Here we go again!

Following last year's rewarding and amazing success with the Flats Challenge I am excited to announce that I am gearing up again for this year's challenge.  This time with a much older child, which brings its own set of unique issues.

As you may recall, the challenge is aimed at bringing awareness to the benefits of cloth diapering.  Families who are tight on funds do not have to spend hundreds of dollars on disposable diapers for their babies.  In all actuality, a baby can be diapered from birth to potty training for less than $50 with the use of flat diapers.

With this challenge, I will only be able to  use my flat diapers and covers.  No pocket diapers and no prefolds. I will also not have the use of my washer or dryer.  The point of that goes hand in hand with the objective of this challenge.  Not all families, low income or not, have access to a washer or dryer.  Others cannot afford to use a laundromat.  The diapers will be hand washed in a camper style bucket and line dried outside on nice days and inside on rainy days.

This may seem silly and pointless to some, but it is a good lesson in how little you need to survive.  After the first day or two during last years challenge, I realized that hand washing diapers is 100% doable and I even got into a nice rhythm of washing and drying during naps.

I will be blogging my progress, my good days and my bad days for the entire week.

Stay tuned!! 

Homemade Peanut Butter

A few weeks ago I turned 2 1/2 pounds of raw peanuts into a TON of peanut butter.  I assumed it would have been months before I had to make it again.  I really underestimated the peanut butter demand in this house, because in just about a month here I am making it again.  Good thing it is so easy and cheap to make.

What you will need:

2 - 2 1/2 pounds of raw peanuts
Baking sheet
Food processor
Pinch of salt, optional

I had a surprisingly difficult time finding raw peanuts by the pound.  Neither the Whole Foods or Trader Joe's near my house sold them, which surprised me.  I found them at an organic health food store quite a distance from my house.  My husband also found them online here.  Check your local health food store for availability.  Two and a half pounds of peanuts from the organic store ran about $8.00.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F.  Spread the nuts onto the baking tray evenly.  This is what 2 pounds of raw peanuts looks like.

Roast the nuts in your heated oven for about 30-40 minutes.  Keep checking them so that they don't burn.  They should have a light golden brown color to them.

Once they are done let them cool for about 10 minutes then transfer them into your food processor.

Then turn on your food processor and let it do its thing.  They will have to spin for quite awhile.   

Here are the peanuts after about one minute of spinning....

 ...and here they are after about 3 minutes of spinning..... starting to resemble peanut butter!!  If you are going to add a teaspoon of salt, now would be when you would do that.

Finally after about 5-7 minutes of processing, you have yourself some beautiful, creamy, all natural, no additives, and preservative free peanut butter!

Transfer to any type of jar... try and make sure most of it ends up in the jar and not your mouth.  This is my yield of peanut butter from exactly 2 pounds.  Adjust the amount to your needs.  Store the peanut butter in your fridge for as long as you like! I can guarantee it will be consumed long before it spoils!

Enjoy!!

Super Quick And Adorable Easter Craft for Toddlers

In honor of Easter this Sunday, I found a super quick and adorable paint project to do with my toddler.  It involves paint and body parts, which is a favorite craft of mine.  (On Valentines Day I painted her tiny hands red and pink and smashed them onto white card stock.   It was supposed to resemble a heart shape with the two hands.  We did the best that we could with a one year old.)

For this holiday, I decided to paint her foot yellow and turn it into a baby chick.  I used a non toxic water based craft paint that I picked up at a local hobby store.

Put your toddler in her high chair and occupy her hands with something to distract her.  I gave my daughter a few cheerios and she was content to let me paint her left foot completely yellow.  I had assistance from a mom friend on stand by with baby wipes and the card stock.

Once her foot was painted we mashed it carefully into the card stock and slowly peeled it away to prevent smears and smudges.  Her foot was quickly wrapped in baby wipes and all the paint was easily removed.

Here is the final result, with embellishments added later in the day once she was napping.  I added the flower by painting my own thumb different colors and making a pretty thumbprint Easter flower.

We will be giving this one to my husband to replace the Valentine's craft at his desk at work!

In total this craft took about 30 minutes.  If your child has very ticklish feet, this craft may be a little more difficult to make.

Happy Easter!!

