Washing Out the Gore: Homemade Laundry Soap

Happy Monday Everyone :-)

Who else is excited about a new week filled with possibilities?

We had a terrific weekend. On Saturday we got to hang out with cool people on our date and even snapped a pic that has both of us in it *mind boggle*



Then Sunday was occupied with the Third Annual SLC Zombie Walk. We had an absolute blast. Surprisingly, it was a real family event, lots of kids and parents; there were even dressed up babies in strollers. Aside from the whole zombie thing, it was a nice walk getting to chat with fun people. I think I laughed more last night than I have in ages. Some highlights were the Westboro Baptist style protesters who had hilarious signs like, "Kids need Mom and Dad not Mom and Dead" and "Protect our Borders, no more Undead Immigrants" and at the end of our walk we were attacked by Survivors with Super-saokers. Love it!

Here's some pics:











Now if you are anything like me, what's going through your mind right now is,

 How are they going to clean up that mess??? 

Seriously, we had fake blood everywhere and on everything.

The blood has lots of staining ingredients like peanut butter, corn syrup, chocolate syrup and food coloring. Ew!

We've been making our own laundry detergent for a few months now and I was curious how it would manage sun baked food coloring ground into in light cotton PJs. 

The answer: BRILLIANTLY!

Here's the recipe I use:

POWDERED LAUNDRY DETERGENT

• 2 cups Fels Naptha Soap (finely grated - you could also try the other bar soap—Zote, etc.) 

1 cup Washing Soda 

1 cup Borax

• Mix well and store in an airtight plastic container.

• Use 2 tablespoons per full load.

We add essential orange oil to the mix, smells wonderful! Home made laundry soap is perfect for HE washers as it's low suds. It's also so cheap - score!

I keep ours in a cute jar:

Time to watch Hamlet with my little brain eaters. Hope your day is grand.

Warmly,

Nicole

Floor Mat and Snickerdoodle cake

Last night the boys and I watched Much Ado About Nothing for the gazillionth time. I love that if I even mention MAAN the kids burst out with quotes like:

"What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?"

"I would my horse had the speed of your tongue"

Since we are such huge geeky fans I decided to make movie night extra special so I baked my boys a Snickerdoodle Cake. I saw the recipe at craftzine and had to give it a try.  Usually I am very anti-cake mix but the temptation got the best of me. I'm really glad it did, the cake was luscious.



My big project this week was making a kitchen mat for in front of the stove. We're always splashing and spilling and I spend truly long hours standing in my kitchen - it will be so nice to stand on something soft and pretty. It's made just like a dish mat only using a large beach towel and more piecing. I was terribly tempted to use the fabric I bought that matches my kitchen but I wanted something very scrappy that I could add patches and such to as tomato sauce stains and (hopefully not) burn marks took their toll on this first layer. The pleats and ruffles are great fun for your piggies and add a little textural interest.

As I was adding bits and pieces I got to wondering how would I know if I was done. Then I broke a needle, emptied my bobbin and ran out of thread... DONE! Love clear messages like that :-)



Anyone know how to get a half decent picture of a large mat?





Big huggy thanks to Lanie at Lanie J. and Co. for featuring my Napkins and Dish Mat. So sweet of you :-) Also, thanks so much to Craft Gossip for posting about my Sci-fi Barstools on their new Home and Garden section.

Linked to:

  

Finished Scrappy Cards and Cleaning

When I was cleaning up the mess from making my dish mats I noticed that clinging to the trimmed bits of terry towel was a lot of lovely bits of my favorite fabrics:

I tried to talk myself into sweeping them off the table and into the trash but I couldn't so I went and browsed my Google Reader instead. And saw this wonderful sketch at Get Sketchy:

You know where I'm going with this right?

So I started trimming the delightful little bits off the towel remnant and made a card:

and another

and still had scraps left so I made a few more

This made me very happy :-)

Dish Mat and Napkins: Finishing Week (Sewing)

There's a reason I left these to the end. I really hate sewing. Too many rules, too much danger. Seriously, I'm always a breath away from a needle in the eye or my sewing machine attaching my digits to the cloth. Don't even get me started on rotary cutters LOL.

I finally finished the napkins, or more honestly, I finished the napkins that had all parts cut out. I still have six napkins to go but the linen isn't cut so... not my problem.

