How I Cleaned My Type S Couch!

Hello friends! We have had a good first week with our new puppy. My 6 year old decided to name her Rosie. She is such a cute pup. I wanted to show you what she looked like at her first day home:

Isn't she cute? Okay, I just had to show her off for a second. Now on to what you would actually want to read about! My couch is called a type S couch for cleaning. That means it needs to be cleaned with a "water-free" solvent or it needs to be professionally dry cleaned. Any water on it will cause staining. Believe me, I learned that the hard way! There are four different codes when it comes to cleaning. You can find these on the pamphlet that comes with any new couch or you can look at the bottom of the couch and there is usually a tag or a sticker that tells you what cleaning type your couch is. A W type means that you can use water on the couch or use a detergent that is water based. An X type means you have to hire a professional to clean it and you can only do vacuuming on the surface. An O type means that it should be washed in cold water and last but not least is my couches type S that I already told you about. 

I had a difficult time trying to figure out what to clean my couch with. Before I realized what type of couch mine was I cleaned it with water. That was a huge mistake! It ended up leaving a lot of stains in my couch that I couldn't get out. I didn't want to hire a professional cleaner or use store bought solvents that I don't even know what half the ingredients in them are! I want something that will be safe for my kids to play on. This is what my couch looked like:

Yeah that is gross. With three kids and me not knowing what the heck to clean my couch with it got gross fast. So, I took to the internet to try to figure out what to clean my couch with. Some of the suggestions were weird. One person suggested lighter fluid? Uhm, no thank you! Most suggested dry cleaning solvent or hiring a professional. That would be nice if I had the money to do that and if they had natural type of cleaners available that would clean my couch. Finally I saw one person that said you could use rubbing alcohol and since I already do cleaning with that I figured I would give it a try! 

The first thing I did was find a spray bottle. I had an empty Lysol cleaner bottle so I cleaned that out real well and let it dry out well also. I had a bottle of 70% Isopropyl alcohol so I put that straight into the bottle. I sprayed that right onto the couch. I had nothing to lose but if you only have a little spot to treat then I suggest spraying it on a spot that is well hidden and rub it with the towel to see if it leaves a mark. Anyways, after I sprayed it right on my couch I used my white towel and started to clean. I rubbed it in circular motions and put a little work into it! 

I made sure to cover the whole cushion and really scrubbed the parts that had the stains. Here is what my towel looked like after:

That was only one spot on the towel. By the time I was done there were spots like that all over. My couch was dirty! After I scrubbed real well I let it air dry. Alcohol when is wet smells real strong for a bit until it dries. My 6 year old was not too impressed at the smell, but it didn't bother me much. Studying to be a Medical Assistant makes you immune to the smell of rubbing alcohol. When its dry you don't even smell it though. Alcohol can make the fabric a little crunchy. I had to vacuum my couch anyways so I used my upholstery attachment an went over the couch with it. I made sure to vacuum it real well. Now its time for the before and after! 

I would be lying if I said that my couch was perfect and there was no stains left. Where I tried to clean with water still has a stain and a couple more didn't come out. As you can see though, a lot of the stains and dirt did come out. I was pretty impressed. I had to put a blanket on my couch cushions to cover up the stains before and now I am comfortable not having the blanket on. Rubbing alcohol is fairly inexpensive and I know the ingredients that are in it. If you have a dirty couch that you don't know how to clean then try this out! Then, let me know how you like it! 

DIY Super Weed Killer

Hello friends! I have had such a busy week! My hubby wasn't feeling too good so we had to take him to the docs. We still don't know whats going on so please pray for him! Also we decided to get a puppy! We are picking her up tomorrow so no pics today! Sorry, but next blog post I will have to add one! On the plus side our little Eli is doing great! So thanks for your prayers there and if you can continue to pray for our little guy I would appreciate it!

Now, on to the post. I have a ton of weeds popping up in-between the cracks in our driveway. It has been driving me crazy! I decided to do something about it! I didn't want to use the harmful chemicals found in weed killer so I decided to make my own. I have seen online that vinegar works wonders on weeds so I decided to look online to see what else works awesome. That led me to the formula I used to make my DIY Super Weed Killer. It took some figuring out and playing with different ingredients but I think I have something that works wonders!

These are the ingredients that I used for my weed killer. Very simple things and most we have at home! So here is the instructions:

DIY Super Weed Killer!

