Stinky Laundry? Fix it! - Sis 1

MILDEW

I have been the recipient of a lot of wonderful hospitality in my years, and I'm always thankful to have a nice place to stay, good food and great company when I visit family in far-away places.

But I have to admit that I'm not always so thankful to have a towel to dry off with. There have been numerous times that I have gotten out of a nice shower, hopefully smelling good, and dried off with a towel that reeked of mildew.

A couple of times, I have even babysat a baby who was very fortunately super cute, because I almost couldn't stand to hold her if it hadn't been for that. She smelled (because of her clothes) just like a rotten dish rag.

My husband is not always terribly tactful and has told people that their towels stink, and he usually gets a reply like, "My towels don't stink!" So, you may not know it if your laundry smells horrible. Don't be offended. Just assume that if you are not actively preventing mildewy towels, your towels are stinky. And just washing and drying doesn't count.

If your towels are white, you're in luck. You can use bleach to kill mildew. Always use vinegar in the rinse water.

If your towels are colored, you are still in luck. You can use ammonia to kill mildew. Again, always use vinegar in the rinse water.

If you have a high efficiency washer (HE), you put the ammonia in the little section for bleach* and the vinegar in the section for liquid fabric softener. If you have been blissfully unaware of your stench for a long time, you may need to soak the towels in ammonia water for a few hours, which will require a bucket, sink or tub unless you have a top loader.

For white towels, drying outside also helps, but for colors, you will probably see some fading.

SWEAT

I have been faithfully working out for several months now, but in just the last month and a half, I have really stepped up the intensity of my workouts. I have been soaking my (and my husband's) workout clothes in ammonia water  before running the wash cycle. In the past that has always seemed to work, but this morning, when I put on my newly washed exercise shirt, I noticed that I already smelled like a gym rat. (I left it on to go walking and smelled awful--sorry ladies!--but when I got home, I decided to fix that problem, too.)

Here's the simple solution: Get pet urine remover. I got mine from DollarTree. Spray on stinky clothes, making sure to saturate the extra-stinky spots (armpits for me). Wad the clothes into a ball and squeeze tightly several times to make sure the spray is getting into the fibers. Let sit at least 10 minutes. An hour is better. Launder as usual.

SMOKE

A couple of years ago, my favorite black suede (leather) jacket spent a weekend at a chain-smoker's house. When I retrieved it, I thought I was going to die. It had soaked in the smoke and I could hardly breathe, just wearing it. I took it outside and febreezed it, letting it hang in the shade (I didn't want it to fade) for several days. No luck. Then I googled and decided to try freezing it. I stuck it in my freezer for a day and then got it out and let it thaw in the shade. Again, no luck. I was afraid I was just going to have to throw my poor jacket away.

Since I was faced with the prospect of trashing it anyway, I decided I would (gasp) wash it. I used cold water and detergent, plus a good amount of baking soda. That helped, but the smell was still there. So I washed it again, this time with a lot of vinegar (love the stuff!). That did the trick! And, after drying it, in the dryer on low heat, my jacket was just as soft and supple as ever, had not shrunk a bit and smelled good. Yay!

*NEVER mix ammonia and clorox (chlorine). The fumes could kill you. Ammonia and vinegar are fine. Clorox and vinegar are fine. Baking soda and Borax are fine with either one. But DON'T mix them. If you are going to put ammonia in your bleach compartment, rinse it with water first.

Whole Orange Cake - Sis 1

My parents gave us a huge bag of tree-ripened oranges at Christmas time, which are delicious. I put a bunch of them in the fridge, because I was quite sure we wouldn't eat them all before they went bad on the counter. Good thing I did. The last few that I left out were very hard on the outsides by the time I used them. The others are still great, but I don't want them to get bad, so I've been thinking of ways to use them, besides just eating them, which I have been doing, but nobody else in the family has.

So, I came up with a cake recipe. Because what could be better than adding fat, sugar and flour to oranges?

