New Pajamas from pattern M6224

Here are the pajamas I made and I love them!  I made them from flannel and the are toasty warm, not to mention my son loves the bears. :)

They are big on him but he will have them for a couple of years anyway :)

Homemade Tide laundry soap

So today was the big day. I had to make up a new batch of laundry soap so I thought I would try powder this time.  Some work later, I have a wonderful smelling product that seems like it will last forever!  Yep I love it, cheap and a long time lol.  But I digress.

The recipe is pretty simple and pretty smelling too. And here it is:

2 cups borax
2 cups baking powder
2 bars of Tide soap
1 container of those nice smelling beads :)  I used Purex Crystals in Tropical Splash
2 cups of Oxy Clean, I used the WalMart brand

Mix it all up and you're done!  Easy peasy right?  Well not quite as I found out.  Now normally the only hard part would be grating the 2 bars of soap which is not really hard at all but since I have bad arthritis I ask the hubby to do it :)

Unfortunately the bars of soap, which I believe are from Japan, are like clay and took forever to try and grate!  I even tried to look up good ideas on how to deal with this but there was nothing so that's why I am posting this.  Here is the soap uncut and in the original packaging.

I got these two bars at our local dollar store just to let you know :) if anyone knows anything about why the soap is like clay please let me know because now I am curious.

So after about 10 minutes trying to grate this stuff, they hubby and I decided to try something else so out comes the hammer!  Yep, you read right, I said hammer.  We put the soap into a ziplock bag and he took the hammer to it trying to get it as beat up as possible.  And here he is :)

Yeah, please ignore the messy counter lol.  So when he pounded the soap down to what we thought were manageable chunks then he passed it over to me and I started cutting :)  I took a knife and cut at the soap in the same way you would cut herbs, onions, or garlic to get it just right.  Here it is :

Yep, all hail the Queen's magic shredding skills :) lol.  Well once all that was done we could finally add those little shreds to the whole mix and Voila!  Laundry soap!

Well this stuff smells fantastic, and will last probably around 6 months give or take.  I do a lot of laundry and generally one scoop of this stuff will work but knowing me I will use 2 because hey, lets face it, I have 4 dogs, 4 cats, 1 boy and 1 husband so you know that's a lot of dirty laundry lol.

And here it is. The magic mixture that will keep this house clean and functioning take that Hogwarts!  Now to find a load of laundry to test it out, oh gee look there is a giant pile :) Ha ha goodbye for now all and happy laundry days :)

New jamjams from pattern M6224

Good morning everyone it's a beautiful day here on the mountain and I know just how to spend it, sewing and baking lol!  I am working on some footie pajamas for my little guy and I am using pattern M6224 from McCalls sytle B.  I love the one pieces for him and I will probably make a few after the first one, they are nice and warm especially considering all the storms we have been having.

For this first one I am using a nice light tan color with brown bear prints on it and I love it.  But I don't have any ribbing for the hands and I can't get out of the house to go to town to find some so I started thinking.  Well, thinking leads to looking and looking leads to finding lol.  I decided to use my hubbys black socks for the arm cuffs. After all, it is ribbing and black will go well with it :)

Now as far as the pattern goes it has ribbing for around the feet too but I wanted to make little footies for it instead so I am going to try to make them using a tutorial I found on Things for boys  it does a wonderful job of explaining and has pictures which is a must for me! lol.  Here is the pattern and I will post pics of the jamjams lol  as soon as they are done :) 

Happy sewing everyone!

Oh by the way, style B is the one piece set :)