• Dawn Dish Soap
• Whole Cloves
• Iodized Salt
• White Distilled Vinegar
• Spray bottle
• Water

1. The first thing I did was take the cloves and a tiny bit of water. I took about 15 cloves. I added just enough water to cover them in a small pot and boil it to extract the clove. Also if you do essential oils (I am going to start soon!) there is a clove oil and you could use a couple drops of that and ignore having to boil it. 
2. Put the cloves and the water in the bottom of the spray bottle. If you look at my the above picture you will see how much water you should have. 
3. Put 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt in the bottle and swirl to stir. 
4. Put 2 tablespoons of dawn dish soap in the bottle and continue to swirl to stir. 
5. Last is to add the vinegar to fill the bottle. I filled up my bottle to the midpoint of the top neck.
6. Go outside and spray on weeds to saturate. 

That's all I did and let me tell you, I have some dead weeds. I will show you a pic in a sec but before I wanted to tell you some tips I found. First is if you spray it and the sun is shining on the weeds it actually kills it faster. Also you want to keep on spraying even after the weed looks dead because you want to kill the whole root. I would think it would take several days. I have sprayed mine twice today and will continue to spray for about a week. I think this works because it drys out the weed. I am not a chemist or any type of scientist so I have no clue if that is true or not but that's just what I think. Now, here is a before and after picture:

That was just after two sprays! I sprayed once at around 9 this morning and then again at about 1 this afternoon. I made sure to saturate the leaves quite well and made sure to get the middle of the weeds too. The difference is astounding! I also sprayed on a patch of weeds by our garage. I only sprayed a circle inside just so you could see the difference. Here that is:

I only sprayed that once just because I wanted you to see how well it worked. It was all green in the middle where that brown section is. I like this because your not using harmful chemicals. My 1 1/2 year old daughter was right by me the whole time and I even got some on her and it did no harm to her. You could spray this right on your skin and not have to worry about the horrible chemicals. I wouldn't, but you could unless your allergic to one of the ingredients. I should say that this will kill any plant. I wouldn't use it on a place where flowers are or get any on your plants that you want. There you have it, something new for you to try! Try it out and tell me how much you love it and how well it works for you!!!

DIY Activity Board!

Hello friends! I am super proud of myself and I cannot wait to show you what I made today! On Friday we went over to my best friends father and step-mothers house. They have a little girl that is the same age as Emelia (almost 2) and she is such a smart little girl! I was shown to her room to change both my little ones diapers and also to use their rocker when I needed to feed Eli. I saw that they had one of those magnetic boards and on it shown flash cards to help Audrey (best friends little sister) learn. I thought oh my gosh that is such a great idea! Also a friend of mine named Hope has a blog and on it she put up a post about a responsibility chart. Here is the link to that: A Responsibility Chart for Toddlers/Preschoolers.

So I decided to put them together and make an activity board for my kiddos. I had an old cookie sheet that was just in my craft tote so I decided to use that since it is magnetic and make my own! Here is what I used/am going to use for my activity board:

I have a ton of newspapers since I am a beginning coupon-er so I decided to recycle that for our activity board. I decided to take the newspaper and rip it up to fit on the cookie sheet and I started to take just regular Elmer's glue and glue it on. At first I did it the hard way and watered down the glue, applied it to the cookie sheet with a foam brush, put the paper on, made sure it was bubble-free, then I put more watered down glue on top. I did that until it was done and I let it dry. I found out when it dried the paper just came off so I decided to just put plain ol' glue on the sheet, use the brush to make a good layer across the cookie sheet, and then re-applied the paper. That worked out a lot better and the paper stuck. So here is what that process looked like:

When I had the layer of newspaper down I printed off the kids name on a piece of paper and applied that. After I did that I had to find a way to hang it up. I looked through my craft tote and of course I didn't have any ribbon or any twine in there! So after thinking a little I decided to roll up some newspaper and use that. I took a sheet of newspaper and split it in half. Like so:

Then after that I rolled up each of the half and in the end I had three rolled-up pieces. I started at one end of the newspaper and rolled it as tightly as possible. It took a couple tries with each sheet. Here is what that looked like:

After I had my three rolled up pieces I taped one end of them to a table and just braided it. I braided it as tightly as I could and then I rolled up the ends and hot glued them. This is what my braid looks like:

I know, my picture was blurry. I'm sorry. I hot glued it to the back of the cookie sheet like this:

It was all ready to hang up! I really liked what the outer lip of the cookie sheet looked like so I didn't do anything to it. If you don't like yours though you can paint it. A bright color might look really cool on the outer lip. I, however, liked the older antique look so I just kept it how it is. I got flash cards and magnetic clips from the dollar store to put on there. Here is what the finished product looks like:

I also am eventually going to make a chore chart for Bridgette and a potty chart for Emelia (and later Eli) to clip up on it. I put on the blank piece of paper to show where I would put that. I have a ton of foam stickers so once I get some magnets I am going to put them on to mark how well they are doing. I wish I saved all the flat magnets (you know, the type that are mostly used at business cards) that I didn't have use for but I just threw them away. I could have recycled them! I guess you live, you learn! Well, there you have it. My proud little DIY project. Are you going to try it? I would love to see what you guys come up with. You can email me your little creations and I will add them to the bottom of this post!

