Smith Family Weblog

After draining yet another $25 tub of Tide Free and Clear, I decided to give homemade laundry detergent a try. I’ve been reading quite a bit about it lately—benefits include cleaner laundry, a huge cost savings and product that’s better for your skin and the environment.

I found hundreds of recipes online—some for liquid detergent, some for powder. I decided to go with powder—fewer steps and less messy to manage. Here’s the adapted recipe I used:

• I bar Fels Naptha, grated
• 2 cups Arm & Hammer washing soda
• 2 cups Borax
• 1 cup baking soda

I found all of the ingredients in the laundry aisle of the grocery story. The hardest part—by far—was grating the soap. I read that Ivory is a good alternative to Fels Naptha, and so I may try that next time.

I mixed everything together, and with about $2 of ingredients, I have enough soap for about eight weeks of laundry (40-50 loads). Each load uses an 1/8 of a cup of detergent.

I used it this weekend, and I was pretty surprised at how well it handled dried mud and other stains. Olivia’s less rashy than usual, too. Plus, the laundry smelled terrific. I suppose though, that could be the new Bounce bar in the dryer. Stick it on the side of the dryer drum, and you never have to worry about adding dryer sheets.

Clearly, this type of efficiency is of utmost importance to someone who spends 45 minutes shaving soap.

I have been saving wine corks for years, tossing them into a pretty crystal bowl in our dining room. Mom and Dave recently made me a set of trivet bases, which I filled with a few of my favorites.

The cork on the bottom was from the bottle of wine we shared on a recent anniversary.

I snagged this one following a fabulous dinner with my Madison girlfriends a couple of years ago.

This set also reminds of them…

Some don’t have sentimental meaning—I just find them interesting. I love the red stains on the ends.

Corks could be completely utilitarian. They are concealed from sight until a bottle is opened, then likely tossed aside without notice. I admire the attention to detail and effort devoted to something that could be so plain.

My collection, though, isn’t growing like it used to. Now, many great wines have screw tops, and I often skip over a bottle in favor of a box, because it’s . . . um . . . better for the environment. Sure, that works.

In case you’re wondering if all this wine—and my tendency to attach meaning to seemingly useless items—will land me on the next episode of “Hoarders: Buried Alive,” rest assured I’m not saving the boxes. You have to draw the line somewhere.

This year, we broke a longstanding family tradition of purchasing our Christmas tree from a retail parking lot. While this has served us well in past years, last Christmas, we brought one home to discover it had been spray painted a lovely shade of aqua.

So, at my friend Dawn’s suggestion, we hit up a local tree farm after the Christmas parade last Saturday. We rode a hay rack out to the field, something that thrilled the girls.

Actually, it thrilled all of the girls…

Once we got there, though, I remembered that I really prefer to shop by myself. I am rather picky and indecisive, and this was no exception. We started out just fine, but we didn’t see eye-to-eye for very long.

Ava wanted this Charlie Brown beauty:

I had my sights set a little higher…I thought it would look perfect in our foyer.

Bryan wanted something he didn’t need a flatbed trailer to haul home and Olivia just wanted a nap.

We finally decided on this one, which while not very large, it is maybe the prettiest tree we’ve ever had.

The crew cut it down and loaded it back on the hay rack for us.

On Sunday we set to decorating, with a few new and sparkly ornaments….

And some old favorites.

I even ended up with a tree for the foyer:

Merry Christmas!

I found these old wooden spools at a flea market over Memorial Day weekend. I loved the bits of remaining thread and vintage labels.

I have a penchant for unusual furniture—an old desk from my Dad’s one-room schoolhouse, a church pew, a door-turned-headboard—and now, my most recent acquisition:

I got this library card catalog on an auction recently, and Bryan and Tom helped me move it into it’s place in our dining room earlier this week. I love it, but it’s quite a bit bigger than I thought it was.

Now, I’m torn—there’s really no other place to put it, unless I move the hutch next to it. The issue here? There’s no place for it to go except the basement. I have a sentimental attachment to the hutch—my great grandfather stained and varnished it for my Great Grandma Wallen—and it houses my wedding china. Plus, Dave bolted it to the wall three years ago.

I would really like to have the catalog in that room—in my mind, it will look something like this once it’s all set up. In reality, it will probably house Barbie clothes, random puzzle pieces and the 18-month-old who scaled the open drawers and has perched on the top.

My solution is to cut it in half (circular saw?) just above the pull-out shelves and use it as a bench behind our love seat:

I think it would be quaint and interesting—Bryan thinks it would be impossible to get a clean and even cut.

What do you think? Any ideas?

Update: Here’s a similar treatment.

In anticipation of hosting our entire family for Ava’s birthday this spring, I am trying to update the house just a bit. Thankfully, the grandparents are making my job pretty easy: Mom and Dave gave Olivia some new furniture for Christmas, and Karyl made her a sweet new quilt.

(I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here before, but the cross stitch you see in the above photo is one my mom made for me when I was a baby. The colors are still beautiful, even though it’s been THREE DECADES.)

I think this quilt is called “Strawberry Limeade.” It’s gorgeous!

The first quilt Karyl made for Olivia is hanging outside her room in the hallway outside of her room. The photo just does not do it justice.

Doug contributed some adorable bath photos, which I put in floating frames and hung in the girls’ bathroom.

Two rooms down, many more to go. I’m working on the living room now, which aside from a couple of new couches, hasn’t seen a real update in about 10 years. Neither has our bedroom, despite the fact I’ve been looking for a new bedding set for approximately 16 months.

Interior design is not something that comes easily to me–I’m terrible at coordinating colors, I can’t made decisions and I usually just end up painting the walls and calling it good.

I’m trying to approach this very thoughtfully, and with a very small budget. It’s driving me crazy. Any tips?

We spent the weekend tackling the first of many organizational projects.

Top on the list: my closet. I found this shoe contraption at the hardware store. Like any “As seen on TV” product, it features a ridiculous “before” shot to illustrate just how well it will work:

Wait, did I say “ridiculous?” I mean “realistic.” Here’s the actual “before” shot of my closet.

The “after” was just as good as the box promised.

Next up, the closet downstairs.

I repurposed my old, smaller shoe organizer here, and that cleared the floor…for a moment at least. I later found Ava and her babies in the closet playing Hello Kitty Bingo by flashlight.

And finally, the dreaded pantry. This is the house catch-all–if you don’t know where to put it, put it in the pantry. As a result, it looks like this most of the time:

Two hours later, it was slightly better. In Bry’s words, “It’s a good start…”

Three areas down, 347 to go.