Laundry Soap

After reading that you can make your own laundry soap for very cheap, I just had to give it a try. It was so easy (about a 20 minute project) and kinda fun. I was doubtful that it would really turn out, but after letting it set for a day, it gelled and truly became a liquid detergent! I was able to find these 3 ingredients at Winco believe it or not. I also had to buy a 5 gallon bucket at home depot. My initial investment was about $10, but the actual batch of soap cost less than $3. It should last at least 6 months, maybe longer and then for the next several batches, I will only have to spend $1.50 for the bar of soap. Amazing!!! Sorry I don't have a review for how well it works yet, it is still too soon to tell. I am so excited to take out expensive laundry soap from my budget. I wish I had a front loader, it would last forever!

Here is the recipe from the Dugger Website if you are interested:


Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap- Front or top load machine- best value

4 Cups hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.

-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

Super Saturday, Gardening, Playhouse, Other Projects and More

I finally unloaded my camera so I am going to put the whole shabang on here so I can count it done! I was actually sad that I haven't taken more pictures lately because we have done a lot of great stuff, but sometimes you just can't do it all. Here we go:

Super Saturday Crafts:

We picked crafts and classes to try to go with our theme "Home can be a Heaven on Earth".

FHE BOARDS:

The oh so popular FHE boards were a hit. This was my first time doing vinyl but I found a great site that sells this all in one piece so it was super easy to put on. Here is a link if you are interested, it was a great bargain too click here . I just bought the boards at Home Depot and had them cut to size. I got the shapes at Micheals. This is only a one hour project.

I love how there is one heart just waiting for our little arrival. It makes me smile everytime I walk by it. If we ever outgrow this board, I will just put 2 hearts on a hook to pair people together for a job. We are going to use our board tonight for the first time. I also love the font on this, it is called Papyrus.

GOSPEL STANDARDS QUIET BOOK:

Quiet booksare always good so we created a couple of different ones. This first one I came up with myself. I wanted to make one for primary children so I used the My Gospel Standards and went from there. Isn't this the cutest scrapbook paper?

Each page had a sentence from the Gospel Standards and a scripture to go with it. I downloaded pictures from lds.org Gospel Art Kit that corresponded with the words and had them printed in wallet size at Costco. We also used a sponge and an ink pad to distress the edges of the words to bring it all together. These are just dollar store photo albums but the ribbon through the binding really made it cute. For the last page of the book I printed a 4x6 of the Articles of Faith since primary children are usually memorizing those. I would be happy to email you directions and references if you are interested in making one of these.


NEW ERA QUIET BOOK:

This book was super easy. I didn't come up with this one, just found the idea googling. These are the New Era posters that you can order as postcards from lds.org. If you use the front and back cover you can fit 40 posters, which is 5 of the 7 sets of 8 that are available, so I just picked the sets I liked the most.

PROGRAM TRACKING/FHE BINDER (don't miss this one!)

This is the coolest thing every that EVERY LDS mom should have. It is a tracking binder for all of the programs our church uses including Faith in God, YW, YM, and Scouting programs. Not only is it a way to keep track of all your children's progress in one binder, here is the genious part. Each program has a page of FHE ideas that your children can do with the family to pass off requirments on family night! We had a stake activity and made these so we made them again for those who hadn't had the chance to get one. This one is worth its weight in gold.

We also had a special guest speaker come from our stake to educate us on using Coupons. She has a very popular website at http://www.beingfrugalisfabulous.com/. She was really informative and had lots of stories of walking away with tons of stuff for just pennies. She showed us how she organizes it all and all the basics. Check out her site it is really neat.

Our other class was based on the Mix-A-Meal cookbook. Wow, there is so much you can do with these mixes to use your food storage and save time. We also learned about a really valuable food storage site at http://www.everydayfoodstorage.net/.

Salt Part 2:

Speaking of food storage, here is another salt picture I found on my camera. I guess i can see why this made sense to Tanner. If you have ever seen a Thomas video, there are often materials used like this to look like snow.

Gardening:

We are enjoying our little garden that we planted. There are only 7 or 8 plants, but the kids really liked this project and we love watching it grow. I can't wait for fresh vegetables!




Playhouse:

The kids have really been into this project as well, especially Dallin. Dallin worked hard every day at school for 2 weeks so that he and Daddy could build a little each night. They usually only had a few minutes before bed time. He never missed a second of the process and was very interested in every detail. Even if he couldn't help with a certain part, he never left Peter's side.

Here it is with a roof going up. Tanner is really a great construction superviser here, ha ha!

Here it is all built. We haven't decided what color to paint yet. Dallin really wanted the windows to have the latice crosses.
Dallin and Eden have taken the liberty to do a lot of wall decoration in there already. I didn't oppose it because it is really their space, so I stayed out of it. The inside is stocked with a plastic kitchen, food and table, and a couple of small throw rugs.

