Puns and Pink Food

So this morning, it was pink eggs (forgot the ham) and jellied toast.

The boy was begging for me to pack him a lunch, but I think he'll like what the school is serving today and tomorrow.  We'll wait until they serve tuna fish sandwiches or something equally (in his eyes) musgusting.

Leon didn't eat very much at all (mainly because he slept too late and it was hard to get him moving this morning) so I ended up enjoying the rest for my breakfast.  

Spent the evening last night moving around furniture.  Will probably offer some up on the local swap pages today.

AND I think my camera charging port is shot.  Do people fix those??  Or do you just go buy another?  In my sorting of things in the garage and my office, I found roughly  6.2 million cameras, digital and otherwise out there.  Replaced for one reason or another.  Don't know.  Also don't know if we have the cables, batteries or sd cards to fit them.  What do we do with them??

I guess I need to be ruthless.

Sorry for the pun, Ruth Ann...

I should probably pitch them.

While waiting for my computer and router to reset, I looked into figuring out a way to decorate my office with buttons.  Nothing ELSE to do with them at the moment... 

Mend things??  ME???!

Probably never...

Well, everything is back up and working like it should.  I should probably too.

Have a great day!

Rambling on and a recipe

Well, I have nothing new from the State fair to report other than I haven't been there since Saturday. WHEW!  The first Iowa Public TV fair coverage started last night so I recorded it to see if anything we went to or participated in was covered.  Not yet.  There is another week of the productions to see though.  

Although, Ice cream nachos...  I'd try that...

On Sunday, I was feeling like I NEEDED to do something productive because I spent all day Saturday at the fair or visiting with relatives.  They left at the same time we left for church, so when I

got home, I got some stuff done!

I saw a hack online on how to use a shower tension rod under your kitchen sink to hang bottles on.  CHECK!  It is organized now!  

still looks disorganized, but at least I now know how much of what we do have. AND where the tools are without having to rip everything out when I need them.

See my creative use of an old dog leash??  That shelf IS put to good use once again.

and still no one knows where anything is.  What's new?

I also made 4 gallons of laundry detergent after realizing we were almost out and I found a bar of Fels Naptha under there.  GOOD!

While making the detergent, I realized that while I had Borax, I did NOT have Washing Soda, a key ingredient to homemade laundry detergent.  So I googled what a good substitute is.  

Apparently you need a chemistry major to figure this out, but if you take Baking soda and bake it for at least 30 minutes, it becomes Washing soda, aka Soda Ash, which is used to dye fabrics. 

Who knew??!  

Well, I guess SOMEONE knew!  So yeah, I did some baking on Sunday.

Recipe to make your own laundry detergent.

1) grate 2/3 of a Fels Naptha bar into a large pot with 3 quarts of water.  Bring to a boil and stir occasionally until the soap bar is dissolved.

2)  Add 1 cups Borax and 1 cup Washing Soda, boil for roughly 15 minutes.  Stirring on occasion. It will have a honey like consistency.

3) Add 1 more quart of hot water from faucet and mix well.

4) In a 5 gallon bucket, dump the mixture and add 3 gallons of cold water.  

5) Let sit overnight, but stir with a long spoon whenever you think of it.  Maybe once or twice.

Voila!  You've made your own, VERY inexpensive laundry detergent that will last for a long long time.  Keep it covered and close to your washer.  

1/2 cup is sufficient per batch.

I got some more boxes sorted in the garage and even picked out some fabric to make Meri a few new shirts for her Senior school year.  Got one cut out and she's not too keen...  She said, "I thought it was going to be exactly like my old shirt that you used for a pattern!"  

Do I need all her friends to think I'm a one trick pony?  No.  It will have adjustments made to look a smidge different.  COME ON!

Oh well.  If she won't wear it, I will.  

Plucked several tomatoes out of the garden when Leon got home.  YUM!  I'm trying to incorporate them into everything I eat these days, because there are a few people in the house who don't care for them.  Have you ever had tomatoes on oatmeal?  Me neither. 

I may have to draw the line somewhere.

On Sunday night, we got to Skype with Maddy.  Looking forward to seeing them soon!!

Gotta go.  Work beckons.  Have a great Tuesday!

Carving through space and time.

My friend Brandi, formerly known as Myfourbubs blog, was showing off her sewing and embroidery handiwork on Facebook Friday.  sigh.  When I sew, I feel like I'm in a fishbowl.  It's at the diningroom table in full view of anyone in the kitchen or living room computer.  The distractions are phenomenal as well as one dog thinks that under one end of the table, looks like the grass in the front yard.  

Also I don't think I can take compliments well in my old age.

"Ooh!  What are you making?!  My what nice fabric!"  *SHUT UP!*  

*I don't really say that, but think it... loudly*  

So I lose interest in what I'm working on and it gets shoved to the end of the table to make way for someone's book or diaper bags.  

Now what was I working on?  Oh well, I don't care anymore.  Give me some chips.

So when I saw Brandi's work, I decided that I'm going to sew this weekend!!!  I have to.. For my own sanity, if not the well being of everyone else in the house.

I reclaimed my sewing nook in the corner of my bedroom.  I shuffled things around.  I moved several bags of fabric that had been waiting for me patiently to make that incredible thing with, out to my fabric stash in my office.  I put my RED Fitness chair in place and put the screw that fell out of it back in.  I think Leon had been playing with it.  This is my official sewing chair...  exercise???....

