I've Moved Blogs!!!

Hopefully you can all find me just as easily at http://bloominmama.wordpress.com/ .  I got tired of not being able to log into blogger and having issues with my password and such there.  I decided to move so come on over and read me!

Sewing Circles aren't just for Grandmas

I've been biding my time waiting to write this post mostly because I wanted to let the ladies of my sewing circle see the pics first.  Then I realized after not getting responses from them that my email was too big and they hadn't gotten the pics!  So here we go, I'm just gonna go ahead and share my excitement of the week.  Leah, Shelly and I had our first get-together for sewing and it was a great success!  Leah has agreed to teach us how to sew and show us how to make some things for us and for our girls.  We all packed up our machines and set up at Leah's for our first lesson.  We decided to make twirl skirts for the girls.  I picked out my favorite vintage children's baby blue fabric for this project.  One of the best things about our night is that it was so indicative of where we all are in life now.  Leah and Shelly both had their babies with them and neither of them wanted to really go to sleep so they became a part of our night as well.  Here's a couple pics of us sewing with babies in tow:

Leah sewing with her little girl on her back

Me holding Shelly's little boy while she shows me her beautiful seam

I tell you what, there is nothing like hanging out with two really cute babies all night to make you have baby fever!  We had a great time being silly and making our skirts.  At one point I think we laughed silly for a full 5 minutes while we were playing with our brownies, acting like funny characters, and speaking with fake accents.  It was hilarious and I can't wait for the next time!  

Amidst all this hilarity we actually did finish our skirts.  We stayed up till 1 finishing them and taking pictures of the aftermath.  Here's a few pics: 

The aftermath including my dirty brownie plate

Our beautiful finished skirts

So there you have it folks!  Sewing circles are not just for old ladies anymore... Cool, hip, young mamas are all doing it and having a great time too!  Hopefully we can keep this going and do it at least once a month.  I can't wait for the next time!  

Thrifting Success!

What a fantastic day today was.  Ryder and I had a slow morning at the house and then went this afternoon for lunch with some favorite friends at Lupies followed by some thrifting afterwards at one of my fave thrift stores in town, Value Village.  Lunch was awesome and I got to really catch up with friends that I don't always get to see regularly, but love them just the same.  Everyone seems to have great things going on in their lives and it's always fun to hear about what they are doing and thinking about.  (On a side note, when I was typing that last sentence out I accidentally typed livers in stead of lives at first... ha!)

As soon as I walked into the thrift store, I went straight for the furniture.  Let me tell you folks, there were some great finds.  They had this awesome old school stove range akin to the pink one in the house I use to rent on Randolph Rd (if anyone remembers that) and I had a moment of thinking that I really should bring it home and see if Evan could refurbish it and we could use it as our regular stove.  It was perfect and white and retro and awesome.  As stupid as it sounds, they really don't make things like they used to and stoves like this one were pretty much like tanks.  You can fix them and they will go on forever!  I still may talk to Evan about it haha.

Anyways back to other finds at the thrift store, I found this awesome orange arm chair that is retro and in great shape and even came with a handmade orange tweed pillow.  I looked it over thinking that it would be 30-50 dollars and I would really have to think about it and probably not get it.  Well I finally found the price written on one of the legs: $10.  Yes, that's right, I said $10.  I was sold.  I knew I just had to have her.  Here's a little pic of her:

 After the initial high of a thrifting find I was in full gear ready to search for deals.  I found a great metal cabinet thing with cool metal handles that looked like wings, but it reeked of old cigarette smoke and the doors wouldn't close and Sharan and Toby talked me out of it.  It was also ten dollars, but it actually needed quite a bit of work and I wasn't sure I could get the smoke smell out of it.  Now even more on the hunt for a good find, I turned the corner to look at the rest of the furniture and there it was: the hottest green tweed chair you've ever seen.  Well maybe not, but totally a cute find in great shape and also perfect for my living room.  I had to find the manager to get a price but we agreed on $20 for the pair of chairs.  So here it is, my second find of the day:

I know, I know, I'm probably way more excited about these chairs than anyone else would be, but really, they are perfect for our needs, they were super cheap, they're still in great shape, and they are just my style!  I win again!  