Regrow romaine lettuce? Lets try it!

Hello! How is everyone doing? We are all doing great in our household. Eli is now being cute (not like he wasn't cute before) and smiling when I kiss him and play with him. It is adorable! Emelia is crazy, she loves to play outside and go for walks. Bridgette is up north (Michigan term for more north than we are lol) until the 18th then she will be home for the rest of the summer. Brad loves his new job, and we love the hours it offers. As for me, well I just take care of kiddies all day and am trying to get involved with mom groups. Fun fun stuff. I have spent today trying to call Eli's doctor about referrals for our appointment tomorrow with the neurologist so I decided to write this while I keep on trying to get a hold of someone. Now enough about us, lets talk about regrowing lettuce.

I have seen online that you can regrow romaine lettuce from the lettuce stumps. I have usually just thrown mine outside for the animals that gather around our house. I absolutely love the little bunnies we see hopping around. Anyways, we go through a lot of romaine lettuce in our household. I love to make salad out of it and put it on our burgers and sandwiches. So, when I seen that you can regrow the lettuce I thought how awesome!

I took one of the stumps of the lettuce and put it in one of Emme's cups. I put water in it just enough to reach and cover about an inch or so of the bottom of the stump. Then I put it in a sunny spot to chill out and get some sun. Our house has a ton of windows so finding a sunny spot wasn't to hard. Ever since then I have changed out the water daily and just watched it grow. Here is what it looked like on day 3:

As you can see it has a little bit growing in the middle. The kiddo's were so excited to see that! I must admit I was too because I couldn't believe that it would actually grow! So we did this on June 7th. 24 days later and we have roots! Here is what the plant looks like now:

Now...would I eat it? No, actually heck no. It started to get moldy and gross out the outside of it. Eww! Here is what the moldy parts on the outside looks like:

Would you eat that? No way! So it was a cute little project and very fun to do. The kids loved to see how big it is and how much its growing. I did too! I think I will keep it for maybe another couple weeks just to see what else it does, but its going outside for rabbit food after that. If you have done this project and had different results please let me know!!! Also some other blogs said to put it outside in the dirt once the roots start growing. Mine already started to go bad on the outside before I got the chance to do that but maybe you will have different luck. So I tried this fun project, will you? 

Boxed cake mix taste like bakery? Tried it!

 Hello friends! My husband is out of town and I am with two little ones and no body to give me a break. Needless to say I am going a little crazy! Not to mention little Eli just turned two months old today and we got his vaccinations. If you have to know one thing about me, it should be that I am very pro-vaccinations. I can talk your ear off about how you should not only vaccinate your kids but yourself as well! I wont, but I really can! Anyways, both my kiddos are really cranky and I needed something sweet to eat and get a sugar buzz to get through this day. So I made a cake!

 I am a huge fan of boxed cake mix because of the convenience. You can just throw things together and it usually (I might have burned a cake or two in my day) turns out. Also the canned frosting is so easy to just throw on the cake. It really doesn't get much easier than that! The thing is you can really tell when it is boxed cake mix and canned frosting. It taste good, but not good enough that you would prefer it over a bakery styled cake. With that said have you seen those pictures going around Pinterest and Facebook floating around that says make boxed cake mix taste like a bakery? I have seen this floating around for it seems like forever and I always wondered if it was correct! So, I decided to live up to my blogging name and try it out!

Now, let me tell you what it says to do. So, first you add an extra egg, or two depending how you like your cake. I only added one. Then you add in melted butter instead of oil, and you double it. For my cake mix it said use a half of cup oil so I melted a cup of butter in the microwave and added that. Also instead of water you add milk. Then I added two cap-fulls of vanilla extract. The picture that I have seen around said to preheat oven to 350 then when your about to throw in the cake turn it down to 325. That is exactly what I did. It said to bake it for 25 minutes. At 25 minutes I inserted a toothpick it came out with cake still on it. I think the toothpick came out clean at 32 minutes. So keep your eye on you cake it could cook at different times!