Since we know an electrician the house even got a light and a plug in for a radio. There are still many things we plan to do out here, but the kids are loving their house. They even slept in it one night already with Daddy. Next, I am going to get some of that chalkboard paint to put on one of the walls inside.

Other Projects:

Charts are becoming such a part of our lives, it just helps me keep the kids organized. This was a fun one we just made as we are starting to teach our kids a little bit about nutrition. We will be having a lot of Family Night lessons about it so this was to get us started. I bought the board at Walmart and the Letters at the dollar store. I just glued the ribbon on with tacky glue. The magnets are made from .75" magnets using glue stick, hot glue and floral marbles from Michaels. I googled the pictures and made a word document with the right sizes. If you are interested, email me and I will send you the picture pages.

Each child has a space where they have all the nutrition requirements for a balanced diet for a day. Whenever they eat something from a food group, they move the corresponding magnet over from the left to the space on the right. I used the USDA's charts for how many servings each person should get. The first letter of each person's name shows their designated area. The kids are really excited about eating foods for their chart and are already pretty good at figuring out food groups.

These magnets turned out cute, but really ended up being more tedious and expensive than I originally thought. Oh well, I love it now that it is done. There is bread, apple, broccoli, meat, and milk to represent each kind of food. This board is as much for me as it is the kids so that I can track how well they are eating(or how I am feeding them!)

A Take on Flannel Boards:

This is so cool! I found a website where someone had downloaded every flannel board story ever printed in The Friend Magazine and colored them in Paint. Click Here for the site. I just downloaded, printed them and laminated them. (tangent: I love having a home laminating machine! It is cheaper than running to Kinkos and I use it all the time. I have the no heat Xyron version that sells at Office Max for $50 that I love, but I noticed there is a heated one at Walmart that is quite a bit cheaper, something in the $20 range.) You can buy magnet strips for really cheap at Walmart and I just use this beat up magnet board that we had lying around to tell the stories with. It is great for telling scripture stories, the kids always beg for more.

These are just the Book of Mormon stories. I keep each story in a sandwich bag in this dollar store basket.

Fun Snack Idea:

This was something that my roommate used to eat back in my BYU days. I was trying to come up with some fun nutritous snacks for the kids and this came back to me (thanks Heather if you ever read this!) Crumble graham crackers in a little bowl and put sliced peaches on top. Drizzle with honey and oh my it is so good! It is one of my favorites now too!

Book Report

I borrowed this book from the library a couple of days ago, what a fun read! I have seen this family on TV and been fascinated at how they run their family with 18 children. The book has a lot of interesting stories about their life and background and their financial and parenting philosophies. My favorite thing is how much they emphasize that children are blessings from God. Sounds like Peter's parents, go figure. This strong Christian family is the least worldly family I have ever seen and I think that is very commendable. They have obviously been blessed for their faith in the Lord. I picked up several ideas that I would like to incorporate into our family and overall it left me so inspired to be a better teacher, example and leader for my children. It is a quick and uplifting read that I highly recommend.

Frugality at its Best

I am excited because today is a holiday. Everyone in my family is excited because we are heading to six flages, but that is not really why I am looking forward to today. My older kids are really into books, we read for at least a half hour before bed each night and they beg for more. They will stay in their beds and read for a while after that even. We use the library a lot and we have a growing collection of our own that I slowly gather when I find the right deals.

Today, being a holiday the Goodwill is having a sale, 1/2 off of everything. That means childrens books will be .50 for hardback and .25 for paper back. I am so stocking up on our way out of town! Those are my approved yard sale prices but they have a huge selection. I don't know if the sale is nationwide, but could be worth checking out. My budget is $20 so can you imagine how much fun we are going to have??? That would only buy a couple of books at Borders.

I have blogged about it before, but we love to buy our kids games and puzzles there too. A game for a couple dollars totally beats 10-20 bucks at Target. I got Eden a brand new Fancy Nancy game there the last time we went.

Getting Organized

I want to share some systems that have really been working for us lately. I don't think any of it is original, but they have made life so much easier around our home.

1. AM/PM Schedules. I made these schedules for the kids a couple of months ago and they have changed my life. The kids are learning good habits and I don't have to walk them through it all the time anymore. In the morning they must do their schedule before we have breakfast. After doing it for several weeks, they just go do it and I don't have to do anything. That's not true for Tanner though, he is still learning so I am working with him each time. Dallin gets his whole schedule done in less than 10 minutes and then he is ready for school, so nice! I love the bed time one too because the kids actually climb into bed without argument since it is on their schedule.

