Homemade Laundry Soap

I know I am in a very unique situation here... How is making laundry soap unique? Well, it's not, but I don't do laundry... Yep, you read that correctly I DON'T DO LAUNDRY. My wonderful hubby is the laundry guru in our house.  My BFF groans every time we talk about it, LOL;)

When I found the recipe for laundry soap about a year ago, he wasn't gung-ho about trying it, so I let the matter drop (you believe that right!?). In between taking photos of houses today (I'm a REALTOR) I stopped by Wal-mart to pick up soap for the dishwasher. I just so happened to see BORAX, the heavens parted and angels started singing. The wonders of having a Droid Razar and the Pinterest App on my phone I found the recipe on my phone in seconds. You can see the original here. The recipe is for a small amount at a time, "Ain't Nobody Got Time for That" So, in true form I improvised.

Ok, enough of the story you really wanna know about the soap, right?!

FYT, I found everything I needed at Wal-Mart in the isle with mops (I remember seeing mops).

 

1 Box of Borax

1 Box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soap

3 Bars of Fels-Naptha

 

You will need

 

A bowl

Cheese grater

Blender

 

Step 1:

 

Shred the 3 Fels-Naptha Bars

 

 

2nd

 

Get the blender out

Take a handful of the shredded Fels-Naptha

Add some Borax

Pulse/Blend

 

 

I just kept adding the shredded Fels-Naptha

 

(It works best to make this in small batches at a time)

 

Dumped the shredded mix it into a bowl

 

 

3rd

 

Dump the Borax, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soap and the bowl of pulsed up Fels-Naptha into a container with a top. 

 

We are using 2 TABLESPOONS PER LOAD

 

Other's have said 2 tsp per load, but the hubby says it just isn't enough

 

I'll update this page every once and a while and let you know how many loads we got out of this batch. I've read from 100 to 256 and it lasts a year or longer!!! WOW, that would be awesome!!!

 

I've gotta make this container a little cuter;)

Yard Sale Finds:) Painting the Bird Cage

I love to go to yard sales!!!  My mama and I cannot wait for March in South Carolina; warmer weather, flowers are blooming, and the yard sale season is on! I found this little gem last spring for $3.00.

 

I've used it all over the house inside and out. I had a potted Begonia in from spring to the first frost. I brought it in and used it during Christmas. I filled with silver painted pine cones and silver Christmas balls ornaments. During Halloween I had a black crow in there, so many different things.

 

I pulled out the gallon of oops paint I got for $5.00 at Lowe's.

 

 

Got my handy dandy foam brush out. ( I keep these on hand)

 

 

 You can see I didn't go for perfect

 

 

Yes, that's Thomas under the bird cage, recycled my son's old sheet for drop cloths!

 

Now what to fill it with for spring!

 

Christmas Fever! O Come Let Us Adore Him

This sign was inspired by one I saw at Not My Own. You can go there to see the original.  I did this project for less than $3.00!  How is that possible? I had all the materials already on hand:)

My neighbor gave me several1x4's about a year ago and they've been sitting in my storage building.

I cut 4 4' pieces and 2 20" pieces. It took about 5 minutes to cut the wood. After lining up the 4 footers I took the 2 smaller pieces and nailed them to the back.

After this I flipped it over got the hammer out and handed it to my little boy!  He had a blast adding the divots!

After this we brought it inside and got out the paint I had on hand. If you need a great netural paint Valspar's Vanilla Steam from Lowe's is wonderful! One (yes, only one) coat later this is what I've got.

I wasn't looking for a perfect finish, I wanted a more rustic look. This only took about 5 minutes to complete.

If you have a steady hand by all means freehand the lettering. I didn't want to attempt it free hand, and didn't want to pay the money to make stencils. I don't have an overhead projector, or a printer at home that works... So I was at a loss of how to do my letters for about an hour.

This is what I came up with: 

I got out the laptop, open MS Word, grabbed some scratch paper, and a pen.

Very gently trace over the letters. This works GREAT!!!!!!

This took about 30 minutes mostly because I had a hard time choosing the fonts I wanted to use.

One more thing I set the font size to 600 and 700.

Once this was completed I set the words out on the painted board to see exactly where it needed to go.

If i would have taken the easy route I would have used my Exacto knife and cut the letters out, buttttt I did it a little backwards. I cut the letters out on the board making my life a little bit harder.

Once this was completed I open my sample paint purchase and began filling in the lettering.

I tried the foam brush but didn't like it, use the craft brushes they work so much better!

Again, I wasn't going for perfect. I wanted a kinda it's been sitting neglected for a while.

This is the result:

I would love to see your projects!

Christmas Ball Wreath

We all know about my wreath obession and this one is by far my favorite! My little boy helped me with this one we had a blast. 

I used about 90 ornaments all different sizes. Stop by your local Dollar Tree and pick up ornaments, you are looking at around $10 total!!!!!

