Items I Love

Items I Love

This is just a page of things I love. Antiques, products, just whatever I just have to have.

Sept 22, 2014

I have a new chicken!! I got her for my Birthday and she is a bun warmer, I think I will be making something very similar next year. I can't wait.

July 28, 2014

So I went to Goodwill to just look and I was a fool! I came out with this beauty for only $3.00!!!

I do not know if it went to a lamp or had a globe in it, because the piece to identify it was broken off, but now it sits by my fireplace and has candles in it to make it glow. It is so pretty, I just love Goodwill!

July 14, 2014
More ceramic chickens! I just can't help myself

May 26, 2014
We have some new treasures we found this weekend and I wanted to share them.

More Cermaic Chickens!! These guys are very old and are stamped with "made in occupied Japan" so excited to have found the Sugar bowl and the Creamer. A friend of mine got me the pepper shaker. Now I'm on the hunt for the salt shaker,

 I bet it's a rooster!

Same friend also bought me these Fire King and Pyrex bowls. I am so running out of room in my kirchen, I really do not know what I'm going to do with all of this!

My daughter now has the collecting Bug! She found this Owl Whisky Decanter and then some ceramic geese. I do believe collecting runs in the family.

From my Home

I have a real obsession with bowls, oh yes and Pyrex. It really is hard to say no to a Pyrex bowl!

Well I promised I would snap some of the things I collect and love.

Chickens!!!!

I have a thing about chickens. Whether they are alive or ceramic, and if they happen to be useful dishes, God help my pocket book, I'm going to buy it.

My grandmother gave me a set of salt and pepper shakers and that's about the time I decided I wanted to collect old ceramics of chickens. The collection I've scaled down, do to lack of room, but it's so hard to pass them up when I see them.

Doesn't help when friends also keep your obsession alive.

My best friend found this chicken at a Goodwill and brought it home to me. She now guards my door to my Laundry room. Gotta love a chicken in a Pitcher!

Another one of my obsessions is with old English dishes. My favorite set was my Mother's and Father's stoneware set,about the Revolutionary War.

I use all my dishes. Even the really pretty ones!

I have made a decision to get rid of plastic from the home, as much as we can. I had all these pretty dishes, but never used them. Makes no sense to have them if you aren't going to use them, right?

Now as a rule, if I buy anything it needs to have a purpose and it needs to be useful. I also have become a collector of the imperfect. The pieces of Pyrex that have a chip, I want it. It has use and guess what...it's still pretty and useful, plus so much cheaper.

Our life here on our One Acre Farm, is trying not to waste anything. We scaled down on a lot of things in our home. I am left with a lot of family objects, also antiques, but most of them find a way of being useful in our home, so they get to stay.

Homemade laundry detergent

I am going to put this on my page for "Items I love", but first I thought I would post it for you all here.

During the time when I was trying to figure out what I was allergic to, I decided to finally make our own Laundry detergent. This recipe is pretty easy and very cheap! So all of that is good for me. I have since this time added a new ingredient, which is color safe bleach powder, but I'll get to this in a min.

You will first need to get your ingredients which are:

Borax powder

Arm and Hammer Washing soda( not baking soda)

Oxi clean or something like it

A bar of soap ( something you use or Felts Napa, Ivory)

Color safe bleach powder

A bowl that is large enough to stir everything in

Easy part is this 1 cup of Borax and 1 cup of Washing soda.

I put in 1/4 cup of Oxi (or an equivalent) and a 1/4 cup of color safe bleach powder.

EASY!

Hard part, grate your soap! Yep grate your soap.

You will want to use this side of your grater:

The shavings will be smaller and easier to stir in with the rest of the ingredients. Now you can save the chips of soap that you have left from your showers to use in this, instead of buying soap to use. It is truly up to you. I have started to do this at our home.

Now I would suggest not using this side of your grater. The chunks are to big for me and I use this in my high efficiency washer, I really didn't want to chance any type of build up.



In this picture you can kinda see the strips of soap and their size.

I only use about 2 tablespoons in my washer for a load of clothes. That is it! Now if I have a load of nasty yucky, God knows what the kids have gotten into load of laundry, I use 4 tablespoons.

Now for the price of it all.

Box of Borax $3.94

Washing soda $3.99

I get my oxi equivalent at the Dollar Tree $1.00

Also my powder color safe bleach there for $1.00

Ivory soap 3 for $1.79

Total

$11.72

This fills my laundry container about half way and lasts, well so far, I've made this one in January and will probably be using this for the next 2 to 3 months. When I bought Laundry detergent it would cost me around $14.00 and only last me for about a month.  This is lasting us anywhere from 5 months to 6 months! With living on a budget, this recipe for me is a no brainier in saving money.