DIY Multi Purpose Cleaner

I'm a big fan of DIY anything. So deciding to make my own all purpose cleaner was a no brainier.  It's super easy and takes minutes to make. Oh and you most likely have all these ingredients on hand.  Here's your mixture...

2 cups water

1 cup white distiller vinegar

Lemon juice either fresh squeezed or store bought

2 Tbsp natural dish soap, like seventh generation 

Pour it all into a spray bottle of your choice and shake til combined. 

I choose to recycle a store bought spray bottle, but whenever I'm not feeling lazy and remember to get a nicer looking bottle, I'll replace it. 

I love the smell of fresh lemon, it's clean and crisp. You could add your favorite scented essential oil instead of the lemon.  Feel free to customize anyway you like. 

Garden Beauties

I wish I could garden all year round. I love fresh veggies out of my backyard or a friends backyard.  However, unless you have a greenhouse, our mountain winters don't allow much growth for anything October-April. Even if you do have a greenhouse, most people put little heaters in there during the coldest months.  So the growing season up here isn't very long and it isn't very easy.  I got lucky this year, between my garden and some friends gardens we pulled in a lot of nice veggies this season. 

Purple pole beans from my neighbors garden

Grilled em right up...really tasty and they turn green once you cook them...pretty cool!

Gardening is a relatively new thing for me and I've really gotten into it. It's both therapeutic and rewarding. I'm looking forward to the next years growing season. 

Attempted Granola Bars

I've read numerous recipes for homemade granola bars. I've also been wanting and planning to make these all summer.  Since it's the end of August now, I thought I'd go ahead and give it a try. The recipe is simple enough and you can throw in just about anything you want from fruits and nuts to chocolate and other sweet treats. The challenge is getting it to stick and stay together. 

Here's my mixture of gluten free oats, sunflower seeds, dried pomegranate seeds, melted butter, honey and peanut butter. I was thinking things were looking good at this point, cause they were definitely tasting good.  You know, mixed the dry ingredients, oats, chex cereal, sunflower seeds and pomegranate together. Then took my boiled, melted down honey, butter and peanut butter mixture and poured it right over my dry mix. Stir it up to combine and you have your wonderful hot, sticky mess of granola goodness.  Now time to make that hot mess into bars

I pressed all the mixture into a greased baking pan and let that sit at room temperature for 2hrs.  While I was waiting I decided to do a chocolate drizzle over the top. 

I'd say that was more than halfway successful. Just disregard the chocolate blob in the middle. I had a heavy pouring hand at that moment. 

Ok, so 2hrs have passed, I'm ready to cut up the granola and make my bars and with my first cut I could already tell that they were going to fall apart. Wasn't worried about it, just popped them in the fridge for 30 minutes thinking that will firm things right up.  30min in the fridge, granola comes out and still falling apart. I accepted defeat at this point and turned this "fail" into a glorified version of granola. 

Here's the almost empty jar. My husband loves it!  I'm glad it wasn't a total loss. There's definitely a learning curve when it comes to making granola bars and I think I've figured out what I did wrong and to fix that for next time. I basically didn't use enough sauce, I needed more honey and peanut butter. Note to self...measurements are important. 

Anyways, I'm not gonna give you a specific recipe since these guys didn't turn out. I'll tell ya what I used though

Gluten Free Oats- about 2 cups

Rice/chex cereal- about a cup

Butter -1/4 cup

Honey -1/4 cup

Peanut Butter - 1/2 cup maybe

Some sunflower seeds

Some pomegranate seeds

Melted chocolate chips

Next time I'll use more peanut butter and honey, maybe throw a little raw sugar into the mix. Also, I'll let the wet ingredients boil/cook a little longer. When I get it all perfected, I'll hook you up with a detailed recipe and a play by play of the process. 

