover recipes there are out there!
I decided to bite the bullet and bought a new spray bottle and I was going to try one of them out though I didn't really have anything to test it on that moment other than my lamp shade that 7 years ago an oil incense burner decided to explode and spray.
Now my pictures aren't the best because my camera was running out of battery power so if I tried to turn on the flash it'd shut down automatically.

(I'd give credit to where I found this one but I completely forgot! So it is not my recipe.)
DIY: Laundry Stain Remover

• 2/3 Cup Liquid Dishwashing Soap
• 2/3 Cup Ammonia
• 6 TBSP Baking Soda
• 2 Cups Warm Water

Mix all the ingredients in a spray bottle. I suggest only adding 1 cup of water to start so that you can shake it up to mix before adding the second cup though I'm sure this will cause bubbling and therefore make it harder to add the second cup. I just found it hard to mix everything putting it all in at once.

After

Before

So did it turn out perfect? No, but I did give it a near impossible task so I can't really blame it and it definitely did something to help. I just sprayed it on and used a sponge to spread it around  in case there was some odd effect so that it would have a more even coloration. This also gave me the excuses needed to fix the wires to where it connects to the lamp so the slightest bump or vibration didn't knock my lamp shade to the side (I still love my garage sale lamps after all). 

I also tried a toilet bowl cleaner that simply said to put 1/2 cup of borax into the toilet and wait 30 min to an hour. I was not impressed by the results of that so that means I'm back on my hunt. I'm sure it might have worked on a toilet that is kept up on but the girls have their own half bath (which was literally a closet converted and not by us it was how we bought the house) and I'm trying to get them to be more responsible about cleaning up after themselves because Mommy isn't going to be around forever to scrub everything for them. 

After all that I got my dishes caught up and then went to fix the screen door because the cat got outside today and ate a bunch of grass and by time I got her inside she threw up everywhere! Ewww! Thank goodness for a spot bot!

From there I went onto my last little project before getting kids and starting dinner which was to make up some oatmeal packets. Every morning I eat oatmeal and the girls used to love it then they stopped eating it which just happened to be right after we bought a huge box from Sam's Club so I've been eating on it. Why we bought it from Sam's Club in the first place is beyond me probably one of those impulse buys. So I set about setting me up a weeks work of oatmeal. It's much cheaper to set up your own and I do a weeks worth because then I don't have a ton of little baggies and I can reuse the baggies. Believe it or not those little packages are only 1/4 of a cup of oatmeal! So I take 1/4 cup of instant oatmeal and put 1 TBSP of brown sugar in the bag and seal it up. 1/2 cup of water and two minutes in the microwave and I have breakfast for a lot cheaper than buying even the store brand of individually packed oatmeal. I like brown sugar but if you want to purchase (or better yet make yourself) some dehydrated fruit that could be put in instead. Really anything could be mixed in and it's cheep and you know what's in it. 

Well that was my Friday after I got out of work. Well dinner cooled from the oven (isn't it funny we heat things up and then have to let them cool to eat). I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Crafty Busy Monday

I think I already have a 'Busy Monday' post. I think my Monday's just stay busy no matter if I want them too or not so I may start a series. BM: "Title" ... wait BM.... um no well maybe ... it'd fit half the time LOL! I'll think about it and maybe come up with something. 

So here's how my day started out. I decided after I got everyone out the door that I was going to do a craft I had found online.... Isn't this how most horror movies start? Well I realized a couple things. One, deviating from the plan means things won't turn out the same. Two, I'm very glad I have a fondness for my low heat glue gun because I tend to get covered in glue. Three, while recycling items is good it is going to cause things to come out different. And finally four, I can't tie a florist bow for the life of me no matter how many youtube videos I watch. 

Here's the original blog post I found. 

Here is my attempt.

So while the website has great directions instead I'm going to give the walk through of my personal nightmare. 

 Well here we go gathering up the supplies. I pulled down the Easter decoration box and grabbed out the bags of old eggs. We have a very eco friendly Easter Bunny so we normally wash the eggs we get from Easter Egg Hunts and just from around the home from previous years and then put them on the porch a weekend before Easter for the Easter Bunny  to hipty hop over and pick up. As you can see I also save Easter grass and it just happened that my husband had just got done building a computer for someone. So total cost was about $4 out of pocket because I bought some very pretty ribbon.

Did you know that the top of a 5 gallon bucket is exactly 12".
Well the original pattern called for a 12" wreath but I thought that looked too small so I made 12" the inside of my wreath and made the over all size (or attempted to) a 16" diameter.  

So I traced my lid and measured out 2 inches. I'm doing pretty good so far and hadn't yet noticed any problems.