Here they are as a set:

Now the other thing I hate about sewing is all the attitude:

Everything must be squared off. CONFORM!

Bind all the raw edges!

Wibbly bits! I cast you out. Off with you; you're trash! 

Wibbly bits are my favorite part! So, imagine how unimpressed I was when I washed and ironed my beautiful fat quarters (sad name, hate calling them fat. How about Rubenesque Quarters? Or  Womanly Quarters?) there was a bunch of non-conformist edge dwelling thread friends. What to do?

Well, I cut them to fit the role they were designed for - you gotta grow up someday. *sigh*
But I left my heart on the cutting room floor... :-(
Then I scooped them up into a riotous color pile at the edge of my desk and smiled at them daily.

I've wanted a dish mat (or is it dish pad?) ever since I saw them on a flurry of blogs last winter. I think Jen  from Tatertots and Jello popularized them but they were so many places I'm not sure who to credit with the idea. The trouble was, I didn't want an orderly, straight lined, proper (perfectly lovely) dish mat... but I didn't want an "artistic" one either - it's going to be doing hard labor so it has to be friendly with the washer and dryer. What to do?

Yesterday when looking at my lovely uneven edges and selvages I realized I had my answer.

It's gloriously imperfect. Some are quilted properly, some have frayed edges. There's zig-zag stitches and straight. I needed a little text in there and many of the pieces were happy to volunteer - aren't the color dots and meadowsweet wonderful?!? 


The entire project was made of those rough edges - I wonder if Chris thinks the same about me somedays? LOL.

A dish mat is a great use for an old well-loved towel and some scraps of fabric. I highly recommend giving this project a try if you're so inclined. I took some "in process" photos so if anyone has any (simple) questions about how it's made. Just let me know.


Good thing I could gaze on my wonderful new dish mat last night as I had a

MOUNTAIN 

of dishes after making the best meal I've ever eaten in my whole life. Chris and the kids requested it for Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving and all their birthdays - yeah, it was that good. We had Shrimp Boil on a Stick with Lemon Thyme Butter:

The photo does zero justice to the spicy, flavorful mouth-party that this meal was. Oh my goodness!

So ladies - what did you finish, please share your successes.

P.S. Here's the 2nd dish mat I made, lots of pink strawberries on this one:

P.S.S. At least personally, I'm morphing Finishing Week into Finishing Fortnight because I'm on a serious roll around here and it feels so good.

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Sci-Fi Bar Stools - The Trilogy

Yippee!

I finally finished my bar stools. One needed major repairs, one had to be redone and one needed cleaning... and it took me a year. Oh, the shame of it!

The Creature from the Black Lagoon started life as Forbidden Planet (Did you just break into the theme song from Rocky Horror? I know I did) but since I couldn't varnish it until I was done painting and it's been sat on for over a year... well... her bright orange dressed faded to an embarrassing shade of naked. It kind of reminds me of those pens and coffee mugs Dads used to have that  disrobed, but there I go, digressing again. Evidence:

Sad! I loved that poster.

Now it looks like this:

And I replaced the trim so there's no embarrassing crack back there. (I'm absolutely unfit for polite society today).

Wanna see the happy little threesome?

And their pretty faces:

My kitchen island just told me it feels very lucky to be in such cool company.

I never stop being amazed at what you can accomplish with Mod Podge, paint and cool paper - these were calendar pages before they hopped on my old boring stools.

That's all I've got for you in terms of finishing today

Just an FYI, there aren't any rules to Finishing Week. You don't need to have mentioned it for it to "count" or anything legalistic like that. I just hope everyone who reads this blog has the pleasure of getting a few things done this week, uses up some of their stash, completes a project instead of starting a new one, clean that attack closet, etc.

Please leave me some comments letting me know what you've been working on. I really love hearing about what you're up to.

P.S. My huge apologies if I haven't responded to all your comments this week. My spine dropped acid is misfiring and my hands feel like Mickey Mouse gloves - very gigantic and fat - so hitting the keys is a nightmare. Most of my post looked like this:

Heriu Everyonlle. I finalllly finishernd my bareoijstools.

Seriously! Very irritating stuff, but it beats the earlier misfires like the sensation that I'd caught fire or feeling like I sat in a puddle of water. Spines are weird.