Cleaning in Between

Well, since I seem to be on an oven-cleaning frenzy, here's another strange, but kinda cool cleaning tip:

I somehow ended up with some schmutz in between the panes of glass on my oven door. I have no clue how it got there, and worse yet, no clue how to clean it. I spent over an hour trying to take apart my oven door one afternoon, and after removing screws, gently prying, prodding, and even swearing, I came to the conclusion that it was a job best left to the professionals. It just seemed so silly to me to pay someone to come to my house just to clean the inside of the oven door. I mean really, how hard could it be??? Well, since I seem to be spending loads of time on the computer anyway, I did a quick search on the topic, and much to my surprise, I found the answer. There is a deep, dark, little secret on how to clean in between those panes of glass that I'm going to share with you...

OK, first step is to remove the drawer on the bottom of the oven. Now, if you're like me, you'll find many dust bunnies, crumbs, and maybe even some long-lost treasures down there when you do. I took the opportunity to clean under there, after yelling "EEEEWWWWWW!!!!!", of course.

Once the drawer has been removed, look at the underside of the bottom edge of your oven door. This may require lying on the floor, or perhaps a little bit of contortionism. Or you know, just feel it with your hands. There should be a couple large holes along the bottom edge of the door.

Get something with a longish handle (I used a big wooden spoon) and cover it with a cloth, such as a towel or a sock. Secure with a rubber band, and spray the cloth lightly with glass cleaner.

Now here's where the genius part comes in: shove the sock-covered-spoon in one of those holes on the bottom of the oven door, and wipe away all the gooey stuff that is between the panes of glass. Brilliant, right???

Cleaning with Dryer Sheets

It happens every year, right about this time..... the oven needs cleaning. After all the baking and roasting on Thanksgiving, my oven is usually blackened with grease, burned crumbs, and spills galore. Now, I'm lucky enough that my oven has a "self cleaning" cycle that can handle all the gunky splatters from roasting our huge turkey, but there is one thing that often get overlooked (or never cleaned at all in my case), and that is the oven racks. They can't go through the cleaning cycle, and I'm not exactly diligent about keeping them spotless. OK, I've never cleaned them since we moved in 4 years ago, I confess. They were GROSS! Quite understandable after being used and abused for years without cleaning, I suppose.


Now, I know my cleaning methods are not exactly the norm, but this one will seem especially strange, I'm sure. I got the wild idea (thank you again Pinterest) to scrub my oven racks clean with dryer sheets. Do you understand what I mean by "strange" now? Let me explain... I saw a silly little post on Pinterest.com where someone had cleaned their muffin pan with a dryer sheet. My muffin pan just happened to be a bit sad looking from lots of baking, so I tried it out just to see if it actually worked. Surprisingly, it worked great and my muffin pan now looks like new. So, of course, when I saw that my oven racks were disgustingly blackened, I started eyeing my box of dryer sheets.

Now, oven racks are too big for me to put in the kitchen sink to soak and scrub, so I started out by tossing them in the bathtub to soak with about 15 or 20 dryer sheets.

See, I told you they were gross.

After letting them soak for a few hours (not sure how many, because I forgot about them), I rolled up my sleeves and scrubbed them with the same dryer sheets they had been soaking with. After a short while, my oven racks looked like this:

Do you still think I'm crazy for cleaning with dryer sheets??? I didn't think so.

Glittery Fun

Play dough has got to be one of the most fun things ever. Seriously. My 3 stooges all have a blast playing with it, just as I did when I was a kid. Lately though, our stash of play dough had been drying out, so it was time to make more. I got this awesome recipe from a teacher when thing 1 and thing 2 were in preschool, and have been using it over and over during the past several years. This time though, I decided that instead of making just plain old play dough, we would add glitter to make it even more cool. The boys helped me make it and declared it "The Best Play Dough Ever"!