Homemade Fabric Softener

After the huge success of my recent attempt at homemade laundry detergent, I decided to go for broke and try to make fabric softener.  I normally don't use fabric softener.  Occasionally I will buy dryer sheets if they are on sale, but I line dry my my laundry in the summer and when I do use the dryer, I can't stand finding rogue dryer sheets stuck to my shirts and socks.

I found a quick recipe on Pinterest (duh, where else?) and decided to give it a try.  Here is what you will need:

a large pot (I used a chili pot)
6 cups water
3 cups of white vinegar
2 cups Suave Almond & Shea Butter conditioner.  (I encourage you to use any scented conditioner you like.  I decided to try this one.)

In your large pot, mix the water, vinegar and conditioner.  Stir well.  I used a wire whisk because the spatula just wasn't doing it.

It may appear chunky or lumpy at first...

...but keep stirring until the conditioner is dispersed evenly.

Pour into a clean and empty container.  I used a gallon milk jug.  It makes approximately a half gallon of fabric softener.

I must be honest. At this point, the fabric softener smelled nothing like almond and shea butter and more like sour apples.  I think the scent of the conditioner was too soft to blend and mute out the vinegar scent.  Before I scrapped this batch and try a different smelling conditioner, I decided to do a load of towels to see what the end result would be.

The recipe I followed suggested using the same amount of fabric softener normally used.  For this load, I used 1/4 cup.  If the scent is too strong or too weak I can always adjust the amount later.

Another option is to spritz a good amount on a wash cloth and toss it in the dryer.  A reusable dryer sheet, in a way.  Neat!

Once the wash was done I buried my face into one of the towels as I removed it from the washing machine and took a big sniff.  The result was NOT sour apples.  It was a nice fresh scent.  I kept sniffing, thinking that I would find a pocket of sour apples, but luckily I did not.  Fresh out of the dryer I had the same result, a nice fresh scent.

I've used this fabric softener in every load of laundry since.  I like it, and so does my husband.  I think for the next batch I'll try a stronger scented conditioner like Rosemary and Mint.  I may like that even more!

DIY Baby Gripper Socks

My daughter is almost a walking toddler.  Almost.  What isn't helping her quest to walking are our slippery hardwood floors.  I found this neat craft idea and decided to try it for her to see if it would help.

So one Wednesday Grandma came down with these paints and some new socks.

In just a few minutes I transformed a few plain socks into adorable and personalized gripper socks for her.

I hope she is wearing a pair of these socks the day she takes her first steps!

There's Nothing Wrong with Homemade Laundry Detergent

I don't know about you, but I am forever doing laundry.  It is amazing to me how many outfit changes one little girl can need in a day.  That, along with her cloth diapers, my washing machine is running every other day.  That equals a lot of detergent.  Does anyone else cringe at the prices of name brand detergents?  And it always seems like they are coming out with a new "must have" additive in smaller containers for sometimes more money.  What ever did people do before the Oxy Burst/Laundry Booster phenomenon?

My challenge this week is to bring laundry detergent back to basics.  Clean clothes at a fraction of the cost. If I told you that you could have nearly 10 GALLONS of laundry detergent for less than $15.00, would you be interested in knowing how?  Well, then read on.

Here are the supplies you will need.  I was able to find them all at both my local grocery store and at Walmart in the laundry aisles.  Walmart had the better prices.

Borax ($3.24)
Arm & Hammer Super WASHING (not baking) Soda ($3.38)
Fels-Naptha Soap Bar ($0.97)
5 Gallon bucket with lid ($4.00 at Home Depot)
10 empty and clean milk jugs or other containers

For the first step, grab your kitchen grater and the Fels-Naptha bar.  Grate the entire bar until you have a shaved pile of soap.

Next, fill a sauce pot with 4 cups of hot water.  Dump the grated soap into the pot and stir continuously over medium low heat until all of the soap flakes have disappeared and melted into the hot water.  Your mixture should be foamy and have no flakes still floating in it.

After your soap flakes are melted, fill your 5 gallon bucket half full with hot water.  Add your soap mixture along with one cup of the Arm & Hammer Washing Soda and a half cup of the Borax.  Stir well.  At this point my house smelled amazing!

Fill the rest of your bucket with water until it is full.  Stir it again until it is mixed completely.  Cover your bucket and let it sit overnight.

