Homemade laundry detergent
Everyone who knows me, should know by now that I'm cheap. I'm openly cheap and I don't have any issues at all with being that way. In fact, I've been cheap way longer than this recent recession/depression. Everyone who has increasingly been feeling the effects of the poor economy and has recently turned cheap, has got absolutely nothing on me! 
In addition to being cheap, I am all about being natural and green. I drive a car that gets 37mpg regularly, take my own bags to the grocery store, and now, make my own laundry detergent. It's really simple. You get a bar of soap that you like, shread it up using a cheese grater or a food processor and mix it with Borax and washing soda using a wooden spoon. I'm on my second batch and really recommend using the food processor, because it takes like 20-30 mins to manually shred up a bar of soap!
In addition, it works great in a front load, so called high efficiency washer. I use 1 tbsp for normal loads and 2 tbsp for extra dirty loads. The reason it works well in the front load washer is because they require a low sudsing soap, which is exactly what this recipe yields.
Ingredients:
1 bar of soap, shreaded
1/2 cup Borax
1/2 cup washing soda
Here are some links that I've found useful in my quest for cheap, all natural, functional laundry detergent.
http://diynatural.com/simple-easy-fast-effective-jabs-homemade-laundry-detergent/
Redoing a flowerbed
Sarah and I spent most of today and yesterday weeding and redoing one of the many flowerbeds at my Dads house. In all, I spent about 10 hours working on this. We dug out all the plants, tilled the earth about 4 inches, raked out all the weeds, laid down some weed blocking fabric, replanted some of the plants we took out (minus many of the lilies that we dug out), and laid down mulch. Here are some pics, before and after, respectively (click for larger image):
Now my Dad is complaining that I gave alot of the lilies away. It's true, I did. But before it was too crowded and overgrown. Now it's simple, weedless, and nice to look at, in my opinion.
Organized my newly painted room… w/ Sarah
Today wasn't nearly as long as the others... Considering I went to bed the latest since one week ago (at 3am), I slept until 11am today. Sarah and I got up at 11am and went grocery shopping for my Dad and so we would have food to eat for lunch.
When we got back, we began to move things back into my room and to organize my stuff since we repainted it. We also went to Wal-mart for the 3rd day in a row... (4th day in a row for me).
We hung up new blinds and put up the newly painted shelves. We also dusted and placed pictures on the walls and shelves. My room is starting to look like a new room. This was exactly my plan.
Here are all the pics.
I figured that since I will be getting a new professional job I should have a new professional space to live in. I know that most of you figured that I would move out as soon as I could, believe me, I wish I could make the transition. However, I will be living at my Dad's house while saving up some money. I hope to save up enough money to make buying a house easier in the next year or two down the road.
This is going to be a tough situation for Sarah and I. We were planning on living together in the next 6 months. However, neither of us anticipated that I'd still be living at home at that time. Oh well, this is just segment in my compartmentalized life that I view as a temporary situation. One day, I tell myself, I will grow out of this compartmentalization and move on to being myself... who knows when (or if for that matter) that will happen... Maybe I'm doomed to being in temporary situations forever...
Painted the trim, Sarah helped
Today Sarah and I painted the trim in my room. It ended up looking great! Most of the trim truely needed like 3 coats to effectively cover the dark blue paint underneath. We only put on two coats because we wanted to get done... Sarah was a big help... I recruited you because I know I can count on you to do quality trim work!
Here's a picture of Sarah dressed as a umpalumpa... because she didn't want to get paint in her hair!
Here are all the pics.
Painted the walls, Kyle helped
Today Kyle came down to help paint the walls.
I recruited him because he is good with the tool that paints the area where the wall meets the ceiling... It turned out good in the end. He came down at about 9am, we went to Home Depot to get supplies and paint, and then we started painting at 10am. We took about a 30 minute break for lunch. We finished painting the walls at 2pm. We worked for about 3.5 hours and got all the walls done. After today, the only thing that remains is the trim work.
Here are all the pics.
Painted the ceiling and visited Charlie
It was my goal today to get the ceiling painted with the ceiling paint. I got two coats on and it looks great. This took only about 4 or so hours. Here are all the pics.
I decided to call it quits early today because I promised Charlie that I would help him take his dog, Branko, to the vet for shots, etc.
Once I got to Charlie's house at 630pm, we left for Exeter to go to the vet. I was pretty pumped, because not only did I get to hang out with Charlie, I got to see his puppy AND drive his Camaro! After we got back, we hung out and had a couple of drinks of Labatt Blue from his Beermeister. While getting somewhat tuned up (about two drinks does it for me 
LOL!), we began to look for old friends on myspace.com and lookup people from high school in our old yearbooks. Drinking for me is never good, as I always relapse to a previous point in my life and begin thinking too much... but then again, maybe thats a good thing... In the end, I had a great time today!