So then I came home, curled up in a blanket in my new orange chair and crocheted while watching Top Gun, which, by the way, is still a great movie.  Evan made fun of me saying that it's only the second of the month and I'm spending all of my money, but really, I think the twenty I spent today well worth it for years to come, not to mention that I've been wanting new furniture for about 5 years now.  Now I just need to find a great used mid century modern couch... anybody have one hiding in their garage or grandmother's house?  ;)  

A Great Week

So again this marks another week of not so many updates, but I've just been busy out places with no time to type at home.  I had a great week working and playing with Ryder at home.  One of our favorite things to do lately has been to sit on the front porch and blow bubbles, play with sidewalk chalk, or watch Ryder ride her tricycle. The past couple of days this is exactly how we have spent most of the day and it's been wonderful.

I posted last all of my recipes and I wanted to revisit the shampoo saga.  Originally I began using the baking soda/ ACV no-poo method which did OK for a week or so, but I began noticing that I was having a really hard time brushing my hair without a lot of breakage (I have super damaged hair from dying it so much).  I then tried a recipe for shampoo using Dr. Bronner's castile soap which I loved, but I think with our hard water and the soap combo was leaving a residue making my hair stick to itself and just overall seem greasy.  I finally broke down and decided that I would have to buy some shampoo and conditioner and just try to wean myself from washing. The funny thing is that after finding out what exactly was in all the shampoos I have been using for years, I couldn't bring myself to buy any of them.  It was crazy how much I have changed in such a short amount of time. I decided to drive all the way to Earthfare (the most overpriced natural foods store ever in my opinion) to see what they had in the way of a safe shampoo.  I found a brand call BWC (beauty without cruelty) with a line of beauty products made from good organic ingredients without any animal cruelty.  I hadn't heard of it before but I liked the ingredients listed and so I decided to give it a try.  Here's a link to the actually shampoo and conditioner I chose: Rosemary mint shampoo.  I used it after getting home and I love it.  Evan agrees that my hair looks sooo much better and it's so light that I haven't had to wash my hair everyday.  I think I'm going to see how long I can go between shampoos so I can eventually quit using shampoo.  I think this will be the best method for me.  I felt kind of like a failure at first, because I didn't want to have to buy shampoo and I didn't want to have to buy anything in a plastic bottle, but I also needed to have my hair look attractive haha!  I think I'm going to have to let it go and figure that it'll at least be better to buy shampoo, but only use it every once in a while to make that one bottle last as long as possible.  Anyways, that's the latest in the shampoo saga!

On a fun note, we had a great day full of friends.  We were supposed to have a skate day today, but because of the rain it became simply a hangout day with homemade burritos.  Toby was in town today and we all played outside with chalk, skateboards (on the driveway), and bubbles.  Ryder had so much fun playing with everybody that she pretty much passed out in her tent watching Rainbow Brite with Chesson.  It was super cute.

We decided to make home made play-do today and it was a huge hit!  Evan said he took some pics so I'll have to post them later (once I find his phone), but everybody got into it and made some fun things.  I think Seth's tongue was my favorite.









So now Evan and I are hanging out on the couch watching Futurama eating a fresh batch of cookies.  It's a great way to end the night.

Oh I almost forgot, here are the pics of Ryder's table and chairs she decorated in the playroom.

Taking Requests

Yesterday and today were both good days.  I had a good day at work yesterday, but pretty much collapsed into bed once I got home.  We had some pretty crazy summer storms last evening/night so it wore me out driving home.  Today Ryder and I got some cleaning done in the house and I finally put away all the clean laundry I had just sitting in baskets. We had a pretty good lunch of yogurt and carrots with ranch dip (Ryder picked out lunch obviously) and then family nap time in Mommy's bed.  After Evan got home from work Ry and I started fixing some dinner and baking our first batch of WHO bread (from SouleMama ).   Ryder had already eaten dinner before ours was finished, and headed up to bed.  While doing our night nights I think Ryder named her favorite puppy dog hand puppet Bobby.  We'll see if that sticks tomorrow, but it was pretty cute listening to her call him Bobby and then giggle.  Evan and I then enjoyed our dinner while watching a movie about Gator a skater from the late eighties and early nineties.  All in all a great day full of successes, but not ever feeling hurried or manic (as days with a toddler in the house and a mommy trying to get things done tend to feel).  And the bread is AWESOME!  Evan gave me some pointers on how to make it better next time, but I feel pretty good about how well it has turned out!

