Vinegar

I could never say enough about vinegar. You can use vinegar for so many different things. I use it for cleaning all the time. For an all purpose cleaner I mix in a stray bottle one part vinegar and three parts water. It works really well for mirrors. For my shower I combined one cup of Dawn dish soap and one cup of vinegar. Spray on tub and let it sit for a little bit. It is one of the best soap scum cleaners I have ever tried, and the bonus is you can make it yourself and can actually breathe when you clean. :)

I read on pinterest that you can use vinegar as a fabric softener. They suggested adding 1/2 cup to a cup of vinegar in the rinse cycle. I have a liquid fabric softener in my machine so I added it there at the beginning of the cycle. I was a little worried my clothes would smell like vinegar. When I pulled them out to put them in the dryer I noticed they were super soft and just smelled like the laundry soap I use, no vinegar. I guess the vinegar balances the PH of the clothes and makes them soft. It also can kill any bacteria that your clothes might have on them.

I also use vinegar to rinse off my produce when I bring it home. Produce can have bacteria on it from shipping/handling in the store. You mix 3 Tbsp of vinegar for every quart of water then let them soak in a bowl for 5 minutes, then rinse. Once it is rinsed you can't taste any of the vinegar, just the food. It can also help with pesticides on the food. I notice that the produce taste fresher if it is rinsed off in the vinegar rinse. You can actually taste the fruit and not the garbage they spray stray on it. It also kills the mold spours on the food, so your berries will last longer.

I could go on for days about vinegar but I will share just one more thing....today. :) If you mix a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and a cup of water it makes an excellent hair rinse. I use it twice a week. It can help improve the health of your scalp (something about the circulation to the head, can't remember what I read). Yesterday I read online that it can help you if you have dandruff. It also removed the build up that people get on their hair from shampoos, pollution, hard water, all those fun things. So you will have shiny healthy hair and a healthy scalp afterwards. Its worth a shot. :)

Aztec Healing Clay

I like to read reviews online (weird I know). I was playing on Amazon after my kids went to bed one night and ran across Aztec Healing Clay with a five star review. I was reading the reviews and people were saying it is Amazon's best kept skin secret. So I thought I better give it a try.

So the Aztec Healing Clay comes in a bottle with a fine powder inside. To make a face mask out of it you mix apple cider vinegar with it until you get a good paste. Then you put it on your face for about 10 to 15 minutes (don't go any longer than that!). The first time I did it I left it on for about 30 minutes and my face was super red after.

As the mask dries on your face it tightens. After I rinsed it off my skin felt baby soft. It deep cleans pores and can help draw out blackheads. I do the mask once a week. It really is cool stuff. :)

Essential Oils

Lately I have been studying and using essential oils. So far I have learned a lot and have loved using them. There is one in particular that I absolutely love, its called On Guard. It helps boost immunity so you don't get sick. I used it on my two girls and myself and we haven't been sick yet this winter. We had a family dinner over at our house with over 45 people. I used the On Guard on my girls and none of us got sick. I was super excited since my daughter was a newborn and I was worried about her getting sick. I like to diffuse the oils in to the air. We put lavender in on nights when everyone is wound up. Its amazing how fast everyone calms down. I get pretty bad anxiety so it has been wonderful to use the oils to help with that.

This weekend my husband got sick (he doesn't remember to put on the On Guard on himself) and I started filling like I was getting a stuffy nose. I heated up some water in a cup and added two Tbsp. of apple cider vinegar, two drops of lemon essential oil and two spoonfuls of raw honey. A couple hours later I felt better and never got the cold like my husband did. I know that lemon oil and honey help but I tired apple cider vinegar (after reading about it on pin interest) and it worked great. The lady said on pin interest they drink it all the time if they feel an illness coming on. I am not going to lie, it is not easy to drink the vinegar. But if you sweeten it with honey and add the lemon it isn't as bad.

I became interested in essential oils after reading a book a couple years ago. It was a weird book about a lady that uses them and she has some romantic fling. She used the oils to heal people and she used them to help elevate her mood when the fling wasn't going well. I started researching it after that. Its amazing what you can heal when you get down to the natural basics. Anyways, that has been my new hobby, learning and using the oils. It has been fun so far.

