This summer has been an adventurous summer of firsts for me. In July, I went to my first demolition derby and had quite the enjoyable time. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed watching the cars smash into each other. My particular favorites were the compact cars. There was a Datsun 210 just like the one I had in high school. It did pretty well but didn't win.
The crowd was almost as fun to watch as the derby. I had no idea that such an eclectic group of citizens lived in my town! There was everything from cowboys, to hippies, to rednecks and preppy college professor types. (Not sure where I fit into this equation...)
Now, in about thirty minutes, I am off to the county fair to watch the Pig Wrestling. My son, who is a former pig wrestler himself, has told me how difficult of a task this is. Not only is the pig mad as hell, it is slippery and quite fast. Needless to say, he and his brother didn't win the competition. I still regret the fact that I had to miss that spectacle. However, I am sure that I will have a great time watching young folks try to catch greased-up piggies.
Who knows what wildness might be in my future? We are taking Brady up to school in Rapid on Monday. Maybe I will pay a visit to Sturgis and see a completely different type of Hog!
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
The Kitchen Monster
Well, sadly, I have not graduated from the kitchen yet with my organizing. I try to organize things, but before I know it, they are a mess again.
For example, I have tried three times this summer to organize underneath my kitchen sink. If you looked right now, you would have no idea that this is true and you would call me a liar for saying that I had. It looks horrible under there and I can't find anything! Part of this problem stems from the fact that I don't finish up the old cleaning products before I start using the new ones I purchased to replace them. But, I can't throw a little bit of cleaner away, because that would be "wasting it". They all sit under there, waiting for the day when I might decide to use them or to even combine two bottles of products to make one.
Then, there's the refrigerator. Earlier this summer, I cleaned out the condiments and we had twelve different types of mustard! In addition, we have more kinds of hot sauce than any family could ever use up. One entire shelf and all of the door space are taken up by condiments. This leaves little room for anything else in the the fridge. A month ago, I reattempted to tackle the refrigerator and its overabundance of condiments. A lady on Pinterest suggested that I organize my fridge into "zones" and have different areas for things such as bins with sandwich supplies, a cleaned and ready to eat fresh veggie section, a place for drinks, and a place for leftovers. I faithfully did this. However, within a few days, the leftovers had taken over the sandwich area, and the whole thing was a deplorable mess again. What is the solution to this problem? I don't know! Maybe stop cooking and just go out to eat all the time, then there will not be any leftovers to contend with. Oh wait, I forgot about my other promise to myself to stop going out to eat so often and to cook healthy meals!
The pantry shares a similar fate as the refrigerator. It is jam packed with food, just waiting for someone to use it up.I don't think that I can send the items to a third world country to be enjoyed by starving children. Shipping said food to Africa would be prohibitively expensive, and there are certainly strict regulations which must be followed to get food across international borders. Anyhow, it would all be rotten by the time they received it.
I am no quitter, though, I'll have you know. As I sign off for today, I head to the under sink cabinet once more, to try and get it under control. If you don't hear from me for awhile, you can probably bet that I was crushed by falling cleaning products and am waiting for someone to come home and rescue me.
For example, I have tried three times this summer to organize underneath my kitchen sink. If you looked right now, you would have no idea that this is true and you would call me a liar for saying that I had. It looks horrible under there and I can't find anything! Part of this problem stems from the fact that I don't finish up the old cleaning products before I start using the new ones I purchased to replace them. But, I can't throw a little bit of cleaner away, because that would be "wasting it". They all sit under there, waiting for the day when I might decide to use them or to even combine two bottles of products to make one.
Then, there's the refrigerator. Earlier this summer, I cleaned out the condiments and we had twelve different types of mustard! In addition, we have more kinds of hot sauce than any family could ever use up. One entire shelf and all of the door space are taken up by condiments. This leaves little room for anything else in the the fridge. A month ago, I reattempted to tackle the refrigerator and its overabundance of condiments. A lady on Pinterest suggested that I organize my fridge into "zones" and have different areas for things such as bins with sandwich supplies, a cleaned and ready to eat fresh veggie section, a place for drinks, and a place for leftovers. I faithfully did this. However, within a few days, the leftovers had taken over the sandwich area, and the whole thing was a deplorable mess again. What is the solution to this problem? I don't know! Maybe stop cooking and just go out to eat all the time, then there will not be any leftovers to contend with. Oh wait, I forgot about my other promise to myself to stop going out to eat so often and to cook healthy meals!
The pantry shares a similar fate as the refrigerator. It is jam packed with food, just waiting for someone to use it up.I don't think that I can send the items to a third world country to be enjoyed by starving children. Shipping said food to Africa would be prohibitively expensive, and there are certainly strict regulations which must be followed to get food across international borders. Anyhow, it would all be rotten by the time they received it.