I let my soap sit for a full 24 hours in my laundry room.  The mixture should have gelled and thickened slightly.  For some reason my mixture was more than slightly thickened.  Stir thoroughly again.

Perhaps if I let it sit for only 12 hours as opposed to 24, or maybe if it were in a warmer part of the house it wouldn't have gelled so much.  The only result of really gelled detergent is that I had to stick my hands in the bucket and break up the big lumps by hand.  It really wasn't a big deal at all. Just a little more hands on work.

Time to get all your milk jugs ready!  Use a funnel and fill each container half way with the soap mixture.

Fill the other half of the jugs with water and shake well.  And, this is the result of a couple hours work:

 

For HE machines, use 1/4 cup of detergent.  For regular machines use 1/2 cup.  Make sure to shake the bottle well before each use.

I now have enough laundry detergent to last a lifetime for less than $15.00!  And the greatest part is that the next time I need to make detergent again, I only need the Fels-Naptha Soap Bar, as I already have plenty of the Borax and the Arm & Hammer Washing Soda.  So the next 10 gallons of detergent will cost only 97 cents!!  You can't beat that!

So now that I have my pretty jugs of detergent, it was time to put it to the test.  The detergent may be dirt cheap, but can it actually clean dirt?

The first test was going to be my dog's dirty blankets.  If it can clean a dog bed, then I'm confident it can clean normal dirt and grime.  Clean or dirty, I don't normally put my face into my dog's blanket and sniff, but for this experiment, I made the sacrifice.  The result?  CLEAN!  It didn't smell like dog, and it also didn't smell like commercial laundry fragrances.  It just smelled clean.

The next tests were a load of lights and a load of darks.  I had an arts and crafts day with my daughter and managed to get pink craft paint on my favorite jeans along with spaghetti sauce from her dinner.  I crossed my fingers and threw them into the wash with the homemade detergent.  The result?  CLEAN!  No paint stains and no tomato sauce.  How excited am I!!

The third and final test will be the deal breaker.  Can this homemade detergent clean and deodorize my daughter's cloth diapers?  I filled the diaper soaking bucket with water and 1/4 cup of the detergent.  As she soiled the diapers I threw them into the bucket to soak.  When I had enough dirty diapers, I threw them into the wash using the homemade detergent.  And the result?  Amazingly clean smelling cloth diapers!

If you really like to have scented detergent, you can always add a few drops of essential oils to the laundry detergent.  

If you happen to have a really tough stain or above average dirt and grime, I would suggest pretreating the stain before washing.

So, there you have it.  There really is nothing wrong with homemade laundry detergent!

Next up:  Homemade Fabric Softener!

Happy washing!

My Resourceful Revolution

I am not quite sure when it happened, but it did.  Maybe it was a result of my new life as a stay at home, cloth diapering, baby food making, 14 month nursing, mother.  Maybe it was a result of our weekly grocery bills constantly increasing.  A lot of it is due to Pinterest.  This I am sure of.  But maybe it was always inside of me waiting for its chance to bloom.  I woke up one day and it was there.

I am referring to what I have coined as my Resourceful Revolution.  My new outlook is that if I can do it/make it/ design it myself then there is absolutely no reason to buy it.  Just because it isn't sold on a shelf does not mean it doesn't exist!  And I have to say, doing it myself and seeing the results of my perseverance and dedication pay off is so rewarding.  It should be illegal.

For example, just last week I found a recipe for peanut butter and for literally $8.00 and 45 minutes of my day I now have enough natural peanut butter to last MONTHS.  I regret that I didn't document the making of it for this blog because it will be a while before I need to make it again.

I will not be making that mistake again.  My goal for this blog is to find new and exciting ways to eliminate the need for store bought household items, food, gifts by making them myself.  My goal is to show you all that you CAN do it, it IS possible and this blog will be the honest truth you can trust.  If something stinks, if a recipe doesn't work, or if it turns out to be something amazing and easy you will find an open honest and hopefully informative review.

So that is it for now.  As I write this post, I am working on my next project:  Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent!!

Please check back often and follow my progress!  If you have an idea for something you'd like to see done, but don't want to do yourself please send me the idea.  I will research and hopefully get a chance to try it out on here.

Angela