Before you start layout all those ornaments, pull the tops off and add a couple drops of hot glue and attach the top again. This will take 20-30 minutes.

The ornaments will start to pop off if you don't glue the tops, so go ahead and do this step now and save yourself some time!

Now, take that wire hanger and bend it into a circle.

Start threading your ornaments

It's going to look a little funny, you are gonna wonder if your doing it correctly! Yes you are, don't worry, those ornaments will start to fill in.

Add a ribbon to the top

After I got the wreath up on the mirror, I noticed it need a couple of fillers, I took the smallest ornaments and hot glued a few into places giving it a really full rounded look!



Are You Ready for Some Football???

To the detriment of my family I am proudly a University of South Carolina fan through and through!

I made this wreath and didn't take a single photo thru the process. However, it was supper easy and finished within an hour.

I went armed to Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon and found the Deco Mesh Ribbon on sale for 50% off!!! HELLO :)

I did by a floral ring for this project instead of creating my own (check out my other door wreath to find out how to make them CHEAP!) I bought a ring this time because I had a Michael's 50% off coupon and they were on sale for 50% off. 

I unrolled the Deco Mesh Ribbon black first and went round and round the wreath using floral pin to secure. Then I went in with the red I cut lengths of it so I could place exactly where I wanted it. I did the same with the zebra print cut lengths and secured with floral pins. I hot glued the letters I found these at Michael's. Printed the USC logo and glued to a piece of plastic.

I'm still shaping my letters so the are spaced evenly, but so far so good:)

GO GAMECOCKS!!!!

I would love to see your Team even our Rival!

Independence Day Wreath

I found a version of this cute July 4th wreath on Pinterest and followed it to Capital B. She has great insturctions, but if you would like to follow my instructions see below!

First your supply list:

• 1/2 yard each red, white, and blue felt.
• Metal clothes hanger
• 1/2 inch pipe insulator (8 feet from Home Depot or Lowe's)
• Felt stars
• Wire
• Straight pins
• Hot glue
• Fat pen or crayon (anything 1/4 to 1/2" to wrap the wire around)
• Duct Tape

This project is easy and a fun to do while watching movies! It will take you some time to complete it is not a long hour project, but simple, simple, simple!

First, cut up your felt. I cut mine 2.5 x 2.5 and 3 x 3 squares. They are not perfect but close enough in size, but give a neat look with the small size difference. I do not know how many I cut, but I cut, and cut, and cut some more! There is another stack behind what you see.

Next, get you straight pins and hot glue out. Put a small dot of glue in the center of the felt square, stick your pin thru the hot glue, and then push the felt upward. This is the longest part of the entire project!

You should end up with this:

This is what I ended up with! (If you like the box they are in see my Staples Box Project!)

I choose to make my wreath rings because it's so much cheaper.  There is a must know to using the pipe insulator. Hot glue melts the insulator use a low heat glue gun or if you have high heat glue gun just hold to insulator pipe for about 10 seconds so it sticks.

To make your ring. First take your wire hanger and stretch out. Then run thru the pop insulator, pretty easy huh!! Once you have the wire thru the insulator feel for the end of the wire hanger. take your scissors and snip just above the wire.

Then circle it around bring the ends of the wire hanger together.  I bend the ends around each other to hold it together and then duct tape the seam.

Shape into circle.  Check out my Valentine's Day Wreath! I shaped into a heart!

Now the fun part! I started and ended with the same color red for the stripes. I tried to keep my widths about the same for the alternating red and white "stripes."

Taking your hot glue gun and one of the "florettes" (for lack of a better word) insert the straight pin into the end of the gun just to get a little glue and then stick into the ring. This is the quickest part of the whole project it only took me about 45 minutes to work my way round!

Work your way around the wreath until until you get to the blue and then fill it in.

Now the stars.

Take your wire and cut it about 8-12 inches (you'll adjust it as needed) lengths and wrap around your marker or crayon and you will end up with this.

Take one of your felt stars add a little hot glue to the back of the star and then place the wire on top of the glue. Adjust the wire length to your preference making it your own!  I put a couple of wires without the stars and I am so happy how this turned out! You should you end up with this.

I would love to know what you think!

Mel :D

From Staples Box to Storage Bin

I have spent the past few months organizing my craft room, with a lack of funds it's a bit of an adventure putting it together. I'm not finish, but you can read the post and see the before photos here.

While surfing Pinterest I came across a storage bin I deemed adorable! See it here at Millay's in Texas. Here's my version :)

I had this fabric I bought at Phoenix Fabrics for $3.00. I knew I wanted to do something with it, but wasn't sure what exactly! When I came across the storage bin on Millay's in Texas, the clouds parted and the angle's sang. (Ok, only in my mind!)

I used an old satin chocolate curtain I had to make the flowers.