Whole Orange Cake
1 large orange, washed, not peeled
1/2 cup coconut oil
4 eggs
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder

Glaze
3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 cup powdered sugar
zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 325 degrees farenheit. Put the orange in the blender and blend it up as well as possible. Add the oil and eggs. Now you can blend it up well. Add remaining ingredients a little at a time, blending between additions.

Pour evenly into a greased and sugared bundt pan. I used coconut oil to grease my pan, but the cake didn't slip out very well, so you might want to stick (no pun intended) with Crisco.

Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack until you can remove the cake easily. (Or use a knife to loosen the edges and make them crumble, like I did.)

Mix the glaze ingredients well in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat and continue boiling for two minutes. Remove from heat.

Use a long toothpick or a spaghetti stick to poke a bunch of holes in the cake and slowly pour about half of the glaze over the top. Wait about 15 minutes then slowly pour the rest of the glaze over the cake.

Enjoy your cake while thinking what a great and healthy choice you've made by eating whole oranges for dessert.

P.S. It's just a hunch, but I think lemons would work well in place of oranges here.

Toothpaste Laundry Magic - Sis 1

Not too long ago, one of my lovely sisters-in-law very kindly allowed me to use her wardrobe for several days. I had driven 5 hours to get near her house and hadn't realized that I had completely forgotten my suitcase. I had always suspected that we wore about the same size of clothes, so I called and she packed me a bag of clothes, including two different choices of dresses and shoes to wear that Sunday. They all fit me well, and I was very thankful not to have to wear the same clothes for 5 days straight.

I washed her clothes in my mother-in-law's washer, except for what I was wearing at laundry time, which included a white shirt with a stain on it. So, as I was washing those clothes out by hand in the bathroom sink, I was determined to get the stain out as a "thank you" for her kindness in letting me borrow the clothes.

This stain was not just any old stain. It appeared to be made by black permanent marker, and I could tell that she had scrubbed the thing before. It didn't show when I wore it, as the shirt was used only to make another shirt more modest, but any stain's a bad stain, right?

I was scrubbing away, not making any progress, when I noticed a tube of whitening toothpaste on the counter. I thought, "What the heck, I'll try it." And it worked.

I told my husband about my discovery on the way home from our trip. He decided to test my findings. He got one of his white dress shirts that had some armpit and collar stains. He scrubbed with bleach on one side of the shirt and toothpaste on the other. (Yes, he does most of his own laundry--we just won't get into why.)

I don't know how he applied the bleach on the one side of his shirt, but I think he just poured it on directly (he IS a man.) Instead of removing his stains on that side, the bleach actually made bigger yellow stains on the shirt (I've had this happen on white cotton towels before. It's very maddening, because it looks like big old pee spots.) The toothpaste removed the stains from the other side of the shirt, and then my husband used it to remove the bleach stains on the bleach side of the shirt.

So, I now have a dollar-store tube of extra-whitening toothpaste in my laundry arsenal. I haven't tried  it on colored clothes yet. If I get brave enough to do it, I will update the post, but for now, I have a great stain remover for white clothes.

Tea Bag Tanner & Cellulite Cream - Sis 1

I was browsing Pinterest a week or so ago and saw a pin about black tea as a replacement for sunless tanner. I thought that was a great idea, since you can dye a lot of things with tea, so I followed the directions.

I went to Family Dollar and bought some tea. Not being a tea expert, I'm not sure if what I got was what they were talking about when they said to use black tea. It's actually orange pekoe and pekoe cut black tea. It was $1.49 for a box of 100 tagless tea bags.

The directions said to boil 6 teabags with 2 cups of water, wait until the water is cool to the touch and then spray it on your legs with a squirt bottle and let dry naturally. That's what I did. And I liked the color. (On parts of my legs.)

The problem with the spray-bottle method is that you get blotchy color with run lines. That may be slimming, but not natural looking.

So here's my solution. I had used the 6 tea bags, so I had 94 left. I covered them in water in a pot. Then I simmered them until the water was nearly gone and let it cool. Since I didn't want my hands tanned, I put on rubber gloves and squeezed the liquid out of each tea bag and threw the bag away. Next, I boiled that liquid down to nearly nothing.

