For a Laugh--Angry Birds

In case you wondered where the Angry Birds came from....

From my LOL board.

How to Make Dish Detergent

The same time I was learning how to make laundry detergent, I found this tutorial on how to make dish detergent.  Since it had mostly the same supplies as the laundry detergent, and I already had all of that, I decided to give it a try.  I really hate buying dish detergent even more than buying laundry detergent.  It always seems so expensive, and it never seems to last as long as I think it should.

For this you need 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Super Washing Soda, 1/4 cup salt, and 2 packets of Unsweetened Lemonade Packets.  Be careful, because I've read that other flavors of Kool-Aid will stain your dishwasher.  Only use lemon!

Just throw it all in a container (I used one with a spout so I could pour it like the regular dish detergent boxes) and shake it up.  It's really that easy...

And use 2 Tbsp per load.

...And find/make a label if you want to beautify your detergent, because that really is necessary   :)

I used the same label that I tweaked for my laundry detergent; I just tweaked it a little more...

This was less than five minutes to make.  It is so easy and so cheap!!

I've found that you probably want to use vinegar as a rinse aid to keep film off of your dishes (it sounds like that may be an issue with this detergent...but I've been having that problem with any detergent I've used lately anyway).  I've read that you can also try to use a little less detergent (1 to 1 1/2 Tbsp instead of 2 Tbsp) or put a few drops of liquid dish soap in the box with the dry detergent.

Ooey Gooey Butterscotch? Chocolate Brownies

In my church we have a young women's group that I'm a leader for.  All of us leaders got together for a meeting one day, and the Young Women's President made these delicious chocolate-y peanut butter-y marshmallow-y treats.  I was searching for the recipe for a couple of weeks before I finally broke down and asked her for it.  I should have known it came from Our Best Bites!!  I love that blog and would not at all mind having the cookbook.

The original recipe calls for peanut butter chips, but my friend used crushed up Reese's PB cups--YUMMMMM!  I didn't have PB chips or PB cups, but I did have butterscotch chips and really didn't want to have to run to the store.  The butterscotch chips were okay, I think the PB chips would have been better, but the PB cups are seriously the best idea ever!!  If I make it again I will be making it a point to go out and buy some Reese's.

Chocolate, peanut butter, sweetened condensed milk, and marshmallows...seriously, what is better than that?!?

Update on the Twiggy Vase

A couple of weeks ago I made a "vase" out of twigs.  Now that we're officially in the holiday season I switched out the fake flowers I had in it for these winter-y Christmas-y branches, and I love it. 

I'm still trying to accumulate Christmas decorations and our house seems to be looking a little sparsely decorated, so this is perfect for one of our counters that needed some Holiday cheer.  (And, yes, I did do my Christmas decorating before my dishes...at least one of those sinks in the background is full of clean dishes!)

Cinnamon Roll Pie Crust

I found this pie crust on pinterest and knew I had to use it for an apple pie this year for Thanksgiving!  This was really easy and fun to make!  

I just used a Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust, buttered it, and generously sprinkled cinnamon all over it.  I rolled it up, cut it into small, mini-cinni-rolls, and squished them into the pie dish.  I used the ends without much cinnamon to fill in some of the cracks where the dish was showing through.

I forgot to get a picture after the pie came out of the oven (and it didn't last long), but here's the recipe of my mom's that I used, anyway.

Apple Crumb Pie
5-7 apples (5 cups of sliced apples)
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp flour
1 9-inch unbaked pie shell

Arrange apples in unbaked shell.  Mix sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour and sprinkle over the apples.

Topping
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter

Mix the sugar and flour, cut in the butter, and sprinkle over everything already in the pie.  Tap it down a little, if needed.

Bake for 40 minutes at 400 degrees or until done.  Cool.

This is the easiest pie ever, and the crust made it even better!!  My mom usually uses tapioca instead of flour in the first mixture, and I actually like that a lot better, but I don't know how she does it!!  Next time, gadget.

Turkey Onesie with Felt

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

For the little guy's first Thanksgiving I had to make this cute onesie I saw here.  I think she used puff paint or something, but I just used felt and some googly eyes.

It was a little tricky sewing all the pieces on.  I really wish I had just done an iron-on transfer or something.  It took a little while, and the , but it turned out really cute!  

How to Make Laundry Detergent

A lot of the things I pin are budget-friendly ideas.  Even with my husband in school, we're trying to stay as much out of debt as we can.  He works full time while going to school full time, and I work part time from home while I stay home with the baby.  It's busy, and we don't spend nearly as much time together as we would really like, but we keep telling ourselves it will be worth it when we don't have student loans for years and years.

I found a tutorial on how to make your own laundry detergent and decided I had to try it out.  The detergent supplies cost less than $10, and since you only use 2 tablespoons per load, it is suuuuper cheap!!  All the tutorials I've seen for this say it costs between 5 and 8 cents a load.  To compare, I found that Tide powder detergent is about 17 cents a load and liquid Tide is 20 cents a load.  Since I added the Sun Oxygen Cleaner (not pictured) to mine, it added another few cents a load, but I would be adding that to any detergent I use, so I didn't add it into the price.


First, get the supplies.  For each bar of Fels-Naptha (or other laundry soap), you will need 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Super Washing Soda, and 1/4 cup Baking Soda.

I used Fels-Naptha (which also is great to pre-treat clothes and get out stains of anything--we used this at my house growing up and it works miracles), but I've also seen tutorials using Pink Zote soap and Kirk's Castile.  I've even seen some using plain old Ivory soap, but I think something made for laundry will work better.  For the bar soap I think you can use whatever you like or have at your local store.

I picked all of this up at Wally World (even though my husband is trying to convince me not to go there), and it was relatively cheap.  I'm sure that you could find even better deals if you're a coupon-cutting deal monger, but I don't have patience when it comes to shopping around.  I ended up using a different container that I already had because I wanted something I could scoop out of instead of pour.


Then, you grate the bar of Fels-Naptha (or laundry soap bar of your preference).  When the entire bar is grated, dump the shavings into a food processor and grind it up until it's a coarsely ground powder.

Lastly, you mix everything together, throw it into an airtight container, and find/make a cute label to slap on.

The original "recipe" doesn't mention any kind of oxygen cleaner (like Oxi-Clean or Sun Oxygen Cleaner), but I'm obsessed with it, so I figured out you need about equal parts laundry detergent and Oxi-Clean.  It's easiest to add the Oxi-Clean after you mix everything else up; you can just dump approximately the same amount into your container and shake it up.  This isn't an exact science; I added about 2 cups to the 3-ish cups of detergent I made.  Then use 3 or 4 tablespoons of detergent instead of 2.  

The blog I got this tutorial from had a cute label that I copied into Word (don't worry, she made it available to use) and tweaked just a little.  I've only used it in a few loads so far, but I'm loving it!  It smells nice but isn't too strong (except while you're stirring all the detergent particles into the air) and is so cheap I don't know if I'll ever go back to buying detergent.