Since I am 1/4 of the organizing team for ODAHQ, an alternate blogathon to take the place of the canceled 2010 blogathon, I will have to put this blog on the back burner for another week or two.

I'll be back with lots of homemade goodies (and badies) soon, though!

If you are interested in ODAHQ (basically, blogging for charity), leave a comment and I'll direct you to where you need to go for more information.

Plain old baking soda is a wonderful thing.  It can be used for anything from brushing your teeth to cleaning your carpet to making your jewelry shine.  I intend to do a few posts on the wonders of baking soda, but I'd hate to post something without trying it out first, so this one will be short.

Everyone knows that you can put baking soda in your refrigerator to absorb bad smells, but did you know that you can do that on your carpet, too?  Since I have birds and rats (both of which get respiratory problems that lead to death from air fresheners, cleaners and most anything else with a strong smell), I'm always looking for ways to clean the two rooms that these pets occupy without using harsh smelling cleaners.

It's been rainy and humid here for the past several days.  When it gets like that, our entire apartment smells like it's wet.  Frankly, it's pretty gross.  I can't use the scented carpet powder that you can put down and then vacuum up, so today I decided to put some baking soda down.  I sprinkled it liberally over the carpet in each room and then let it sit for about 10 hours.  The longer you leave it down, the better it will do its job.  Around hour 10, I was about to fall asleep from lack of productive things to do, so I decided it was time to vacuum.

So, you just vacuum the baking soda right up along with the odors that were in your carpet and you don't have an overpowering flowery smell left.  I have a bagless vacuum, so I did have to take the bits out and rinse them after I was finished vacuuming, but the bits were due for cleaning anyway.  If you have a vacuum that uses bags, be prepared for a full and heavy bag.

My carpet doesn't smell like wet mops anymore, by the way.  It just smells like nothing - which is a good thing in our house.

I give baking soda as a carpet refresher 4 out of 5 sprinkles.  (Leaving it down for so long does tend to get baking soda tracked all over the place and then you end up needing to sweep places that didn't need to be swept.)

Ingredients:

1 C heavy whipping cream (ultra pasteurized whips faster, but any heavy whipping cream will work)
1 TBSP sugar
1 TSP vanilla extract (or any other flavoring of your choice)

Chill a bowl (stainless steel works best) and your whisk (or whatever you're using to whip the cream) in the refrigerator for about twenty minutes.  (You don't have to do this, but it makes it go faster when you start whipping.)  I used an electric hand mixer to do this and it still took a fair amount of time, but you can definitely do this by hand.  Anyhow, combine the ingredients in the bowl and start whipping the cream.  Pay close attention to the cream as it thickens because if you whip too long, you're on your way to making butter.  Once the cream forms soft peaks, put it in the refrigerator to cool and enjoy.

Unlike store brands, homemade whipped cream is both cream -and- whipped.  Apparently, most store brands are neither.

I thought I would give this a shot when I made Pavlova for the first time over the weekend and it came out incredibly well.  Breaking this down, it costs maybe 50 cents to make two cups of whipped cream. You can rewhip the cream to make it creamy again if it begins to settle.  I have also read that if you use confectioners (powdered) sugar rather than granulated, it makes a nice frosting for cakes.  The only real downside to this recipe is that you can only store it in the fridge for 3 days, so don't make too much of it.

I should have known when the site I got this from said that the bugs would starve to death that this wouldn't work.  Don't you think that bugs are just a tiny bit smarter than to sit on a plant they don't want to eat until they die from starvation?  Especially when there are perfectly good (and still edible) plants all around them?  Starve to death, indeed.

The recipe and directions can be found here.

Do not, and I would really like to repeat DO NOT, make this recipe unless you are willing to sacrifice you blender and the pot you make it in.  If you want to dedicate a pot and blender to this, go ahead.  Not only did my blender reek of these ingredients after several washes and soaks, it still reeked of the ingredients when I finally gave up and threw it out a week and a half after I made this.  The pot that I used had the same issue.  I haven't tossed it yet as it is one of the few large pots that I have, but I also won't be using it for anything else in the future.  It has been about a month since I made this "pesticide" and the pot still smells like onions and garlic.

One thing that you will definitely repel if you spray this in your garden is people.  You may find yourself with far fewer solicitors and those nice old ladies from the Kingdom Hall may suddenly just stop showing up.  Unfortunately, you may attract hungry kids who love spaghetti.  Probably not, though.  This stuff reeks.  It reeks from the moment you make it until the moment that a heavy rain or watering washes it off of your plants.  In fact, after 2 weeks with mostly rain and only a little sunshine, some of my potted plants -still- reek.  Try not to spray it onto the pots, I guess.