After baking it, it looked pretty good. Smelled good too! It was hard to wait until it was done to try it! I did though, you all should be very proud. While I was waiting for it to cool I had a thought about the canned frosting I was about to use. There had to be a way to make that taste better, and also make it so there is enough to cover the whole cake. That's what I hated about canned frosting, it was NEVER enough to cover the whole cake! So I decided to mess around with the canned frosting. So what I ended up doing was taking chocolate (whipped) Duncan Hines frosting and add about 5 drops of vanilla extract. I say about because I went to go put some in the cap and spilled it into the frosting. OOPS! Then I added about a tablespoon and a half of butter. I like my frosting to be thinner. Then I added 1/3 cups of powdered sugar. I also added in a half of a tablespoon of Hershey's chocolate powder to add to the chocolate part. It was pretty much add a little bit of this and that until it was to my liking. Then I added it on my cake. 

Now the frosting that I made was thin. Like super thin but you can make it thicker by adding in more powdered sugar. Also you can do the same for white frosting. I haven't made it yet but I would think that you could add the vanilla, powdered sugar, and butter to make it taste better. It is easy to just make your own frosting but mine never turn out! For some reason my butter cream taste like, well, butter. I know butter is in the name but I want a delicious butter cream not a stick of butter in my mouth. Also the possibilities are endless with canned frosting. You can add peanut butter or any extract. Pretty much anything that sounds good, use your imagination. Now to take out a piece of cake and see what that looks and taste like.

Let me tell you this was the best boxed cake I have ever had. Now, to compare it with a bakery style cake is unfair. It is delicious but not bakery delicious. You can definitely take a bite out of this cake and a bakery style cake and tell which is which. It is very good and by adding those couple ingredients and not really taking that much more time to make it, it makes it like 1,000x better! It is definitely worth it! So, try it, tell me how you like it, and enjoy it! I am going to go and get another piece because it is delish!

Easy Peasy Pumpkin Muffins

Hello friends! This week has been crazy! In between my oldest being done with kindergarten, doctors appointments, and just plain crazy kids, I haven't had any time to do anything! I thought today I would post my first recipe. I will be posting recipes every now and again. Now, I should mention that I am a horrible cook! I mean it! Half the stuff I make is barely edible. I am an okayish baker. I enjoy baking so maybe that's why a little bit more than half of the stuff I make turns out. Today I am going to post about muffins, pumpkin muffins to be exact. I know right now is not the time to be posting about pumpkin being as its summer and not fall. I really wanted pumpkin muffins this morning though so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and post about my pumpkin muffins while eating one! You are just going to have to keep this in mind for those fall days, or you can just be crazy like me and make them right now!

I made these muffins for my daughters kindergarten Halloween party. Without the coconut oil though I just started to add that. I got the original recipe off of the food.com website. I figured that sounded easy enough to make so I tried it out and did a trial run. My family ate all the muffins in one setting! They were so good! I also added icing to the top of them because I needed that little bit of extra sweetness. So let me tell you how to make them and hopefully you will love them as much as my family does! 

• 1 15oz can 100% pure pumpkin
• 1 box of spice cake mix
• 2 teaspoons of coconut oil

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Mix in the pumpkin to the spice cake mix using an electric mixer. Make sure that it is well blended. 
3. Add in the teaspoons of coconut oil. Blend in with electric mixer until you cannot see any of the coconut oil. 
4. Spray the liners with nonstick cooking spray. You can also just spray the pan if you don't have/want to use liners. 
5. Put the mix into the muffin liners/pan. I used a regular old kitchen spoon and used about a spoonful for each muffin. This is not like regular mix. It is super thick and stays together.
6. I baked mine for 18 minutes and it was perfect but you can bake for 18-22 minutes. A toothpick when inserted should come out clean when done.

Makes about 20 cupcakes.

