Valentine's Day

Here are the kids' Valentine for this year. They always have an exchange with the other kids at Martha's. Sorry if you feel jipped that you got it virtually. :)

And here is Grace's for her preschool class.

We had a lot of fun making them together!

Lydia at 4 months old

I am 3 weeks late writing this post but better late than never, right? Lydia is growing like a weed and was 12 1/2 pounds and 24 inches long at her 4 month check up. She is in the 50th percentile in height and head circumference and 25th percentile for weight (although you'd never believe it if you saw her thighs and rump!) :) She continues to be such a joy to all of us. The kids absolutely love her and want to help feed her, hold her, button her clothes, and take a bath with her. She is a happy little girl and will smile and giggle when I munch on her cheeks, neck, toes, hands, belly, and legs. She is not spitting up nearly as much and has had rice cereal a couple of times. I don't really push giving it that much. She just started taking a 6 ounce bottle at the sitter's every morning this past week. Besides that bottle I continue to be able to feed her before I leave in the morning, at noon and then again at 3 when I pick the kids up. It's so awesome to be able to do that! She loves her Bumbo, her bouncer, her play mat and continues to enjoy toys. She loves to be chatted with and will skillfully roll from her back to her belly almost immediately when laid on the floor. She is starting to enjoy games like peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake. Oh how we enjoy our sweet Lydi-Lou! :)

Tank

I had to run a few errands in Defiance today with Lydia and Samuel and decided to run through a drive-thru on the way home since it was getting to be lunch time. I got the combo meal that comes with 2 cheeseburgers thinking that I could give Steve the extra sandwich when we got home. I took the bag back to Samuel and unwrapped his sandwich and gave it to him. I left the bag beside him and told him that he could have a few fries too if he ate his sandwich all gone. By the time I got out of Defiance he was polishing his sandwich off. I then stopped paying attention (big mistake) and a few minutes later glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed that Samuel was over halfway done with the second sandwich! Within a couple minutes he had that one finished too. He then reached in and pulled out the fries. He shoveled a few of them in his mouth before finally saying he was full. Seriously?! I don't know where he puts it. Then tonight we went to Pizza Hut to celebrate dad's 60th birthday. I had to cut him off after he ate 3 large pieces of pizza (1 was cut in half in his defense.) On the way home Lydia was screaming so we pulled over at a McDonald's so I could feed her quick. Samuel's response? "I want nuggets!" No we didn't get him any. :)

My latest attempt

I've been tempted to make my own laundry detergent for awhile now. I finally bought the stuff I needed and did it. I have no idea why I waited so long. I needed exactly 3 ingredients to make it and it costs $0.74/2 gallons to make. Why, why, why did I ever wait so long to do this?! I have no idea how much money I've wasted on laundry detergent in the last 10 years and I refuse to sit down and attempt to figure it out because it would just be depressing. Instead of spending 15ish dollars or more every 6-8 weeks I'm spending 74 cents. How awesome is that?! It costs less than 1 cent/load. Here's the blog post I used:

How to Make your own Laundry Soap

I did a lot of research online to find as much information as I could about making my own laundry soap. What I found was that pretty much all the recipes are essentially the same, some people use more or less of each ingredient, and that bath soap does not clean as well as laundry soap. I also learned that this is great for High Efficiency washers because it makes little to no suds (FYI the suds in store bought laundry detergent are for looks only and don't actually have anything to do with cleaning.)

Here's what you need: (It cost $7.59 total for the three ingredients)

• Some kind of bucket to mix all your ingredients in. I used a 2 gallon paint bucket.
• 1/3 bar of Fels Naptha Laundry Soap (you can also use Zote, Octagon, or Ivory--amounts may vary)
• 1/2 cup Borax
• 1/2 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (everything but the bucket can be found in the laundry aisle of Walmart)

Baking Soda and Washing Soda are different. See?

Step 1: Cut your bar of Fels Naptha Soap into thirds and finely grate one third of it.

Save the other two thirds because next time you make a batch of laundry soap it will feel like you are doing it for FREE!

Step 2: Put your grated soap in a pot with 6 cups of water and heat on low until the soap melts. Don't let the soap boil. Once all the soap is completely melted add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens (almost as thick as honey) Remove from heat.

Step 3: Pour 4 cups of hot tap water into your bucket. Add the soap mixture and stir it up. At this point you could add a few drops of essential oil like lavender or tea tree oil if you wanted your soap to have a fragrance. Add nothing and your clothes will simply smell clean.

Now add one gallon of hot tap water plus 6 more cups. I used my giant 8 cup Pyrex measuring cup but if I had had an old milk carton I would have just used that. As you can see my 2 gallon bucket barely fit it all. You might want to use a 5 gallon bucket to avoid unnecessary sloshing.

Give it another few minutes of stirring and then let it sit overnight.

Step: 4 In the morning your soap might look runny, or like gel, or separated with big clumps of slime on top and water on the bottom. This is all normal depending on the weather and the type of soap you used. At this point you can be done and simply keep your laundry soap in the bucket and just scoop out 1/2 cup per load. Or you can give it another good stir and funnel it into your old well rinsed laundry soap bottle. OR you can be a sucker for cute packaging like me and take it one step further.

Step 5: I wanted to use a Beverage Dispenser with a spigot but my soap came out all clumpy and I knew there was no way it would flow through. So I busted out my immersion blender and smoothed all the clumps layer by layer.

I funneled each layer into my container then went back and blended the next part. Blend, funnel, blend, funnel, blend, funnel...etc.

I found this cute plastic cup at a thrift store and it holds exactly 1/2 cup. Perfect!

An adhesive plastic hook gave me a cute litle laundy soap set-up.

If you have a Downy ball, you can put about 1/2 cup of Distilled White Vinegar in there and it makes a fantastic fabric softener. And no, your clothes do not come out smelling like vinegar. If you don't have a Downy ball just add your 1/2 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. I don't like babysitting my washing machine so I have a Downy ball.

Check me out! Cute! Frugal! Tree-hugging!