And for those interested in creating your own sparkly fun, here is the recipe:

Homemade Play Dough

Small Batch:
2 Cups Water
1 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil
1 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar
1 Cup Salt
2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

Large Batch:
4 Cups Water
2 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil
2 Tablespoon Cream of Tartar
2 Cup Salt
4 Cups All-Purpose Flour

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly in a large saucepan. If you want to add food coloring or glitter, now's the time. Cook on the stovetop on medium-low heat, stirring constantly until it forms a dough ball and is no longer "gooey". Remove from heat and allow dough to cool. Knead dough once it's cool enough to touch to ensure a smooth consistency. Once cooled completely, store in an airtight container- do not store while still warm or it will turn gooey in the container.

This play dough lasts far longer than any store bought dough we've had, as long as it's stored in an airtight container (ours is by OXO, but a ziploc bag works just fine too). Also please note, this recipe makes a lot of play dough. The container shown has a small batch in it. If you omit the glitter, then this is actually edible, so it's perfect for little ones that still put everything in their mouth. I hope you enjoy this play dough as much as we do!

Thank You Peary Much!

Have you ever wandered around your neighborhood and admired all the lovely trees in your neighbor's garden? No? Ok, I am that strange then.

Every weekday, my kids and I walk home from school and pass by a house that has a lovely pear tree in their front yard. When I pointed out the tree to my 3 stooges a few weeks ago, they immediately wanted to pick the pears, despite the fact that it was pouring rain outside. I had to quickly remind them that it's not our tree and we couldn't just pick the fruit without permission- that burst their bubble a bit, until Lia processed just what I had said. She perked up 2 seconds later and asked "Can I go ask permission???". As soon as I gave her the OK, she darn near bamboozled a poor guy trying to get out of his car and go in to his house! He thankfully had a good sense of humor and not only chuckled at the odd question "Can I pick your pears?" from an overexcited little girl, but granted us permission to take as much as we wanted. Apparently our neighbors just have the tree because it's pretty, and don't eat the pears! My kids LOVE canned pears, so guess what I did with the 10+ pounds of pears we picked?

I even had a little help canning this time from my niece and sister (thanks guys!). The kids had so much fun picking fruit from our neighbor's tree! I however, have caught myself now eyeing all our neighbor's trees hoping to score some more goodies. The house next to us has a crabapple tree...

Garden Delights

Well, summer is quickly fading away. The kids have started school, the leaves are already changing colors, and our veggie garden is winding down. Our garden was very productive this past season, even with me forgetting to water it as often as I should and hurricane Irene trying to blow it away. Here's a small sampling of what we harvested this season:

We planted green beans, roma tomatoes, bell peppers (which are just now starting to produce), jalapeno peppers, cucumbers, pumpkins, and zucchini. The pumpkins haven't produced a darned thiing (some died off, so there's only one lonely plant and nothing for it to cross-pollinate with) so we'll be purchasing some at a local farm when we go apple picking. All in all, we got a very nice harvest. Plenty for us to eat, plenty to share, and plenty to preserve.

Ok, the yarn wasn't harvested from the garden. It's some baby alpaca yarn that I just recently finished spinning and couldn't help but share with all of you ;o) Its soooo soft and will be knit into a christmas gift for someone special.

I've also been busy canning some of the goodies from our garden. Here's 7 pints of yummy salsa that is made using tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapeno peppers from our garden:

I also made a couple loaves of zucchini bread, but didn't get a picture before it was scarfed down. You salivating yet?



Coffe Anyone?

    Ok, I must admit- I have an addiction. No, it's not drugs or alcohol, it's with a certain brand of coffee. I just can't live without it (I've tried, and it wasn't pretty)! My brand of choice, that I affectionately call my "coffee stuff", is the French Vanilla Cafe from Maxwell House International Cafe. I love it, and drink so much that we buy the mega-ultra-friggin-huge containers of it at the wholesale club. The containers it comes in are a nice sturdy cardboard, but usually end up in the trash once empty because I have no clue what to do with them.