Once cooled, I poured my VERY strong tea into a bottle of dollar-store lotion and shook well. Now I have a bottle of sunless tanner that goes on colored. You just rub it in (wear gloves) and you don't have to wait for the color to change. You won't have streaks, because you can see the color going on.

And here's the great thing (that's unproven): black tea has lots of caffeine. Caffeine has been shown in some studies to improve the appearance of cellulite. So maybe using your homemade sunless tanner that cost you a total of $2.49 will make your cellulite go away. Happy Day!

Suncatcher Ornaments - Sis 1

Every year, I like to let my kids make some ornaments and give one to their school teachers, along with some sort of goody for Christmas.

This year, we made suncatcher ornaments. They are SUPER easy and difficult to mess up. My 3-year old made several of these and they're nearly as good as the ones made by my 10-year old.

First buy some transparent plastic beads. I'm pretty sure that any style will work.

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees farenheit and turn on the fan.

Now let your kids put a single layer of beads in the metal container of their choice. The round one shown was done in a muffin tin. The heart was done in a metal cookie-cutter sitting on top of a cookie sheet. We also did star shapes, but they didn't come out as well because of all the corners. Maybe if we had put a few beads more than a single layer they'd have filled in better.

Bake your beads in their metal molds for 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Pop your ornaments out of the cookie cutters or muffin tins. To get some of the ornaments out of the tins, I had to flip the tin upside down and give it a sharp tap with a butter knife. The rest came out easily.

Now for the holes to string them with: Use a power drill and your least favorite drill bit. Place a piece of scrap wood under the ornament and drill through the plastic. It really becomes more of a melting than a drilling, once the bit heats up. I found it helpful to let the plastic spin through the other side of the hole for a few seconds to remove extra plastic buildup from the drill bit. I also had to pull the plastic from the tip of the bit while it was still warm so that it would work on the next ornament. I broke all of the plastic off of the bit when I was finished, but it wasn't extremely easy.

We put the ornaments around the necks of sparkling juice for our teachers. I wrote "To Mrs. Blank from Child's Name 2012" on the backs (flat, unshiny side) of the ornaments in mirror letters with a very-fine tipped sharpie. You can read it better through the shiny side than from the side you wrote on.

Cold Porcelain Photo Ornaments - Sis 1

This project took A LOT of trial and error. I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how to get it. I also took pictures of nearly every step, but somehow my SD card is now unreadable, so I only have the finished product to show you. I made a set of ornaments with photos of all of the grandkids for my mom, and wrote their names and the year on the backs. Then I made a set of just my kids for myself, plus a bunch with different pictures of the Saviour  that I liked (seeing as how this is His holiday.)

I started out by making cold porcelain. If you've ever made cooked playdough, the process is very similar, but the ingredients are much different.

Cold Porcelain

1 lb white school glue
1 lb cornstarch
2 Tbs. lemon juice
4 tsps. petroleum jelly

Get a medium to large saucepan that you aren't in love with. I was able to get everything off, but I may have been lucky. Put all of the ingredients in the pan and stir over low heat until it pulls away from the sides of the pan and looks doughy instead of gooey. Be prepared to use some muscle. It was not easy to stir this (and don't use a weak spoon.)

Remove from heat and let cool enough that you can touch it without burning yourself. Start kneading. Once the dough is all smooth, roll it out, again, this is difficult, because it's stiff dough. Cut out. I used a vaguely flower-shaped cookie cutter. (If you don't have a cookie cutter you like, you can always make one.) Then I punched holes in every bump with a large drinking straw. I used a slightly smaller drinking straw to punch holes inside the ring of bigger holes. If you wanted, you could use coffee stirrers to make another round of smaller holes, if you wanted.

To use a straw for a punch, the easiest way is to use the bendable straws and cut it off just above the joint section. Press the original sipping end into the dough and hold onto the contracted joint as a handle. To clear the dough out of the straw, stick a toothpick through the joint and push the "holes" out the other side. You may need a couple of each size of straw because they aren't terribly sturdy.

