Tide's Got Nothing On Me...

I mentioned in one of my first ever posts that I make my own laundry detergent now. I swear by it and will NEVER buy detergent from the store again. It cleans just as well as store bought, there are no added perfumes and dyes, and the cost savings really add up! Also a benefit for my family, my detergent is great for sensitive skin.

I would like to share my recipe for my powdered laundry soap. This not an exact science. If you search for "homemade detergent" you will get many many recipes with basically the same ingredients in varying amounts. I encourage you to play around with the amounts to find what works for you. Also, powdered vs. liquid is completely a personal preference. I have always used liquid detergent, but I find the powder works just as well and seems like it is faster to make and easier to store. So basically, whatever floats your boat :)

So the Dream Team of ingredients for homemade laundry detergent are Washing Soda, Borax, and bar soap. I use Fels Naptha for my soap. Some people use Ivory or other mild soap. Fels Naptha is about a $1.00 a bar. This was the most commonly used in the recipes I found so I stuck with it. The fourth ingredient I use is a generic "Oxy-Clean" type product. All of these can be found at your local grocery store.

First thing you will need to do is grate your bar soap. I got an inexpensive grater at the dollar store. I use the very fine shred so that my soap is small enough that it will mix and dissolve well. My first grating experience was awful. It took forever and made my arm hurt. Now I take my soap, grater and bowl, and sit in front of the television. It gets done pretty fast.  Also, let me warn you. If you leave a bowl of grated Fels Naptha in your kitchen, there is a possibility that your children or significant other will try to eat it since it looks like cheese. Don't ask how I know this, and don't worry, they recovered...

So for my batch, I used the following amounts:

• 3 bars of grated soap
• 3 cups Washing Soda
• 3 cups Borax
• 1 cup or so generic Oxy

Now I am sure if you go on Pinterest, you can find a really cute, crafty container to keep your detergent in. Here is my pretty bucket...

 Mix all of your ingredients together. Try not to breathe in the dust.  It should look something like this:

 I use the scooper out of the generic Oxy to measure my detergent. You could also use a coffee scoop, a tablespoon, maybe one of the cap measuring cups from cough syrup or other medicine. Basically, you will use one tablespoon per load. If your clothes are really dirty, you may want to add a little more. 

This is now the point where if you want it to be scented, you could add some essential oils. I prefer for it to be unscented.

Making your own detergent is a great starting point in homesteading and living frugally. Just be warned... It is like the "gateway soap," once you make laundry detergent, you will want to make hand soap, dish washing soap, dishwasher soap, and so on...

Laundry Is A Four Letter Word, Not Really, But It Should Be...

The term "laundry day" is completely ridiculous in our house. If I could get all my laundry done for the week in one day, I would be the happiest lady around. I'm not sure what I hate about it the most.

Washing isn't too bad. Our laundry area is our unfinished basement. Not as creepy as some basements, but it is far from the glamorous designs you find online.You know, the ones with the twenty drawers and matching bins all labeled perfectly. And whose laundry room really has crown molding?

Then there is the folding. This is probably the part I don't mind. Its like that instant gratification when you turn a heaping laundry basket of warm clothes (okay who am I kidding? Our clothes frequently sit a day or so unfolded until I can get around to them) into neat piles of clothing organized by family member and type of apparel.

So I lied a little bit earlier, after writing about this, I definitely know what I hate the most. Putting the clothes away! It's horrible. I'm sure for some of you that may have large walk in closets and spacious dressers, this isn't really that big of a deal for you. We however are lacking in the storage department. Our "master bedroom" does not have a closet. So all our clothes go in the dresser or draped over furniture or piled in laundry baskets. The kids have so many clothes, I cannot even get everything in the dressers. They at least have closets, but I have hijacked my son's closet to hang dresses and coats. I don't think there is a room in the house that does not have at least one laundry basket in it.

I have been trying to find some solutions to our organizational dilemmas. I have read about "family closets." This is a very interesting concept that will not work at all for us in our current house. A family closet is a room, preferably with the washer and dryer, where everyone in the family would keep all their clothes. All your laundry supplies are there, when you fold things you don't have to leave the room to put it away. There are tons of blogs and articles (Lots of Kids, Musings from the Heart, and True Moments of Family to name a couple) that are talking about this. Also apparently I just found out in my Googling, that the Duggar family (I know you know who this is) works from a family closet.

