Homemade Laundry Detergent

Well, now that we're down to one income I gotta get serious about saving money. I got this recipe for laundry detergent from my friend Nicole and made it for the first time today. It was really easy! I did not do the math on my purchases, but Nicole says it costs her about $0.37 for 12 large loads of laundry....not bad!!

This recipe makes 96 oz (12 loads; 1 cup of laundry detergent per load). If you have a bigger storage container, you can double/ tripple/ etc. the recipe.

Here's the recipe:
1/4 bar of soap (I used Irish Spring because it was on sale making it the cheapest; not to mention that it smells good)
cheese grater or knife
1 cup boiling water
12 cups hot water
4 Tablespoons of Washing Soda (I got it at Kroger; near laundry supplies)
2 Tablespoons of Borax (got it at Kroger as well)

STEP ONE: Put one cup of water in small pot on stove. Heat it on high, just under boiling. Using a cheese grater or knife, shave the bar soap into the water. Keep the heat below a boil. Stir until the soap dissovles.

STEP TWO: Put 12 cups of hot water into a large bucket. Add the 1 cup of soapy water from step one. Stir for a few minutes. Add 4 Tablespoons of washing soda; stir another minute or two. Add 2 Tablespoons of Borax; stir another couple of minutes. Let cool over night. (Will be slimy and a few shades lighter in color than the soap you used come morning.)

STEP THREE: You can either store your laundry soap in a bucket or transfer it into an empty laundry soap container.

A bunch of videos...

It's been a while since I've uploaded any videos, so this is a catchup post. Some of them are older than others. Enjoy!!

This video is from a while ago. It's when Jack first started holding onto links. He now grabs at them himself when they're hanging in front of him.



This one's only a few days ago. Jack on his tummy. He's getting stronger every day!!

This one's really not much of anything. I was trying to get Jack to talk and/ or giggle. He does a little talking in this one, but I haven't managed to catch his way cute giggle on video yet.

Our first child: Levi :o) The snow in our yard has turned hard on top from the snow melting during the day and refreezing at night. When Levi was chasing snowballs, his back legs kept sinking in every few steps! We thought it was funny anyhow :o)

Belated Valentines

My parents were in town last weekend over Valentine's day, so Luke took me out to celebrate today. He surprised me by planning a trip to "All Fired Up" a local pottery painting place.

I painted a mug for him that he can keep at work. It's upside down (obviously) because I had just painted the bottom. I chose to paint it in Michigan colors because that's Luke's college team. You can see a little bit of marker where I wrote out the letters first...that will burn off in the kiln.

There's a story behind Luke's choice. A few months ago I broke our salt shaker when I knocked it out of the cabinet and it crashed on the counter. Last week I went to Belk to get a new set of shakers (that match our dishes), but they were gonna be $32...and that was 30% off!! Needless to say, we decided not to get them. When we were choosing our pottery, Luke chose the salt and pepper shakers as soon as he saw them. The salt shaker he painted as Michigan and the pepper shaker is painted as UGA (since those are our two teams). This was Luke's first time painting pottery, but he's such a good drawer I knew he would do better than me!!

Really??....

Just after I bragged that Jack only woke up once during the night, last night he woke up not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES!!! Hopefully we'll be back to waking up just twice tomorrow night.

Reaching Milestones...

So for the past 2 nights, Jack has only woken up once to eat!! YAY for Jack and for Mommy :o) This does mean he's been waking up about a half hour earlier in the morning, but hopefully that will improve with time. He usually wakes up around 8:30 (sometimes even sleeping in as late as 9:45), the past 2 mornings he has woken up at 8:00. I'm not expecting this "once a night" thing to last because he always does things a few times, then doesn't do them again for a little while. But, it's nice while I have it :o)

This next picture is Jack with his friend RJ. We go to church with RJ and his parents. RJ is right about 6 weeks older than Jack.

Cassy: "I find I don't have a lot of pictures of me and RJ. Do you want me to take a picture of you with Jack?"

Me: "Same here! Of course!!"

Here's the outcome:

It's been 2 months already?!?

It's hard to believe that Jack is 2 months old already! Jack got his first round of immunization shots last week. How pitiful! He was pretty fussy the rest of that night, but we were able to put him to bed early. Based on this first shot experience, I will always schedule his shots for the afternoon - I can't imagine what it would've been like to have a fussy baby all day long!

Jack now weighs 12 lb 13 oz and is 24 inches long. He's in the 75%-90% range for both height and weight.

He has also had several nights with extended periods of sleep, although not always in consecutive nights. Last night was BY FAR his longest: he went 9 hr 45 min between feedings!! I think he slept better than I did, though. I kept waking up wondering if he was still breathing. I wanted to get up and check on him, but I didn't. I probably would've slept better if I had :)

He's also taking much better naps now...which makes me really happy! I think he got the hang of his nighttime routine really well and then he caught on to doing it at naptime as well.

And the cutest thing - Jack has giggled....twice! Luke and his mom (YaYa) saw it the first time. Then Jack did it once for me a few days later. We haven't been able to get him to do it again. But he is smiling ALL the time now :)

We've been enjoying lots of snow up here in VA. It's snowing again right now! It's beautiful! Luke posted some pictures of Jack and me in the snow.

Hopefully I'll do better at keeping our blog updated. Our blog tends to take the backseat to housework and sleep when Jack's napping :o)

We've gotten alot of snow!

Recently Lynchburg has gotten ALOT of snow. The following pictures were taken 2 weeks ago of Laura and Jack together in the snow.




More of the snow.