Homemade Produce Wash

I've been using this all-natural produce wash for a little while now. I made up a new batch of it today, so I took some pictures and thought I would share. It's super easy and WAY CHEAPER than the stuff that you buy at your grocery store.

Homemade Produce Wash:

1 spray bottle + one recycled jar

1 cup water

1 cup vinegar

1 tablespoon baking soda

20 drops grapefruit seed extract - (I get mine at Whole Foods)

Put the water and vinegar in a deep pitcher or big bowl. This is why...........

When you add the baking soda, cool science happens! lol The baking soda and the vinegar react and foam up like crazy. I was using an 8-cup measuring cup and it came very close to foaming over the top.

After the foam goes away, stir well. It will probably foam up again, but not as badly as the first time. Fill up your spray bottle and if you have any left over, pour it into your recycled glass jar. Be sure to label your jar, so you know what's inside!

To use, spray your produce and let it sit on your counter or in a bowl for 5 to 10 minutes. Rinse well and eat!

For small produce, like grapes and blueberries, I place the fruit in a bowl, spray the fruit real well and mix them up a bit with my fingers, spraying on more wash here and there. Then I let them sit and rinse.

I found this recipe at Recipezaar and I think it works great!

Game Face - layout

First of all, I have to say this.........

GO BIG RED!!!!!!!

Okay, now that I have that out of my system....lol I also have to say that the photo of my kids on the second page (acting like the statues) is by far one of my most favorite photos of my kids ever! lol I have a copy of this on my fridge and it makes me laugh every time I look at it. It's great for those times when I'm grumpy. lol This layout covers a couple of challenges. It was my submission at Practical Scrappers for their Bling Challenge that was last week (yep, I'm late on sharing mine here on my blog!) and it's also for a sketch challenge at a great Yahoo! Group called ScrapFromYourStash. The sketch is by Shawn at Nuts About Sketches. She has tons and tons of awesome sketches, so be sure to visit her blog to see them!!!!

Things are still crazy here.....I'm averaging one page a week......which I guess is better than zero! I'm trying to pull out all of my winter clothes right now, pack them up and move in my summer clothes. I need to do that for little GG, too, so I have quite a bit of clothes to go through!

I hope to share more with you soon!

Practical Scrappers Card Sketch

The current card sketch at Practical Scrappers is just awesome! I really enjoyed making this Thank You card.....(I need to mail it! I keep forgetting!). Be sure to go here to see the sketch and all of the other amazing cards that have been made following this sketch.

For my card, I chose to use a small doily for the main circle. I'm not sure if you noticed, but the scalloped-rectangle piece of paper is a scrap left over from the paper that I used on the layout I shared a few days ago. The title is stamped.....I'm embarrassed to say that I have had that Stampin'Up! stamp set for probably 8 years and I just now cut that stamp out to use on this card. For the flower, I punched out 4 different sized flowers and curled up the edges with a small, wooden skewer. Then I added fine glitter to the edges with some liquid glue and added a small rhinestone in the center. I am really having fun making these 3-dimensional flowers!

I hope you all have a wonderful, crafty day!

Markers Challenge @ Practical Scrappers

Good morning! This weeks challenge at Practical Scrappers is to use your markers! I have had the full set of Stampin' Up! makers for many, many years and I must say I can't believe they still work so wonderfully. I guess that's a bad sign that I really haven't been using them that often. ;-) So, I was really excited to see this weeks challenge. I have been trying to use them more and I think that I'm actually really enjoying all of these markers for the first time since I bought them ages ago!

I really wanted to challenge myself and think of something that I hadn't done before. So, I decided to color on some thick, cotton "ribbon". I'm not sure what this stuff is called, but it's not ribbon, it's more like yarn or flat cotton twine. Anyway, I decided to use blue and pulled out three shades of blue markers. I put some Mono Adhesive on both ends of the twine and stuck it to my work surface, so it wouldn't move around while I colored on it. Then, I just started making lines of different thicknesses for each color and followed the pattern all of the way across the ribbon. Easy as pie and it matches my layout colors perfectly!!!! :-) If you click on the picture, you can see a bigger version of it....I forgot to take a close-up of the colored twine!

Obviously, this layout is about our love of Whole Foods. lol We go there a little too often.... ;-) It can be pricey, but I find that their 360 house-brand is quite reasonable. Really, all that I buy there right now is organic produce, some beauty/bath items, Keifer and organic coffee. That's my one, big splurge. Organic coffee. lol My little one loves Whole Foods, too, especially their cookies! I know that people like to call it "Whole Paycheck" but I really do find that if you buy what's on sale, use coupons, and buy their house-brand, that it's not too bad. Plus, I'd rather pay the extra for things that I know are better for me and my family.....but that's an entire different topic! ;-)

I hope you all join in on this challenge at Practical Scrappers! Please visit us there, check out all of the amazing projects and add your own to Mr. Linky!!!!! It's a wonderful place with wonderful people and a great place to get inspiration to use the supplies that you have!