I normally try to store off season clothes in plastic tubs or under bed storage. This year the winter was incredibly mild, so I packed all the heaviest clothes and coats away. But of course, the weather is almost freezing today and there was a threat of snow (it's almost May!?!?!). Needless to say, my kids had to wear lightweight jackets with layers of shirts and sweatshirts underneath to stay warm.

Are we the only family out there with this problem? I guess the best answer to this would be to downsize the amount of clothes we have and find creative organizational solutions. Anyone have any good suggestions? What works in your home?

Today I ate a baby...

I ate a Dutch Baby, that is. If you have never tried one of these perfect desserts disguised as breakfast, you are missing out my friends. This morning I woke up and remembered seeing a picture of this big fluffy pancake on Pinterest and I just had to make it. After about 30 minutes of trying to find the pin, I gave up and just started googling. I ended up with a recipe for this German pancake. I love German food and I can't believe I have never had one of these before.

If heaven could be on a plate, this is what it would look like. And of course since I love you all, I will share the recipe.

Ingredients:
6 eggs
1 cup milk, room temp
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
5 Tbsp butter

I preheated the oven to 450 degrees. I put my cast iron skillet in the oven to  get all nice and scalding hot. I beat the eggs until they were frothy and smooth then added everything else except for the butter. Then you have to beat it for about 5 minutes.  When your cast iron is hot, take it out of the oven and add the butter. Let the butter melt and coat the pan. Add your batter and then stick it back in the oven for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, you will open the oven door and see this:

 The kids thought is was pretty cool.  I brought it out and slid it onto a big plate. I added some sugared strawberries, confectioner's sugar and whipped cream. You would be able to top it with anything. I think next time I will bake it with apples. I love recipes that are so basic that you can change little things to have a completely taste.

Happy baking!

The Bread for the Butter...

So lately my friends have been really into the home-party businesses whether it be hosting one or becoming a consultant. I went to a food party (I won't mention the name but I am sure a couple people can figure it out) and they had the most delicious beer bread mix. I bought a box that included three mixes for about 15 bucks. I made it when my order came in and it was just as delicious as I remembered. As I was eating it though, I thought that there has to be a recipe out there that is similar to this and that would cost a fraction of the price. With the help of advice from friends, I got a generic beer bread recipe off of one of the big recipe sites. But then I thought, what could I do to make this better?? So here is what I came up with:

The generic recipe calls for:

• 3 cups self rising flour
• 3 Tbsp white sugar
• 12 oz can or bottle of beer 

Here are my additions:

• 1 cup shredded cheese ( I used a three cheese blend but any kind would work)
• 3 Tbsp melted butter
• 1/2 tsp seasoning blend of salt, pepper, garlic powder (Here is what I make)

I mixed together the flour, sugar, and added the beer (after I took a sip). It started to get hard to stir so I just used my hands to mix it. In a separate bowl, I added just a little (about a Tbsp) of flour to the cheese, and coated it. This will help the cheese from going to the bottom (or so I was told). When your dough is well mixed, place it in a greased 9x5 loaf pan. I used one I took from my grandmother's house. I have really nice new ones but there is just something about baking bread in the same pan that she used when I grew up. Anyhoo, place the dough in that and spread it out evenly. Make sure you get it all down in the corners. Mix the melted butter and the seasoning in a separate bowl. Pour this over top the bread dough.

I then cooked the bread for 50 minutes in a 350 degree oven. After the fifty minutes of my house smelling amazing, my creation was done! As soon as it came out I used a knife to loosed the sides, took it out and put it on a rack to cool. It didn't stay on the rack long though because there is nothing more delicious than bread right out of the oven.  The middle is very soft and the outside had a crustiness that is great. The seasoning on the top is very light, but it definitely adds to the flavor.

Happy baking!!

The Butter on my Bread...

So I am not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I made butter! It was great and I took pictures to show you!

My grandmother found me some good cream from Trickling Springs Creamery at our local Pennsylvania Dutch Market. 

My grandmother's KitchenAid mixer. As you are probably noticing, my grandma was an integral part of this homesteading experiment. I have a mixer, not as nice as hers but we were over there and I just couldn't wait until I got home to do this so I just did it there.

So I mixed and I mixed... It went from a liquid to a solid whipped cream looking consistency. Then the whipped cream turned into liquid again! At this point, I thought for sure I had messed it all up. After more mixing, the butter started to form and separate from the buttermilk. This was kinda a sloshy mess but I knew at that point I was doing something right.

I drained out the buttermilk and saved it for some wonderful recipe such as buttermilk biscuits or pancakes.

