Spickity-Span

For a few glorious days at the beginning of our move, we had cable. I made it my job to watch TLC and HGTV so I could get my fix.

While exposed to the larger repertoire of commercials, I saw an ad for the Libman Freedom Mop. Once I realized my Swiffer was still at the old house, I grabbed the Libman mop on my next Target run.

Seriously, I've not been so pleased with a product in a long, long time. I love that the solution bottle is refillable, and that the cleaning pad is washable. I spent 15 bucks once, and now I'm done.

Plus, it works really well. It cleans my disgusting I-have-two-kids-a-husband-and-crazy-hair floor.

The folks at Libman didn't pay me for this (they don't know I exist), I just really like it.

You would, too.

Quick Gift for Kids

 On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave me to me...a totally easy and free advent calendar, the best Christmas movie ever made, quick gift card cozies, our Christmas tree, a sweet Christmas memory, the story behind the shoes, Mary's Lullaby, homemade Snicker bars, and a gift for the pint-sized crafter.

While trolling around on Land of Nod the other week (or was it the other day?  I'm pretty much addicted), I stumbled across this fantastic idea.  An art jar for kids.  If you have a kid in your life like mine, they love to craft.  And if you're like me, you don't love to share your craft supplies.

A fantastic idea?  Yes.  A fantastic price?  Heck no.  Since I'm ridiculously cheap ultra resourceful, figured it would be easy and wayyyyy cheaper to do this on your own.  I'm thinking a big jar would be great, like one of those vats of animal crackers.  I'm sure you could just buy some type of container, but I'd like to think you'd all just recycle something you already have.  Just call me Mother Earth.

So you've got your jar (or maybe jars?) and then all you've got to do is stuff them full of fun stuff, like:

• pipe cleaners
• cool scissors
• glue
• pom pons
• googly eyes
• popsicle sticks
• buttons
• glitter (if you're brave)
• markers
• crayons
• paper
• anything else that looks like it could make a ginormous mess.

After that's all done, you just need a label.  Because I just found a new place to download new fonts, I decided to share the wealth and offer a free pdf of my label.  Because I'm nice like that.  So just click, print, and enjoy.  Feel free to use it for gifting, but let's not go ahead and sell these jars with my label, okay?

Enjoy!

craft jar

A Green Face-Clean

The Sunbean isn't exactly a 'clean' eater.  She's not a total maniac, but her face needs a good rub-down after meals.  We used to use baby wipes, but then we completely stopped using disposable products (with the exception of toilet paper).

We started using dish cloths for kitchen cleaning rather than those disposable rag-in-a-box things.  I got white cloths, so I can just bleach them and they look good as new.  So we had two cloths going each day:  counter-cleaning and face-cleaning.  Problem was, they looked exactly alike.

I'm pretty neurotic, so I had a fantastic system where I would keep the counter one draped over the front of the sink and the face one draped over the side of the sink.  Worked fine for me, but if anyone was ever helping me, especially with the Sunbean, I was always freaked they'd use the wrong cloth.

Enter the brown terrycloth:

I got the brilliant idea to just make up some little terrycloth squares to use specifically for Sunbean face-cleaning.  It took less than 20 minutes with a simple rolled hem on the serger, and now we have two different types of cloths in two different colors.

I love it because we're not being wasteful, yet I can rest easy that the kitchen-counter-germs are not being spread all over Sunbean's face.  Gag.