More from Pinterest

I can’t get over how much I enjoyed my Pinterest inspired Christmas wreath.  It got comments from almost every person who came to the front door, and I was surprised to notice that it was even visable from the street.  Yay for dollar tree socks!

I also had decided that I wanted to try a method I’d seen on pinterest for displaying Christmas cards.  I used adhesive and hung ribbon from the walls, then clipped the cards to the ribbons.  After I realized that I couldn’t use light-duty adhesive it worked pretty well, though the cards did turn upside down sometimes when I closed the pantry door.

I’m still kind of on the fence about this one.  It is a fun way to display cards.  But what you can’t see is that this is probably only 2/3 of the cards that we received, but I don’t have enough wall space to display any more!  So I’m not sure what I’ll do next year.  I guess it all depends on the wall space available…

 

My last Pinterest effort had nothing to do with Christmas, and everything to do with saving money.  I decided to get on the “DIY laundry detergent” bandwagon and give it a try.  After reading up on our particular combination of factors (front loading washer and septic system) I decided that I should make the liquid detergent.  I mixed up a small batch and we used it without any problems.  I don’t really love the way it makes the laundry smell, so I’m still working on that part, but I haven’t noticed things not being clean.  I’ve never made a whole batch (which requires a 5 gallon bucket) and the second time I made it I must have miscalculated the amount of water needed—the next day the stuff was entirely a solid gel.

I hoped that I could just use it that way, but no such luck.  Here was what I saw after the entire cycle had run…

Clearly that cold well water was not enough to liquify the solid detergent!  So I gave in and mixed it with more water and it seemed to work fine.  Next up—DIY fabric softener.