And now by request, I will share my home cleaning recipes with you all.  I would love to hear if any of you have any different recipes that you love as well!  Some of these I will just type out the recipe and some of them it will be easier to just give you the link to see it yourself.  I hope you guys can try some of these and you like them!  Many of these recipes will call for Borax and Washing Soda.  Borax can be found in a box near all the laundry detergents at your local grocery store.  Washing Soda can be hard to find, but I found it a year ago at my local Harris teeter again near the laundry detergents.  I also use a lot of Dr. Bronner's castile soaps.  It's a vegetable based soap that you can use for shampoo, toothpaste, body-wash, dishes, surface cleaning, degreaser, laundry, basically anything in your house.  You can buy a bottle of it and water it down (a lot!) to make it go a long way.   I use the almond liquid Dr. Bronner's in all my hand soap pumps in our bathrooms watered down and it smells soooo good!  We also use the peppermint and almond liquids in our bath for shampoo and for body wash.  Keep in mind that these soaps are going to get rid of residues left from your old shampoos/body-washes, so you will sometimes need a little transition time where your body makes the right amount of oils for you hair and such.  It sounds gross, but after your body adjusts you will find your skin and hair looking the healthiest it's ever been and you will notice that you don't need to condition or wash as much anymore.  Also, I know there is a lot these days where people feel the need to have everything be super antibacterial and all that jazz.  If you want your cleaners to be antibacterial you can add Tea Tree Oil to your soaps and cleaners.  It's an essential oil that is a naturally occurring antibacterial agent, but it can be put into all your cleaners, soaps, and shampoos and still be safe to use.   Anyways, here are the recipes: 

Dish washing detergent for hand washing: 

In an olive oil cruet I have a cup of Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap (the citrus scent) and 1-2 cups of water. It does a great job and I love the scent.  Make sure you rinse well in hot water as it can sometimes leave a residue if you don't rinse well.  

Dish washing detergent for the dish washer:

I found this recipe somewhere online, but I can't find it now to give a reference.   I think it's a standard recipe.   

In a bowl mix together: 

1 cup Borax

1 cup Washing Soda (soda ash)

1/2 cup Salt

1/2 cup citric acid  

use 1 tbsp of this mixture and fill your rinse aid with white vinegar.  We have really hard water so I will sometimes have a little residue, but overall I am in love with this recipe!  For the citric acid, you can use packets of Kool-Aid lemonade with no sugar added.  

Peppermint Laundry Soap: 

I'm just going to give the link to this one in the hopes that once you go to this woman's blog you will spend hours going through her archives and then become addicted to her blog like me.  

SouleMama's Laundry soap

Peppermint Shampoo: 

1 cup Dr. Bronner's peppermint liquid castile soap

1 cup distilled water 

1 tbsp. Jojoba oil

mix together in a bottle and use on hair like normal.  Castile soaps don't suds up like you are probably used to, so concentrate mostly on your roots and then rinse.  Use a conditioner if you need to.  

Baking Soda/ACV No-Poo method: 

keep a container of baking soda, a bottle of apple cider vinegar, and a 16 oz cup in your bathtub.  In the shower mix 1-2 tbsp of baking soda to 1-2 cups water from your shower.  Mix thoroughly in the cup and then pour over your head concentrating on the roots.  Rub it into your scalp and let it sit for a minute before rinsing.  After your shower spray hair down with 2 tbsp of vinegar mixed with 1 cup of water as a detangler.  One of my Charlotte Mommies friends told me she keeps it in a spray bottle with a stick of cinnamon in it.  I used this method for about a week before switching back to Dr. Bronner's because I think the baking soda wasn't reacting with my hard water very well.  I think I'm going to give it another try, but maybe research a little more.  

