Home Made Laundry Soap

Who Knew?

Home made Laundry Soap...

You can make your own laundry soap for a fraction of the price of store bought soap, plus it's gentler on sensitive skin like mine.. It's easy peasy to make and lasts a very long time!

All you need is a bar of Fels-Naptha Soap, Arm & Hammer Washing Soda, a box of Borax, a food grater, a large jar or other container and a scoop..

Take the bar of Fels-Napha Soap and grate the whole bar using the food grater.. You can also use a food processor for this, but it does end up sticking to the blade quite a bit.. I find it's faster and easier to just use a food grater... 

I buy my Fels-Napha Soap at Wally World... It costs about $1.79.

Add the grated soap to your glass container, or whatever you decide to use to hold your laundry soap. I bought this glass jar with lid at WalMart for about $5.

Add 4 cups of Washing Soda and 4 cups of Borax, also purchased at WalMart. 

Pour them into the container and start shaking the container. After I shake it up for a bit, I use my hand to make sure it's really mixed up.. 

I use a plastic scoop taken from a protein drink mix.. One scoop is just the right size for a normal wash load. 

I wash most of our clothes in cold water and never have a problem getting this soap to dissolve.. 

It has a fresh, clean scent... I love the smell and so does my husband.. 

It leaves our clothes clean, fresh and bright.. 

I have sensitive skin and have been buying unscented laundry soap with no perfumes or dyes added for years.. This laundry soap does not bother my skin! 

One jar lasts my husband and I about 3 months.. That's a bargain!! 

Sugar Free Jello With Stevia

My husband and I just started Atkins Induction a week ago.. My husband is a diabetic and Atkins is a great diet for his health needs...We had both gone on Atkins a year ago, each lost weight, but gained some of it back over the winter even though we've continued to eat low carb.. Here in Northern Michigan it's hard to get much exercise in during the winter months and our scales show it!

One of the little treats you can have on Atkins is sugar free jello...I think this means we're both kids at heart, because we love Jello! But neither one of us want to consume Aspartame, which is what boxed sugar free jello is sweetened with.. Aspartame gives both of us a wicked headache, plus it's been linked to so many health issues, it just seems a no brainer not to allow it in our bodies..

I started searching for recipes for sugar free jello from scratch. I found quite a few of them, but none of them used Stevia as the sweetener.. Many of them used sucralose and other sweeteners I'm not familiar with. I've been using Stevia in many different forms for many years, and I trust it since it is a natural product.. I even tried growing it in our greenhouse last summer, but it was such a hot summer, it ended up croaking! Better luck this year (crossing fingers).

Anyhoo....After a lot of experimenting, I finally found an easy way to make sugar free jello using Stevia in the Raw.

I make a big bowl, which lasts us for a week, but if you wanted to cut this down in half, it would be fine. My recipe, I believe, would be the same as using the big package of jello available in stores.

My recipe is:

7 3/4 cups water (this will be divided into two steps)

2 packages unsweetened Kool-Aid

4 packs Knox Unsweetened Gelatine

2 cups Stevia in the Raw

First, pour 4 cups COLD water into a pot.

Add 4 packs of the unsweetened Gelatine.

Whisk to mix the Gelatine.. 

It's important to use cold water.. In my mind, hot water would mean it would dissolve better, but I soon found it just clumps in hot water and takes forever to stir down, so make sure you mix it with cold water. 

Add the 2 packs of unsweetened Kool-Aid and 2 cups of Stevia in the Raw. Whisk again until dissolved. 

Put on the stove and bring it to a rolling boil.. I set the burner on high and whisk it until it boils.. It doesn't take long and believe me, you don't want to walk away and let it come to a boil unattended because you'll have a sticky mess all over your stove top and burner...I found this out the hard way.. 

It's quite foamy looking until just before it gets ready to boil.. It then looses the foam and becomes clear. 

Remove it from heat and pour into your bowl.. Add 3 3/4 cups of cold water and whisk to mix.. Put in your fridge for at least 6 hours and you'll have delicious sugar free jello without aspartame!

You can add 4 cups of water if you want, but I like my jello to be really thick, which is why I choose to add 3 3/4 cups of water instead.

Once it's set, I dish out a small bowl of it for each of us for dinner and add a tsp of heavy whipping cream to our little jello treat. Heavy whipping cream is allowed on Atkins and it just seems to make the jello even better... 

I know some people do not approve of unsweetened gelatin products for a variety of reasons.. 

Gelatin is produced by rendering animal body parts.. Gross sounding, I know.. But these animal byproducts contain collagen, which is a natural form of protein and is very good for joint pain, which my husband and I both suffer from.. I remember my mom mixing a pack of it with her orange juice to help strengthen her fingernails when I was young. It's also used for many pharmaceutical applications and was used as a blood plasma substitute in World War II... 

