Dancing Queen

    My little girl is starting dance class tomorrow.  So of course that means dance shoes!  

p.s I made the bows for the tap shoes. =)

When ever the kids need clothes I always check out the used children's store by us first.  So after a quick call to Once Upon a Child I found that they carried ballet shoes and tap shoes in the size I needed.  Just to see how much money I was going to save I checked online to see how much these shoes cost. For both pairs the cheapest I found was $45.  By going to used children's store I got the shoes and all of the clothes below for the same price.  And bonus, some of them are new!

I Love Funny T-Shirts

This is my newest favorite funny t-shirt that I picked up at cafepress.com.  While searching the internet tonight I found a 
t-shirt that I just might have to pick up.  I found it at http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=17764 

First Post

 Ok so I've finally started a blog.  My soul purpose for this blog is to share my ideas on how to make homemade things so you can save money.  After following Dave Ramsey's advice and getting out of debt I realized how much I like my money and don't want to give it away anymore.  So I started finding ways to save money on the items I did have to spend money on. And what do you know? I've saved quite a bit of it by making my own, re-purposing and sewing a lot of the stuff we use around the house.  The first thing I started making was my own laundry detergent after seeing the Duggars  make their own.  I haven't been able to convince many people I know to start doing this but I have to say, my clothes come out clean, it can get out just about any stain on the planet and it costs about $2 for 5 gallons of it.  So my first "how to" will be on homemade laundry detergent. 

There are 4 ingredients in this detergent (one being water) Zote Soap, it comes in pink and white and as far as I can tell they smell the same.  But being a girly girl I love pink. So thats what I went with.

You will also need a 5 gallon paint bucket to mix it up in, and yes this is also how much it makes.

The last 2 ingredients are Borax and Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda.  NOT baking soda.

Step 1.  Cut up soap.  Not to hard to do its like slicing cheese.

This is how small I cut up the soap.

Step 2.  Add soap in to a pot.  Mine is a 3 quart pot.
I get the water hot before I add the soap.

Set burner low.  I've boiled over too many pots of soap to count
and while it leaves your stove top nice and clean its a pain to sop it all up.
So I've found the best thing is to leave it on low.
It takes longer but it this way it also doesn't get foamy. 

Step 3. While waiting for the soap to
melt measure 1 cup Arm & Hammer
Super Washing Soda

Step 4: Measure 1/2 cup of Borax 

 

Step 5. Fill 5 gallon bucket with hot water about 3/4 full.  

Step 6.  Add Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and
Borax to the water in the bucket

Step 7. Mix well. 

This is what the soap will look like when
its about half way done melting

When the soap looks like this its finished!

Add soap to bucket then stir.  The soap should come up to the
first outside rim.  Add water if it doesn't 

Finished!  The detergent will gel when it sits overnight.
I use my pasta spoon to stir it up before I use it.  

     Use 1 cup per load and just leave the bucket next to the washer.  I tried for awhile pouring it into smaller containers and realized that its just a waste of time.  The detergents smells like ivory soap but it doesn't leave the smell on your clothes so if you want your clothes to smell spring fresh you'll have to use some scented fabric softener. 

Next post will be on how to make your fabric softener last longer but still get your clothes soft and smelling good.