Wool Dryer Balls for the Win

I look quite similar to this during my workouts. I’ve been known to fall off gym equipment due to clumsiness.

I sweat. A lot. I come home from the gym smelling like a teenage boy. No, not because I’ve been making out with one at the gym, but because teenage boys are stinky. Geesh. Perverts.
I used to rely on scented detergents and dryer sheets to help clean and mask the smells that lingered in my gym shirts and mom-style yoga pants that come to my bellybutton to hold in my muffin top. But we haven’t used scented detergent since the Finn kids have sensitive skin. (The Lord blessed me with pale, pasty kids that require copious amounts of sunscreen AND super-duper sensitive skin.)
I’ve been meaning to give up dryer sheets, but missed the manufactured chemical-laden scent they gave my stanky clothes. Who doesn’t want to smell “Mountain Fresh” or like a “Spring Breeze”?
But as my crunchiness level has increased since my move to Seattle, I’m proud to say I’ve finally ditched those bad boys and found a new love. Meet my wool dryer balls! Who doesn’t love a fluffy, useful pair of balls?! (That’s what he said).

Wool dryer balls come in a variety of sizes.

I bought these balls, but there’s several varieties. (These jokes could go on and on.) I tried plastic dryer balls a few years ago, but they were noisy, got tangled in the sleeves of shirts or pant legs, and wore out quickly. But wool dryer balls are quieter, larger in size, and last for years. Best of all they’re all natural.

The dryer balls work by separating clothing, absorbing water from wet clothes, and increasing air circulation. They can cut drying time by 25%, which will save electricity and money.

Add a few drops of oil to the dryer balls before tossing them in the dryer. Everyone loves oily balls!

Who cares if the wool balls gets my clothes naturally soft if they still have the gym stank? To combat the funk, I add a few drop of essential oils to the balls before throwing them in the dryer. Young Living’s Purification blend is my favorite. It eliminates odors and leaves my laundry with a clean, fresh scent. I also like lavender and Joy blend. Bam! Naturally soft and naturally scented, funk-free laundry.

Do any of you use dryer balls? How many ball jokes did you count?

Homemade Foaming Hand Soap

Ingredients needed to make hand soap.

I’m always washing my hands and my kids’ hands. Washing after playing at the park, picking their noses, and other gross things. You know, like crawling on public restroom floors, picking up chewed gum on the street, and digging through trash cans. We’re a classy bunch, can ya tell?
I adore the fancy-smelling foaming soaps. Lemon-basil, peach-coriander or rosemary mint, anyone?  But I’ve become a label reader and I didn’t like the ingredients listed. Or the price.
Why were dyes, sulfates, and weird ingredients in hand soap? Shouldn’t there be two or three ingredients? My favorite bar soap was an option, but I like foaming soap in the bathrooms and kitchen for easy use for kids.
Making foaming hand soap takes less than five minutes. It’s simple and costs a fraction of the fancy smelling stuff.
I used an old soap bottle that was originally filled with fancy hand soap. The key is the bottle must be a foaming dispenser. I’d like to buy this

The final product

bottle. It’s cute, sturdy and received good reviews.

Ingredients:
Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap  (I bought mine on Amazon, but it can be purchased in most grocery stores in the health food section)
Almond oil (can substitute with olive, jojoba,  or grapeseed oil)
Water (distilled is best, but tap water is okay if the soap will be used within a couple weeks)
Essential oils

Directions:
1. Fill bottle 2/3 full with water.
2. Add 2 tbsp. castile soap.
3. Add 1/2 tsp. oil.
4. Add essential oils of your choice.  (I love fruity, clean scents for warmer weather. Wild orange, lemon with mint, and lemongrass are my current favorites.)
5. Close container and lightly shake to mix ingredients.

It Ain’t Easy Being Green

Living in Washington has provided several learning opportunities. I’ve learned parking spaces labeled “compact” are the SAME SIZE as regular spots. Businesses are required to label a certain amount for compact cars. My SUV is long enough to cover the “compact” writing so no one notices. Problem solved. I’ve also learned oh-so-much about garbage, recycling, and toddler’s gross habits.

Sorting garbage is a way of life here. We have three garbage bins in our garage. One for trash, recycling, and food/yard waste. Which leaves approximately three inches left to park your car in the remainder of the garage.

Little Finn’s love of trash reminded me of this guy. I think they smell alike some days, too.

We recycled in Ohio, but that was amateur compared to Seattle. Detergent bottle empty? Finished with that yogurt container? Changed your door knobs? They can all be recycled! Our bin is overflowing every week. Of course, with a toddler who adores playing in the trash, I usually end up with plastic containers, beer bottles and paper bags scattered about the house. It’s like the kid is practicing to be a homeless bum. If he starts putting brown paper bags around the empty beer bottles I’m taking him to therapy.

