Barbie beds and laundry soap

So here is another thing I did back in March. I had orginally bought this craft box at Michael’s to be a box to hold paper dolls for my niece, Gentry for Christmas. The dolls were WAY smaller than I had anticipated so I had to get a smaller box for them, thus I was left with this one to hold for that project that just needed a wooden box. That came about 3 months later when I decided to make a Barbie bed for Gentry’s birthday. I used fabric I had bought at a second-hand store for seventy-nine cents to make a quilt and matching pillows. Well, once I got going I couldn’t stop and before you knew it I had bolster pillows made from some of my quilting scraps, a sheet made from some fabric samples the interior design firm in Jim’s office had given me, mattress made from those same samples and I decided to pull out the box to use as a bed frame. I roped Jim into cutting out a couple of magazine pictures to glue into the lid so it looks like pictures hanging on the wall and walla…..a bed in a box.

A 1 hour project turned into 2 1/2 hours but it was fun.  Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t have any girls….

On another note I have new favorite laundry detergent……that I made myself. I have been trying to save money and at the same time do things more naturally/organically and I found this recipe on the internet. I must admit, I was skeptical but it was so cheap to make I figured I should give it a try. I splurged a bit and bought a $2 bar of 99% natural rosemary mint soap instead of using the 33 cent bar of Ivory that the recipe called for. I have used it this week to wash our laundry and it works great. My clothes feel and smell clean.  It has kind of a weird consistancy….my sister was over yesterday and she just kept sticking her fingers in it. I was trying to figure out what she was doing and then I realized she was trying to figure out what it felt like and I told her it was frog eggs and she agreed. (We used to go out and catch frogs in our pond and take their eggs and put them in buckets of water so we could see the tadpoles when they hatched.) Don’t let that turn you off of it…..it just feels like them doesn’t look like them. It works great and I have 110-ish loads of laundry detergent for three or four dollars as opposed to the twelve something I usually spend to do the same amount.