I can tell you right now, it will -not- repel small animals or birds.  I had a particularly obnoxious pair of grackles eat every single strawberry in my strawberry jar planter despite the plants and soil being sprayed with this stuff.  A baby rabbit decided to help itself to my flowers.

For bugs, there's no telling.  Two of my potted plants were still attacked by bugs quite frequently.  I'm pretty sure they just looked up at me and laughed as they ran deeper into the soil to avoid the spray because they're still nomming on the leaves.

I might try the age old water and dish soap method on my flowers, but for my veggies, I think I'm going to stick with an organic pesticide from the store.

I give this 1 out of 5 ruined blenders.

It's been such a long time since I've posted, so I thought that I would give you three posts in one.  Hopefully, this sort of thing doesn't happen again, but it's been a hectic few weeks and, sadly, this blog had to be put on the back burner while real life beckoned.

Let's start with homemade make up.  I made loose powder eyeshadow, flavored lip gloss and used an old trick to make "cream" blush.

Loose powder eyeshadow only requires some corn starch and one of two other items: mica powder (which can be found in craft stores) or the leftovers from your pressed powder eyeshadow.  If you are using the mica powder (which I did not), you only need to mix the mica powder into cornstarch until you get the color you desire.  If you are using old eyeshadow, you need to crush it to a fine powder and then mix it in with the corn starch.  You can easily make this into a cream eyeshadow by mixing in some petroleum jelly.

My eyeshadows came out well, but they were a huge pain in the butt to make.  You have to use so much mica powder/eyeshadow and then mix for so long that it's just kind of silly to make it yourself.  Of course, if you get your pressed eyeshadow from a dollar store and then make it into loose eyeshadow, all you're losing is time.  The make up works well.  I don't have any pictures of it in use, sadly, but I tried it myself and then gave some to a friend to try.  She likes it just fine.

The lip gloss was easy and pretty economical.  A little petroleum jelly mixed with whatever color kool-aid that you'd like to mix it with.  I used cherry and pink lemonade.  The pink lemonade came out very pale while the cherry came out looking like dark "nude" color.  You can keep mixing it in until you get the shade you want, though.  I made the mistake of using unsweetened kool-aid and ended up with a very tart lipgloss.  Not a terrible thing if you like tartness, but I'd suggest using sweetened kool-aid.  Since I didn't make my colors very dark, all you're getting is a mostly clear gloss.  However, if you mix your colors darker, you'll get a lip gloss that tints your lips.

Now, the old trick for cream blush is pretty easy.  I've been using tinted moisturizer this summer instead of foundation when I wear make up because it's much lighter (by the by, easy trick for tinted moisturizer - use the foundation you already have and mix a few drops with your favorite moisturizer), so I don't want to cake my face up with a bunch of powdered blush.  Instead, I put two to three small dabs of a cheap lipstick I bought onto the apples of my cheeks and blend it in.  My mom used to do this waaaaaay back in the day and it's a pretty convenient little trick.

I give this stuff 3 out of 5 kool-aid packets.  The eye shadow is just a pain to mix.

* * * 

On to the bath salts!

1 part Epsom salt
1 part Sea salt
1-2 tbsp baking soda
6-10 drops of essential oils (if desired)
5-8 drops food coloring (if desired)

Mix salts and baking soda.  Add food coloring 2-3 drops at a time, mixing very well (the salts wants to clump up with the food coloring, so you'll want to keep breaking those clumps up and mixing until you get a fairly even color throughout).  Once desired color is achieved, add essential oil a few drops at a time.  Remember that the salts won't smell as strong once they're dissolving in water.

These things are amazing!  I'm currently at war with my bathtub and the disgusting junk that grows in it (thanks to our apartment complex flat out lying to us about whether there was a mold problem before we moved in), so I won't bathe in it.  However, I do have plantar fasciitis, so I soak my feet from time to time before I massage them with a tennis ball and then ice them down (it's a real pain).  Why not use the salts when I soak my feet?  So, I did.  Not only does it smell nice (I happened to have essential oils laying around from some body scrub I made from a kit), but it makes your skin quite soft.  I'm sure that my physical therapist appreciates that my feet don't feel like alligator skin when she has to do my deep tissue foot massages.

I give these bath salts 5 out of 5 grains of salt.  They work just as well (if not better) than their expensive store-bought counterparts.

