My Favorite Salad

This is my favorite salad.  It's the creation of the wonderful Pioneer Woman.  It's simple, it's hearty and packed with flavor.  It starts with a bed of fresh crisp spinach, then is adorned with salty, crunchy bacon pieces and a boiled egg, then topped off with a sweet & savory bacon vinaigrette.  It's the type of salad I crave.  It's a salad manly enough for a guy.  Have I mentioned, it's my favorite salad?  Yum.

Speaking of spinach, I am going to plant spinach seeds today.  I soaked them overnight in a bowl of warm water with a drop of dish soap.  Why?  Because that's what the books told me to do.  Will it make a difference?  I have no clue.  This is my first year to plant spinach so it'll be an experiment.  I am going to plant some of the seeds in a pot and some in the above ground garden.

As I mentioned before I am notorious for being an over ambitious gardener.  I am trying to narrow down my list of things to plant this year but spinach was a keeper.  For one, I had already bought the seeds and I didn't want to return them, and two, a surplus of spinach from the garden will give me an excuse to eat my favorite salad as much as I want.  Let's hope it grows.

Back in Action

It's been a while since my last post and for that I do apologize.  We can either dwell on it or just move on.  I vote for option 2.  I see this blog thing as a long term relationship.  We're going to have break-ups, we're not always going to get along, but for the most part we're going to have fun, we'll enjoy some good food and we're going to get giddy when we see each other.  You're paying for the meals though right? :)

Spring is in the air.  It lifts my spirits and brings out my creative side.  Here are a few things that have been on my mind now that spring is rolling around.

1) Gardening.  My husband so kindly built me an above ground garden last weekend and I just established another garden on the SW corner of out lot.  With all these gardens around our house my mind is running wild with ideas on what I am going to plant.  I am consistently guilty of over planting and this year is no different.  Last night I made a list of all I want to plant: arugula, basil, borage, chives, cilantro, hosta, mint, nasturtium, oregano, parsley, peas, petunias, peppers, rosemary, sage, spinach, strawberries, tomato, thyme.  Ahhhhh!!! A little on the over ambitious side don't you think?  It's fun to plant the seed but it's the maintenance, weeding and harvesting that takes the real work.  I'll keep telling myself that and hopefully I can narrow down my list.  

2) Pool Season.  I can't tell you how excited we are for pool season.  Baby J is a fish and gravitates to water.  During the winter his water fun has been limited to the bath tub and the dogs' water bowl so he's really going to get a kick out of the community pool this summer.  We are in our 3rd week of swim lessons and he's doing great.  With pool season comes bathing suit season.  Since I quit nursing I've put on a few pounds which I'm okay with but I just need to tighten up a bit and maintain my current weight.  To help me along I've been tracking my calories using a free app called "Lose It!".  It's easy, fast to use, and serves as a guide to know how many calories certain foods contain as well as other nutrition content (protein, fat, carbs, etc).  I'm always surprised at how many calories fit in a small amount of food.  I've also been doing a lot of Jillian Michael's workouts too.  Thankfully many of her workout videos are free through Amazon Prime so it gives me some variation in my workouts and keeps me sweating.  Her workouts are some of the only at-home workout videos that truly give me a good workout.  My favorites right now are: No More Trouble Zones and 6-week Six Pack.

3) Paint.  I have plans to paint the living room and upstairs bathroom.  Right now the living room is a neutral tan and the bathroom is blue.  The living room is going to be a light olive green color and the bathroom will be a light green color, kind of like a light green crayon color but a little less limey.  A couple of months ago I bought some bathroom decor that I am anxiously waiting to display once the new color is on the walls.  And for the living room, a....

4) Gallery Wall. Once the living room is painted I plan to create a gallery wall.  I rummaged my Mom's house over Christmas and brought back frames of different sizes.  As you can tell they are also different colors so I plan to paint them and make them the pop of color in the living room.

The colors of the frames will coordinate with this blanket and pillows. 

A friend of mine gave me the idea of using painter's tape to visualize where to put the frames on the wall before you actually nail them.  It's such a simple idea but so helpful.  I simply lay the tape on the frame, one along the length, another along the width.  Then I cut the pieces of tape in half lengthwise and tape them back together on the wall.

The larger frames on the bottom left and top right are 8x10.  All my photos are 4x6 or 5x7 though so I plan to create some mats.  Right now my idea is to either use scrapbook paper (the kind that is thicker than a regular sheet of paper) or thin pieces of card board and cover it with a fun pattern.  Our Habitat for Humanity ReStore has cheap wall paper that might just work for the card board.

My mom is coming up to visit in 3 weeks so once she gets here the projects will commence!  What projects are you working on this spring?

