Miracle Cleaner - seriously !!!

I know what you are thinking. Yeah, right "miracle cleaner" ... another one, sure. Well, at least that is what I thought. But I was desperate. We live in an apartment and we are not allowed to have our own wash machine, so we have to use the one here in the building. May I say " it stinks " ? And that is putting it very nicely! It costs $ 1.50 per load however from when the water starts to fill in until the last spinning cycle is done takes 32 minutes. Now, can you tell just how the dirty, muddy laundry is supposed to come out clean???? Well, it doesn't! I have been buying the "expensive" detergents and adding Oxi Clean on top of the spray on stain removers with disappointing results. Now while the water runs into the machine, I keep pressing the heat setting button which then turns the time back to 32 min because if you just let it go it will take 5 min of your time just to fill the machine with water. Well, sorry, but with this being such a short cycle already, I can't afford to lose 5 min. So, those are my little 'tricks' to try to get our laundry clean.
The other day I was on - you guessed it - Pinterest and found this recipe for a 'miracle cleaner'.  I pinned it to my board, thinking that I may give this a try, maybe, someday.....   Then, my little guy went fishing with a friend, thank you Scott you made his day :)  Due to me not paying close enough attention, Jeremy escaped out of the house with a white t-shirt. When he came back a few hours later, he was very happy that him and his friend Scott had caught some fish, which they released again. Jeremy was all smiles and his face was glowing (it was really hot and he was kinda red and sweaty) and his formerly white shirt wasn't glowing so much. It was pretty dirty. In my experience, with these wash machines here, this was a lost cause. I little spot of mud didn't even come out of his short a while ago. No, this was a lost battle.....  Then I remembered the 'miracle cleaner'. I went to Pinterest, gathered and mixed the ingredients and gave it a try. I sprayed the shirt rather heavily and let it sit just like that for about 30 min ( I had just started a load of laundry, that's how I know that it was 30 min). Then I washed his shirt together with towels and socks and such on hot. I was very curious to see what would happen. When I got it out of the laundry it was - CLEAN !!!  I was so surprised and very happy. This is the reason why I have decided to write a whole blog post on that :)   I am guessing that there are a few mom's out there that could use a 'miracle cleaner' that actually works AND is cheap!
Now, for the recipe, I got it from Modern Day Moms

Ingredients for Miracle Cleaner:

1 part Dawn Dishwashing Liquid (the original blue kind)
2 parts Hydrogen Peroxide
Mix together and pour directly on the stain.

 Now that you know the secret ingredients to certain spot removal, I think it is time that I show you what it for my son's shirt.....

Before

After (what looks like dirt on the bottom, is actually just a shadow)

Before

After

 This is my new 'miracle stain remover' :)

Update: I have had some of the mixture left over, so I just put it away. When I looked later, the color has changed and now it is clear. When I first mixed it, it was blue. I haven't yet tried it again, but will do so with my daughters filthy shirt she brought back from camp. She wore it when she got pied - let's see how it holds up to that challenge ;-)  
Updated Update: Okay, Nina used the mix on her sweat shirt she got the pie on and it sat in her bags for about one week. Then we sprayed it with the now clear 'miracle cleaner' and it worked like a charm. Came out all clean!!!  I am so happy :)                                                                         

Gluten - Free Taco Pie

I have told you about Pinterest, so now it is time to talk about what I have done there and what the results are.
Well, let's start with food :) That's always good, right?  I made taco pie on Sunday because we have had crock-pot food a few days in a row and I wanted a change of pace. However, the temperature is supposed to be in the 90's, 91 to 99 F or 33 to 37 C, all week. I sense another crock - pot week coming on .... did I tell you that I found this one site on Pinterest with crock-pot recipes for a whole year without any repeats? Oh, I digress, sorry, yeah, the taco pie - also from pinterest ;-)

It was very easy to make and quick, which is always a plus, because everyone is hungry when we come home from church. I had planned to stop by the Health Food Store and see if they have the Betty Crocker Gluten Free Bisquick mix because I wanted to use that instead of the regular wheat version. But the car was overheating very fast and very much and so the logical choice was to go home asap. I found a recipe for homemade gluten free bisquick mix, which is probably cheaper. Well, at least if you have the different flours at home, which you very well might if you live gluten free.

So, without further ado, here is the picture......

Impossibly Easy Taco Pie

It's very easy, click here for the recipe for the taco pie and here for the recipe for the gluten free flour. I put the bisquick mix in a mason jar and store it in the refrigerator - oh, yes, I almost forgot. I didn't have shortening so I used coconut oil, which I feel is healthier anyway, you could probably also use olive oil or whatever you have on hand.

This was so delicious, that we had almost all gobbled up before I remembered to take a picture. Now, our picture isn't that pretty because we didn't put tomatoes on the pie while it was in the oven, I just added tomatoes and lettuce and sour cream on side on our plates. So, here is our picture of the left overs ;-)

I have strayed......

and I will tell you all about it ..... but first let me get back to my last post about the Bible in 90 days. Well, it didn't work for us. We thought it would be nice to listen to the bible while having breakfast. While in theory that was a splendid thought, in real life it didn't work out like that. We tried it a few days, but found that it took us about 1 hour or sometimes more of listening to the selection for the day. When we tried to read it ourselves, it wasn't much better because I think we must be slow readers because it took about the same time. Since we don't have that much time every day, we gave up on this. Maybe someday.....

Now I should tell you about me straying from blogging.....well, I finally discovered Pinterest. I didn't want to have a pinterest account for a long time, because you have to have the " new timeline " on Facebook, which I didn't want to have. Then one day, they got me and I somehow just had it on my facebook. I really, really don't like it. It seems so disorderly and confusing and overwhelming...but since I got stuck with it, I thought I might as well check out this pinterest - thing. Well, to make a long story short - I am having fun over there :)   If you feel like it, you can check out my boards here.  It is very cool, you have pictures of everything and anything you could possibly be interested in, from crafts to home decor, do-it -yourself, books, hobby, homeschooling to anything you can think of. The nice is, that this is a perfect way to keep all those cool things that you see and want to do some other time in one place. For example, all the crock - pot recipes you find online, you can now store on a board on pinterest, all the these cool homeschooling ideas or how about these neat storage and orgianizing ideas you find online? Yep, they can all go on pinterest and since it's all pictures, you can easily browse your boards or the boards of others and re-pin what you see somewhere else and have it all in one space. I find that a cool and very practical idea.  I have several boards with books I have on my kindle, it is so much easier and nicer to look at a picture and be reminded of what I wanted to read next :)