2. Laundry System. This is so huge for me. The worst part of doing laundry is getting it all put away. With our family of 6 it takes forever to get everything put where it needs to go. I asked my sister who has 5 kids for suggestions and it was definitely a light bulb moment for me. Now instead of separating all the laundry into colors each week and dealing with a huge pile of everything at once, I have a laundry basket for each person in our family, and one for kitchen towels. I labeled them with their names so they know where to put their clothes when they change. Then I follow a laundry schedule so that I am washing about 2 loads per day. The beautiful thing is that I just wash a load and it all gets put away in 2 minutes in one place. I wash it all in cold and bought some color saving sheets for loads with reds in them. I don't know why it has taken me so long to come to this system, it is SOOO overdue. The second part to my sytem are these great little under bed boxes. They are just the right size to fit a week of outfits down one side, and undies and jammies on the other. I have one for each kid. When they do their schedule they just go to their box and get what they need. I roll shirts and pants together to make outfits for the week. I still use their dresser for all of their other clothes that are not in season or being used at the moment. Having a specifit basket for dirties and box for clean makes schedules go that much smoother. Now when I wash a person's basket I just bring the clean clothes up and reset their box and I am done for a week.
3. Green Bags. I won't pretend that I am trying to save the planet here. That is great and all but this really is just practical for me. I invested 1.00 each for these at the grocery store and I love them. They are SO durable and fit a TON of stuff in each bag. When I get home everything is still in the bag, I don't have to deal with broken bags, or little plastic bags all over my house. One of the best things is that the straps are long enough that you can throw 2 or 3 over your shoulder and carry a couple in your hands too. I am one to always try to bring as much as possible in at once. 5 is enough if you do a weekly trip, but I do about 2 weeks at a time so I need 10. Still a really cheap investment. for a dollar I am so impressed with how durable these little guys are, and with the large capacity I will probably find a lot of uses for them.



4. Kids will be kids. No matter how perfectly organized I try to be, the kids will always keep me humble. With all this swine flu stuff in the news, I got to thinking about my food storage and how we don't have any salt! That would really stink to have all this food and no way to flavor it. So I was happy that salt was on sale for .27 this week. I bought nine containers and brought them home in my handy dandy bag. My biggest mistake was not putting it away with the food storage right away. I was so happy last night listening to the kids play so nicely together, no fighting or yelling or anything. Then I discovered what they were up to. SALT!!!! Dallin and Tanner thought the salt would make great snow to play with their cars in. Eden was guilty by association as well. I really don't know how much more the carpets in our house can take, really! This particular pile was turned into snow by adding water. Aren't they just so creative? After I was done pulling my hair out I could laugh about it when I told Peter about it (he was out of town for the night).

72 ideas to simplify your life.

http://zenhabits.net/2007/09/simple-living-manifesto-72-ideas-to-simplify-your-life/

This is a great list.

Sock Box

Like most people, we keep a shoe basket by our front door. This winter, I found that my little bare foot kids had cold feet a lot. Rather than have them always wear their shoes around the house, I went to the store and bought 2 big packages of ankle socks that would fit all three of my older kids and put them in a little basket next to the shoe basket. Now, if the kids have cold feet they just go grab a pair of socks and wear them like slippers. When it is time to go out and I tell them to put their shoes on, the socks are right there ready for them all in one spot. It really helps us to get them on and out the door faster.

Toy Room Organization

I finally have my toy room organized perfectly, just in time for Christmas. I guess I will have to totally rework it in a few days, but here is what I have been doing with it the last few weeks. I ditched the mini table and chairs and put up our long table. It is adjustable so I put it as low as it goes and we use our big folding chairs so they are right up there in their work spaces. This works well with multiple projects and children at the same time!

Next, I tackled the toy closet. After getting rid of things we just don't use and finding a place for everything and everything in its place, I labeled everything. I used to use a label maker, but I got this idea of taking pictures from a TV show(John and Kate Plus 8). Now the kids know how to put things away which is a huge help. They finally actually like to clean because it is like a matching game.

Another example.

Here is the finished project! I know it isn't exactly pretty, but I wanted to use what we had so I didn't spend any money on fancy containers. The table and chairs were just hanging out in the garage so that was easy too. Total cost 0$ ! The picture labels make it sooooo nice and neat. Having a toy room is worth the sacrifice of a bedroom. We have our 3 oldest kids sleeping in one room as an exchange, but this works well for us. The girl toys are in their bedroom closet in bins, so that is why there aren't any in this space. So now I just need to make the rest of the house this organized :)

Puzzles and Games

Game and Puzzle boxes never last long for us for some reason, can't imagine why! When they wear out, I turn to the trusty zip lock bags. They are easy and cheap. I have a small stack of game boards and the plastic bags full of pieces in a little tub on top.

I also started cutting out the front of the puzzle box so the kids have a reference when they are putting them together. It saves so much space too. I just have them all in one small drawer.