Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

Ingredients:

• Borax
• Washing Soda
• Laundry Bar Soap (Fels Naptha)

Other things you'll need:

• Cheese Grater
• Measuring Cup (4 Cup or larger and a 1/3 Cup)
• 5 Gallon Bucket
• Pot
• Cooking Spoon
• Mixing Bowls (Optional)

Start by finely grating the Bar of Laundry Soap. Remember you only need 1/3 Bar of Laundry Bar Soap.

 I mark mine after measuring 1/3.

Next put the grated soap into a pot with 6 cups of water

 Heat until the soap melts evenly. It's pretty easy to tell when the soap is melted.

Next you'll add in the 2/3 Cup of Borax and the 2/3 Cup of Washing Soda.

Stir both of these into the soap until it is all evenly dissolved.As soon as the mixture is dissolved you'll need to pour it into your 5 gallon bucket. Add 4 Cups of VERY Hot Water. You'll know if your mixture is fully dissolved based on whether or not the mixture came out consistent or not when you pour it out of the pot. If there is any Borax or Washing Soda left then you didn't mix it good enough. It's not the end of the world because you can stir it more but let it be a lesson for the next time you make a batch of soap.

Stir the mixture evenly. This is your last chance to fully dissolve your mixture before letting it set.

Next you will add approximately 5 1/2 Quarts, or 22 Cups, of HOT Water to your five gallon bucket. Stir well for at least 2 minutes.

Finally place the lid on your 5 gallon bucket and let set for approximately 24 hours. At this time upon stirring the laundry soap it should have the consistency of that of store bought laundry soap.

Restoring Wood Flooring

Carpets can be a convenient way to cover up some flooring issues but they can hide some truly gorgeous floors. We just bought our house and previous owners had covered up the original wood flooring with carpet. The carpet glue has been stuck to these boards for years.

We started by removing the carpets and then began the long and arduous task of removing the carpet glue with razor scrapers after soaking it down with Butyl Cellosolve.

Then the floor sander that was rented was brought in and smoothed out the boards. This left a nice uniform look to the entire house.

We then applied a light stain which made all the various rooms with their various shades of wood from differentiating levels of wear to come together as one solid shade.

Finish that off with a nice finishing gloss coat... Or four, and we have ourselves some gorgeous looking floors.

Garden: Starter Plants

Our garden this year is starting with 3 different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, beets, and lettuces. Besides that we've got leeks, basil, carrots, broccoli, peas, and several varieties of pole beans and bush beans.

I guess I'll post the pictures later since I inadvertently removed them from my phone and they are now on my laptop which is at home.

For our seed packet starters we used empty egg cartons, if you don't have these available then you can use empty toilet paper rolls.

We did get some starter planters that came in a round disk with the disks of compacted soil that expands with water. Some of these proved that they were determined to strive and quickly outgrew the expanded disk soil.

Pumpkin Pie from Pumpkin Butter

Pumpkin Pie

from Pumpkin Butter

Ingredients:

• 1 Pie Crust
• 1 Cup Evaporated Milk
• 2 Cups Pumpkin Butter
• 2 Eggs

Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a mixing bowl whisk together the Evaporated Milk and the Eggs together.

Next add the Pumpkin Butter and whisk until evenly blended together. We make our own Pumpkin Butter but feel free to use store bought instead.

Next you will add your mixture to your Pie Shell. I used a store bought preformed Pie Shell but feel free to make your own from scratch.

Place into the oven and bake for 25 minutes, at this time the edges of the pie will start to turn golden brown. Feel free to leave the pie baking for several more minutes to getter a darker crust.

Simply let cool and serve. Very simple recipe.

Swag Bucks to Earn Money From Home

Earning money from home online is difficult to say the least. With all of the scams and the same old same old promises it can be really difficult to pull in an additional income to help supplement your household. Unfortunately the websites that do offer ways to pull in an actual income from home do little in terms of incentives.

Take ChaCha for instance, you have to answer hundreds of questions in mere seconds for mere pennies. Even the Specialists have a difficult time earning any decent amount of pocket change from the low work to pay ratio.

Some websites such as Bing offer rewards that can go toward things such as Microsoft Points or Amazon Giftcards. While though all they really want you to do is use their search engine I have found that I prefer a couple other sites that offer better ratios by offering random payouts as these can often accumulate to be far more then what you'd otherwise earn through a fixed point amount (Bing Rewards).

The best website that I have found for earning money online is Swag Bucks. Swag Bucks gives you Swag Bucks for doing various activities on the site, watching movie trailers, doing surveys, downloading and using the toolbar (I highly recommend this), using the Swag Bucks search engine, Swagstakes, and more. For only 475 SB (Swag Bucks) you can purchase a $5 Amazon Gift Card, sometimes you can pick these up for even less than that! This is the fastest and easiest way I have found to earn these Gift Cards which you can apply to your Amazon.com Account.

It's a little too much to hope for earning straight money from home but with very little effort you'll find that you can earn Swag Bucks to help supplement an existing income. Some of the stuff is even fun to do, like I enjoy watching the movie trailers. The search engine is the easiest thing, just turn on the toolbar and any time that you need to do a search. I find that the search terms are not only relevant but that they are usually more what I am looking for than what I can find on Google or Bing. Just while writing this blog post I earned 6 SB from using the search bar on the toolbar.

Homemade Dish Soap

Dish soap can be expensive however without any difficult work you can make a cheap and stronger alternative. You can find a few different recipes online but I really like something that can cut through grease without any issue. You can see images at the bottom.

Ingredients:

• 1 2/3 Cup Hot Water
• 1 Tablespoon White Vinegar
• 1 1/2 Tablespoon Washing Soda
• 1/2 Cup Castile Liquid Soap
• 1/16 to 1/8 Teaspoon Tea Tree Oil
• 1 Wire Whisk
• 1 Large Bowl
• 1 Funnel
• 1 Empty Container
• (Optional) Food Dye

Directions:

1. Pour the Hot Water into bowl
2. Pour the White Vinegar and Castile Liquid Soap into the Large Bowl and use the Wire Whisk to mix the ingredients.
3. Add Washing Soda and Tea Tree Oil, quickly Whisking.
4. Let cool, usually takes over night to set properly. Leave in the Large Bowl so you can Whisk periodically.
5. Once set you can add the optional Food Dye. Use the Funnel and pour the soap from the Large Bowl into the Empty Container.

Pretty simple to make, most people already have the first two or three. You can pick up Liquid Castile Soap at Walgreens and you can pick up Washing Soda at Walmart. The Tea Tree Oil can be Melaluca Oil instead but lean more towards 1/16 Teaspoon instead of 1/8, it's super strong stuff. The reason you're using so little is because it will make your dish water greasy and you'll end up using more soap trying to clean that and just waste it.

You may notice that the mixture separates overnight, that's fine. Just mix up your soap or shake it and it's as good as new.

Finally, as an alternative to picking up those things locally, you can order them cheaply on Amazon.com. The most expensive thing is the Castile Liquid Soap but it stretches so long it's not bad at all. The really good deal on Amazon though is the really cheap Tea Tree Oil I found and linked below.
Castile Liquid Soap
Washing Soda
Tea Tree Oil