School days

Growing up so fast! Better late than never--here is the photo from the first day of school. See the happiness on Ada's face, and the admiration of a little girl for her big sister.

Spider's eye view

My husband is a man of many talents, and one of them is taking photos. This spider caught his eye recently. Here she is in her house outside our front door.


A shift in focus, and here is how the spider sees our house.


I love her beautiful colors--so reminiscent of the fall to come. Happy autumn.

Owl ATC #2

Finally!
This thing has been chasing around in my head for a few months now. Trial and error, even for such a small thing, makes for satisfaction when the project is done. What took so long was figuring out how to make it open from this


to the larger owl that you see in the first photo. Cloth owls, while cute, don't hold up on a fold out. Velcro works better than button closures on paper. And reinforced cardstock was the way to go. As I said, small things, but lots of little tinkering...
Now it's done! And off in the mail to Nicole...

Naked crayons

Esme insisted that these old, broken crayons wanted "to be naked awhile, Mama." So they are. And into the oven they'll go to make lovely, new, chunky crayons for the girls. Ada arranged them into cups, and they're so pretty like this, it's a shame to melt them.

Fabric! Projects!

Lest it seems this blog is all about the snails and chasing kids, I had to do a little show-and-tell about my project planning. I am in fabric heaven with these, and so I'm making a little batch of pencil cases and aprons. I know I'm not the only one who lays out fabric around the house just so I can walk by it and sigh...please tell me I'm not the only one who sighs at fabric stacks piled up around her house..

Here are some stacks that make me smile lately.

Love these with the winking owls. Now some pretty ribbon and some buttons...fun.



The strawberries print and the folksy print are for a swedish apron.




And these dots and birds are for Ada's pencil case...shh. Don't tell.

Making laundry soap

We are now on the bandwagon of "greener," and as part of that (and to save some pennies), I'm making my own laundry soap. 

I have to say, on the scale of pioneer women, I fall someplace between Laura Ingalls Wilder and Holly Hobbie. And I'll tell you right now I am addicted to electricity--the computer, the tv, the sewing machine, the phone, the washing machine and dishwasher, not to mention the fridge and the vacuum and all the other good stuff I use each day. Like lights.
So don't count me off the grid just yet.

But I do like to make my own stuff. Laundry soap is the latest on that list. It's not hard, and it's cheap, it works gently on the clothes, and best of all, it smells really good.  Oh, yeah, and I know what's in it--no toxic stuff to stoke my hypochondriacal fears.

To make it, I took recipes from several websites, and I tinkered with different combinations. After a few tries, I discovered the one that works best for me:

1 bar of ivory soap
a half bar of Fells Naptha soap
1.25 cups washing soda
1.25 cup Borax
16 cups water

scents, if you want. I use:
2 teaspoons lavender essential oil
2 teaspoons vanilla essential oil
1 teaspoon sweet fennel essential oil

Other things you'll need:
a grater or food processor with grater attachment
a large pot for dissolving the soap flakes
a larger pot for combining all the ingredients
a wide-mouth canning funnel
two old laundry jugs for storing your mixture

1. Grate the soap in the food processor or on a grater. Stir the grated soap bits in 4 cups of water in the large pot , and heat it on medium heat on the stove. You don't want it to boil--it will bubble over! Instead, you want it to be hot enough to hurry the soap into a liquid. 
   
2. Next, heat the other 12 cups in the larger pot. Add the dissolved soap mixture, then the washing soda. Stir it until it's dissolved, then add the Borax, stirring again until dissolved. It should get pretty smooth and glossy, like the picture. Set it aside to cool, stirring it a few times, and adding your fragrance.
   
3. Once your mixture is cool, it will separate, and you'll have soapy water with clumps. You can break these up a bit and then use the funnel put it into your storage jugs. I did this a few times, and found it worked well, but the mixture didn't last as long because you end up wanting to add more "clumps" to your wash to make sure you get enough. The clumps, by the way, dissolve in the washing machine without any problems. You won't need to swish it around--it breaks down easily in the wash.
   

After making this a few times, I added one more step: I mix the completely cooled mixture in the blender, in several batches. Having an even consistency makes the soap last longer, and I'm able to get it into the jugs more easily.

For cleanup, I wash the pots, funnel, grater, etc, with the soap that's on them, then I rinse with a vinegar and water mixture before I dry everything. This removes any hint of residue that sticks to the plastic.

As I said, the soap works really well, on regular laundry and on stains. I fill two 77 oz containers with each batch, and they last me around 3 weeks, or 30 plus loads of laundry. The ingredients: about $2.50. Total cost of soap per load--8 cents. Not bad.   Saving or no saving, it's sort of fun. 

It takes about 15 minutes of active time to mix, stir, wash, and pour into jugs.  Less time than it takes to get to the grocery store.   And goody--I save gas!  But even better, I don't have to deal with putting Esme in the carseat for yet another trip...

Green grocery bags

It's a trend, and a lasting one, I hope. I've got a thing for reusable grocery bags. (See the one I made for a swap in this post.) It's my fall resolution to remember to bring them into the store every single time I go out...I'm still working on it.

I added to my collection of bags this past weekend with one from my friend, Alex Kent, a local artist.


Don't you just love this rooster? He makes me want to run right out to the farmer's market!

I've got plans for more canvas bags of my own for a fundraising project...details coming in November.