Ah the wonderful problem starter. Do you remember doing this in school? Finding the center and using a string and pencil? Well here's the bad part about this technique:
1. the string will slip if you don't tape it.
2. the angle of your hand really matters.
3. trying to keep even on corrugated cardboard is harder than it sounds!

 So I cut it out and it looks like a circle right? I should have taken this as my first clue to perhaps redraw my center circle. Naw! Let's forge ahead. Now to be fair I also started trying to cut this out with a pair of scissors but soon found out I should be scoring and cutting with a precision knife.

Well this is awkward.
Notice how uneven it is? I sure did!
I decided I would put the bow on the thinnest part.
 

I found some old ribbon I had stashed away because I'm awesome at hoarding! Wait! I'm not suppose to be proud of that am I?

I told you we have an eco friendly Easter Bunny that means that some of our eggs really were ready to be recycled because otherwise they would have had to been taped together (which many of them had the previous year and I had to peal tape). I went ahead and glued my eggs together because they were not going to stay together by their own power by any stretch of the imagination.

Notice how little room I have? Yes that cut made a big difference but even in the widest parts I had problems so I would probably go with more than the 2" they are suggestion.
This is the first eggs I put on and I tried to follow the pattern on the website but as I started trying to glue eggs on I noticed I was getting this awkward tilt trying to fit the eggs on!

At that point I gave up and just glued all my inside eggs first and figured I'd fit the outside eggs on how I could. This meant a lot of larger gaps between eggs.

 Hey large gaps? No problem! Lots of Easter grass!
This was by far the longest part of this process! I used a pencil like the website showed but I had several spots where the gaps were smaller than the pencil so this required getting inventive. I think I ruined a chop stick (Boo!). I suggest a skewer stick.

And that was my morning project. 

So just after I finished this monstrosity I get a message from my husband asking if I want to meet him and a few of his co-workers for lunch. Of course I hadn't showered or even found daytime clothes yet so that meant rushing but we had a good lunch at I ate too much. I dropped my husband back off at work around 1 pm to give an idea of the time frame we are talking about here. I then headed over to Hobby Lobby and go my adhesive chalkboard cover and a couple other things for the chalkboard project. From there it was to the grocery store. I walked out needing two shopping carts as I continue my buying for a month experiment other than things like milk, bread and eggs. Last month I saved around $122 this way and was able to stock up the cabinets! I know people must think I'm nuts by now but hey that's OK. I was under budget by nearly $40 last month so I'm just over joyed. 

I got home that afternoon and cleaned up after my craft this morning, put away all the groceries and then went to get Katherine. My husband got a phone call from the car lot he does computer work for on the side (is actual job is computer work at the hospital) so he informed me he would be a little late but said he shouldn't be too late. So I cooked dinner, had the kids do their homework and we waited. I fixed the bathtub drain and scrubbed out the bathtub. I then vacuumed the house while Brielle was still working on homework and Katherine cleaned up her room for me to vacuum in there too. Peter did eventually get home close to 8 o'clock. I had already put one kiddo through the shower and was getting ready to put the other one in. I feel bad he had to work so long but it is what it is.

I did manage to also get the office chair put together for the kids room as we are taking out the big orange plaid monstrosity they were using for their desk. Once the area is well... closer than it is right now to being finished up I'll post a picture of the before and after.

Well I better get ready for work myself as it is sadly Tuesday and that means getting back to the work grind.

March Menu

Well I wrote out the menu for the next month and you'll notice some things are very common in this household right now: Pizza, Hamburger Helper and Spaghetti. You may also notice perhaps don't have the best of diets. I'm looking forward to Spring/Summer/Fall garden time plus the ability to grill out some more. Notice next Sunday we are grilling out! I have a steak in the freezer and we are going to do a little bit of chicken for the girls because it's suppose to be 62 degrees and we are very excited.
So why a month of a menu and why will I be doing nearly the full months shopping tomorrow? Well this is an experiment I had attempted to start before but never completed it so I'm trying to keep up with it. January I did not do this and the first two weeks we ate out a lot and some meals didn't get made and it was a bit of a mess. February I started my menu/buying for one month experiment again. The idea is the less times I have to go to the store the less chances I have for impulse buying or just buying things that are on 'sale' because they are. That is not to say if they don't have a really awesome deal that I won't do it but I have to really want something and it not being just because I'm in the store anyways. It sounds silly but I did the figures between January and February and here is how it worked out.
         Groceries      Eating Out     =    Total
Jan    483.60          224.54              708.14
Feb   361.22          154.64              515.86

(Note: This does not count school meal cost.)