TOT

The dog/chicken obsession is getting out of control at my house.  My dogs are completely obsessed with the chickens and the chickens are kind of obsessed with the dogs.  These birds have no fear. They'll just fly right into the dog pen and strut around for a hot second and fly back out.  This drives the dogs mad! I think the chickens like to taunt, tease and test the dogs. It's pretty ridiculous.  The dogs have been in strict training for almost a year now with the whole you can look, but you can't touch/eat the chickens.  Poor dogs get yelled at and popped on the nose if they even nip at the birds and then the chickens never get in trouble. Sounds unfair, but I know you can train a dog and he'll listen, but chickens....

Exhibit A. Gretchen Butters. German short hair mix. An avid bird lover and chicken extraordinaire. Unfortunately, this ole girl has gotten 3 of our chickens and that's why she's in doggy jail when we're not home. 

Exhibit B. Pungo. German short hair purebred.  Our prize bird dog hunter. She is totally obsessed with these chickens. She heards them, chases them, stares at them, nips them and repeats. This is what she does all day long. 

Pungo, turn between letting chickens in or out of their coop

DIY Earring Holder

I have been wanting to make my own earring holder for a long time. Several of my friends have made them and they're all over Pinterest and they're so cute.  So, I finally got around to making one the other week. This little Diy project was really easy and it cost almost nothing. You can get really creative with this one by choosing different types of colors and mediums. These would make great gifts for any occasion. 

Here's my step by step process...

I picked out a cheap frame at Michaels, it was $4, and I already had some paint at home, but I'm pretty sure I bought that paint at Michaels for around $3. Anyways, the point is it's cheap. 

I painted a light coat because I wanted some of the black to show through. You know, give it that rustic look. 

Well, that didn't work out the way I thought it would. My cheap, fake wooden frame had some kind of coating on it to make it look like wood, which disagreed with my paint.  All the paint began peeling off, that kinda sucked.  Maybe sometimes cheaper isn't better. Guess I should've sprung for the real wooden frame. 

I was determined to make this frame work in my favor.  So I thought I'd either switch to using spray paint or just try and sand off whatever the frame was coated in. I didn't have any spray paint, but I had plenty of sand paper.  I got to sanding and it didn't take long to get most of the paint and coating off the frame. 

I repainted my frame and it worked!  Next I got out my burlap that was leftover from making my pallet garden beds and cut it to fit the frame. 

I busted out my trusty staple gun and attached the burlap to the frame. Just a side note here, I actually doubled up the the burlap thinking it would make it stronger for holding heavier earrings. If you don't have any heavy earrings in your jewelry arsenal then one layer of burlap should be fine. 

At this point I was pretty much done. Just had to trim off the excess burlap. 

My finished project! I have it just sitting on the counter in my bathroom, but I'll probably end up hanging it on the wall to free up the space. I'm happy with the way it turned out and I'm sure I'll make more. Like I said, you can get pretty creative with this project. I choose to use burlap, because that's what I had on hand, but you could use small chicken wire or window screen as your backing and you could do a ton of different things for the frame. 

Totally Obsessed Tuesdays

So, this weeks obsession is not a big surprise and it really doesn't need a grand introduction. 

I, like so many others are totally obsessed with...

This addictive website is amazing!  Where else can you go and find anything and everything?  I'm not gonna lie, Pinterest consumes most of my free time. I mean, I'm already life dependant on social media as it is, but Pinterest is basically my go to for just about anything. If it happens to not be on Pinterest, then sometimes I strongly consider not perusing the mission at hand. Yes, I'll admit it, I'm addicted and obsessed with Pinterest. 

Just the site of this icon on any web page, blog, or social media of any kind makes me want to take a look. Yeah, yeah I'm a junky and it's probably only gonna get worse. Ok, so, I might not have thousands of boards or pins or followers on my Pinterest page, but some of my boards are in the hundreds. From first glance at my Pinterest page you might not think I'm that big a freak about it. However, I'm the secret surfer. I'm the one who's always looking, just not pinning every single thing I see. 

