Thanksgiving Firsts

This was a great Thanksgiving for us - one that provided the opportunity for several new experiences outside of the annual feast that we're used to indulging in. I'm still stuck on small lists after my last post, so here are the firsts - one through three:

1) I made a Christmas wreath. And it looks AWESOME!! [in my humble opinion :-)]



K's cousins M and D stayed with us over the past few days, and D is seriously talented when it comes to crafting. I could not have made this wreath without her and cannot take much credit for how beautiful it turned out. The best part about it is that the silver and red go perfectly with the green lights K got for our porch. Talk about some festive decor!!!


2) K processed his own venison.


Rather than take it to Kuby's like usual, K decided to learn how to cut and package his own game after going hunting last weekend. This was a multi-step process, and we're saving the most fun part for last - the grinding, which will be done via an attachment on my beloved KitchenAid mixer. I'm very skeptical about it on multiple levels, but have chosen to trust that my hubby has watched enough YouTube videos to know what he's doing...


3) I made homemade tortillas. And they were AMAZING! [in my humble opinion :-)]


You know how D is a master crafter? Well - she's also a master chef. Again - I can't take much credit for the tortillas, but mostly just appreciate the time and effort she put into teaching me how to make new things. With her encouragement and guidance I was able to do stuff that I previously viewed as completely out of my realm.

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!!

Officially enthralled...

...with 2 things:

1) NBC's The Sing-off. Have I written of my love for this show before? It is incredible. Especially this season's Pentatonix from Arlington. My FAVORITE performance of theirs is as follows. The bass and beat boxing are amazing!!!!! Can you say dance party in the living room??



2) Our new chairs. We inherited these from K's grandmother, and when we got them they were a lovely celery green velvet. I remembered to take a "before" shot as K was loading them up into his car to take to our design guy for a face lift.


Here is the after. Only one is complete as of now, but the final pair will go in the master bedroom. Am loving the update, especially the pattern!!!


And can you believe Thanksgiving is this week? Where has this year gone???

Today

Today is Friday, y'all. Fridays are usually dubbed as "no clean" day in my book. It's like my day off from household chores, although sometimes I've been known to do a load of laundry here and there on a Friday. But today - I got a mini cleaning streak in me. It's been brewing for a while. I really want to have a clean house, and I feel better after I clean knowing that everything's in order, but I get so DISCOURAGED because I know I'm just going to have to do everything all over again in a week. And that's just a downer. Ugh.

But back to today.

So instead of cleaning our hardwoods, shining up the stove, or doing something that would noticeably impact the cleanliness of our house to the naked eye...I decided to do something that no one will ever see or know about, but that will make a big difference in the cleanliness of our laundry room.

I cleaned our washer!!!

While surfing the home decor section of pinterest, I became inspired by a blog post that had been done on cleaning out your washing machine. I don't think ours has ever been done. Like as in EVER. I do laundry all the time, but really - who thinks about cleaning something that cleans? I was so inspired that I even took before and after pictures to see if it would really work.

First I lifted the lid to see if it REALLY needed to be clean. I think there was part of me that was still secretly hoping I could suppress this weird cleaning desire that cropped up on a no-clean Friday. But alas - take a look at exhibit A for proof that indeed, our washer needed some TLC:



So I loaded it with hot water and put in 2 cups of white vinegar. It didn't quite fill to the top of the center spin thing, so I used a measuring cup to add in a lot more water. I thought that was probably a dumb idea at the time because surely the washing machine knows its own water limit, but the grossness on the spin thing was still exposed and I knew it needed to come in contact with the water / vinegar mixture to get clean. I set our kitchen timer for 60 min and let the solution work its magic.

After an hour, I let the washer finish the cycle. I put it on the shortest one to speed up the process and get to the next step, which was to fill the washer AGAIN, and this time put in 2 cups of bleach instead of 2 cups of vinegar. Did you know that bleach goes bad? That's what K tells me, and I think it's true - because once I spilled tea on the white shower curtain in B's room and when I washed it with old bleach the stain was still there. So I opened up new bleach and put it in the sink with the stained shower curtain and it came right out. That was a while ago, and I used the same beach in today's cleaning process, so I hope it hasn't since expired - but I digress....

Because of the length of time involved in this project, I definitely lost steam midway through. When I saw the grossness was still on the center spin thing after the vinegar cycle, I started to think, "seriously? why did I even get started on this? I need a nap."

But I somehow mustered up the strength to forge ahead.

I decided to take a sponge and put white vinegar on it and see if I could scrub some of it off. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult. The bleach might have taken it off, but I felt it better to jump the gun to ensure it would be gone once and for all. In retrospect - instead of going through the entire process, I think I would've just taken the sponge with vinegar to the center spin thing from the get go. Maybe next time. Here is the finished product:



Wow. This is the longest post I've written in a long time. And it's about cleaning our washing machine. Just go with it...