Aww, you’re so cute, little baby avocado trees in our window. Your tropical-ness is really refreshing in the middle of winter. Thanks for putting up with the measly amount of daylight we get here in the northland.
Now hurry up and grow big, so I can put you next to the claw-foot tub and pretend to be in Costa Rica every time I bathe.
{Alternative title: Adventures in Wifery}
Mike is packing for a business trip to California- and shoot!– we discovered that he somehow had a colorful New Years cocktail spilled on his favorite dress shirt.
“Can you get it out for me?”
“I’ll try, honey…”
These things are tricky when you have to stick to biodegradable products…but wait! That magical substance called baking soda is here to the rescue again. There is nothing it can’t do. It’s the Chuck Norris of household supplies.
Unfortunately, Mike’s lovely wife didn’t notice the stain before throwing the shirt in the wash a few days ago…so now the stain, though faded significantly, has been set into the shirt. I’m sure that baking soda will be able to handle the situation, though. I hope. I pray. Please.
Can you even see the stain?? It’s not very obvious, but it’s there. Like the punch-line to one of my father-in-law’s puns.
Here we go. Mix 1/4 of a cup of baking soda and enough hydrogen peroxide to make a paste. Spread onto the stained area, like cake frosting. Use fingers to rub into the fabric for several minutes.
Soak the garment in very cold water, agitating occasionally.
Rinse in cold water to get out any baking soda that might still be hanging on. Hang to dry, smoothing out the wrinkles.
BOOYA!!
Stain is history, and my reputation as Pretty Good Wife is intact.
In the winter, when our garden is dead and the beach is unappealing and it’s too damn cold out for anything other than pond hockey, we turn our attention from the outdoors to the indoors.
Floors get a whole summer of dirt mopped off them, windows get washed, and the toothbrush comes out for all the baseboards. It’s nice for the place to be spic-and-span since we have to be in here a lot for the next five months.
This weekend, Mike and I found a lightly used bedroom set on Craigslist for a great price. It’s solid maple, and happens to be the same set that Mike’s parents have in their guest bedroom, which we annoyingly bug them to give to us every time we’re there and they annoyingly refuse every time. 😉
Currently our bedroom houses a box-spring with a mattress on top…….and that’s all. So obviously, we had to get this bedroom set. Oh, to have a dresser {we have somewhere to put our clothes!}, a bedside table {yay, our lamp doesn’t have to sit on the floor anymore!}, a bed {we’re looking less like a dorm room and more like a real grown-up bedroom!}, and a mirror {oh god, is that what I look like?!} Things are shaping up around here.
In order to have some clean clothes to put away in the new dresser, I had to go on an intense laundry-doing mission. Someone was pretty stoked about all the warm laundry coming out of the dryer and being piled on the bed…
I do declare, here’s nothing more cozy than tidying up, nesting, and decorating your home for the holidays.
{In Which We Begin Digging a Root Cellar in our Basement}
Does that look like a root cellar to you? You don’t have to be polite, we’re aware of the fact that it totally doesn’t. But it WILL. Someday. After many, many buckets of clay soil are hauled up the basement stairs and outside.
Praise the Lord for great friends who willingly offered to help us with this enormous task!
My name is Tonia. I live on a rural homestead in Northern Wisconsin with my husband and dog and write about living life with my hands in the dirt.
