Baking Soda Magic

This is my microfiber couch. I was ready to plunk down my $70 to have someone come out and professionally clean it, but then my mother gave me the amazing idea of trying to clean it myself. And since I clean almost everything with baking soda, I figured why not give it a try here.

What a difference! I simply wetted it with a cloth and then sprinkled baking soda on. Then with some elbow grease I rubbed it and rubbed it. And then I put it into the washing machine on gentle and the dryer on gentle. Et voila! $70 still in my pocket and a clean couch.

The photo on the left shows the original dirty couch and the one on the right shows my miracle baking soda cleaned couch. Quite a difference.

(A note to GM in Texas: I know that baking soda doesn't clean EVERYTHING! But I'm glad you found vinegar to clean up your rice pot.)

Slow Cookbook-ing

Since finishing up all my quilts last year, I decided to take a little break from sewing. Mostly this is due to my more active baby coupled with the fact that my sewing room is deep in the basement, about as far away from everything as possible.

Instead, I started reading more. And I read Francine Jay's The Joy of Less. What an unbelievable book! I would recommend it to anyone who wants to streamline their life. So I started to purge and downsize and generally question why I have so many things in my life. And one of the things that I have a few of in my life is cookbooks.

We all have them: cookbooks we like for only one recipe. Cookbooks with nice photos. Cookbooks that we got as a gift from our husband on an overnight trip to Denver about quesadillas when we really just like our standard quesadilla recipe with the cheese and salsa. Okay, he's a great guy, but maybe not the best gift giver. I am very happy with him.

So we have these cookbooks, but if we were honest with ourselves, we know that we really only use a few recipes and can chuck the rest.

Enter "Slow Cookbook-ing."

I am compiling all my favourite recipes (about 100 including 50 dessert recipes!) into one book that I will then get printed off. It is a full colour monster and I am about half done. To finish it off, I am going to write the most awesome index in the world so I can find all the recipes that I want instead of flipping through my hodge-podge cookbook with the glued-in recipes that I currently have.

It's a dream that's becoming a reality. Very slowly. Especially with the kids. But I plug away at it everyday and I'm hoping to be done sometime before my birthday in February.

Happy 30th birthday to me!