Random Homemade Awesomeness

I'm not a person to go to a lot of trouble to make things from scratch.  I would rather buy ice cream than go to the expense and trouble of making it.  Compounded by the fact that I can no longer eat ice cream (thank you lactose intolerance), my ice cream maker sits on a shelf in the garage and collects dust.  Since Eric became gluten intolerant, I've tried several times to make gluten free bread.  A store bought loaf of gluten free bread is $5.50 and yields about six very small sandwiches.  The slices are the size of a baguette.  However, I've come to the conclusion that making it is almost as expensive (the specialty flours cost $3-4 alone for one loaf of bread) and it's a crap shoot at best.  Sometimes it comes out great, sometimes it doesn't.  I hate wasting an entire afternoon and $4 of flour for a crappy loaf of bread.

But, I love a good bargain.  And I'm not an extreme couponer.  I don't see myself ever going that crazy.      Having said all that, here are recipes for 3 products I LOVE and we use a lot!  And, the homemade equivalent is super cheap to the store bought equivalent... not to mention easy to make!

Homemade Gatorade
2 qts water
1 package of unsweetened Kool-aid
1/2 t. table salt
1/2 t. morton's lite salt
10 T sugar

The best way to do this that we've found is to buy a 64 oz bottle of gatorade at Walmart for a buck-fifty.  Then after you've drunk it, you can make your own and refill the bottle over and over again.  We fill the bottle half way, put the ingredients in, screw the lid on, shake well, fill the rest of the bottle up with water and shake again.  Voila... 64 oz of Gatorade for about fifty cents!  :)

Brown Sugar Body Scrub
2 C brown sugar
1 C white sugar
1 C oil
1 T vanilla

Mix the sugars in a bowl until there are no lumps.  Add oil and vanilla, mix well.  Put in a plastic container and store in the shower so you can rub it all over your heels in the shower.  Since I started using this stuff, I haven't had one cracked heel.  That says a lot, since it's a chronic problem I've had living in the desert.

Granite Cleaner
Take an old windex bottle and fill it 1/8 full with rubbing alcohol.  Then add one drop of dish soap.  (Really, one drop is more than enough.)  You can add a drop or two of essential oils if you have them for scent, but I don't.  Then fill the bottle up the rest of the way with water and you have a super cheap, great granite cleaner!

For the Love of Pinterest….

If you haven’t joined Pinterest yet, what are you waiting for???  It’s an online forum where you can bookmark things you like from the world-wide-web.  I can’t tell you the times I’ve seen a cute gift idea or a recipe on a blog that I wanted to try later and then when I went looking for it… yep, you guessed it… I couldn’t find it.  That’s the most maddening thing ever!  Pinterest has solved my online dis-organization.  I feel so Martha-ish.  It’s amazing, I’m telling you… you will love it.

Here’s a DIY project for floating bookshelves I saw on Pinterest that I wanted to duplicate.  Click here for the original blog post to see how they did it.   Is that newspaper wallpaper?  Interesting….  Another place on Pinterest had these linked to an online store where you could purchase a “floating bookshelf” for $11 a piece.  I wanted 4 shelves for my project, so that would actually be kinda pricey… ouch!

So last week, I went to Home Depot to buy the supplies.  After confusing one employee there with my odd project plans, I came home with 4 sets of “L” brackets and a package of heavy duty wall anchors to hang them up with.  Total cost was $15. 

These are the baskets I bought at Ikea right after we moved here.  They have been where we have kept the kids books for years and I keep them right by the kids bedroom doors… except that look at how full they are… and I’ve cleaned them out recently, too!  I had stacks and stacks of YA books downstairs with no home, and no room in our book baskets. 

Here’s what you’ll need:   4” L-brackets, with wall anchors suitable to hold a heavy load.  I weighed my heaviest stack of books and it was 15 pounds.  The wall anchors I bought will hold 50 pounds, so I shouldn’t have any issues.  You’ll also want a drill, a measuring tape, a ruler, a pencil and a screwdriver. 

Here’s what I did.  I divided my books into 4 stacks.  Then I measured the tallest stack.  (It was almost exactly 12”)  Then I decided I wanted 7” in between the top of the book stack and the bottom of the next one, so I measured 19” in between each bracket extension.  Did that make sense?  It really doesn’t matter what your measurements are, as long as you level your brackets.  I was working with a skinny wall, so I wanted mine to be perfectly aligned vertically.  Although, if I could do this with more books and a wider wall, I might stagger them from side to side for more visual interest.   And I ended up making a bigger gap between the two middle stacks to accommodate the light switch, but I think it still looks good.

And voila!  One trip to Home Depot and one hour of labor later, this is what I had!  I couldn’t believe how easy this project was.  The kids noticed it right away when they got home from school and everyone loved it.  Now we have a special place to store all of our favorite books, and if they want to pop out of their room to grab a book, all their books will be in one area.