Now the next step I didn't do as well as I should have. I was supposed to rinse and squeeze all the liquid out or it would spoil faster. I got most of it out but I think it could have been done better.
Here is my finished product!! I apologize for the bad decision to put it in a dish that is the exact same color as the butter, since it does not take as good of a picture.

I used it all up pretty quickly. It was good but I wish I would have salted it. Unfortunately, when I was doing the cost breakdown of homemade butter versus store bought, the store bought is definitely more economical. The cream cost a lot more than a pound of butter and it only produced about a stick and a half. I did get buttermilk out of it which was a bonus. I think the only way I could see making all your own butter is if you had a deal with a dairy to get the cream really cheap. I don't have those connections yet.

On a side note, I got heckled while I made this. A lot of my family was over for a big breakfast and during a quiet moment I decided to do it. Some of the comments were things like "Oh so you want to be a homesteader but you are using a KitchenAid?? Where is your churn?" They were all laughs until the butter was finished. They were all quite impressed with this skill even if I didn't use a churn...

And I'm back...

Okay so let me go ahead and get my excuses out of the way for why I disappeared for what seems like forever:

• The plague hit our house. Well I might be a little over dramatic about it but both kids got sick. Then the boyfriend got sick. Then I got sick! (Whoever said mothers don't get sick is completely misinformed.)

• When I started blogging, I was using my work laptop. Then they switched me to a brand spanking new desktop but yanked the laptop. So I have been basically computerless, except on nights that the boyfriend is home, but who wants to sit on the computer when he's home only two nights a week? But he had an old laptop and got his dad to fix it (Thanks Roy!) Sooooooooo I have a computer now!!!!! 

• My PTA duties were tremendous. Well not tremendous but time consuming. Since one of the chairpersons went MIA, I, being the responsible vice president that I am, offered to take over her position as that chair. Of course this position was collecting all the little Box Tops (great school fundraiser!) and having to count and submit them. How many box tops could our very tiny school collect? Well I counted, clipped, packaged, and sorted just shy of 3000!

And to be completely honest, I hit a wall. I hit a big invisible metaphorical wall of non-motivation and non-inspiration.  But hey, I'm back and that's all that matters. I have some big ideas now and I'm on my way.

Even through this dark month or so of nothingness, I have managed to do a couple small things here and there. I made chocolate syrup. Very easy to make and the best part is that your entire house smells like chocolate for the rest of the day. My son loves it. I also made Miracle Whip. This however was a lot more involved then I thought but I got to use my new shiny food processor so I was happy. The response for that was "Hey, the mayo you made tastes like Miracle Whip." So I will say success!!! It still needs a little tweaking but I was expecting a complete failure so I will take it!

 I have also made more laundry detergent. I am playing around with different recipes to find the one I like the most. I have switched to the powder. It seems so much easier than the liquid. I made a double batch the last time and we have run out of the store bought kind so it will be homemade from now on. I have not convinced anyone in the household yet to go with homemade fabric softener (straight vinegar). I will continue to use the fabric sheets since that does help a little with the lack of fragrance from the detergent. I have been cutting the dryer sheets in half though, to make them go twice as far and I don't think it has made any difference.

Garden time is approaching and I am very excited. Well excited and anxious. I have never really had a garden before. I cannot even keep houseplants alive! The weather around here has been unseasonably warm, so I think next week we will get the ground broken for the garden. I have an idea of what I want it to look like but I will be happy however it turns out. I got a seed catalog in the mail and picked out about 40 different fruits and vegetables I wanted to plant, but then I came back to reality and decided that I will start a little smaller this year and plant things that I know we will eat fresh and that I can preserve easily.

Composting has begun! I was going to make a compost bin out of wood pallets, but then after doing some research I started seeing information about the dangers of using pallet wood. While I was walking through Sam's Club I found a composter for a very low price, so I went ahead and bought it. The kids and I started adding to it with fruits and vegetables from the fridge on trash day along with some dry leaves around in the yard. Every other day, Emma asks me if the dirt is ready. Rain barrels are also in the works.

I guess I will end by revealing my secret Internet obsession as of late: Pinterest. What an amazing and inspiring website. I have found so many great home ideas, kids projects, recipes, and anything else you could imagine!! I am completely in love with it.  On the negative side, Pinterest does somewhat make you feel like you are completely boring. So many people are doing all these projects and what am I doing? Reading about it while I am sitting on the couch doing nothing!

Anyone have any ideas for what my March skill should be?? I will admit that the knitting in January failed horribly so I will have to revisit that one soon. And well we know that February was a complete bust.

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