I am no quitter, though, I'll have you know. As I sign off for today, I head to the under sink cabinet once more, to try and get it under control. If you don't hear from me for awhile, you can probably bet that I was crushed by falling cleaning products and am waiting for someone to come home and rescue me.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The Overachievers of the World
I am not the only overachiever in my family. I am married to someone who is much more of a perfectionist than I am, and who makes everything he does turn out to be the most amazing project you have ever seen. In addition, my husband is the kind of person who can just read about how to do something or watch a video on it and will know how to do it perfectly afterwards.
Well, today held all sorts of new adventures for the two of us. Randy and I have been planning for quite a while now to put some tile in our garage to keep the dirt down in the house. Today was the day that we decided to undertake this task. At first, we were just going to tile the step going out to the garage. Then, we decided we should do some beyond the step. Next, we decided we should at least go underneath where the freezer is. Lastly, just as we were getting ready to start, Brady came out to the garage and said how cool it would look if we did a pattern with large and small tiles. So now, I think that I can safely say that we have the fanciest tiled garage for miles around!
Now that we are finished with our tiling extravaganza, I am going to take some advice from William Morris, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." My goal is to purge my house of all the extraneous crap that we have held onto for no particular reason at all and to do it before I go back to work! I will report to you and let you know how it goes. Time to get my organizing book back out and start working on it a bit at a time. Wish me luck!
Well, today held all sorts of new adventures for the two of us. Randy and I have been planning for quite a while now to put some tile in our garage to keep the dirt down in the house. Today was the day that we decided to undertake this task. At first, we were just going to tile the step going out to the garage. Then, we decided we should do some beyond the step. Next, we decided we should at least go underneath where the freezer is. Lastly, just as we were getting ready to start, Brady came out to the garage and said how cool it would look if we did a pattern with large and small tiles. So now, I think that I can safely say that we have the fanciest tiled garage for miles around!
Now that we are finished with our tiling extravaganza, I am going to take some advice from William Morris, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." My goal is to purge my house of all the extraneous crap that we have held onto for no particular reason at all and to do it before I go back to work! I will report to you and let you know how it goes. Time to get my organizing book back out and start working on it a bit at a time. Wish me luck!
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Hippie Project?
As many of you already know, I crochet and knit in my spare time and to relieve stress. While exploring the Internet the other day and looking at upcycling ideas on Pinterest, I found "tee-shirt" yarn. A lovely Hawaiian lady gave explicit instructions on how to create this yarn and it looked pretty easy to me. I decided to give it a try.
Well, it wasn't quite as easy as she made it look. After several tries of cutting up tee-shirts and getting a bunch of little strips instead of one long string of yarn, I decided to examine her tutorial once more. I found out what I was doing wrong(cutting straight across instead of in a diagonal) and proceeded to make several balls of tee-shirt yarn.
Now the question was, where to get tee-shirts to cut up? I knew that Randy and the kids would not appreciate me stealing their tee-shirts to make my yarn, and I had already gone through my tee-shirts to make the first few balls. Luckily for me, I love to go shopping at our consignment store here in town, and they often have free stuff outside of the store(can you say "crap that no one would even buy for a low, low price but Andrea will snatch up because it's free?") One day as I drove by, there was a giant garbage bag of tee-shirts out in the free stuff! I brought them home, washed them up, and proceeded to make yarn to my heart's content.
So far, I have been crocheting baskets out of this yarn. It will work well for bags too I think, because it is nice and heavy. My family has been teasing me something terrible about my new yarn. I have been reminded that ladies in the 1800's made rugs out of old clothes, and that recycling tee-shirts is probably something that makes me a hippie. The hippie comment got me thinking. There are tons of hippies in Laramie, why not sell them my tee-shirt baskets and bags? So, this is my future plan. I have only completed one basket so far and am working on a second. When I get it done, I will put a picture of it on here for you to see.
By the way, after an hour of work with the shop-vac, I got all of the baking soda out of the carpet! Victory is mine!
Well, it wasn't quite as easy as she made it look. After several tries of cutting up tee-shirts and getting a bunch of little strips instead of one long string of yarn, I decided to examine her tutorial once more. I found out what I was doing wrong(cutting straight across instead of in a diagonal) and proceeded to make several balls of tee-shirt yarn.
Now the question was, where to get tee-shirts to cut up? I knew that Randy and the kids would not appreciate me stealing their tee-shirts to make my yarn, and I had already gone through my tee-shirts to make the first few balls. Luckily for me, I love to go shopping at our consignment store here in town, and they often have free stuff outside of the store(can you say "crap that no one would even buy for a low, low price but Andrea will snatch up because it's free?") One day as I drove by, there was a giant garbage bag of tee-shirts out in the free stuff! I brought them home, washed them up, and proceeded to make yarn to my heart's content.