The Joy of the Lord......card

I made this card last month and I forgot to share it with you all. This was for a dear aunt of mine who lost her mother, who was a wonderful lady indeed.

For this card, I stamped the verse in an olive green and then I went over each letter with a blender pen that I rubbed in some olive green marker. I don't have one of those neat paper edge de-stresser tools, so I carefully rubbed an Exact-O knife along the edge of the paper and the green mat. Oh, I stamped the verse on water color paper and don't tell my husband about my dangerous use of that Exact-O knife! It scares him to watch me cut an apple, because I hold it in my hand, like my mom always did. Anyway. ;-) I used a Versamark pad and stamped the small flowers on the base of the card.

Now for the fun part. The flowers! At first I had this great idea to use my flower punch, but punches and tissue paper DO NOT MIX! lol So, I used my Big Shot and a flower die and cut out several flowers and that worked well. I did have to use my tweezers to pull the separate flowers apart, because I ran several layers through my die-cutter at once. This takes a very light hand, because the flowers are very fragile. (Does anyone else say "fra-gee-lay" when they type "fragile"? lol) After I had each flower laying out on my table, I used a liquid glue pen and carefully glued each punched flower on top of each other until the flower was a many layers as I wanted. I used my tweezers for this part, too. I made two different sized flowers, but each flower is made up of the same sized flower, if that makes any sense. ;-) I added a rhinestone in the center of each flower to finish them off.

The leaves are punched from green card stock. Then, I placed them on top of a piece of craft foam and used my embossing tool to burnish the center of the leave and to shape each leaf so that it looked more real and dimensional. I'm not sure if I can describe what I did.....maybe I should do a tutorial for you some time! I added some ribbon, because I love ribbon and this one matched my card perfectly, so I had to use it. ;-)

I've been making a lot of cards lately and it's been a great way for me to do some creative therapy.....now to work on some layouts!

Take care!

Rub-On Challenge @ Practical Scrappers!

There are always lots of great things going on at Practical Scrappers and I sure do hope that you make some time to stop by to see all of the fabulous projects that are shared there!

This weeks challenge is to use Rub-On's! I don't have many and it took some rooting around in my stash to find some, but I finally stumbled upon a sheet of rub-on words that all focused on "love". So, I thought of the stamps that I have seen where the words are all fitted together to make a shape and I thought that would be a great thing to try to do with these rub-on's! I crossed my fingers and started rubbing each word on, one by one, and just hoped that it would turn out into a rectangle shape. It worked great and I'm really thrilled with my card!

For the flowers, I punched a large flower from three shades of blue, a medium flower in pink, and a small flower in light pink. I crumpled them all up and the unfolded them a bit, stacked them on top of each other and used a small, flower-shaped brad to hold them all together.

Please stop by Practical Scrappers to see all of the great inspiration there for using rub-on's! Join in on the fun and leave a link to share your projects! We sure would love to have you visit!

Crochet Laptop Cozy

As soon as I saw this tutorial for a crochet laptop sleeve, I knew that I had to make one for my new Mac! This was really easy and I honestly just kind of stitched away, kept putting it on my laptop to see if it was working, and then stitched some more. I added a stitch for a few rows at the beginning, so that it widened bit by bit and fit around the bottom nicely. This was pure luck that it turned out right! lol I haven't ever done anything like that before, so like I said, I just went with it and kept putting it on my laptop to see if it was working. This is a super easy project and the only really tough part about it is that you are crocheting with THREE skeins of yarn at once, so it does get a little bulky to work with because it starts getting a little heavy and you have to sit with three skeins of yarn in front of you. I actually set mine on the floor in front of me with the ends facing up that the yarn was coming from. I used a light yellow, light pink and then a darker pink of Red Heart brand yarn. One big, Super Saver skein of each color was enough for this project.

The end is sewn together, so that you have to slip the top flap over the edge of your laptop. This is nice because it protects the edges of your laptop and just looks a lot nicer anyway. I also stitched around the edge of the flap for two rows, instead of one, because I needed that extra length so that the edges that I needed to sew together fit together well.

Then I had to embellish it, of course. lol I got the silly idea of putting my initial on it, so I tried crouching with silk ribbon. This was the first time I've ever tried this! I do like how it turned out! Then I made some yo-yo's from some scraps of fabric, added some old buttons and felt leaves. I decided to stitch around the leaves in a lighter color of green DMC floss, because I didn't like how the leaves looked plain, I think it was because the color of the felt was more of an olive tint and not green enough for this project. The light green floss adds that green color that I wanted and also gives the flowers neat dimension. I sewed all of the embellishments on with yarn.

I LOVE my cozy! lol

I hope you are all enjoying Spring! Isn't it wonderful????? :-)