Summer of Pinterest--the abbreviated version

Well this summer did not exactly turn out the way I'd planned.  I did want to share the few things I did get to try along with a brief review.  

This was delicious!  It was the perfect way to use our abundance of tomatoes and basil from our garden. 


This has done great things for me.  Originally I started doing this to help boost my metabolism, however I have discovered that ACV has many other health benefits.  After about 4 days you get used to the taste.  I mixed up enough for 4 days at a time.  I've been taking it for 10 days and I've seen significant weight loss.  I'm not sure if it was bloat or fat but my mother, sister, and husband all made comments before they knew what I'd been doing.  I haven't changed anything else.  Specifically the area of my lower stomach that was left somewhat pouchy has flattened out.  I wish I had taken pictures or stepped on the scale (I have a bad relationship with scales, I try to avoid them).  I've also noticed a boost in energy and generally feeling better.  If you're trying to lose a bit of weight, struggling with depression, or would like to lower your blood pressure, this is worth a try.  


This was yummy. The mint was from our garden :) 


This was ok.  I think our homegrown zucchini was too big.  I should have made it into smaller pieces.


This sort of worked.  There was improvement but my husband is a very messy cook so maybe if I do it a few more times, it will be as good as I want it.


This was as fantastic as all the pins claim!  I really wish I'd taken a before and after shot, but I don't want the internet to judge how disgusting my tub and shower were.


That's all for now.  Have you tried anything new from Pinterest lately?  How did it turn out?

How Far $10 Can Go at Dollar Tree

 Well I am a teacher and the budget is tight for the summer, the catch 22 is that it's when I have the most time to get things done around this place.  Therefore, off to Dollar Tree I went.  I'd seen a few posts on pinterest about organizing your entire home using items from the dollar store, but I decided to target a few areas that have been annoying me.  Below is what I bought, I did go back to buy two more of the blue and pink baskets to the left for a total of $10.

First I had this bin in my laundry room that was ok, but having a small bin for each person's socks made more sense.  I chose a different color for each person.  They are stackable so they take about the same amount of space in my small laundry closet.  Bonus: this led to mating about 10 pairs of socks.  

Before

After

The other addition to the laundry closet is the tiny trash can you see.  It sits on the dryer and is the perfect place for lint and all the other pieces of trash that are found in a certain man's pockets.

 Next I tackled my biggest nemesis, under the sink.  It's been ignored since the garbage disposal came unhooked and made a mess my husband *claimed* he cleaned up close to three years ago.  Basically things were just thrown in there.  Wow was that a wake up call.  I had to wipe down a ton of products, pull up the shelf paper (which I still need to replace) and give it a good cleaning.  Then we could get to the organizing.  I sorted the items according to their purpose, dishwashing, disinfecting, wood cleaning, etc and put them in baskets so it would make sense.  Due to the fact both the hubby and I tend to stock up and the fact he will sooner tell me we are out of something than move something to find the 80 million of whatever he thinks we're out of, there was a lot more under there than I believed.  The green basket is for kitchen laundry.  It always bothered me to put a damp kitchen cloth in with the family laundry hamper until I do wash, but I don't need to do towel laundry frequently enough to just throw it straight in the washer, so this was the perfect solution.

before

after

I also took those four little purple tubs (top left of the first picture) and put one under each sink in my house for cleaning sponges.  

Laundry Closet Update

So I finally got my indoor retractable clothes line installed (we received it about a month before but life got in the way).  It was an impulse buy when I saw a friend had pinned it.

It was easy to install, however because the cheapie drywall anchors that came with it didn't seem to work and to my husband's dismay the directions did not say what size drill bit to use, we replaced them with these which just happened to be sitting on my washer from another project.

The hubbie was a little frustrated and uttered what my be my favorite quote of all time.  "Did you find this on Pinterest?  Don't go on there anymore!" 

But in the end, it was installed.  It's everything I imagined (once you get the hang of holding the plastic piece so all the lines get an even amount of tension when you pull it out for use).  Seriously though, it holds all my cloth diaper laundry and I no longer have to take up space in my son's room with a drying rack :)

Retracted

Ready to use

Holding about 20 cloth diapers.