If you don't know what Pinterest is, I'm glad I've at least brought it to your attention. If you do know what Pinterest is, then maybe your share my obsession with this website. Whatever your case might be, I hope you at least stop by my Pinterest page and check on my latest pins or likes. I try to keep it interesting. 

TOT

Totally Obsessed Tuesdays, ummm I guess I'm starting a theme for at least one day of the week. 

Alright, so my TOT for this week is Craft Beer.  I love local, homebrew style beers. Well, I love beer in general, but craft beer is the best. Luckily in North Carolina there are craft beer breweries popping up everywhere and even better there are a few in my town and the surrounding areas. 

I'm gonna feature a few of my favorites 

Flat Top Brewery, Banner Elk, NC. 

This brewery just opened last month. They're pretty small, only 6-8 brews on tap, but they sure are tasty. These guys have their eyes set on distribution mostly, not so much a tasting room. However, they're open 6 days a week and offer up some of the best small town brews.  

Stout and Irish Red

Appalachian Mountain Brewery (AMB) Boone, NC

Ok, these guys are in it to win it and they're doing a damn good job. Not only do they have a wide variety of home brews and ciders, they give back to the community every single day and they're the only certified sustainable/green brewery in town. I love their mission statement, "Changing the High Country One Pint at a Time, ACT LOCAL. DRINK LOCAL! "

Hawksbill Pale Ale

Pisgah Brewing Company, Black Mountain, NC

This brewery is one of many in the Asheville, NC area.  If you know anything about Asheville, then you know they're killing it in the craft brew category.  This is the place you'd want to be if you were going on a brewery crawl. Pisgah offers over a dozen brews and has a heavy distribution in the surrounding areas. 

Pisgah Summer Ale

Me and my son, Ollie. He had fun running around the brewery and my husband I enjoyed a couple tasty brews, wishing 3 year olds could be designated drivers....haha, one day

None of these wonderful brews would be possible if it wasn't for this awesome plant, hops

Hops make it happen

I love, love, love beer and I love trying all kinds of different brews. However, my go to flavors are pale ales, summer ales, most seasonal brews, rye and scotch ales. Happy beer drinking and cheers!

Totally Obsessed Tuesdays

Ok, so I'm totally obsessed with this new store that just opened in town. We are acquainted with the owners, but I would have been obsessed with this store anyways.

Here's their website http://www.townhomestudio.com

We went to their fabulous open house party last week.  I entered the raffle they were having and I won! I seriously never win anything, so I was so excited to find out they drew my name. I won a beautiful hand blown glass birdhouse. It's pretty unique. When I went to pick up my winnings, I picked up these super cute woven tote bags. 

Here's the birdhouse with the tote bags. These bags are a steal...only $14!  I love, love, love them, so cute and versital.

These guys at Town Home really know what they're doing and have a great eye for this unique design style. 

Here's their showroom

They carry local, handmade furniture and art

Town Home's niche is a new take on the mountain rustic look.  Check em out!

Blooming Blueberries & Blackberries

Well it's getting to be that time of year again, when the blueberries and blackberries start blooming. 

 

More and more berries ripen each day. I love this time of year, because it's fun to check on how bountiful your berry harvest will be this summer.  However, the blueberries always seem to take longer than the blackberries. 

We definitely have a few more blackberries blooming than the blueberry bushes at the moment, but by the end of August the blueberry bushes will have caught up and beat out the blackberries. 

I love these wild flowers that just popped up in our blackberry thicket. I have no idea what they are, but this picture doesn't do it's brilliant red color justice. They're gorgeous!

The hubs searching and picking out the best blackberries. I guess we should try to cut back and thin out our blackberry thicket. It's starting to get a little out of control and overrun with some briars and weeds. Also, if we cut it back we'll yield a bigger crop next year. 