So far, I have been crocheting baskets out of this yarn. It will work well for bags too I think, because it is nice and heavy. My family has been teasing me something terrible about my new yarn. I have been reminded that ladies in the 1800's made rugs out of old clothes, and that recycling tee-shirts is probably something that makes me a hippie. The hippie comment got me thinking. There are tons of hippies in Laramie, why not sell them my tee-shirt baskets and bags? So, this is my future plan. I have only completed one basket so far and am working on a second. When I get it done, I will put a picture of it on here for you to see.
By the way, after an hour of work with the shop-vac, I got all of the baking soda out of the carpet! Victory is mine!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Pet Puzzler
I have dreams of being like Martha Stewart. Every summer, I make great plans to organize my house and to keep it immaculate throughout the school year. This summer, I downloaded a book on organizing your house in 28 days, I have worked on coming up with a cleaning system and I have planned out family meals a month in advance. I took a healthy eating class and learned about the benefits of planning out meals and shopping once a week for foods. All of these things sound great, don't they? Let me tell you the rest of the story...
I get carried away with trying to do too many things at once. I have all of these projects going around the house, and I never complete any of them. For example, I organized the kitchen but I never made it to any of the other rooms. I print off a cleaning schedule for myself and hang it on the fridge where I can refer to it. Then, I never do the things on the list! Lastly, I hate going to the grocery on Sunday because it is so crowded. So, if I don't make a concerted effort to go on another day and do my shopping, we don't have the supplies to cook the amazing meals I have planned out. As a result, we end up going out to eat.
Yesterday is a fine example of me getting overzealous with one of my projects. I found a recipe online to clean up pet stains from my carpet. As Baby, my min pin, is 13 years old, she is getting pretty senile and just goes where ever she gets the urge to go. If I am not paying attention, I have a heck of a mess! The recipe is as follows: first, mix a bottle of half vinegar, half warm water. Spray it on the stain to neutralize the smell. After you have gotten the carpet fairly wet, scrub it with a brush to get the mixture all over the stained spot. Next, when the area is dry or almost dry, sprinkle a handful of baking soda around on the spot. After you have sprinkled the baking soda, mix 1/2 c. hydrogen peroxide with 2 tsp. dish soap. Put this on top of the baking soda, and use your brush to scrub this into the carpet. Once it is completely dry, vacuum up the baking soda with either a shop vac or your vacuum cleaner. A professional carpet cleaner online told me in his video that this was the best technique to use.
I tried to carefully follow the directions, and it went pretty well. The carpet smells amazing, and it is not stained any more. So far so good-- EXCEPT, I went a little overboard with the baking soda and now I am having a struggle getting it all out! My advice to you would be, if you try this technique, don't totally plaster your carpet with baking soda or you will have to spend the rest of your life vacuuming it up!
I get carried away with trying to do too many things at once. I have all of these projects going around the house, and I never complete any of them. For example, I organized the kitchen but I never made it to any of the other rooms. I print off a cleaning schedule for myself and hang it on the fridge where I can refer to it. Then, I never do the things on the list! Lastly, I hate going to the grocery on Sunday because it is so crowded. So, if I don't make a concerted effort to go on another day and do my shopping, we don't have the supplies to cook the amazing meals I have planned out. As a result, we end up going out to eat.
Yesterday is a fine example of me getting overzealous with one of my projects. I found a recipe online to clean up pet stains from my carpet. As Baby, my min pin, is 13 years old, she is getting pretty senile and just goes where ever she gets the urge to go. If I am not paying attention, I have a heck of a mess! The recipe is as follows: first, mix a bottle of half vinegar, half warm water. Spray it on the stain to neutralize the smell. After you have gotten the carpet fairly wet, scrub it with a brush to get the mixture all over the stained spot. Next, when the area is dry or almost dry, sprinkle a handful of baking soda around on the spot. After you have sprinkled the baking soda, mix 1/2 c. hydrogen peroxide with 2 tsp. dish soap. Put this on top of the baking soda, and use your brush to scrub this into the carpet. Once it is completely dry, vacuum up the baking soda with either a shop vac or your vacuum cleaner. A professional carpet cleaner online told me in his video that this was the best technique to use.
I tried to carefully follow the directions, and it went pretty well. The carpet smells amazing, and it is not stained any more. So far so good-- EXCEPT, I went a little overboard with the baking soda and now I am having a struggle getting it all out! My advice to you would be, if you try this technique, don't totally plaster your carpet with baking soda or you will have to spend the rest of your life vacuuming it up!
Monday, July 23, 2012
Introduction
Welcome to my Blog! I am a forty something woman, who wears all sorts of hats in my life. First of all, I have been married to the same man for 24 years, and I am the mother of three college-aged children. I've taught high school English for the past 18 years. I also love to travel around the country watching my two boys play college football. I crochet and knit, read, and cross country ski. As a result of being so busy, I am constantly looking for ways to make life easier and less stressful. I want to share the tips I find with you, my readers! I will also share about the crochet and knitting that I do, the books that I read, and anything else that I think might be of interest.
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