Weekend Fun

This was a fun weekend. Handsome Husband's aunt came into town this weekend with her two youngest kids, E and J.

J is in town for Notre Dame's soccer camp and E is three and a master of the question, "Why?" I met them for the first time last summer for Handsome Husband's grandfather's 95th birthday celebration. E and J have 3 siblings that stayed behind with their dad.

E is one of my favorite people to hang out with and as you can imagine, I don't get to see her often. It took her about 5 minutes to warm up to me again and we were back at it. Playing games on the iPad and E asking, "Why?" Good times!

Her mom said she's been obsessed with seeing me so hopefully I can see her tomorrow!! Here are a couple photos of the cutie-patootie.

High Five for Friday!

This is the first time I am posting a High Five for Friday post (hosted by Lauren at From My Grey Desk) since I forgot about my blog took an accidental hiatus from blogging.  Let's just hope that I can do this linking thing correctly!

Here are some things from this week and today:

1.  Got new placemats and napkins and placemats at Target to warm up my dining room.

2.  Spent some time and money at one of my favorite stores to get ready for the school year!  I have a small obsession with black accented with rainbow colors and polka-dots. :)

3.  Check out these CUH-UTE stamps I got!!

4.  Hooray for moms who loan their daughters pieces of furniture for an indefinite amount of time!  Go Jan!

5.  Ending the day with decaf.

How was YOUR week?

School changes

I must say that I think my school has THE COOLEST janitorial staff around.  Where else would you find a head custodian willing to let three (3!!!) teachers paint some of their walls black??!!  My team and I usually spend the day before school starts putting black paper up on the walls to help our posters and signs pop.  Well...that gets annoying. And it wastes paper!  So, we approached our custodian to ask permission to paint instead.  Gotta love him!

Here are some before and after shots of the new walls:

Don't mind the one on the right that I forgot to paint...it'll get done.  Swear. :)

Ahh...that's better!

Home renovations

So, Handsome Husband and I hosted a couple of friends for dinner tonight.  We had a blast eating good food, drinking coffee and laughing our butts off!  My pregnant friend laughed so hard her belly button popped out!  Hilariousness ensued...and it popped out even more!  When they got here I was able to show them all the things that I have changed in the house.

My Handsome Husband has owned this house for around 10 years and I am the first woman to put her stamp on it.  It has been very much a DUDE house.  The paint on the walls was the same color throughout (DIRTY! I mean well-lived-in).  There was ugly teal carpet on the stairs (seriously, who picks TEAL???), and grey carpet upstairs that was hiding hardwood floors!!  The floors need some work but they are soooooo much better than the carpet.

This week my mom and I have ripped up the rest of the carpet on the stairs and upstairs and my new bathroom has been completed.  Target and TJ Maxx have seen me just about every day!

Handsome Husband thinks that everything looks nice but is secretly thinking, "Thank God I didn't have to do any of it!"  I say that I am increasing the property value...he says, "You did that just by moving in!"  Awwww.  That's why he's Handsome Husband :).  Although, I know that what he is really saying  is, "How much is it going to cost this time???"

Here are some before and after photos of the most recent renovations.  The previous ones will be in another post.

We kept the door behind the shower which used to access a utility closet to make for easy access to the plumbing.  That way we don't have to rip out a wall if we ever need to get to it.

Homemade laundry detergent...Easy peasy.

I was afraid that they wouldn't let me use this blog anymore since it's been so long since I last posted!  I originally started this blog to talk about teaching and my adventures but I have so many things that I enjoy talking about. :)  

I have been working on many home improvement projects around the house and trying new ideas.  The newest idea that I tried was making my own laundry detergent.  My mom made her own liquid formula for a while but it was annoying and ugly while stored in bulk (5 gallon bucket in the bathroom anyone?).  

She tried again after finding this post on Pinterest, tweaked it a bit and gave some to my husband and I.  We loved it!  I was bummed when it ran out because I figured that it would take me FOREVER to make or have some random ingredients so I didn't even attempt it.  

I was wrong!!!!  I decided to give it a go...and it went well!  For some reason, finding the ingredients (all 3 of them) was difficult.  I went to Target first and only found the Borax (and the pretty jar it ended up in but I don't consider that an ingredient).  Instead of putting the Borax back I decided to buy it anyway, which was a good thing because Wal-mart only had the baking soda and Fels Naptha soap...no Borax in sight.  Oy vey.

So, here's what you need to get started:  three 5.5 oz bars of Fels Naptha soap (approx. 16 oz total), eight 16 oz boxes of baking soda (I found 76 oz boxes, so I only had to buy two), one 76 oz box of Borax, a bucket to mix in, a cheese grater and an optional "prettified" container to store it in.

First, grate the bars of soap into the bucket using the cheese grater.  I thought that my pieces may have been a little too long so I crunched them up a bit using my hands.

Second, pour the box of Borax into the bucket.  Mix the soap and Borax well with your hand.  I took my wedding and Memere ring off while I did this.  I didn't think it would hurt them, but better safe than sorry!

Third, mix in each box of baking soda well.  I mixed for a couple of minutes to make sure that everything was evenly distributed.

Once everything was mixed well, I used an old cottage cheese container to scoop the mixture into my "prettified" container.

I had enough for two containers!  You only need about 2 tablespoons of the mixture per load.  The directions I gave my handsome husband were, "Big load, two scoops.  Little load, one scoop."  I have to make things super simple for him to adopt them as habits. :)

When all was said and done, this took me 20 minutes and cost $12 for the ingredients and bucket. The "prettified" container was around $7.50 at Target.

Let's see how long this lasts us!