Popcorn

I ordered a popcorn popper from Amazon about a month ago. We have been making popcorn a couple times a week. Our favorite is kettle corn. The recipe is....

1/3 cup of popcorn seeds

3 T of oil (I use canola)

3 T of sugar

salt to taste

We always double it because we like to pig out. But you can use a stock pot to make this, you don't have to have a special popper. But you heat the oil on medium heat for a few minutes. Add the seeds and sugar and stir it real fast so the sugar doesn't burn. Then put a lid on and shake the pot about every 20 seconds or so. When the it is all popped then you salt the popcorn and enjoy.

Tom Papa

The other night we were watching some stand up comedy from a guy named Tom Papa. He is the guy that hosts The Marriage Ref. He likes to talk a lot about being married and children. We were amazed at how similar our lives were. I am totally obsessed with washing hands. I am always asking my husband if his hands are washed. I guess this Tom Papa guy has the same problem with his wife. Tom is also in a family with all girls, even their pets. Hearing this guys routine made me feel a little more normal. :)

I'm not sure if I am really cut out for this whole Blog thing. I don't really have any fun stories to write about. It would have been fun to blog back in my dating days. I had a lot of fun adventures. Now I just stay home and do the same thing everyday. I haven't had anything interesting happen to me in a long time. Not that I am complaining. I like things to be calm, it just makes writing a blog kind of boring.

Scary Thought

So the other night we were watching TV and a commercial came on for a show called Switched at Birth. We started talking about what we would do if that happened to us. I can't even imagine how painful that would be. I don't think I could let go of the baby I have. Then if you kept the baby you would always wonder how things would have been with the baby you were supposed to have. Anyways, normal people don't sit around and think about those things, but I guess I do. It gave me anxiety and I couldn't stop thinking about how horrible that would be.

I read a story just now about a lady who had a baby last month. I guess the hospital switched babies on accident and she was feeding and taking care of someoone's baby. It turns out the nurse didn't check the band on the baby and the beds were switched somehow in the nursery. When they finally made the connection and came in to make the switch the lady who had been breastfeeding someone's baby was mortified. They did test on both the baby and lady because they had swapped bodily fluids.

It reminds me of The Office episode where Michael is getting ready for Jan to have her baby and Dwight tells him he needs to mark the baby to make sure they aren't swapped. This is a totally random post but when we were talking about that show we said that would never happen. Then a few days later I read a story about it happening. Luckily they found the error and fixed it. Well now that we all feel enriched from this weird post we can get on with our day.....

Christmas Day

We did most of the preparations for food the day before so Christmas day would be relaxing. Since I have been married I have been looking for a good Christmas morning breakfast I can make every year. This year I think I found it. It is a french toast recipe that you can make the day before and then bake the morning of. My bundt pan was too small for the recipe so we had it spill over quite a bit. I think next year I will half the recipe so it all fits nicely. We can't wait to eat it next year, it was delicious.

When my daughter woke up we brought her into our room for a few minutes so I could get dressed. She saw the presents as she was walking by and was so upset she couldn't run out there. I thought we had them all pushed over so she couldn't see but she saw one gift and that made her so excited to go out there. My husband was watching her and she kept going really quiet and then she would make a break for the door. When we finally got out there she was so excited and opened the gifts for everyone. We played with her toys and enjoyed just being in our pajamas and relaxing.


My husbands work gave him a honey baked ham so we enjoyed that for our Christmas meal. The rest of the day was spent sleeping, eating and relaxing. We went on a walk in the afternoon and couldn't believe how relaxed we both felt. It has been a long time since we have taken a day just to rest. There is only so much relaxing I can do, so by the time the evening rolled around I was ready to put Christmas away. We only put up a small tree and lights around our door so we were cleaned up in no time. This year was so much fun now that our daughter is old enough to be excited about presents. We can't wait for next year.

Even the dog got a stocking from us filled with toys and some treats from my sister. It was a good year. :)