* * *

And, finally, we come to highlighting your hair.

Most everyone has heard that you can use lemon juice to lighten your hair.  However, lemon juice dries your hair out really badly.  Not to worry!

I mixed mostly water, a fair amount of lemon juice and a tablespoon of olive oil in a small spray bottle and then doused my hair in it before I went for my run.  I did blow dry my hair just a bit since I didn't want to run with sopping wet hair, but that didn't seem to make any real difference.  Off I went.  I kept my hair down and I was in the sunshine for about half an hour before I headed back to the car and then home.  Once home, I washed my hair to get the juice and olive oil out.   Lo and behold, my hair was just a tad lighter and I had a handful of red and blond highlights.  The olive oil made my hair really soft and kept the lemon juice from doing too much damage.  It's best to do this out in the sun, but I've read that it will work if you blow dry your hair as well.  I do have to say, though, if you go out into the sun a lot anyway, don't bother.  The sun will naturally bleach/lighten your hair.  I once went from brown hair to medium blond after spending a month in the California sunshine.  If you don't get out much, you could give this a try.  However, your hair will look like you haven't washed it in several months thanks to the olive oil, so I don't suggest going too far from home with this in your hair.

I give this 4 out of 5 lemons.

I do mean to get into the swing of things here eventually and post on some sort of schedule.  In order to do that, though, I need to get a few things made and tried out so that I have a nice buffer.  So, with that in mind, I'll give you a taste of what is to come.

Homemade makeup: Lipgloss, eyeshadow, cream blush.

Homemade pesticide: Rather, pest repellent.  I'm testing this on the little garden plot that we were given on a farm owned by the company hubby works for.  It's organic and supposedly works for mice and rabbits, too.

Homemade bath salts: Easy, quick, but are they any good?

No 'Poo: My adventures with baking soda and apple cider vinegar instead of shampoo.

If you have suggestions for what you'd like me to try out in the future, let me know.

• ¹/₄ cup oatmeal
• 1 tsp crushed lavender or other fragrant herb
• 1 tsp baking soda

Grind these together with mortar and pestle, small grinder, or place in a baggie and crush with a rolling pin.

Sprinkle enough of the mixture to cover all hair, and massage for five minutes before it it brushed out

***

Since I am going No 'Poo for an upcoming post here, I thought that I would look around for a good "dry shampoo" recipe.  The adjustment period for going without shampoo is leaving my hair a disgusting, greasy mess, so a dry shampoo should be just what the doctor ordered, right?  Wrong.  I found my recipe for a dry shampoo here and, since I like DIY Instructables so much, I thought I'd give it a shot.  I wish I hadn't. 

The ingredients themselves are easy to find in your kitchen or garden (I used dried rose petals instead of lavender), but that's where the fun ends, folks.  I used a mortar and pestle to grind everything together and wondered what the point of the lavender (or rose, in my case) was since all I could smell was oatmeal.  Into a jar it went and then I just waited for my hair to get greasy.  It didn't take long.

I sprinkled it into my hair (and all over the sink and floor) and tried to massage for five minutes.  I didn't even make it two.  Because of the bits of oatmeal, it honestly felt like there were large bugs in my hair.  It was pretty unsettling.  In addition to the bug feeling, bits of this mess fell inside my shirt and, eventually, down onto the floor to join the rest of the mess that this made.  After making my head hurt with chunks of dry oatmeal, I finally just decided to brush it out.

Or... try to brush it out.  It took several minutes to brush even enough of it out to be confident that I'd removed all of the oatmeal bits and then my hair still looked like I'd poured white powder on it.  I kept brushing and brushing to no avail.  Even though most of the mix was out, there were white specs all over my hair that were very reminiscent of nits except that they weren't actually lice eggs.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I have no interest in going out with my head looking like it's full of lice eggs.  I eventually just got my brush wet with some water and kept brushing my hair until it was damp.  While this got rid of a lot of the tiny white bits, it made my hair look even greasier.

All in all, it was not a great experience and I got to spend the next several minutes cleaning my bathroom sink, counter and floor.  I did wonder briefly if I hadn't ground the oatmeal well enough, but with this amount of ingredients, it would have taken all day to grind it as finely as the baking soda.

No, thanks, I'll just go back to my old standby, baby powder (you can also use cornstarch).  Sprinkle it in your hair before bed (or in the morning) and it'll soak the grease right up.  Of course, this may give you static, but so does that dry shampoo.

I give this mess 1 out of 5 washes.