french door curtains

In our new home we have a set of french doors in our front room and a single door with glass that goes to our porch. I love the look of french doors with curtains so I plan on making these as soon as we move in. I found a couple good tutorials on how to make them. 

Tutorial #1

Tutorial #2

All you need is some fabric and one of these curtain rods, it's temporarily out of stock but you could probably find one at a local sewing store, Lowe's or Home Depot.

It's called a sash rod

here is the fabric I'm looking at from fabric.com

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I also like these ones, they are a bit lighter and may let in more light since they aren't the heavier home decor weight

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I think I'd hang this one vertical rather than horizontal

Any preference?

healthy cleaning product

Remember last week when I posted about the vinegar for your dishwasher? Well I mentioned that I got a TON of new tips for cleaning from a meeting at church. I tried out another one and wanted to share it with you!

All you need for this shower/bathtub/toilet cleaner is:

1 cup dawn dish soap (original blue only)

1 cup vinegar

1 squirt bottle

Microwave your vinegar for 1-2 minutes. Pour it into the bottle (I used an empty 409 squirt bottle) and add the dish soap. Shake, shake, shake the bottle. This will create a gel that will still squirt out of the bottle. Spray this all over your bathtub and toilet and let sit for about 5 minutes. Scrub away, adding water, rinse and be amazed. 

This worked very very well, better than bleach I thought. But the thing I love most about this is that there are no chemicals in it. You know when you clean with bleach or strong cleaners and you feel like you should have a face mask on? That will not happen with this cleaner, I actually liked the smell :) 

I'm on a mission to clean with natural products!

I used this last night and checked out my bottle of gel this morning since it had cooled down and it is still a nice gel texture. You only need the vinegar to be hot to make the gel at first.

I hope this works as great for you as it did for me!

hard water stains be...gone!

This past Thursday I attended a church meeting where we learned all about cleaning with natural products rather than harsh chemicals. I learned a lot of helpful tips but the one I was most interested in was adding vinegar to my dishwasher. I've tried it before and wasn't impressed, but I learned a new method at this meeting and I decided to try it again. I tried it this morning and I was unbelievably impressed. You have to try this, especially if you have hard water.

So I started with a full dishwasher, added my soap to the slot of the door then got my vinegar ready. Grab a glass or jar that you don't really care about so you can designate it as your vinegar container, then fill it with vinegar.

I used a small jar and filled up about 2/3.

Place it on your lower rack, preferably in the middle but anywhere will be ok. 

Mine didn't fit in the middle so I just put it in the back.

Close your dishwasher and select your normal settings and if you have hi-temp wash select that.

Let it run and be amazed when you open your dishwasher!

The cup will be totally full when you open the dishwasher so be careful not to pull your bottom rack out too quick and spill it. You can re-use this same vinegar for another load. Vinegar is so potent that having it watered down won't hurt it for another load.

The cup on the right doesn't have any water spots, 

the spot on the top of it is merely a reflection of the dirty glass.

You'll want to continue doing this for each load if you have hard water to keep it from building up. It will prolong the life of your dishwasher too. I also noticed that my dishwasher was much cleaner.

Let me know how it works for you, I was blown away at the results of one wash!