Thursday, March 21, 2013

DIY- laundry soap


 Pinterest is overflowing with "recipes for laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, make your own dryer sheets, all with the promise that you'll save loads of money. Bad pun, but yes, intended. Not sure what exactly it was that made me decide to try one of them. Maybe it's just the fun of starting a new project to make Adam crazy. I do have a tendency of starting things and then losing interest in them. Whatever it was I made a list based on a couple different that I had "pinned" and hit the laundry isle.


  • One four pound 12 ounce box of borax
  • One four pound box Arm & Hammer baking soda
  • One box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
  • Four pounds of Oxi Clean {1 small/ 1 large}
  • 3 bars of soap- most recipes called for Fels-Neptha I used a brand who's fragrance is lovely and tropical

Adam got me a 5 gallon bucket for mixing and I poured all the ingredients in, grated the bars of soap then turned it back over to Adam who put on the lid and shook it all up for me. Worked great!


When putting all the items in the basket I was sure it was going to cost more than this..

You supposedly use 2 to 3 tablespoons per load, so this may last a while! I'll let you know.


xoxo

Lissa

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Snow Daze aka CoMo Snow 2013

Just when I thought we were out of the winter woods it caught up with us. Big time. Just like Snowpocalypse and SnOMGeddon of 2011, schools and businesses shut down, the State of Missouri issued a state of emergency as well and a "do not travel advisory". Alright, I'm going to admit I thought we'd get a few inches and it would all prove to be a lot of hype. I mean seriously, could we get another "shut the town down" storm just 2 years later. I just didn't see it in the cards. Boy was I wrong. Not only did we get one big storm we got two, in a week.

I got up February 21st, got ready for work and made my way in. It was BARELY snowing at my house. It's a 7 or 8 mile trip depending how you go and most days takes me 15 or 20 minutes. By the time I got a little over half way there it was snowing. Hard. When I passed my first fender- bender I started to think maybe I should have just stayed home.

The two staff members that don't live in Columbia were told to just stay home, turns out it was a good call. After being there about an hour and a half it was time to get out while the getting was good. I emailed Adam and told him he should think about putting his stuff together and head home too. Turns out, the gettin' wasn't all that good, but I had a much easier time than some.

 My sensitivity to snow has changed drastically over the last few years, and amounts that used to seem ridiculous to cancel anything for now makes me wish people would just stay home. Mostly because they're just plain stupid about it around here. My Twitter and Facebook feeds were full of people who took 4 hours to get home, or got stuck and left their cars on the sides of the roads or even highways. It was MAYHEM. There actually was a reason it got so bad so fast, we had a weather anomaly. Thunder-snow. Sounds really cool, right?  Well just like a rain thunderstorm is fast and intense. Lots of precip in a very short amount of time. LOTS.


This lovely box was on my porch when I made it home. Perfect for a snow day!

Giant fluffy snow flakes came fast and hard

Annie is about as much of a fan of snow as I am. 
Pretty in pink. 


I do have a couple of friends that plow in the winter so I had text one, but his crew was on the other side of town and booked solid. So when a break in the heavy snow came we bundled up and headed out. 
This was taken at 2:04. Remember there was no snow at all a little over 6 hours earlier

After an hour and 1/2 it looked a lot better. 

A fun snowstorm story~  Our really cool neighbors are pregnant and due any day. While we're shoveling we talked about how we should probably go do some of their drive way too. What if she went into labor? It was going to be a job to get to the hospital. I just kept thinking about Courtney's sister in law who had to be rescued by the National Guard in 2011 when she went into labor.... kinda scary. So in we go to take a break, eat, warm up and, of course, catch up on some social media. And what do I see? Pictures of a brand new baby that had been born that morning! Whew! That baby knew what was coming a decided not to wait. At least that's what I think. :o)

Fast forward a few days and the buzz about another storm headed our way, and we were still digging out from the week before. If I was skeptical about round 1 I was double that for round 2. But for the 2nd time I was so wrong.

A text first thing in the morning said "stay home". Yay! It felt the same as when I was little and got to have a snow day. Then to make the day better I heard a plow. It was our friend Jerry, he was headed to a job and came by to rescue us. It's a wonderful thing to have friends that'll go out of their way to nice things for you.

Jerry to the rescue


When I realized how heavy and wet this snow was compared to a week before I was even more grateful. We didn't have to shovel!
Super heavy wet snow.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think we're done with snow for the winter. I hope.

xoxo

Lissa