Cleaning Products I Now Love

A friend once told me that cleaning the house with small kids is like brushing your teeth while eating an Oreo. So true and therefore I am always on the look out for things that make my job a little easier. I have recently fallen in love with a couple of products that I'd like to share with you (and no I'm not getting paid, just passing on what I've learned).

Product #1

I am super picky about how the bathrooms get cleaned, especially the toilet. I've always used Clorox toilet cleaner because anything less than bleach just never felt good enough. And my Clorox has always done a great job, until our new house. We have very very very hard water and my toilets have developed nice rings inside the the bowls that my Clorox just can't get off even with scrubbing.

So while venting to a friend about it, she recommended getting the dark blue Lysol toilet cleaner. That what she uses and she has found it great on getting that yucky ring off. When I got to the store I saw this cleaner:

It's the same as the dark blue one, but with added lime and rust remover. I decided to try it out first. And guess what, those rings I've been scrubbing at for months on end went completely away in one cleaning! Now that I've seen visible results I guess I'm proven wrong that bleach is not always best.

Product #2

We bought a new vacuum when we moved into our house. It was the Eureka Pet Pal. We don't have any indoor pets, but I shed just as much so we figured it would be good. Frankly the vacuum was horrible. It had no suction power what so ever and when we tried to get it taken care of on the warranty, Eureka gave us the run around until our warranty expired. Yeah, not impressed.

So we decided just to throw the thing away and get a new one. After reading reviews we went with the Shark Navigator Lift Away. And we have absolutely loved it! It has amazing suction- the first time I used it I filled the canister twice just in my bedroom. I know that's gross but that's how bad our other vacuum was.

It has swivel head steering, kind of like the Dyson Ball. Doing the stairs is so easy. The vacuum comes apart so that you only have to carry the canister while doing stairs instead of trying to balance the whole vacuum. It can go from carpet to hard floor, but I don't use that very often, that's just me. And it's light weight making it easier to lug around the house.
Hope those were helpful. If anyone else has any great cleaning helps, let me know. I'd love to share them with everyone.

Featured On Craft-O-Maniac

Hey guys! I was featured on Craft-O-Maniac today! Yay! That's always so fun and exciting for new bloggers like me. Just click right here to head on over and see me. Have a great weekend.

Little Man Tie

Before I get to my post, I was asked how my Ute husband liked my BYU cookies from my last post. Well, at first he said he wouldn't eat them, but then changed his mind because it would be metaphorical. Which sadly was the truth, Utah beat BYU 54-10.

Now onto the post.

I love, love, LOVE little boys dressed up in nice dress clothes. It totally makes me melt. I thought it would be fun to make my little man some ties so that we could mix up his church wardrobe a bit, and I just like making stuff so it gives me an excuse to sew.

Well I decided on this about a year ago, yes it's really been that long. At that time a good friend of mine told me she had found a pattern for little man ties and would teach me how to make them. I was so excited. She even bought this great patterned material to make them with and the elastic and bra hooks so we could put the ties around our kiddos necks. We got the tie made and well, guess what I discovered. My little man won't wear a tie that goes ties around his neck. Every time I tried to put it on him, he'd try to pull it off. I was so bummed.

BUT, he will wear clip-ons! So I have search and search and search for the hardware and no craft store carries them. Double bummer. Until, a couple weeks ago I found the hardware online at............ The Ribbon Retreat!!!!! Yes of all places The Ribbon Retreat sells tie clips. So I ordered a handful of them to try them out and took my tie off the elastic neck band and tied it around the clip and YAY I have a tie that I made that he will wear!!! (Wow, that was one big run on sentence.) And here it is:

Isn't he going to be so handsome at church on Sunday!

Team Spirit

My husband and I went to rival universities. He graduated from the University of Utah and I graduated from Brigham Young University. Neither of us are really into football until game day. We both have to defend our teams on the day they play each other.

The game this year was on saturday, so to show my team spirit, I used my sour cream sugar cookie recipe (see here) and made my man these wonderful cookies. Go Cougs!

GAP Knock Off

School shopping this year my daughter dragged her aunt into the GAP. Not a place I usually shop because I generally find it to expensive for our budget but looking never hurts I guess. She of course found the perfect shirt that she just had to have for school:

Isn't it just fantastic with all the beads and jewels and bows! Every little girls dream shirt right! Then I looked at the price tag and at $27 this particular dream was not going to happen. So instead we bought a cheaper but still nice, plain pink top. And with my new love of freezer paper stenciling, we add pearls ourselves. Then used some fabric glue to attach some jewels and bows. She even decided to add some jewels to the bottom of the shirt, her own design. And here it is, our GAP knock off for a third of the price!
Here's an up close of the top portion. I actually like how it turned out better than the original and better yet my princess loves it!

Back To Crafting

I finally got my follower count up and then summer hit and I disappeared! Our summer was the busiest summer I've ever had. We only spent two weekends the whole summer at home. So needless to say blogging got neglected. I'm just hoping at least a few of you still stop by every now and then to check up on me.

So now that school is back in session and my life has somewhat settle into a "normal" routine, I'd like to share with you what I've been up to. I've been seeing freezer paper stenciling all over blogland. However, I didn't ever really get what it was or understand what all the hype was about. Until this summer! I decided to figure out the freezer paper mystery and I am now hooked. For those who are as naive as I was- freezer paper stenciling is a way to paint designs onto shirts. It's a way to make your kids all those designer graphic tees they want for a lot cheaper. There is a great tutorial on MADE.

My first freezer paper project was to make my little man some sports shirts. I bought tees at Hobby Lobby for $3 a piece and now they look like shirts you pay at least twice that for.