Easy huh? I love how simple and easy this recipe is! Mine comes out super moist. It is not like a regular muffin by how it tastes. It is kind of gooey? I don't know if that's the right word for it. It kind of reminds me of a thicker more cake-like pumpkin pie, if that makes sense. All I know is when I make them my husband and I have at least 5 each because they are that good. This is what the batter looks like after I mix everything together:

I already made my first batch, then I took this picture. If you can see the batter is super thick. I added the virgin unrefined coconut oil to mine. The stuff that still smells like coconut. I figured it would be okay because the spice cake mix was a really powerful flavor. They do make a refined coconut oil that does not have the smell or taste of coconuts or you can not add it in or none at all. Your choice! I made a glaze for ours this morning by taking powdered sugar and adding milk to it until it was my desired consistency. I have also made a thicker icing just adding more powdered sugar. I made that for my daughters Halloween party so I can make spider webs and use little raisins as the spiders. Not to pat myself on the back or anything but I thought that was the cutest thing ever. You can also add raisins to the mix and it taste awesome!I know that you are just dying to see the finished product so here it is:

I'm telling you, if you're a fan of pumpkin you are going to love these! I know I do! I think I am going to go and get my 6th one now. Try it out, then tell me how much you looooovvvveee them. :-)

Want to try free things? Be a BzzAgent!

Hello, everyone! My oldest is at her last full day of Kindergarten. When did my baby get so big?! Ugh! My two youngest are both taking naps. Which to me, is a miracle. They NEVER nap at the same time. That means mommy gets to do a blog post! Yay!

I thought I would change up my post a bit. I am a stay at home mom, which also means slave of children. True story! I have been a stay at home mom for two years now. For me, it's very hard to be a stay at home mom because I love what I do. I just got my college degree before my husband and I decided it was best for me to stay at home with our children. So now I find myself trying to think of ways to help out or at least not bother my husband to buy things we really don't need. I am trying out a couple websites now that either give me free product or I can make a little bit of cash off of. Either doing surveys, telling people about products (that I try for free), or even just checking my email. I will post about the ones I have tried throughout my blog posts and hopefully you can have fun on them too! u

First website I thought I would tell you about is called BzzAgent. Let me tell you about BzzAgent. First of all you sign up, its completely free! After you sign up they will have a bunch of surveys for you to do. Now these surveys tell BzzAgent about who you are and what you like or dislike. This will qualify you to try out free product or as they say you will be invited to a campaign. Now all you have to do is wait for your package in the mail (which to me is so exciting) and then you try out the product. They will have different things they want you do on the main page. Like give friends and family samples (or coupons) and tell people people about the product, or post about it on social websites, or blog about it if you have a blog. What you have to do varies to each campaign. With each campaign I have done I had to do a review on the product. To me that stuff is easy and the products I try actually interest me!

When I signed up I thought I would never qualify for a campaign or get anything out of it. I saw mixed reviews online and some people say that they have gotten invited to many different campaigns and some say that they don't get many invitations. I believe its just how you answer your surveys. You want to answer them completely honestly and when you try out product be 100% honest with your reviews. I have done 3 campaigns so far, and I started in March. I have qualified for 5 but two of them I knew I wouldn't be able to give an honest review because I wouldn't have tried the products so I decided not to do them. The three I have done are Starbucks k-cups, Children's Claritin, and now I am onto Coppertone Sunscreen. I will tell you more about the Coppertone Sunscreen at the end of this post. I have called the company because I was so impatient with my first campaign and because we were moving so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss it. It was nice to talk to them on the phone. They were very pleasant and didn't have a single problem when talking to them. This is what my home page looks like now:

One cool I have found about BzzAgent is that they team up with a site called mypoints and they give you points for completing activities in the campaigns. You can then use those points when you get enough of them to get gift cards to almost any brand you can think of. Mypoints also has stuff you can do on their website for points but I haven't done any of that...yet. Also they let you know how you are doing with a bzzscore. They work with a ton of different companies so you get to try a broad range of products. Like:

Is it obvious I am doing the Coppertone Clearlysheer Sunscreen campaign? It should be because this sunscreen is awesome! It makes your skin soft and it is non-greasy! I have put it on my face and it just leaves it soft and smooth,not to mention it didn't cause a single breakout!I have applied it when I did gardening all day and also before I went to the zoo. I did not get a single sunburn and my skin was soft and smooth afterwards. My mom applied it too and only her shoulders got a little red. She has sensitive skin also and it didn't cause any disruptions with her skin. Now if I was just going to the isle and saw it without doing the campaign, I probably wouldn't buy it. Just being honest here! I get the cheap stuff! Now I would double think that motion because I really do like this sunscreen. Once I am done using all this sunscreen I am going to make a DIY one (I will post about it when I do), but if that doesn't work this one is the sunscreen I am going to use. Here is a pic from my BzzAgent page on it that tells about the different types and it even says how many days I have left to finish my activities with this campaign. 

 I got to try this and the other products for free! Oh, I already said that? Sorry, I just think that is so cool there are websites out there that lets you do that. If this interest you, I like to say try it out! :-)