I placed my stack of clothes that I was going to re-do or fix up on one of the tables, set up my ironing board and I was good to go!

Now where are my reading glasses???  Not that I was going to read, but if I don't have them, Leon would learn a lot of bad words in the amount of time it would take me to thread that sewing machine needle...  Roughly 30 minutes, then I'd be out of the mood.  Found them.

While he either threw toys into the bathtub for Grandpa to find, read his books in his hallway reading nook, or climbed up on my bed and watched Monsters, Inc, I deliberately ripped out some seams on some pants.  I had two pairs of slacks that fit me well, except they're a smidge too short AND weird bell bottoms.  I don't do bell bottoms well, but when I do, it rocks!  These aren't that kind.  So they have to adapt to me!

I did one pair and am a little perplexed on how to hem them.   I made them into straight leg pants.  Tried them on and showed Meri.  She liked them and will consider borrowing them.  *no*

In fixing these pants, I tore out the top stitching on the outside seams from the knees down, then ironed the side seams so that I could put a new seam in.  I left the old one until the new one was in.  Then ripped out the old seam so I could iron it flat.  I'll come back and hit it with the serger when I move that back into my room.  Anymore I hate to have unfinished seams...  So THAT needs to be done before I hem them.  It'll be a VERY tiny hem.

I also brought in the side seams of a shirt that I'd bought that makes me look like a dumpy housewife in it.  I know that I AM, but I don't want to look the part.  The fabric is awesome and I don't want to give it away.

In the midst of all this reorganizing, Leon is being potty trained.  Or rather he is training us... to give him presents whenever he does his business on the potty...  I bought two sets of cheapo farm and zoo animals and while he chopped up play dough in his highchair and watched Monsters, Inc, I wrapped them all up and put them in a big jar in the bathroom.

Can you guess what the movie du jour is?  Yep - I can quote Boo, Sully and Mike all day long now!  We're trying to teach Leon how to say "I'm Mike Wazowski" so he can be him for Halloween...  If he was a she, he's be Boo and saying that.

Shouldn't be too tough to make, huh?  If I'm not interrupted I mean...

A Kick In The...

Patooty. Is that a word? Well, you probably know what I mean...

Yesterday was a relatively quiet day at work. I LOVE days like that, but they're pretty rare. You're always waiting for the other shoe to fall for a new crisis. Well, the crisis didn't happen the way I thought it might.

But anyway, what I did until the crisis... I had the fabric stash in my office fairly organized from a couple weekends ago when I tore into it and got ruthless. So that looks good. I brought the vacuum cleaner out but it sits because I got distracted. But if you organize part of the room, it's kind of hard to say you have a clean office when your desk is piled high with notes and scribbles.

I'm the type of person that has to be writing or jotting down notes of any conversation I have with people while on the phone. You never know when something is going to be pertinent! For example, "Wait a minute, you said that you pressed the F4 key BEFORE you typed in the code..." and can catch someone is a mistake. I LOVE that... I'll make a good detective when I grow up.

So I went through the papers on my desk. Almost every last snippet. But if you clean off the top of the desk, you realize that it's not really clean when every time you open the main desk drawer the doorbell rings! I have a portable doorbell button that got dropped in my desk once upon a time and the kids used to wonder how I knew that they were digging in my drawers when I was inside the house...

So I started cleaning out my main drawer. I pulled out about 3 lbs of bandaides, 2 lbs of safety pins and paper clips, 4 lbs of random pencils and pens, 3 boxes of staples (and I don't even have a stapler out here...), 2 packets of floss, about 250 tiny computer screws, a WHOLE bunch of needles and thread spools, an international plug in adaptor and a bunch of trim nails to name just a few odds and ends in here. OH! And a couple Teach Yourself Gaelic tapes and an unused roll of film, batteries, etc. I even pulled the hose on the vacuum and vacuumed out the tiny bits of desk stuff to get it REALLY clean, or at least half way presentable.

But if you clean one drawer, why stop there! I realized that the 3 side drawers were so full of stuff that you could only open one. I tore into those too. Found a cd that I'd hunted for all over the house but couldn't find several months ago, so I bought a new one off Itunes. grumble grumble... It'll go in the car! Found several of our old Christmas cards, pics and letters we'd sent but gotten returned due to bad addresses. I save them...

And if you clean all the drawers why not the little dresser behind you and the cabinet on the other side of the desk! I organized the side cabinet in this thing and found 2 brand new ink cartridges (Black) for my printer! I'd been out of ink for.ev.er... and never remember what kinds to get when I'm at the store. HP wha??

So anyway. Thanks to Sluggy & Mark for my simplifying my life. A little... I do feel good that the drawers are looking good now and I can find what I need!

The crisis today was that my internet is down. Silly phone company/internet people... My phone works and connecting remotely to one of my companies main computers, but my email, internet browser and Yahoo IM is down for the count.

By the time you get this, it will be back up. Because how would you be able to read this if my internet is down?? In the meanwhile while I wait... I'm clearing out the box of stuff that has to be shredded or saved for posterity or scrapbooked as well as thrown out. And perhaps vacuuming, but don't hold your breath.

Why does my life feel like a "If you give the mouse a cookie" book?

Talk at you later!