Notice the difference? I sure did and I was shocked. I try to budget $400/mo for all household cleaners/food/pet supplies and I found it a struggle every month to keep to it. I budget $120/mo for eating out mostly for my husband but I was finding every month this was being blown away. Now we did go over on the eating out because one night his parents and my husband's brother from Louisiana came in town so we went out to dinner and then last week when the Daddy/Daughter dance was going on I decided not to cook so that I could have more time to worry about getting things read for Katherine and Peter. If you take my budgeted totals though I still was under my ideal budget! This month I will be trying the same shopping habits though my husband told me I shouldn't focus so much into the eat out budget this month or at very least not count my birthday dinner. I guess for his sake since it is the families gift to me I'll leave it off my totals and put it down as 'gifts'.

Monday 4

Chicken
Rice
Stir Fry Veggies

Tuesday 5
Baked Penne Spaghetti

+ add pepperoni

Wednesday 6

Sloppy Joes
Chip

Thursday 7

Hamburger Helper
Green Beans

Friday 8
Chicken Bake

Saturday 9
Pizza

Sunday 10
Grilled Steak/Chicken
Baked Potatoes
Corn on the Cob

Monday 11
Tacos (taco seasoning)
Rice
Beans

Tuesday 12
Cheesy Chicken

Wednesday 13
Breakfast for Dinner

Thursday 14
Spaghetti
Italian Sausage

Friday 15
Eat Out - Birthday Dinner

Saturday 16
Pizza

Sunday 17
Pot Roast
Mashed Potatoes
Corn

Monday 18
Chicken
Pasta
Peas

Tuesday 19
Grilled Cheese
Tomato Soup

Wednesday 20
Spaghetti
Meatballs

Thursday 21
Turkey Bake
Mashed Potatoes
Corn

Friday 22
Hamburger Helper
Green Beans

Saturday 23
Pizza

Sunday 24
Balsamic Chicken
pasta
peas

Monday 25
Meatloaf
Mashed Potatoes
Corn

Tuesday 26
Pulled Pork
Chips

Wednesday 27
Pigs in a Blanket
Tater Tots

Thursday 28
Spaghetti
Chicken

Friday 29
Chicken Nuggets
French Fries

Saturday 30
Pizza

Sunday 31
Breaded Pork
Mashed Potatoes
Peas

A Very Busy Friday

So Friday was a very busy day and I'm glad that I worked some extra hours this past week so that I could leave early.
So what was all the fuss? Well Brielle was returning from the Jr. Beta Competition and Katherine had the Daddy/Daughter Dance last night. Plus, here is a bit of my selfishness showing through, I needed some more crafting supplies to finish up the boards for the kids.

First, I want to say that if you spend more time than you really should there are neat products to be found! I found while standing at Hobby Lobby trying to find new cork because the cork I had picked up was just too thin this wonderful stuff called Dry Erase Vinyl Surface. It's 17.7" x 57.1" and repositionable! Why did no one tell me about this stuff?! This will make my dry erase board creation much simpler! I realized after I got to the car that I forgot to buy the corking but didn't have time because I had to go pick up Brielle from the trip bus (yes she was on an over night trip in Louisville and missed two days of school for it!). While I was driving down to where the pick up spot was going to be I realized wait! If I use cork board then that means tacks and push pins. That means things for me to step on! Well do you know what else I found down at Hobby Lobby? That vinyl surface for $7.99 but made for chalk! Yes a vinyl chalk board surface. Again, the things I didn't know before then! So I've scrapped the idea of the peg board as neat as I think it would look and went for something that has less chance of causing me bodily harm. (If you haven't seen my boards yet here are two that are done: Magnetic Board, Memo Board)

I got Brielle and found out she ranked in the top 10 out of 75 people for her first spelling bee. Because there were so many people the first part was written to get into the top 10 and then out of the top 10 they did the stand up spelling which is what we normally think of when we think Spelling Bee. She did lose during this process and only the top 5 are going to Nationals but for Brielle's very first Spelling Bee I'm very proud of her. I wish I could get pictures but from what I hear they had a closed room competition so not even the teacher that came with Brielle could enter during the whole thing.

I went straight home after getting Brielle (I'll have to figure out some other time to get to Hobby Lobby) because Katherine was riding the bus home today because after school was canceled so that they could get ready for the dance. The theme of the dance this year was Mardi Gras. So I decided to cut down on stress so I could iron things and have time to do Katherine's hair I asked Peter to pick up Dinner. I know once again I deviate from my meal plan!

I'm very glad Katherine is such a weirdo because her mother is horrible at doing hair!
I also had bought her some beads while I was at Hobby Lobby earlier this week. Before she even left home she had given half of the beads to her father and I was informed when they got home last night that yes they got their professional picture taken with him wearing the beads. I have such a goof ball family.