Homemade Laundry Soap for HE Machines

I was at an activity the other night and someone brought homemade laundry soap.

I have been wanting to this for a while. I was so excited that it was a recipe that can be used 

on HE (high efficiency) machines. When I came home that night 

I realized we were almost out of laundry soap. Perfect timing, right?

I got the Mr. on board with it and bought the stuff. We did this as a family activity. 

You will need the following to make this.

1 (4lb) Box of Borax

1 (3lb 7oz) Box of Super Washing Soda

2 (5.5 oz) bars of Fels-Naptha

5lb baking soda

Essential oils for smell if you choose (we did not use this.) 

Something to put the laundry soap in

The bars of soap looked like cheddar cheese. 

We had to tell Ava it was not and that she couldn't eat it. 

1.) Grate the Fels-Naptha soap, use a cheese grater. Ava helped with this part. 

Once it is grated you can put it into a blender or food processor. You do this to make it as small and fine as possible. We used the blender first and it just clumped together and then we added baking soda to see if it would help. It did a little. My blender kept getting really hot and the soap started melting together at the bottom. So we moved it to the food processor and only put a half a cup in at a time. This worked so much better. You can see in the picture above that the plate has the clumped soap from the blender and then what it looks like in the food processor. Maybe my blender is just a crappy one, I am not sure. I would definitely use the food processor first.  

2.)Mix all the powders  into a bucket or tub a ware. We used a Tupperware 

that fit nicely on top of our washing machine.  

3.) Mix the Fels-Naptha with all the other powered stuff. Mix well.

4.) Use 1 to 3 tablespoons of laundry soap per a load. I have tried 1, 2 and 3 tablespoons and I just prefer 1 tablespoon. 

Here are some benefits of making your own laundry soap.

• If you do use essential oils, mix the powders and then split it in half. Put twenty drops or so of your favorite essential oil and mix it. Then add the other half of powered and mix it well. 
• It is suggested that you mix however many tablespoons (you choose to use) of laundry soap with a little water before  if you are using an HE machine. I put the laundry soap directly into the main wash spot of our front loader and have not had any problems.  
• The smell of the laundry soap in the tub a ware is strong. This had me worried at first. By the time you wash and dry the clothes it does not have a strong scent. It is a light clean smell, which I like. 

Snow Date

This year it was my turn to plan our Anniversary Date. 

I had the hardest time coming up with stuff for us to do with a super tight budget. 

I guess the The Dating Divas knew. Not really but they just happened 

to post a "Snow date" activity to Facebook.

It was perfect. I love the snow, Bryce loves the snow.

I had to make a few adjustments, because the snow outside was the yucky dirty stuff. 

Well that and Bryce's Vertigo has been bad. So I didn't want to do anything super crazy.

I put the Christmas stuff away the morning of the date. 

But left the tree and these cute snow flakes on it. Which are ironically from our wedding.

For the indoor Snow Date we;

Ate "Snow Angels" 

Built a Snowman

Had a "Snowsock" fight 

I was so excited, I went to print off the printables for the date. 

It was my lucky day the colored ink was emptied. Dang it! 

I thought about running to the store 

only to remember we currently only have one car. Which he had... 

It was only a day before so I went through my scrapbooking stuff.

As a result I made a super amazing invitation and Card.  

The top and bottom left are the invitation.The middle and right side is the card I made for him.

I may have gone a little overboard but I had so much fun making them.  And of course the bucket is full of  "snowsocks" snowballs.  

For the card I got computer paper and glued different scrapbooking paper to it. I put a little card on the front. On the inside I listed his best qualities A to Z.  I used a few sparkling stickers every few words.

Instead of putting Bryce is at the top I put "stinker" which is a nick name we both use for each other...   

On the invitation, which I gave to him the day before our date.  

I used some brown scrapbooking paper and glued others to it. 

I cut out a mitten and wrote the date, time and place of the date. 