Once the shapes are cut, you can air-dry them for several days or dry them in a 175 degrees farenheit oven for a couple of hours. Either way, turn them over once in a while, because they start to curl and you want these flat.

Here's where the adventure started. I wanted to print photos and transfer the images directly onto the ornaments. These are the methods I tried:

Inkjet print-out on waxed paper, then dampen the ornament and rub picture face down onto it. Didn't work. Very blurry. With less water, the ink didn't come off of the waxed paper.

Inkjet print-out on velum, then hold the ornament over steam and rub the image face down onto the ornament. The image on the ornament was very undefined.

Inkjet print-out on transparency film pre-sprayed with spray hair-gel. Rub image face down onto the ornament. The image on the ornament was again, very undefined.

Inkjet print-out face-down on ornament with rubbing alcohol rubbed on back of paper. No transfer of image at all.

Laser print-out face-down on ornament with rubbing alcohol rubbed on back of paper. No transfer of image at all.

Laser print-out face-down on ornament with acetone rubbed on back of paper. No transfer of image at all.

Laser print-out mod-podged face down on ornament, then (attempted) to remove the paper. Came out a gooey, sticky mess.

Here's the thing about the laser print-outs, though. before going to get laser print-outs of my photos, I tried it out with a laser-printed bill from a utility company. The ink was only black, and it worked on the cold porcelain with both rubbing alcohol and acetone. The color print-outs I got didn't work at all, though. I don't know if it was a different kind of laser printer, or if it was the fact that it was color, but it didn't work.

And the thing I learned about every one of the ink-jet methods is that it worked very well and transfered a nice clear image onto paper or papertowel, so in the future, I could use this on other projects, perhaps, but it doesn't work on cold porcelain.

I gave up on the image transfer bit and decided to just cut the pictures out and glue them onto the ornaments. I wanted to print it onto tissue paper, so it wouldn't be as obvious that it was cut and glued on, so I tried to send a piece of tissue paper that was taped onto a regular sheet of copier paper through my printer. (I assumed that tissue paper isn't stiff enough. Maybe I should have tried it anyway, because then at least I'd know.) But the paper jammed both times.

In the end, I glued laser print-outs onto the ornaments and covered them with another thin layer of glue. If I'd had matte mod-podge, I would have liked to use that, but I didn't want to wait another few days to get it in the mail. I used the laser print-outs because they wouldn't smear when I put the glue on top of them like inkjet prints would.

I still like the results, but I still wish I could have made the image transfer idea work.

Spinach Artichoke Dip - Sis 1

I remember the first time I had Spinach Artichoke Dip. Sis 2 brought it to a dinner party at my house and I was smitten. I've ordered it at several different restaurants and been disappointed every time. I think I got Sis 2's recipe, but I changed it a bunch, because that's just how I cook. I used that version for several years, but lately, I've been on a yogurt kick, so I redid the recipe again. It has less fat (I'm not going to pretend it's low-fat, because it isn't, but now it doesn't have a pool of grease on top when you reheat it.) and tastes every bit as good.

Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip

12 oz. plain non-fat yogurt

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, plus more for top

½ cup shredded parmesan cheese

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

3/4 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon garlic powder

1 tsp. italian seasoning

1 (6.5 or 7 oz--I've used both) bottle marinated artichoke hearts

1 cup chopped frozen spinach, thawed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees farenheit. Mix first 8 ingredients in a large bowl. Drain artichoke hearts, then chop them into 1/2 inch pieces. Now pick them up in your clean hands and squeeze them over the sink, as if you were wringing a dishtowel. They need to be as dry as possible, or your dip will be runny. Put the artichoke hearts into the bowl. Now squeeze the spinach juice out the same way. Stir the artichokes and spinach into the other mixture. Since you squeezed them so hard, they'll be in clumps that need to be broken up.

Spread dip into a loaf pan, pie plate or 8x8 pan. Sprinkle extra mozzarella cheese over the top, just to produce a light layer.

Bake 30 minutes, or until top is bubbly and golden-brown.

Serve hot with crackers, chips or bruschetta.