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Once I had Baby J and quit my job, it didn't take long for me to start looking for ways to cut back and save money.  One of the ways I thought we could do that was by making our own laundry detergent.  It also appealed to me because I like knowing what goes into my detergent.  I did not know anyone who made their own detergent though so I turned to trusty Google.  Luckily I stumbled upon this recipe.  Their claim: you could save $0.16/load with the homemade detergent compared to commercial detergents.

*If you hate math then skip this paragraph*

I decided to give it a try but track the number of loads I got out of a batch of the detergent to see just how much I was paying per load.  I bought the ingredients at Walmart: Borax (76oz) for $3.96, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (55oz) for $3.24, and a bar of laundry soap (5.5oz) for $0.96.  I made a double batch of the detergent so I used $3.69 worth of detergent products ($0.83 Borax, $0.94 A&H soda, and $1.98 bar soap).  Most of the time I do large loads of laundry so I opted to use 2 tbsp per load (they said you could use just 1 tbsp).  Out of a double batch of detergent (meaning I doubled the recipe) and using 2 tbsp/load, I was able to do 67 loads of laundry.  That amounts to $0.06/load ($3.69/67 loads) which is a savings of $0.10/load in comparison to commercial detergents.  It seems like small savings at first but it adds up over time.

The website gives a great step-by-step tutorial on how to make the detergent but here are a few tips:

• They suggest many different types of bar soap.  I have tried Zote and Fels-Naptha.  I do not recommend Zote, I think it smells weird.  I do recommend Fels-Naptha, it has a nice scent that is not strong so it doesn't linger on the clothes.  I haven't tried any of the other soaps.
• They suggest grating the bar soap, I don't, it's a pain.  I recommend chopping it first with a knife as so: cut into 1/2 inch pieces across the width of the bar, then cut two sections along the length of the bar.
  
• After you have chopped the bar soap into 1/2 inch pieces, blend it in a food processor using the metal blade.  First blend for 30 seconds, stop, shake it up a bit to make sure all the pieces are at the bottom, blend for another 30 seconds, shake again, then pulse a few more times.  
  
• Once you've blended the soap, measure out the Borax & washing soda, pour on top and pulse about 5 times. 
  
• Once you have a nice distribution of white (borax + washing soda) and yellow (bar soap) in the mixture, stop pulsing and pour into an airtight container.
  
• Even if you are going to make multiple batches of the detergent (I usually make a triple batch), do it one batch at a time because it'll give you a better consistency.  Plus I can only fit about one batch of the detergent in my food processor at one time (I have a 12-cup food processor).  
  

Leave a comment if you have any questions.  Happy washing!

Closet Challenge

Let's be honest, I'm a stay at home mom and since most of my hours in a day are spent at home, my outfits usually consist of stretchy pants and a comfy top, or workout clothes.  On the days that I do get out of the house though, I like to move beyond stretchy and wear something else in my closet.  For the past 18 months my wardrobe has been defined by either a pregnant belly, post-birth baby weight and/or breast feeding. I am finally able to pick out an outfit with no agenda. Well I take that back, I'm a girl so there will always be an agenda. Let me rephrase. I am finally able to pick an outfit based solely on what mood I'm in, how fit I feel, what kind of hair day I'm having, where I'm going, oh yeah, and the weather.

Even with all this new found freedom, I'm stuck in a rut.  A clothes rut. I find myself gravitating towards the same clothes in my closet and I keep them on rotation every two to three weeks. It's easy, it's comfortable, but it's BORING.  That's no way to enjoy my freedom and no way to treat all the clothes in my closet (I like to imagine that inanimate objects have feelings too).

Beyond that, I am stricken with the moral bug that there are people in this world who are under dressed while I am living in excess.  Although I have not met them personally, I imagine them to be thankful to simply have one pair of pants, shoes and a shirt.  For some reason I keep thinking of the Somali pirates in the movie Captain Phillips (great movie, have you seen it?).  That's a terrible example because they're bad guys, but for those of you who've seen the movie, you know what I mean.  The point is, I have so many clothes in my closet that I don't even wear them all, while some people have none to wear.

Herein lies the challenge: wear all the shirts in my closet within 4 months.  I've chosen shirts because that's the article of clothing I have the most of in my wardrobe.  Why 4 months?  Because I figure I'll need that amount of time to have enough "non-stretchy pants occasions" on my calendar (aka days I get out of the house).  If a shirt in my closet doesn't get worn within 4 months, then it goes to charity, plain and simple.

I will keep track of the clothes I have worn by hanging them "backwards" in my closet. See the picture below to understand what I mean by backwards.

The only rule is that I cannot wear one of the backwards hanging shirts until 1) I've worn everything else, or 2) unless it is in conjunction with an unworn shirt in order to make an outfit.

Today is April 1st, the first day of the challenge.  The last day of the challenge will be July 31st.