Homemade Laundry Soap

Laundry soap is so expensive! Here is my recipe to make your own. It is very cheap to make and lasts a long time. (Depending on how big your family is and how many loads of laundry you do a week) It smells great and cleans so very well! Use 2-4 tablespoons per load. This does not suds up so I am told it is safe in HE washers. I however do not have the front loader washers but have been told by people that do that it works great. They just add it to the drum with the clothes. 

Updating Our Home Office

So our home office was in need of an update. Our large executive desk just took up too much room in our office. Nothing was easily accessible.  

And while it is still a work in progress I wanted to show you what we have done so far. We still have the flooring to do and the office closet, but I will post about those two later on after they are complete. 

Updating Generic Column on Our Covered Patio

Our original column on our covered patio was boring and had seen it's better days. So we decided to replace it with a cedar 6x6. We found a local guy who runs a saw mill at his house and had him cut us a true 6x6 cedar post. The result was amazing and really looks nice. We went with cedar due to the upcoming Pergola and deck project we are fixing to get started. We also built our exposed post Privacy Fence out of White Cedar and are very pleased with the results. (See earlier blog on how we put up our 100% DIY Exposed Post Fence) ........

Here are our Before and After photos of replacing the old post.

Easy and quick DIY Recipe Board

I have looked thru tons of pins on Pinterest for DIY Recipe boards for my kitchen. A recipe board is a convenient thing to have in your kitchen to preplan your meals. While I love DIY crafts I was looking for something a little less involved then some of the ones I found online. I really did not want to have to make the board itself. So I headed off to Walmart and found this cork/dry erase combo board for $12.00! I also picked up some clip magnets and a magnetic holder.

Honest Review of Tommie Copper

Ok so I don't normally write about products....(and before someone asks, No, I do not work for Tommie Copper. Neither I nor my blog was paid or compensated in any way.) And to be honest this topic is completely different from what I usually blog about. However, I felt is was much needed.

My problems are in my back, neck, shoulder/arm combo. I have nerve damage, disc problems, & degenerative disc disease in these areas. A few months ago I saw a commercial for a product called Tommie Copper. I don't know if anyone has heard about it. I will say I was a complete skeptic and no way thought it would help at all. I did some online research for weeks and found mixed reviews. While it worked for some, others said no results seen. Reviews sometimes do not give honest opinions. It's hard for me to believe what another blogger wrote about a product that the company has sent them free products and asked them to "Try It." Out of most of the reviews I found, this was the case. So I thought I would give you guys my completely honest, unpaid review.

Updating your Builder's grade Bathroom and Kitchen

Our house was a classic builder's grade home with all light fixtures and hardware being the cheapest stuff available they could use. So we changed them out to something more appealing. We updated both bathrooms and our kitchen. With just small upgrades you can completely change the way your room looks.

Organizing Your Walk in Closet

My walk in closet was a disaster! So I figured it was time to do something about it. I had thought about the best route to go with it and decided to buy a cube storage system for floor storage and bins on the top self. I removed everything but my clothes. I left them hanging up and removed everything else from my closet. 

How To Frame a Builder's Grade Mirror

We knew we did not like the plain builder's grade mirrors that were in our bathrooms. We debated whether to bust the mirrors off the walls or just frame them up ourselves. Taking the mirrors down and replacing them with nice framed mirrors proved expensive and time consuming. 

Framing the mirrors out with simple trim is the most cost effective and simplest way to do a quick update to your bathroom.