The food waste bin has been the most useful, yet difficult to use. We keep a small trash can under the sink and dump it into the larger bin in the garage. The trash can fills up quickly with food scraps and funky smells. Finn Girl is ALWAYS the first to notice. “Mom, it smells like dirty diapers. Mom, it stinks like dead ponies. (What? I have no idea what that means or where it came from.) Mom, why am I smelling something bad? It hurts my nose.” Finn Girl’s teenage years will require me to be heavily medicated. The overdramatic holding of the nose as she flees from the kitchen or the cries that come from her throwing her scraps in the yard waste trash are comical, but only if you’ve had a cocktail. Otherwise it’s irritating.

I am proud to say we have only one or two bags of trash weekly. In Ohio it was easily 5-7 bags. That kinda change would make uber earth conscious Alicia Silverstone happy. Now if only I could get on board with her whole vegan diet we’d be BFFs. Sharing the best use for hemp hearts. Talking about our organic, freshly composted gardens and how to make our own kumbucha. But I can’t. I love the animal flesh. And cheese. Life would be sad without cheese.

The Finn is loving all the recycling and yard waste bins because he grew up dividing his trash like he had a severe case of OCD. I, on the other hand, am accustom to throwing everything in the garbage. The only thing we recycled in the Midwest were glass jars that my mom would fill with bacon grease that would be used for cooking later.

Cubes of trash sold for $50-$100/each. There’s hope for Little Finn’s trash habit.

We’re all adapting and enjoying the changes. I’m hopeful that Little Finn’s obsession with garbage will morph into some sort of weird, new-age art and we can count on him to fund our retirement. If not, guess The Finn will keep his day job.

Hiking with Kids

It’s been an unseasonably warm winter in Washington. We’ve been enjoying 60 degree weather, sunshine and our flowers are starting to bloom. The family decided to take advantage of the weather and go for a local hike. I packed up water, snacks, hand sanitizer, wipes, and crossed my fingers.
Thirty minutes later we were at Coal Creek park. I strapped Little Finn into my carrier. And away we went with him crying and kicking me.

So many picturesque moments of green landscapes on the hike. I showed my sister the above picture of the waterfall at the end of the hike. She said it looked fake. I told her if it was fake it’d look like this…

That red thing is me floating down the river. Do you know how exhausting it is carrying 27 lb of screaming toddler on your back up a muddy, steep incline?
During the 45 minute trek Little Finn pulled my ponytail like I was his horse and my hair was his rein. He also wiped his snotty nose and dirty hands in my ponytail. I had no idea my hair had so many uses.
Maybe it’s a new trend I can start here. Out of tissues? Use your hair! Ran out of wipes? Use your hair! I’m certain I can find articles on how snot and crumbs are nourishing for your hair. It’s also a renewable resource. People will love that aspect out here!

The hike back down was summed up nicely by Finn Girl, “Listening to nature is boring. When are we done? I never want to come back here.”

Yeah, not seeing Girl Scouts in her future.

Homemade Detangler

Finn Girl has typical Nordic hair. Super fine, tangles into a thousand knots if you look at it, and a shade of gorgeous, almost white blonde women pay for in a salon. She also has a tender scalp and a great set of lungs. Combine all these traits together and this, my friends, is the recipe for a daily epic meltdown.
She puts on an Oscar worthy performance while I brush her hair. The tears, the deceit, the pain. When is this going to stop? Why do I do this to her? Why, mom, WHY!?!
We go through bottles of syrupy, sweet detangler quickly. The artificial scents they use make me nauseous. What exactly does Apple Blossom Surprise and Strawberry Fizz Dessert smell like?
Then I read the ingredients and knew we could find a better, natural alternative.
The detangler recipe below is easy to make. It works, too! I added essential oils to create a pleasant scent.

Homemade Detangler

Ingredients

• 12 ounce or larger spray bottle
• 2 cups distilled water
• 3 tablespoons marshmallow root (Ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs)
• 2 tablespoons conditioner of choice (I used this one)
• 10+ drops of essential oil of choice (optional)

Instructions

1. Add water and marshmallow root to small pan. Bring to a boil for one minute.
2. Reduce heat and let simmer for 20-30 minutes.
3. Let cool slightly and strain through a cheesecloth or very thin wire strainer. (You’ll have about 1.5 cups water at this point)
4. While still warm, pour in to bottle, add conditioner and essential oils. Shake until mixed. (If ingredients don’t mix completely, I suggest putting them into a blender until mixed well.)
5. Store for up to 2 months (it might last longer, but we go through the bottles quickly).

   *Recipe adapted from wellnessmama.com

Berry Picking in Finland

Red currants

We’re  in Finland visiting and soaking up the last bits of summer.  The long, sunshine filled days are quickly being replaced with biting winds and darkness. We decided to get in one more berry picking session before frost claimed the berry bushes.  We headed to the fin-law’s garden where gooseberries, red, black and white currants awaited us. A quick trip into the marsh on their property revealed blueberries to add to our collection, too.  We ate more berries than we collected, but it was fun and the kids enjoyed it.

