My Kid's A Hero

I am a huge fan of homemade and personalized gifts. I think there is so much to say for a gift that is filled with the love of someone who wold take time out of their busy lives to make something special just for me. I love giving personal gifts as well, my family can attest to the countless photo gifts and homemade picture frames and collages. 

So I was really excited when my friend Felicia, owner of the Darling Girlfriends Review Spot blog,  wrote a review  for products from My Kid's a Hero, a great site with some wonderful personalized gifts like blankets, book bags and their main attraction, storybooks that star your child as the hero. Check out her review to take a look at the products she received as well as enter a fun giveaway for your own personalized book mark and book bag.

All of the products on My Kid's a Hero look fun but the story books are what really drew me in. My kids love to read and they also love to make up stories that include themselves. So, to give them a gift of their very own story book with them as the hero I think would just make their day. It is a gift they would treasure for years to come. This is definitely something I will be looking into for birthdays and Christmas.

So Fresh and So Clean!

While I am a frugal person and I like to make a lot of things on my own I am also not the type of person who makes every little thing from scratch. I know people who make their own household cleaners, detergents, etc, but that is not me...usually. This week I found myself in a bind, grocery day is still a couple days away and I ran out of laundry detergent. So, knowing that there are people who make their own I decided to look up recipes. A problem i found was that most recipes called for ingredients most people would not just happen to have on hand like washing soda (not the same as baking soda) and borax. Since the whole point was not having to go to the store, I hoped to find a recipe with ingredients i already had.

Luckily I came accross a pretty cool site called Tipnut. This site is full of recipes, cleaning tips, craft projects and more. On their site they had an article, 10 Homemade Laundry Soap Detergent Recipes, that had just what I needed as well as some helpful tips. There was one recipe amongst the 10 that used only soap, baking soda and water, all things I had on hand.

Here is their recipe:
Recipe #8
2 gallons Water (hot)
1 bar Soap (grated)
2 cups Baking soda (yes baking soda this time–not washing soda)

• Melt grated soap in a saucepan with enough hot water to cover. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring frequently until soap is melted.
• In a large pail, pour 2 gallons hot water. Add melted soap, stir well.
• Then add the baking soda, stir well again.
• Use 1/2 cup per full load, 1 cup per very soiled load.

 I used Ivory soap for my recipe. Grating soap is tedious, and it made my hands sore, my 4 year old daughter thought it was fun to help though and once that was done the rest of the process was really easy. I had my recently emptied detergent bottle so when I was finished I poured my homemade detergent in it for storage and dug through recycling for more containers, since i made more detergent then my bottle could hold.

After washing, my clothes not only look clean but smell clean too. I usually have to buy detergent for sensitive skin which gets my clothes clean but doesn't really smell like anything, the ivory soap doesn't irritate my skin and it gave my clothes a really fresh smell. I would say that this is something I would do again. The effort it took to make was minimal, plus, I got 2 gallons of soap for a fraction of the cost of store bought detergent. Typically I pay around $12 (not counting coupon savings) for a 150 Floz bottle of detergent, which is just a little over a gallon (128 Floz). Baking soda costs about $1 per box and the soap usually comes in packages of 3 or more starting at around $2 or $3, so at most I paid $4 (less actually since I only used 1 bar of soap) for 2 gallons which is a savings of about $20!!

Have you made your own laundry soap? If not wold you try it? If so what recipe did you use and what was the outcome?