We didn't get much on our first pick, but that will change very soon.  That little bowl will turn into gallon freezer bags full of berries. I can't wait to start making jam. I love a good blueberry or blackberry jam. For now I'm just putting the berries in smoothies, pancakes or just munching on them for a quick snack. So check back later this summer when I'll be making jam and other berry favorites with my insane amount of harvested berries! 

DIY Laundry Detergent

Making your own laundry detergent is super easy and extremely cheap in the long run. I have always read stuff about making your own soaps and cleaning products and thought, yeah I could that, but laziness got the best of me and I'd end buying the in store products anyways.  It was really my husband who motivated me to actually make the detergent. He looked up several recipes online, found one he liked, bought the ingredients and made the first batch.   I watched him do the whole thing and it was stupid easy.  So that was a little over a year ago and I've been making detergent and other cleaning products ever since. 

Here's what you'll need

This fills up a 5 gallon bucket about halfway

2 boxes of borax

2 boxes of arm & hammer washing soda

1 bar of fels-naptha

1 bar of regular soap...it can be scented or unscented. It's personal preference at this point

Then you dump the borax and washing soda into a mixing bucket, stir together to combine. Next bust out your regular ole cheese grater and grate the fels-naptha and bar of soap into the detergent mix. This is the only slightly time consuming part of this project. It's not bad though. Once everything is grated up, just give the mixture a few good stirs to make sure everything is combined.  

It'll look like this with the fels-naptha and soap shavings mixed in

You can find all these ingredients in the laundry detergent isle at the grocery store or walmart. I had never even heard of fels-naptha or even seen it. That's because they hide it on the bottom shelf at the store. So you can't even hardly find it.  Anyways, all these ingredients are gonna cost you $15.39 and it lasts for months.  I made my last batch in April and I still have a little less than half left

It's already lasted me about 3 months and I've got plenty left. Also, it's not like I never do laundry either. I have a 2yr old boy, a husband who is a builder, 3 dogs and 9 chickens. Trust me, the laundry piles up quick. 

You can customize your detergent any way you want, like adding scented soaps or essential oils.  In my current batch I have lemon scented soap and it smells great.  This homemade detergent isn't only practical and economical, but it's not full of all the weird chemical ingredients that you can't even pronounce like in the brand name laundry detergents.  The homemade stuff cleans well, gets out stains and leaves your clothes feeling fresh. 

I love making my own laundry detergent. I love how cheap it is and how long it lasts. 

Beet Greens

The other day my good friend let me harvest whatever I could get my hands on in her garden. It was awesome. I can't wait until her peppers and tomatoes ripen up. We're already planning a canning party. Yes, I did say canning party and I'm pretty excited about it.  I know it might sound dorky and I'd have to agree and say it kinda does, but it fits into my becoming completely domesticated lifestyle and I love it. 

Some of my loot from Jenn's garden

In my venture of domestication and homesteading, I'm trying new things in the kitchen. Like, Beet Greens. I didn't want to waste any of the veggies I harvested, so I cut the tops off my beets and got to cooking.  Check out these greens

I love the bright, vibrant color of these greens. They were really easy to cook with and only required minimal prep. 

First you just wash, then separate the stems from the leaves and lay greens out to dry. Of course, if you have a salad spinner you could use that and they would dry faster. However, you don't have to have the greens completely dry before cooking. 

The rest of my veggies for dinner

Here's how I made my greens

I started with melting butter in a medium size sauce pan, then added half of a white onion, coarsely chopped. Just sweat the onions out for about 2-3 minutes and then add the stems of the beet greens. Cook the stems for 5-7 minutes until they become tender and bright shiny red in color.  Toss in the leaves and season with sea salt and fresh black pepper.  Cook leaves for 6-8 minutes or until wilted down to your liking. I also used a splash of apple cider vinegar and homemade chicken broth because that's what I do with collards and chard and I thought it would taste good. Turns out that was a good idea, they tasted great. 

Finished product. The stems of the beet greens turn everything a pretty ruby red color. 

These were delicious. I was pleasantly suprised and will definitely be making these again.