The berries grow plentiful in this region of Finland and have many uses. My mother-in-law makes the standard jams and juices, but also freezes batches of them to use on cakes and desserts. She even dries out some of the leaves from the bushes to use for tea.

While we don’t have a garden of berries at home, I did take advantage of a local you pick berry patch this summer. I made my first batch of black raspberry jam and froze the leftovers to enjoy later this w

White currants

inter when I’m craving fresh fruit.

I’ll share more about trip into the marsh in another post. A quick 10 minute jaunt turned into a 45 minute hike of horrors.

 

 

Our Garden Failed this Year

The garden wasn’t a success this year. It was more of a failure. The broccoli and cauliflower balked, the few carrots that grew were soft and chewy, the tomatoes were ugly and tasteless and several plants didn’t grow at all. I was disappointed because I was striving to provide our own vegetables and lead a more sustainable life.
But it hit me while I was pulling the dried, weed covered garden out. I was there with my family. My daughter collecting stray cherry tomatoes and my son content  in the dirt with a shovel. We were doing something together. My husband and I showed our daughter how to grow food. We visited Gorman Heritage Farm, where the garden is located, several times to check out the animals they have on hand.
While our original goal was to provide food for ourselves, the end result was teaching our kids the meaning of hard work (planting and picking the garden), patience (waiting for the crops to grow) and practice (learning to produce a fruitful garden). While you don’t always succeed you always learn something. It just depends on how you look at it.

Freezing Whole Tomatoes

My mother-in-law has four deep freezers. Each one is jam packed with frozen fruits, vegetables, cakes, breads and whatever else can be frozen. With the short growing season in Finland, she harvests her produce and freezes it as to not be wasteful.
I’m striving not to be wasteful with veggies from our garden. So far, we’ve only have success with tomatoes this season. Lots of success. What to do with the tomatoes before they go bad? I made marinara sauce with the grape tomatoes, but had plenty of larger tomatoes that needed to be used.
I asked around and found out you can freeze whole tomatoes. Who knew?!
It’s quick and much easier than canning, which I have no clue how to do.

Yeah, look at these bad boys. They got a bit overripe in the garden, but still taste delicious.

After a quick rinse throw them in a pot of boiling water. Be sure not to fill the pot too full or you’ll end up with water splashing out on the stovetop. Not that that happened to me or anything…

Cook until skin starts to look wrinkly or begins falling off. Mine took about 8 minutes. Let cool before peeling.

Throw in plastic freezer bag, glass jar or however you want to freeze them.

Much healthier and tastier than canned tomatoes laced with sodium, citric acid and other needless ingredients. Best of all, we grew these tomatoes.

There’s more tomatoes to come. What else can I do with them?

Wild Thistle

We ventured out to the garden yesterday as a family. The farm told us our plot had wild thistle we needed to pull.
In the hour we were there, Suvi needed to potty twice and Niko ate several handfuls of dirt. But they did enjoy digging with their tools.
I’m hoping the more they come with us, the more they’ll appreciate we’re growing our own food.
Our plan is to plant the first week of May. Now on to finalizing the layout of the garden.

Homemade Shaving Cream

When I visit my fin-laws I find all sorts of homemade products tucked away in the cabinets. My mother in-law makes juices, teas, ointments and more.
Using natural ingredients to make homemade products is something our family has steered away from. We succumbed to the convenience of store-bought items full of chemicals and nasty ingredients.
I started our venture back into “homemade” with shaving cream. This recipe uses only four ingredients and is easy to whip up.

 

 

DIY Shaving Cream

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup coconut oil
• 1/3 cup shea butter
• 2 tablespoons olive, jojoba or sweet almond oil
• 2 tablespoons liquid castile soap

Instructions

Step 1: In small saucepan, melt shea butter and coconut oil over the lowest heat setting over the stove. Stir occasionally until fully melted.

Step 2: Add olive oil and stir until fully blended. Remove from heat.

Step 3: Transfer mixture to a medium-sized bowl or any size jar and place in the fridge until it’s solid.

Step 4: Remove from fridge and get ready to whip it up. If it’s in a jar you’ll need to transfer it to a medium-sized bowl first. Whip using a hand mixer or stand mixer. Scrape sides down as needed. Add castile soap and whip until fluffy ~ about 3-4 minutes depending on how cold your mixture is.

Step 5: Spoon shaving cream into an airtight container and store in a cool, dry place.

To use, apply a thin layer to skin and shave. Makes about 4-6 ounces whipped.

NOTE:
The ingredients in this recipe are shelf stable for quite a long time on their own without a preservative. However, if water gets into the jar they will spoil much more quickly. I pat my hands dry with a towel hanging right outside the shower before scooping the shaving cream out.

 

 

 

 

Recipe courtesy of Mommypotamus:
http://www.mommypotamus.com/natural-homemade-shaving-cream/