Several things I want to write about this morning. First up is this fabulous book. 5 years ago we had an experience at our house in Santa Fe that changed my view of standard household cleaners. We had a Pinon tree outside one of our bathrooms that was slowly turning brown and we couldn’t figure out why. One day the girls reported the toilet wouldn’t flush. After no success with the plunger we called Rotor Rooter. An hour later our toilet was laying on the floor of the bathroom as the Rotor Rooter guy was pulling massive amounts of tree roots from the base. I’ve never seen anything like it. A light bulb went off in my head. The tree was dying because of the bleach we put in our toilet every week. Our whole family felt sick. We were slowly poisoning one of the most beautiful trees on the planet to keep our potty clean.
I started researching alternatives and came across this wonderful book by Karen Logan. Talk about getting hit across the head with a 2 x 4. My cleaning cabinet is now filled with vinegar, Dr. Bonner’s liquid soap, Borax, baking soda, olive oil and essential oils. I make my own general purpose cleaner, furniture polish, and ant spray. I clean my potty with Dr. Bonner’s Tea Tree Oil and use baking soda to scrub anything and everything. After cleaning, my home smells like jasmine, lavender and grapefruit instead of toxic waft. If you’ve been thinking about this topic I encourage you to get Karen’s book. It’s really wonderful.
This week’s Whip Lash challenge “Everyday Creativity” is over and I placed 2nd with my cat food placemat! I’d like to thank the Academy of Whip Up Judges, Grandma Buckles for her years of patient teaching and love (I know she’s cheering for me from up in heaven), and Mrs. Scott, my high school Home Ec teacher, for requesting that I tear out and reset that sleeve for the third time. I’m totally floored and enjoying all 15 seconds. Thanks to everyone that left a comment. As a new blogger it feels good to know that someone (besides my mom and best friend) are stopping by and checking out what I make. The main reason for this blog. This week’s challenge is ‘Your Surly Side’. I’m not particularly surly and nothing came to me so I’ll be sitting this one out. I am looking forward to checking out the entries. I really like the short time span and the interpretive theme. Brilliant format for a challenge.
The other enlightened change I made this week is to download Firefox as my browser. This was suggested by the Whip Up gals when problems surfaced with the challenge upload facility. It hadn’t really occurred to me that a browser could have functionality. My favorite feature is being able to open multiple tabs across the top of the browser with different web pages on each one. Very easy to switch between, especially useful for pasting links. It also has a little search box along the toolbar where I customized several search facilities I like to use. All I do is go to the toolbar to enter my search criteria. Right now I have Google, Amazon, The Food Network, Merriam Webster, Wikipedia and Yahooligans. Brilliant idea and so useful. There’s a gazillion other features that I haven’t explored yet. First I need to figure out how to get a line space between the icons on my sidebar.
I plan to spend my weekend finishing my Mystery Quilt and planting sunflower seeds with the girls.