    A few days ago I got a cool idea on a way to reuse them from one of my favorite websites http://www.pinterest.com/ - as a storage container for all of my daughter's hair accessories! She, like many other little girls, has a ton of hair elastics, clips, and bands for her beautiful mile-long hair. We've been storing all of it in a ziploc bag ever since we moved in, but the bag was ready to fall apart from so much abuse. It took me only a few minutes and some scraps of fabric and ribbon to turn my "coffee stuff" container into an ultra-girly hair accessory container that holds all of Lia's hair do-dads. Her headbands fit wrapped around the outside of the container, and everything else fits inside. Here's the before and after:
BEFORE:

AFTER:



Reusable Casserole Cover

Once upon a time, one of my awesome friends left a disposable plastic bowl cover at my house after a party. Although I had seen covers like this before, I never bought them because I thought they were silly. I decided to wash and reuse it after the party 'cuz that's how I roll (see my previous post about my distaste for disposable products). Little did I know just how useful this shower-cap looking cover would be. For those of you that have never seen these silly covers, here an example of one:

I use the cover all the time! It's very handy for covering casserole dishes when there's leftovers (doesn't happen often, but it does happen), and absolutely fantastic for covering bread dough while it's rising. After over 6 months of repeated use and abuse, my silly shower cap was looking pretty worn and tired :o( I didn't want to go out and buy an entire box of disposable covers, so I decided to make a reusable one instead. This one is the same size as the plastic one, but with lots more flair!

It's lined with PUL from the very same mattress cover that I used to make the snack baggies, and covered with an awesome skull print cotton fabric on the outside. There is elastic around the whole cover so it fits snugly on all sorts of different size containers (it measures about 19" square, and is shown on a 13" x 9" baking dish). I just used it to cover bread dough while it was rising, and it works fantastic! It's so easy to clean too- just wipe off or toss in the washing machine. I will definitely be making at least one more, perhaps a bit smaller.

Reusable Snack Baggies

Ever get sick of buying sandwich baggies just so your kids can throw them away at lunch time? I know I HATE buying things just to throw them away after a single use (with the exception of toilet paper, of course). It's such a waste of resources and money! So rather than just complain about it, I decided to make these cute reusable baggies out of repurposed materials. The fabric I used is PUL- polyurethane laminated- fabric that I found at a charity yard sale. It was actually a mattress cover, and I purchased it for the rich sum of $2. It has loads of fabric to it, so I can make as many of these little baggies as I want, though I think 10-12 of each size will do. The large baggie (shown stuffed with green beans from our garden- YUM!) measures about 6" x 6", and the smaller one measures 3 1/2" x 6". I used velcro as a closure so it will be easy for my little minions to open and reclose themselves. The best part about these is that they are super easy to clean! I can just wipe the inside with a damp cloth, or if they get super yucky I can toss them in the dishwasher or washing machine. There is a similar tutorial for how to make these HERE if you're interested in making your own. The kids are excited to use these at school, and they will be great at picnics and the beach too :o)

Bloody Eyeballs!

Ok, so they're not really bloody eyeballs, but they look like it , right? These are actually cherries that I canned yesterday ( I know, boring compared to eyeballs, but much tastier). Lia helped me while I was pitting the cherries, and it looked like we were in an episode of CSI- our hands were covered in cherry "blood", there were blood spatters all over the counter, and my skeleton apron had blood dripping from it LOL. Wish I had taken a picture of the crime scene, but it's hard to do with blood on your hands ;o) I was able to can a total of 13 pints of cherries. I haven't tested these out yet, but Caleb has and he declared them "yummy".

So far this summer, I've canned 16 pints of peaches, 15 pints of pineapples, 13 pints of cherries, and 8 half-pints of blueberry jam. This is way more than I've ever done previously, and I have plans for lots more. Come check back later for more delicious crime scenes!