Bubbles and Blogs

Grant and I have been discussing and praying about ways to lower our budget, so we can start saving up a financial reserve and storing food. The answer came in an inspired email from my mother-in-law. It was just a suggestion to check out someone's blog that I had been putting off till I had the time. What I found out when I read it was there are TONS of ways that we can save and be more self-reliant. The blog is written by a sweet lady who lives in Australia and writes to encourage people to be more green, save money, be self-reliant, and value homemaking. She is an excellent writer. It is an inspirational blog.

So I took dear Rhonda-Jean's advice and dared to knit my own cloths, make my own bread and yogurt, and make my own house-hold cleaners... including laundry soap.It has been quite the adventure. I snooped around our local grocers looking for ingredients I had never heard of. I mean... how many of you know what Bicarb soda is? really...
After a few hours of mispronouncing the name to store clerks and looking up and down the cleaning aisle (sure I had missed it) I found out that Bicarb Soda is Sodium Bicarbonate, known in AMERICA as Baking Soda! :D I laughed so hard at my foolishness. Of course the most common ingredient in so many of these cleaners was Baking Soda! I had heard of using Baking Soda to clean and deodorize before!

When I bought the BIG pot I would need to make my ten liters of laundry liquid, the store clerk asked if I was going to make spaghetti. I laughed and said, "Nope! I'm making laundry detergent!" I got the strangest look.Turns out that just like making healthy bread is cheaper than buying healthy bread because the amount of each ingredient you use costs much less, making your own laundry detergent is MUCH cheaper than buying even the store brands. Plus it doesn't have some of the unnecessary chemicals (ones added just to make bubbles) and such.At the Harold B. Lee Library, I found a wonderful book written by a chemist about what the ingredients in common brands of household chemicals do and why they use them. I couldn't put it down. It's entitled The Complete Guide to Household Chemicals by Robert J. Palma, Sr., Ph. D. with Mark Espenscheid. I strongly recommend it to those of you interested in simplifying your budget and understanding the preservatives and additives in household chemicals, foods, and such. It even covers what is in your cars and why.

Anyhow, here are the pictures from my fun experience.

This is all I needed to make my laundry detergent.

I graded up that little bar of laundry soap and heated it in some water on the stove till is was all melted. Then added the other ingredients.

After it was all mixed together, I poured it into a bucket and added a bunch of water and then let it set up. This is the ten liter bucket while it was cooling. The whole process took about 25 mins.

Here are all the ingredients I needed to make common household cleaners.
And the final products. :D
For these recipes and more check out Rhonda's post about making your own green cleaners.
For most inspirational writing and other ideas on how to be frugal and live simply click here.

Visit to Vancouver

We had a whirlwind visit home last month. We went up so Grant could record his speaking lines onto the With Mine Own Hand cd so it could be distributed to seminary teachers this coming year... just in time for Book of Mormon! We were only there for a few days, but we had tons of fun with our families! Here are some of the highlights (actually they're just what I happened to take pictures of when I remembered I had my camera with me - lol)...

This is Grant jumping on the trampoline with the kids (sorry its not a wonderful pic. It was nighttime). Grant spent a large part of our time there entertaining the younger three with tricks and games on the trampoline. He's going to be a great dad!

Everyone kept arguing over who got Grant's full attention next. It was pretty fun to see how much they all love him! I couldn't have picked someone who fit better into my family. While he was busy teaching Traci about photoshop, playing videogames with the boys, helping dad sand the ceiling, and playing on the trampoline, I enjoyed time visiting and cooking with my mom and sisters! It was so perfect!

My sister Kristi and I.
Me, Kristi, and Traci.

This is a picture I snapped while we were all sitting around visiting. It's a good thing Grant likes cuddling becuase he sure married into a family of cuddlers!

Thanks for the wonderful memories family! Can't wait to see you all at Bear Lake! (Less than two months!! :D)

Happy Birthday Grant!

The handsome 23-year-old himself

Opening gifts

Note the decorations in the background! :D

Grant's favorite dinner (that exploded in the oven)

Hannah has the pictures of the hot fudge that exploded in the microwave.

The fam'

Happy Birthday Grant!

Prevention not Repention

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not." - Mark Twain

These are all the vitamins and preventative medicines that have been sent or recommended to us in the last semester during cold and flu season.



We're a little afraid to take them all at once. he he.

Faith of the Iron Variety

We usually keep our clothing iron on a shelf up high in the storage closet. Our suit cases are underneath the shelf in the same closet. Today, in order to return ten rather large, rental snow shoes (a funny story in itself) to BYU required my retrieval of our largest suitcase, in the very back of this storage closet. Unfortunately for me, the cord to the iron was wrapped around some of the smaller suit cases in the front of the closet. It came crashing down aiming right for my head and neck.

By some miracle (angelic interference is my vote), I felt the heavy iron come whizzing past my head, mere centimeters from the right side of my neck. I literally felt the whoosh of air that followed its course. In my astonishment, I looked down at the heavy metal object. There was no way it should’ve missed me. I quickly knelt and offered a prayer of gratitude and determined to find a new storage place for our iron.

Grown ups

Sunday, my husband met me in the halls of our church meetinghouse looking a little forlorn. He had been helping out with the eleven year-old boys class.

The following had taken place:

One of these sweet innocent children had sat by Grant during the lesson. At some point, he turned to Grant and asked, "Are you all done growing?"

My husband, confident and handsome man that he is, responded, "Yep. I'm pretty sure." I'm sure he even flashed his charming "hero smile."

"I thought when you where all grown-up, you didn't get acne anymore." A comment that, said to any lesser man, may've earned a good whalloping.

My husband promptly 'turned the other cheek' (the grown-up one - you know)... good man.

I will have to work harder at attempting to follow my husband's example.

Broken Things

I have decided to take a break from my ridiculously long term paper, because my brain feels like it has been doing Linguistic-gymnastics for much too long. I thought I would tell you all about the "blog-fodder" that happened around our house last night.

We are finally down to our very last tall, glass cup of the TWELVE we received at our wedding. Since Grant and I have now been married for six months (okay okay it's really seven for those of you counting, but six works better for my purposes here), that means we have broken a glass about the rate of approximately one every two weeks. This is deplorable considering the fact that in the six (or seven) months that we've lived in our apartment, we've never once admitted anyone under the age of 17.

Conclusion drawn from the evidence presented:

durable plastic cups WILL be required in the near future.

Post-post thought: I would have included pictures for you, but we've broken the camera too. Man.