All Surface/Everything cleaner:

I keep two spray bottles of cleaner.  In the kitchen I mostly use vinegar and water to clean the counters/table/placemats/anything that needs cleaning.  It has a salad or easter egg smell  to it when you are cleaning with it, but it goes away as soon as it dries I promise.  All over the house I use Almond Dr. Bronner's liquid soap mixed with water in a spray bottle for dusting/cleaning/getting Ryder's finger prints off the coffee table.  It smells sooooooo good.  It'll really make you happy you're cleaning.  Well maybe not, but at least it'll smell good and clean well and it's non toxic so I don't have to worry about Ryder touching things or putting her mouth on them after I have cleaned them.  

Floors: 

I just use a mixture of vinegar and water for the floors, but here is what I think I'm going to try next.  I have a swiffer wet jet thing already and I have some old hand towels I use as the little pads on the bottom, so I think I'm going to try to hack my old wet jet bottle and put vinegar and water in it.  Here's a link to the website describing how to do it, but again, I haven't tried this one yet. how to hack your swiffer If you read down into the comments people go on to list easier ways of doing this by just cutting the cap or drilling a hole in the bottom and closing it with a cork.  It's a great idea as a money saver.
If you just want to use a regular mop and bucket, mix 1/2 cup of white distilled vinegar with a gallon of water.  

So I think that's it, but if I've forgotten something please let me know!  

After a lengthy week

Forgive me friends, as I have written blog posts almost daily in my head every day of this week, yet never quite made it to the computer before bed to post them.  It's kind of ridiculous really, but needless to say, here I am with much to say after a busy week and countless unpublished blog posts with an extraordinarily long conglomeration of them all.  Sit back folks... If it makes you feel better, I made a special playlist in iTunes labeled "blogging mix" and am currently enjoying it just to stay focused.

So this past week was a busy one and I enjoyed it for the most part.  I worked a lot as well as had a staff meeting on my day off, so much of my week was spent thinking of or being at work.  I decided to take a small break from sewing for the moment to revisit a crochet project I began last year before Christmas (I know, I know) and never got very far with because I'm not too great with patterns.  It's one of those free patterns you can pick up in a craft aisle near the yarn and originally I picked it up hoping to learn how to felt.  It's for a cute purse that you crochet and then felt and it is supposedly intermediate level.  Guys, I have to tell you, I have been crocheting for around  15 years now.  My sister taught me as our grandmother had taught her years ago and since then we have been quite a pair of blanket/scarf/cozy making machines since then.  Neither of us were ever taught how to read patterns or really what the names of the stitches we were making were, but we could make some pretty stuff.  Also, once Beth had given me a 20 minute tutorial on how to start a chain and then do a couple of stitches, I was off and we never did another lesson really.  Well imagine my surprise when I learned a couple nights ago after my third unsuccessful attempt at this stupid pattern that for the past 15 years I have been crocheting a specialty "crab" stitch as my normal crochet method and really hadn't ever done a proper crochet stitch.  That's why my things always looked so weird.  Anyways, lesson learned and after about 10 minutes worth of youtube videos and Evan making fun of me I angrily relearned how to crochet.  (And yes, I checked the blanket Beth made me years ago, my sister crochets perfectly, I am the stupid head who taught myself differently apparently)  So anyways, that being said, I have spent the past several nights sitting and watching movies with Evan while crocheting and trying to figure out this pattern.  Frustrating as it is, it's still fun.