Read more: How Knox Gelatin Is Made | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5063199_knox-gelatin-made.html#ixzz2SbyErNsk 

There is a product called Agar that is a vegetarian alternative gelatin made from sea weed, although, I've never used it so I can't say how it works. I've read good reviews about it, though.

One of the great things about using unsweetened Kool Aid is that it comes in so many flavors! You won't find boxed sugar free jello available with so many choices.. My favorites are Black Cherry, Cherry and Orange, but there are so many flavors to choose from! Makes a great sugar free snack and adds a little sweetness to low carb dieting..

Recycling a TV Stand

My husband has had a heavy duty TV stand for years that his son Tony made him.. It's really sturdy and made to last, unlike a lot of affordable TV Stands available in stores today, but just kind of outdated now.

We don't really watch TV in our living room any more, though, so it's kind of just been taking up space for the last several years.. We had a TV and DVD sitting on it, but I can't even remember the last time we used them. I think it may have been when 2 of our grand kids were here for a week a couple of summers ago..

Since we've been redoing our living room, we had to decide what to do about this big ole piece of furniture.

I suggested to my hubby that he add some new shelves to it and turn it into a book shelf, which we really need.. He LOVES his books and has been storing them wherever he could find space for them.. I'm more of an audible book person, but I have quite a few books needing a dedicated shelf, too....

I'm sure this was really sharp looking when it was first built, (it was BK...before Karen) but it's gotten really rough looking after four moves and many years of use... It was built to hold a specific TV and 2 humongous speakers.. I told my husband quite a few years ago the speakers had to go but knowing the TV stand is special because it was made by Tony, it has remained..

John added 2 new shelves, and then I painted the whole thing with a dark red paint I had left over from the Candle Making room.. It's Behr paint from Home Depot, which I love, and amazingly, only took 2 coats to give it great coverage.

The wood we bought for the added shelves, also from Home Depot, cost under $12 and since I already had the paint, this project was pretty cheap!  The two shelves and mirror were brown so I painted them with the dark red, too, and then roughed them up with a sander. 

We moved it to the opposite side of the Living Room, which really opened up the room.

We were able to add books 2 and 3 rows deep on each shelf, so this is really holding a heck of a lot of books.  I decided to add all my lighted ceramic houses I've been collecting for years and years to the top with some fake snow, despite my griping about how the snow stuck around way too long this year. lol.. 

I do love snow and the way it looks and have always loved my little village...

My favorite lighted house.. My son painted in the "Karens Kottage" and gave me this for Christmas.. I love gifts that are personalized or made by hand. They're the best! 

Of course there's a big orange Tomi kitty on the porch :o)

I was just taking a picture of my little village, but realized the opposite side of the room shows in the mirror, which I thought was very cool. If you read one of my earlier postings, I had started painting the wood in the living room cottage white, but ended up not being sure I liked it and wishing I hadn't started painting. I decided to only paint the one wall and it turned out to be one of those good mistakes.. The dining room is cottage white with natural wood wainscoting, so this happy accident seems to pull the two rooms together..

Working on the livingroom

This weekend I'm working on our livingroom.. This is the 2nd redo for this room, and I'm not really changing a lot, but we are putting down a new floor next weekend, so I wanted to get some painting done this weekend.. I was going to paint all the tongue and groove walls cottage white, but after finishing one of them, I'd wish I hadn't started this project.. I decided I really like the look of the natural wood better.. So today I'm trying to decide what to do, what to do, what to do...

I'm also trying to figure out how to put little links up across the top of my blog.... Not sure why I can't figure this out...

So far this is not a very constructive day... I'll be adding new pictures and updates to the livingroom as it progresses... Better get back to work and decide what the heck to do... I have doll orders to work on all week, so I need to figure this out and get it done today... Oyvie...the pressure. lol..

Karens Krafty Kottage

Hi and welcome... My name is Karen Challender and I love to create... I've been a crafter for as long as I can remember..I craft for a living and love what I do... Not only that, I seem to be in a perpetual redo mode in our home... I've redone every house I've ever lived in.. I never seem to leave things be for very long before I'm thinking of something new I want to do.. My hubby says my mind must never rest... There are times I wish I could stop thinking of new things to do and just relax for awhile.. but I never do! I bet there's a lot of you out there just like me...

I thought I'd start a blog to keep track of all my projects... Hope you enjoy looking through some of my pages and maybe grab a few new ideas for yourself.. Please feel free to leave any comments or just give me the name of your blog so I can see all the things that race through your mind, too!