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I had a wonderful weekend of nothing on the schedule!  It feels so good on a Friday night to know that your next “have to” item will not be until Monday morning.

It was a beautiful day, so I put a couple of  great-grandma Katie’s quilts out to air.  I treasure these quilts so much and love to think about the women that hand stitched every little piece of it.  I wonder where the fabric came from and what the purpose of the quilt was.  I would love to throw them in the wash to give them a good cleaning, but I know that is a HUGE risk!  So I won’t.

I’ve had a few recent bloopers.  The first was my attempt at thickening a ham and bean soup.  I read on the internet that if you want to thicken it, you can make a flour/water paste and add it to the soup.  Well I can tell you that is the fastest way to make dumplings!  I have to admit, the dumplings ended up being one of the best parts, but my that is not what I intended.

I also started knitting a 12-18 month old pair of socks.  About 3/4 way through I abandoned ship since it looked like a 5 year old could wear them.  That will teach me to do the sample gauge that the patterns ALWAYS tell you to make.  It seems like such a waste of time to go to all that effort though when you are just so excited to start the project.  Tony says I have to rip it out and start over since there is no way a 5 year old is going to wear my hand knitted socks.  That’s the good thing about knitted stuff for babies…no matter how terrible or ugly your knitting is, the baby can’t say no to wearing it.

In other news, my brother’s twin girls just came home from the NICU.  They are doing wonderful and I can’t wait to get a visit in.  Liana and Amaya–two girls that will have to put up with a lot of homemade treats from Aunty Ing.

I think this project is so cool!  My walls needed some color down in my “special” room, and so instead of painting I took fabric and liquid starch and made my own wall art.  It is so easy to do!  Take some fabric and cut out the shapes you would like to apply.  Use some double stick tape to position your shapes on the wall to get the exact placement you want.  For the liquid starch, you will need to make up a little concoction.  Whisk together 1/4 cup of cold water and 1/8 cup of corn starch.  Add 2 cups boiling water to this and whisk some more.  Let it cool a bit so it is easy to work with.  One at a time, take your pieces of fabric and paint the back side of the fabric with the liquid starch.  Make sure to really soak it good–I put my pieces of fabric in a jelly roll pan to help contain the mess.  Place your fabric on the wall and then brush the front side of the fabric with a little more liquid starch.  Let it dry!  I have heard, though not tested, that when you want to remove the fabric, you can just peel it off…no damage done!  Can you imagine the things you could create!? 

Here’s another little project I got involved with last night.  My sister-in-law gave us this white rug, her grandparents had made, for a wedding gift.  I loved it but you can imagine what a white rug looked like after 5 years.  Tony thought there was no hope for it, but I just couldn’t part with it.  With the help of a package of Rit dye and my washing machine we gave the rug some new life with a smidge of extra spunk.

A friend I work with gave me the recipe to make my own laundry soap!  How cool is that!  I made some the other night and it was so easy.  The recipe is below…some of the ingredients may seem difficult to find, but when I went to the store most of them were all right next to each other.  For the bar of soap you may have to go to a smaller hardware store.  (I got mine at Ace Hardware.)

If you are counting pennies, here is how this breaks down in price.  Borax=$2.56, Arm & Hammer=$2.12, Bleach (I used Biz)=$6.68, Fels Naptha Soap=$1.29.  Not bad.  I have a ton leftover after making one batch! The only thing I will need to get more of is the bar of soap.  With using 2-3 Tbsp a load I’m thinking this is the way to go.  Plus it is such a romantic thing to do and it smells good!