Clean Living {Homemade Laundry Soap}

For awhile now I have been pinning things on the ever-so-great pinterest about natural living. I think it would be nice to have cleaner cleaning products. Less of the junk and more of the good stuff that gets all the grime and dirt out of clothes and off of floors. I decided laundry detergent would be a great place to start. I've read a thousand different recipes and they are all pretty much the same: borax, washing soda, Brommer's soap (or another type of plain soap bar), often times a good dose of OxiClean, and sometimes some extract for a scent.

Tomorrow I have to do laundry, and we officially ran out of the liquid laundry detergent I purchased from Costco awhile back. So it was now or never. I was either going to buy all the ingredients to make the laundry detergent or I was going to cave and just buy some Tide. I will admit that I almost caved, but I thought it would be a fun project, relatively inexpensive, and make enough laundry detergent to last us FOOOOOOREEEEEVVVEEER (said in the voice from the movie Sandlot...).

Luckily, you can find all of these ingredients at your local grocery store in your laundry isle, which makes it super convenient to make a big batch. You will also need a big bucket to mix all the parts and some air tight containers to store the detergent. I opted for the every so handy and trendy mason jar. Ultimately, I ended up using the recipe from AskAnna.  I did change one thing: instead of buying an essential oil, I just purchased some Brommer's soap that had essential oils added. I went for citrus since it smells so fresh, but there are other options, like lavender and almond. I thought the lavender was a bit too strong, but it was my second choice.

And here you have it! That cute graphic design came from AskAnna as well! I just printed them out on some card stock, glued them down with some modge podge, and that was that! 

I am hoping have cute laundry soap in my trendy mason jars is the first step to transforming our laundry from this...

To this...

Might not be much, but to me, mason jars is a start! :)

Wall Art on the Fly...and for Cheap

I would not describe myself as artsy. My sister Mary, on other hand, super artsy, so I try to be like her. She does more abstract stuff, which isn't really my style, but the fact that she just picks up a paint brush and gets going inspires me. So a few months ago, during my fall break, I decided to try my hand at painting something simple and meaningful for our family. We have a TON of empty wall space and it taking us forever to fill it up, but this was a good meaningful way to get something up on the wall.

Using a few random art supplies I had around the house (canvas, acrylic paints, some stencils, and a few paint brushes), I was able to throw these little pieces together. The blue and burnt orange are two colors that you can see throughout our house (and I could easily make these particular shades with the random paints I had).

The one on the left is our anniversary which is coming up! And...believe it or not, the one of the left is suppose to be an "O" for Oertle. Unfortunately people always ask me what the zero stands for, which honestly makes me want to take these down sometimes. I am convinced that people only think it is a zero because it is next to another piece with numbers. I didn't even think about it being interpreted that way when I made them because we used the same stencil to make signs for our wedding reception. 

 No one seemed to confused the "O" for a zero then! Wah-wah. What matters most is that I like those pieces of art that I made for our house. They probably won't be permanent, but they satisfy our need for wall art, add some color to the hallway, and always remind me of our special day!

To make these little paintings, all I did was measure the inches of the canvas and draw the different lines for the horizontal stripe. Then on top of those lines, I traced the numbers (or letter). I only had letter stencils, so I improvised by printing out some large numbers on Word and used those. After tracing the whole pattern, I just started painting. I wanted the two pieces to work together, so I used the same colors but opted to alternate the use of the colors on each canvas. 

Just  little pic to show a bit of the process

All in all, I love how they turned out-despite the fact that most people think I have a random zero painted and hung on our wall. Maybe I should try to come up with some special significance for the zero...Any ideas?

Living Room Updates

Now that we have lived in our home for about a year, it is fun to look back and see how much the house has changed and improved since we first bought it and moved it. We still have a long way to go, but we have made a pretty good dent. Currently, the room that has seen the most change is the living room, or front room. It is the room you first see when you walk in the door. It has some great features, like the three beautiful windows, and some more difficult features, like the loooooooooong wall that connects it to the dining room.

Here's the room as we found it when we first moved in.

Terrible paint colors. The long wall was covered in a very dark red which sucks away all the light. Then there is that yellow color which is terrible. And you can't see it, but there was another beige wall. So much going on. The living room is also sunken. Don't love that, don't hate that. It separates the space from the dining room which is good, but the two spaces still share that really long wall which keeps them connected. That has been a design problem in my mind. 

So when we moved in, we painted this room a safe "bone white" from Dunn Edwards, which added a lot of light, and decided to make this room our "family room." I insisted on hanging some curtains because I wanted the space to feel warm. Unfortunately, that was a bad decision...you live and learn. 

First design for the living room.

We didn't have much furniture when we first bought the house...any at all really, so the "family room" looks quite bare. After living there for about six months, I convinced my husband that the room should really function more as a "living room" than as a family room. And so we moved some furniture around and got this:

Full couch against long wall; loveseat across and against a small wall; floral chairs in front of windows

It worked. We decided to take the curtains down, bought some couches, eventually scored that beautiful round coffee table and bought some nice lamps from Target. All was well and it fit the needs of a living room. Meanwhile, the room we made the "family room" looked awesome. (More on that later).

While on search for a dresser for the nursery, we came across a lady on Craigslist who had some awesome pieces. We got a dresser for $70, but then also scored a beautiful credenza ($150) and a cool old wine-box-turned-end-table ($30).

If you open the door, there is a working record player.

Not the best photo, but it says "Chateau Ste Michelle."

I loved the two pieces, but when they came into our house about a week ago, they stressed me out. I didn't know how they would fit and I hated that we bought furniture we didn't have a particular need for. Luckily my mom came into town and helped us solve this little problem. We decided to move the couches around, use the credenza as a sofa table and use the wine box table as a table between the two floral chairs.

I love the room! We still need art/decor on the walls, but as far as it feeling and functioning as a living room, I think we have hit the money spot! It also has a nice separation from the dining room. Now when you sit in either space, you don't feel like you are in one huge room but in a separate space. It is so nice! 

Any ideas for how to fill up the wall space? I am not the best at choosing decor for walls...but I will try my best.