Laundry Detergent Making Party...

Last night, me and a few girls from our Sunday School class made our own laundry soap! I saw the idea on pinterest and have several family/friends who make it, so we decided to give it a try! I bought the supplies for everyone and it came out to be right at $20 per person! We made enough laundry soap that should last our family between 9-12 months! It made a ton, and the best part is I only have to use a tablespoon per load of laundry:)  Here's the formula!

1 4 lb 12 oz box Borax (2.15 kg or 76 oz) 

1 4 lb box Arm & Hammer Baking Soda (1.81 kg) 

1 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda 55 oz (3 lb 7 oz) 

3 bars of Fels-naptha soap,

2 small containers of oxyclean (try to get about 3.5 lbs total (1.58 kg)) This is optional BUT I decided to add it because it adds that extra power of cleanliness to it:)

(you can also use pink Zote soap instead of Fels-naptha)

I found all of these supplies at Wal-Mart on the detergent isle and I literally cleaned them out:)

Basically, you mix everything together in a 5 gallon bucket. We lined our's with trash bags. Fels-naptha soap has to be shredded either with a cheese grater or a food processor[that is the easiest] and then tossed in the mix[these will dissolve in the wash even with cold water). Once everything is together, mix it all really well together and you have your soap! I have been told by friends who have HE washers that it works great in those specific washers. I'm super excited that I don't have to buy detergent hopefully for the rest of the year:) AND it was a fun time to spend with friends!

 We are storing most of ours in the 5 gallon bucket in our garage BUT I bought this container at Wal-Mart for $3, and sprayed a little chalk board paint on it to keep in our laundry room. This isn't even half of what the detergent made and it only takes a tablespoon:)

a brand new room...

We have been doing a ton of projects in our house! It’s a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house. It’s our first home that we’ve lived in for almost 5 years:) I’ve always really liked our house but we’ve done so many projects I really will be sad one day to leave...Awhile back, we talked about selling because we were running out of room, BUT after seeing how much we would take on a loss we said NO. Since my office is in our home, it takes up a lot of space! So the guest room and nursery have always been together, and the extra bedroom was my office. It worked well for awhile until we got Annie Rice...Then the space got even tighter, guest would have to sleep with her in the room...It just wasn’t working. So we took out our dinning room[which we never used because we have a eat in kitchen], put it in storage, made the dinning room my office and changed all the rooms around. At first, I was kind of sad to do that because the dinning room was my FAVORITE room in the house BUT that has changed now! The NEW guest room is my favorite! I’ll post pictures soon of the guest room and new office! So now, our old dinning room is the office, Annie Rice has her own room, and we have a true guest room. No formal dinning room anymore, but still an eat in kitchen:) With making all those decisions, I knew that meant some updates and re-designing and I couldn’t have been happier!

My first task was Annie Rice’s room. I wanted to make it a fun place where she could play, be creative, and be really girly:) 

This is the room before...

and then we decided to change the bed out...

It sounds silly but one of my biggest concerns with adopting was I didn’t want a gender neutral nursery. Silly, I know but I know some of you can understand! I’m very happy with the way it turned out! My colors were always orange, white, and green with polka dots and I kept that same color scheme but added a LOT OF PINK! 

I painted the trim hot pink one day while Kaz was at work! He was completely floored and I did a pretty good job! I made all the wall art.. with photoshop[a free trial-I edit in Adobe Lightroom], bought some fun fabric, and some black frames! The wall art was complete! I also bought some wood frames and stapled fabric to them for these really cool, colorful, fabric frames! I’m convinced fabric can fix just about anything:)

 I saw the lime green dots on Zulily by Wall Pops one day and knew they would be perfect! 

I added a few pink poms, a new pink rug...

 I hand painted every outlet cover! At first I thought that might be a bit overboard, but knew if I didn’t like it they didn’t cost very much! I ended up loving them! I painted 6 and everyone has a different design on them! I really wanted to incorporate the poem Kaz’s cousin wrote about Annie Rice and kaz’s mom Anne, so I hung it with a picture where Annie could see it everyday! 

I bought these wood letters and wrapped them with a little yarn and I got some really cool letters:) All together, I probably spent $100 BUT that’s because the rug was $55 of that. Everything else was very cheap and I made the majority of it! Annie Rice loves playing in her room. Some days while I work, I can hear her giggling in there. I of course still watch her on the monitor:) 

AND Miley LOVES her room too! This is where she is the majority of the time! 

easy photo craft....

So I made this easy craft for the nursery. It cost less than $10 and I really like it!

Kaz made 3 rounds circle for me out of wood. He sanded them to make them smooth. I painted them orange [a color that we already had in our extra paint section in the garage].

I bought 3 photo magnets from Wal-Mart, and 2 different types of ribbon.

I stapled 2 pieces of ribbon to the back of the wood, tied them in a bow, and then glued the photo magnets to the front with Titebond Wood Glue.

I also put Fray Check on the ends of the ribbon. I let them dry and now they are ready to be hung in the nursery!

It was so simple! You could do this same project for any room and use any shape!

I PROMISE…PROMISE…PROMISE…that tomorrow you will see the unveiling of the nursery:) We are missing the bumper and the mattress but everything else is ready! I will take pictures tonight and post tomorrow so be sure to check back!