Pintresting Results - Home-made Shampoo

The shampoo when left alone, separated. I'm calling this one a fail for now

Fleas - The Waiting Game

The fleas are still here. They're very hearty little buggers (much to my chagrin). The toll it was taking on the dog was just too much.

I started waking up with more and more flea bites in the morning. Worst of all - I found fleas in my daughters hair once after she rolled around on the floor playing. I felt like I was the worst worst house-keeper and that I had my family living in some flea infested hovel (my mother didn't help me feel any better about all of this either.)

My father bought a flea spray to be applied to the dog pretty much every day, we bought the dog a flea collar, we bombed our house twice, and then we had to give the dog a flea bath. Once again we will have to wait.

I found a pin talking about an at home spray you can make using essential oils, but essential oils run around $10 - 20 per bottle at my local health food store and the mix calls for quite a few. I just couldn't afford it.

Now you may be thinking, "with all that was purchased, surely you could have afforded the natural solutions." We really don't have a lot of money, and I really didn't expect this flea problem to go this far. Maybe I'll slowly purchase the necessary essential oils to create the natural flea spray but for the moment I have a lot of other things on my plate.

It seems that a kitten our daughter was playing with at my mother-in-laws house was patient zero. I heard a lot of my brother-in-laws friends found themselves victims of a flea infestation. It just seems my own household was the one that suffered to this extreme degree.

One of the friends said that his mother suggested banana peels. He he said he bought some bananas and left the peels in the corners of a few of the rooms and the fleas were gone in days. He also made sure to point out he's never home so they may have just starved to death.

Pintesting - Chem-Free Cleaning - The Oven

Today's pin-test comes from the info found here via this pin.

Behold my dirty oven - I can't recall the last time I cleaned it. Maybe a year ago and probably only the once since we've lived here (about 2 years.) It was due for another cleaning.

Sprinkle a little baking soda.

Give it a spray.

Scrubby scrub scrub.

Once I was done scrubbing you can see I was able to make a dent. I'd have to say my biggest problem was that when cleaning this way there isn't too much way that I can sprinkle baking soda on the walls of the oven.

After scrubbing there was still quite a greasy reside left on the oven door.

I tried a little miracle cleaner on it but was still left with enough residue that I doubt I did much good.

I've tried and seen other pins where people suggest using vinegar in a spray bottle. I put mine in a reclaimed Windex bottle and feel that these things work out better when I just pour the vinegar directly onto the baking soda. That is not, however, what I did this time.

Roasted Eggplant Soup

Alright, so August wasn't really soup weather but among the fruits n' veg I love most are fresh tomato and eggplant (avocado is also on this list). I can't remember if I found this recipe via pintrest (I re-checked my pins and didn't see it anyplace) or where, all I know is that the moment I saw it I had to make it and have it in my tummeh.

With the help of the farmers market and my husbands grandmothers garden - I assembled a few of the troops.

The farmers market only had fairy eggplants but no one had to twist my arm to get me to bring these beauties home.

I'd thought I'd bought enough tomatoes at the market but it seems I didn't. Luckily the day I decided to make the soup we'd payed ol' grand-ma-ma a visit and she sent me home with some of her delicious tomatoes! As well as a couple of the first leeks she's ever grown.

The recipe calls for your choice of vegetable or chicken stock. As much as I would have liked to buy some fresh stock - I was so tired after the farmers market and in such terrible need of a tank of gas I didn't feel like making it to the store I thought might possibly have some. Since this is a vegetable soup I thought it only best to use vegetable stock.

One of the awesome things about farmers markets it the ability to talk to people who have intimate knowledge of the products they are selling. With so many yummy looking goat cheese options I asked at the counter of one of my favourite shops which would go best with my soup. The man asked what ingredients were going into it, made his suggestion for which cheese would be best, and said the soup sounded delicious (let's hope that it will be.)

Once everything was roasted I scooped the insides out of the eggplants so that they could be put into the pot with everything else. I should mention my AC was on the fritz, it was the middle of August, and I was standing over a gas stove.

After a quick boil followed by a 45 minute simmer, bit by bit, into the blender it went

I wish I had an immersion blender . . .

When the blender was full and the soup pot was not yet empty, I poured it into a bowl to wait for the next step.

Back into the pot it went.

Then I added cream. Brought it to simmer (thew a little white truffle flour in there. Whisked away.) And put it into a container to cool off before being put in the fridge.

It was 11:30 at  night by the time I finished cooking. That doesn't include my wait time. I did make sure to take a quick taste of it with a bit of goat cheese. Just needed a little salt and pepper to taste but still pretty tasty!

Pintesting - Chem-Free Cleaning - The Kitchen Sink

My kitchen sink can sometimes look . . . pretty gross.

As much as I'd like to blame it on my husbands it's my fault too.

Someone should be going behind the other to make sure things don't get to an unacceptable point. This is definitely not the worst it's ever looked but most certainly not the best.

Today's pin-test comes from the info found via this pin, all the info I needed was on the pin so I didn't really have to dig around on the source blog.

This is one of the quickest and easiest pin-tests I've done.

Sprinkle your sink with baking soda.

Spray with vinegar and then rinse your sink with super hot water. I didn't even bother scrubbing and my results were satisfying.

This one is definitely worth trying.

Pintesting - Chem-Free Cleaning - Cookie Sheets

Do your cookie sheets ever look a bit like this?

Uh yeah . . mine either. I'm holding this for a friend.

Today's pin-test comes from the info found here via this pin.

I decided to begin with my toughest cookie sheet.

Plopped on a spoonful of the miracle cleaner and got to scrubbing (I used an UnPaper towel because I don't have anything else to scrub with).

Cleaning the edges of the pan turned out to be the easiest part for me and not the center as the source of this pin said it was for her. I was really unimpressed with my results.

I tried dusting the sheet with some baking soda and then spritzing it with some vinegar.

Back to scrubbing ending with more unimpressive results.

Maybe this was just too tough a job to do without a serious scouring pad? I pulled out another somewhat yucky looking cookie sheet thinking maybe I'd have better results with one that would require a less intense cleaning.

Although not perfect, the results this time were much more noticable.

Alright one last try.

Knowing that what I really needed was a scouring pad for the past ones I used a spoon to scrape at the toughest looking spots that would need cleaning. It looked to me like I scraped off a coating that was supposed to be there - and it's not safe to cook with things that may be leaving metal shavings in your food. So this pan bit the dust.

I also tried it on some of my problem pans to see how well it may or may not work.

I felt it only really helped one pan.

Overall what did I think of the miracle cleaner? I'd be best off trying it again with something heartier than a home-made paper towel.

Pintested - Chem-Free Cleaning - Dishwashing Detergent (part III)

You can imagine how absolutely sick of dishes I must be by now. If it weren't bad enough that I was already doing multiple loads in a day - lately I've been getting nowhere, fast.

Today's pin-test from from the info here via this pin.

Considering how terribly this has all being going for me and that I read in the comments of someone's blog about home-made, chemical-free, cleaning agents that citric acid cancels out Castile soap somehow I wasn't feeling too confident that this would work.

It didn't. Again I had a bit of a chalky residue. I'm considering packing it in and just buying some Meyer or Seventh Generation . . . .