I also spent a huge portion of this last week looking up recipes for homemade cleaners/soaps/shampoos and cleansing our house of the really bad toxic cleaners and such.  I began this a week or so ago with the baking soda shampoo/apple cider vinegar rinse, but now we are completely using homemade dish-washing detergent (for the machine and the sink), laundry detergent, hand soap, face wash, shampoo, conditioner, all purpose cleaner, and floor cleaner.  I think the best part of it all is that it all smells so good!  Tonight I took a peppermint bath with my newly mixed peppermint shampoo and almond soap and it was heavenly.  Evan and Ryder have been really helpful and encouraging with it all (actually Evan has been super supportive and has amazed me with how awesomely helpful he's been through all of this)  and we made the laundry soap together as a family (Ryder just watched) but it was fun.  A lot more fun than grocery shopping and artlessly buying something off the shelves while Ryder gets cranky because she is bored and stuff into a cart seat.  All of these benefits aside, I think the biggest thing that made me feel good about this and my entire project this summer is that I have influenced my sister to make some huge changes too.
Some background: My sister is my best friend in the world.  Seriously.  We are eight years apart, but we couldn't be closer.  When I look back at my life, so much has been shaped by my sister and so many things that could've been really hard growing up were made so much easier by  having her in my life guiding me and being there for me.  So when she called me Friday and said that we were going to be big old hippies together (never fear, I'm not really going to do dreads and we will always bathe and smell nice) I was amazed that I could give her something as meaningful as what she has given me in the past.  Long story short, very sad circumstances along with kind of scary new fears have arisen in Beth's home having to do with illnesses that could have been environmentally caused.  Beth decided to take matters in her own hands and have a green non toxic home to try and remove some likely factors.  She has joined my ranks as a make your own green cleaner soldier and is pretty happy with the results.  I hope she doesn't mind me sharing about her on here, but I was really excited for her and it made my heart burst when she said, "I couldn't have done it without you doing it too!"  Ah, I love my sister and that's that.

So anyways, after a maudlin middle section I will finish up this extremely long post with a little story about this afternoon.  After a long morning of playing in the sprinkler with her cousins at Memaw's house, Ryder was tired, but still not tired enough to take a nap.  I kept finding her just sitting at the top of the stairs quietly talking to her favorite puppy dog hand puppets (Meh-Meh's as she calls them), so finally I gave up hoping for a nap time today and decided we would play outside some more with the new sidewalk chalk and bubbles we got at Target today (on clearance in the dollar section -- so worth it and not breaking the bank).  We spent two hours just sitting on the front steps of the house blowing bubbles and practicing drawing stars and hearts.  It was magical.  It was so hot and muggy it felt like a sauna, and we were so dirty from playing in the field earlier that we were just as earthy as we could be.  The only sounds were of the birds chirping around us and flying away from the squirrels in the trees right next to the house.  Every once in a while I could hear our neighbor sawing wood in his wood shop and it was a soft buzz followed by comforting plops as the wood would fall to the ground.  After a bit Ryder stood up and asked for me to get her bike out so she could ride it.  I complied thinking that she would just push off the ground with her feet or simply hide the chalk in the seat for later as she usually does (she hasn't ever been successful at riding her trike by herself), but she just sat on it, put her feet on the pedals and rode her trike for the very first time by herself as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  It was awesome!  The she figured out how to ride it backwards and spent 20 minutes just riding it up and down the drive way.  After a particularly fast ride down the driveway she got off and ran to me yelling, "Mommy that was fun!"

I'll leave you with that for tonight.  May you have sweet dreams full of memories of hot summer days full of sprinklers, bubbles, and bikes.

A Chip Off the Old Block

So Ryder and I had a pretty OK day.  She has discovered the never-ending question of "why" this week and it has worn me out today.   After breakfast this morning we decided to clean out her playroom so that we could give toys to boys and girls who need them.  Ryder really got into it and was throwing toys she hasn't really played with in a while into a big bag.   After packing them away we cleaned and organized her room.  I was busy making a little dress up station for her and I heard, "look Mommy, this is cool!"  I turned around to see that Ryder had covered her little chairs and table with bandannas from her dress up stash and laid an old pillowcase across the top as a tablecloth.  It was so cute!  I'll have to go up and take pictures after she goes to sleep.  I guess she's been really into all my redecorating lately and wanted to do a little on her own.  The funniest part was when she kept walking around it and touching it saying over and over again, "wow, that's pretty Mommy, that's so cooooool!"  Haha, I love that little girl!

I didn't do anything crazy this week craftwise yet; I am actually trying to figure out my next project.  I don't know whether I want to start a sewing project or maybe a crochet project.  I'm beginning to think about Christmas presents (I know, I know, but it takes so long to make presents that I have to start them now!) and I need to sit down and make a little plan of what I am going to do and for whom.

Anyways, that's it for today.  Hopefully I'll be super successful doing things tonight so that I can have an awesome post tomorrow haha!