chocolate covered pretzels on a whim

Yesterday while standing in my kitchen I happened to glance down and see these two things sitting next to each other completely by accident.


I'm sure I don't have to tell you where my mind went after that.


Oh yes, yes I did.

I had just laid the youngest little down for his nap so I knew I had a couple hours in which to put these two things together in a way that was meant to be. There are some things that are just meant to go together. Like peanut butter and jelly, Romeo and Juliet, chocolate and pretzels. It's a no-brainer.


It also gave me a good excuse to use this cute little plate my MIL gave me.


Isn't it clever? Somehow it seems to capture my sentiment when it comes to making delectable treats like this. So good yet...[sigh]...see? Perfect.


So then I decided to see how many different ways I could take a picture of chocolate covered pretzels before my camera battery died.


I like this one because it has my Kitchen-Aid in the background...even though it is not needed to make scrumptious chocolate covered pretzels...


I didn't really have a plan. I just started stacking.


and stacking...


another Kitchen-Aid lovely.


one of my favorites


Too much stacking. One thing I did discover, though. There's not really any wrong way to take a picture of chocolate covered pretzels. No matter how they are stacked I still want to eat them. All of them.

homemade laundry detergent

I have been making my own laundry detergent for several months now. The first batch I made was the testing phase. If I had been thinking about it I would have tracked how many loads I was doing and all that. But I wasn't. I went through the first batch and loved it. My clothes came clean every time. They came out smelling fresh, yet didn't have an overpowering scent. The second batch I made, I quadrupled the recipe. I didn't think about the fact that by doing this it would take me even longer to calculate how many loads I can get out of a batch. I was just so excited to make a whole dang tub of it! I also didn't think to take a picture of the ingredients for a groovy little blog post I could do later in case this worked out. Are we seeing a pattern here? Better late than never. That is my motto. So here's a random picture I found online:


There are a lot of different recipes out there to try, but I liked this one because it's only 3 ingredients, and is very simple to put together.

1 bar of Fels Naptha - $.97
1 cup Borax - $2.98/76oz
1 cup Washing Soda - $3.24/55oz

I think you can probably find all of these things in the laundry aisle of your grocery store. I found them in my Wal*Mart Supercenter. I'm sure the prices vary by region, but that is what I paid. For me it came out to about $1.86/42 loads.

Grate the Fels Naptha bar. Mix in the Borax and Washing Soda. Run it through a good food processor to turn the mixture into a really fine powder. Use 1 Tablespoon per load. Maybe add a little more if the load is extra soiled. Voila!

summer yarn wreath

I really like how this turned out! I know summer is almost over but I have been wanting to make a summer wreath for a while now. Just took me a little bit to get started. I just wrapped the wreath in white yarn, put together some flowers out of some cut up t-shirts and slapped 'em on there!