On the front I put a note saying 

"Baby it's cold, so take my hand to hold, lets celebrate our love with a snow date".   

I used a  angel shaped cookie cutter to shape the ice cream used for the "Snow Angels". Aren't they just so special??.. He thought they were cute. 

 The Amazing snowman is something I made for Ava out of foam. I got the idea from Growingajeweledrose. But we are kids at heart so we used it. She was busy playing at Grandmas so she clearly did not miss it.  

After the snow date, we made dinner. Which consisted of steak, Smashed Bake Potatoes, broccoli and cream soda in our wine glasses (he was in charge of dinner). Of course it was a candle light dinner. I know it is "surprising" but I didn't get any picture of the food or table. 

After dinner we decided go see the movie Austanland. It didn't start until 9:20 pm so we snuggled and watched Once Upon a Time until we needed to go. Bryce was one of five guys in the theater and had to control himself from gagging the entire movie.. I know he secretly loved it.     

Six Ans De

Did you know that I took french in high school? Saying it was a joke to me is an understatement. I took it for two years and hated it. I had these big red (like the gum) playing cards. It was my last class of the day so we always ended up playing at the end of class (I know that the teacher loved me for it). I finally got to the point where speaking burger king Spanish was going to be my second language... Oh and I worked downtown at a burger king so it was kind of a necessity to know some Spanish..

" Love is like pi....

natural, irrational and 

very Important"....

― Lisa Hoffman 

 I am not sure why my explanation to the title needed all that to be said.. Oh well six ans de means six years in french (in case you didn't know). That's right Brycifer and I have been married six years. I don't really know why I call him Brycifer because whenever I say it, the word Lucifer comes to mind. And he most defiantly is nothing like that, but I like it and it has stuck.. so whatever.  

I feel like it was just yesterday that we get married. More importantly it feels like we should just be celebrating six months and we should still be newly weds. That's obviously not the case, but hey as long as we live in the honeymoon phase of life forever it all works out... (or so we pretend).  

"I love being married.

 It's so great to find one special person

 you want to annoy for the rest of your life."

 — Rita Rudner 

I have heard people say that year one was the hardest, which it was hard. I have also heard that after year seven it's a piece of cake.. I will keep you updated on that when we celebrate eight years. I am pretty sure year six has been the hardest, there are things in life you just aren't prepared for. So even with all the crap fun that has happened this year. We have defiantly had lots of laughs and are still very much in love.. cheesy I know, but true. 

It will be the first year we haven't gone out for our anniversary. I am way excited though. Bryce is in charge of dinner and I have planned an activity from the dating divas click here for activity. I will post more about it next week. I think it will be fun to stay in. 

The little miss is still at the grandparents, so this morning I slept in until 9:30.. I felt guilty but it was super nice. 

Here are some facts about our marriage (because this is really what people blog about when writing about anniversaries). I think we should blog about all the times we almost  killed each other... that would be so much more interesting to read about. 

* Settlers of Catan is our favorite game to play... (it is also detrimental for our marriage). Last nights game proved this statement to be true... I am sore loser sometimes that is all.

* We (I) still have not mastered the art of sharing a blanket while sleeping. I had to learn to share a bed with someone. Do I really have to share my blanket? 

* In the past few weeks we have worked on making some projects (crafts) together it's been a good learning  and strengthening opportunity for us. You would think by year six we could work on projects together with out any problems. 

*Politics still lead to heated calm debates in our house.. I am glad we agree to disagree. I wonder if our kids will be more conservative like Bryce or more liberal like me. 

 *Most importantly we love each other more then last year, last month and yesterday. I am so grateful I get to spend eternity with this Goober. No one can make me more made (because really we choose to get mad) or laugh as hard as he does. He is the most amazing best friend I could ever ask for. He just gets me.

  Guess who is not happy in this picture?

 We didn't do family pictures this year. This was as close as we got.