Homemade Laundry Soap

I LOVE Pinterest!  I've found so many fun ideas there, and actually had a chance to try a few.  Well, this one pin in particular intrigued me.  I've always wanted to try making my own laundry soap and had seen this pinned quite a few times.  I figured I might as well give it a try.  I read through all the comments on the blog post and decided that it couldn't be too difficult to do and should last us a while.  If I could save some money on laundry detergent at the same time, I figured that would be a win!  I usually buy the big bottle of detergent and it lasts us quite a while.
To be honest, I'm really not sure how much we're saving or going to save because I hate doing laundry!  I do as little laundry as possible because a) I hate doing it, b) I'm never home to do it and c) I hate doing it!  Actually, maybe I should clarify that...the actual process of gathering up the clothes and physically putting them in the washer and dryer is easy.  Hubby does his own laundry and I wash my clothes and the boy's clothes, although give it another year or so and he'll be doing his own too.  It's the darn putting the clothes away that I just seem to never find the time to do!  I think I actually put clothes away 3 to 4 times a year, when mount laundry gets too high and when there's actually a day when there's nothing else planned and I go on a house-cleaning rampage!  The last time I put clothes away ended up in a trip to the hardware store after the bar in the closet came crashing down at 3am because of the weight on it!  The thing just snapped clean off the wall and made quite the racket in the middle of the night!  It didn't help that the wall support was also holding up the shelf in the closet either, and that was rather heavy as well.  The last 6 shirts I hung up did the poor thing in!  We discovered, in putting new brackets up that the closet rod was never hung level to begin with.  Funny what you learn about your house when random things start breaking and you have to fix them!

Anyway...the pin that I was going off of was here:

Source: beingcreativetokeepmysanity.blogspot.com via Erika on Pinterest

which led to this blog post.

It took me a bit of time to gather up the materials I needed because I wasn't really in a hurry, and every time I went into the store, they were always out of borax!  Eventually, I rounded everything up and had an afternoon where there were a couple of free hours for me to get it made.  The longest part was grating up the soap.  Since we've got a front loader, I not only grated the bar of soap, but ran it through the food processor as well to make sure that it turned into a really fine powder that would dissolve easier.  I also added in a bottle of Purex crystals to give the detergent a bit of a scent.

All that's needed for the soap is: (it can all be found in the laundy soap aisle at walmart)
3 bars fels naptha (I grated them up and then ran it through the food processor)
1 box borax
1 box washing soda
1 4lb box baking soda
1 tub powdered oxyclean (I used the larger, 3lb one)
1 bottle purex crystals (optional for a light scent)

I'm pretty sure we're going to have laundry detergent for a LONG time!  It only takes 1 to 2 tablespoons per load, and with as much detergent as this makes, a tablespoon is nothing!  I add the mix right in the drum when I do a load, instead of putting it in the soap dispenser on top.  I'm not sure why, but everything I read said to do it this way, so I do!  I finally found a big jar at walmart, and just had to make it look fun.  To be honest, I really was just looking for another glass etching project!  I don't remember what font I used, but I thought it looked fun.  I grabbed some spare vinyl, cut it out, weeded and put it on the jar, then let the etching cream sit for a bit before rinsing it off.  I'm pretty pleased with the result, and so far the soap seems to be working like every other brand of laundry soap that we've ever used.  As long as the clothes come out looking and smelling clean, it's a winner in my book!  Now, if I could just solve the putting-the-clothes away issue!

Office Christmas Decor

I work for a small company, that at times is insanely busy.  At other times though, I'm all caught up on paperwork and I'm able to bring my cameo and my cricut in and get my crafty on.  My boss has mentioned several times when the decor is done that he really likes how it looks and is glad that my coworker and I take the initiative to spruce the place up...as long as work continues to get done!
Christmastime has always been the main time that the office gets decorated.  Every year we add a little more.  This year, we decided to try vinyl.  I love how it turned out, and it was so much easier than cutting out, layering, and laminating a ton of paper.  We've still got the paper decorations from years past and while they still look good, we noticed that they faded A LOT!  Green and red just don't do so well sitting in the window!  By the time we pulled them down last year, the green had faded so much that it almost looked blue!  Note to self...don't use cheap paper in my scrapbooks!
Anyway, as I was saying, we decided to try vinyl this year.  We did a trial run over the fall to see how it would hold up, and we were very impressed.  It's so easy to work with, and fairly easy to take down.  The only downside is that you can't save it for next year once you take it down.  That's not necessarily a bad thing though...just means that we can come up with new decor next year!  Oh darn, another excuse to bring my stuff back in!
I really love how the windows turned out.  We used a combination of things that we had leftover that I cut out with my cricut last year, and things that I found in the silhouette store and cut out with my cameo this year.  Using the laminated paper cutouts on the inside of the window, and the vinyl cutouts on the outside, really gave the decorations a sense of depth too.
Now to come up with ideas for the rest of the holidays!

We used two different colors for snowflakes, cut out at various sizes.

 I loved this design as soon as I saw it and just had to use it!

 I loved this one too, and only did one for each window since it was a layered design.

 The whole window, well one of them.  The other one looks nearly identical.

 Paper/laminated cricut cutout from last year

I'm not entirely satisfied with how the pictures of the window turned out.  It's quite hard to get a good picture of the windows of the office because there's so much glare and reflection off of them.  Oh well, at least I've got something to look back at next year when we're decorating again!

Teacher Christmas Gift

It's a safe bet to say that I have a huge addiction love of vinyl.  I love the look of it, and the fact that it can be taken down from the walls without damaging them.  This also means when I feel like changing something up it's as easy as designing something new, cutting it out and putting it up on the wall.  It's also great for other fun projects.  

For thanksgiving with my family this year, we decided to have some fun and decorated some tumblers.  The tumblers with straws seem to be all the rage lately, and they're easy to personalize with a little bit of vinyl.  I had a couple of cups left over when all was said and done, so I decided it would be the perfect gift to give the boy's teacher for Christmas this year.  He didn't want to wait until this week to give it to her, so she got it for thanksgiving instead, but the thought was/is still there.  It was so much fun to watch him run up to her and give it to her.

I got the hint at the beginning of the school year that she loves teddy bears, so I figured that was a good place to start.  I happened to have a cricut cartridge that had a teddy bear on it, so I picked out a few colors and went to work.  An hour later, and I had a finished gift!  I used outdoor vinyl because it stands up to abuse better.  The cup can be washed and the vinyl won't come off.  I've heard that it will survive the dishwasher, but it isn't recommended.

I used the "Create A Critter" cartridge for the teddy bear, and then fired up my sure cuts a lot program (which isn't available anymore, and is the reason I now have a Silhouette Cameo) and picked out a font that I liked and cut it out.  Layers can be kinda tricky because the vinyl really likes to stick to itself, but working slowly and trying not to do layers that are too big make it a little easier.