• The Wonders of Soap Nuts

    Can you believe that this berry cleaned my clothes AND my dishes??!! I am so excited to tell you about soap nuts!!  I was sick of all the chemicals in even the ‘green’ laundry detergents and both intimidated and not sure of the ingredients in the typical homemade recipes. THEN I heard about soap nuts.  And my laundry world has been forever changed.  (Guess I’m feeling dramatic tonight.) Soap nuts are actually soap berries.  They grow on trees in India, Nepal, and China.  (I’ve heard you can grow them here but haven’t gotten that far into it yet).  The harvesters pick them and husk them.  According to Wikipedia, they have…

  • Forming Values

    We are constantly bombarded by media and culture.  The average American woman is exposed to around 350 ads per day.   I know I’ve seen quite a few just today through facebook, email, driving down the road, and on a few blogs!   All of these ads are strategically designed to influence us – whether we like it or not.   The influence continues through movies & tv shows, all of them telling us how to dress, what we should look like, who to be with, etc, etc.     Values will be formed in our kids – Are they going to be our values or the culture’s? I recently…

  • The Kombucha Experiment

    One of Chris’ hobbies is trying out new beverages.  So, I wasn’t a bit surprised when he picked out something called Kombucha from the drink case at Central Market.  He has become a fan, and at $3+ a bottle, I wanted to see if I could make it at home. Sure enough!  Cultures for Health offered a nice how-to-make-kombucha video and our experiment has been in process.   I saved the last bottle he drank with a few ounces left on the bottom, and stuck it on top of our fridge for a few weeks to grow a culture.  Today, the experiment continues.  I’ve added sugar, and am currently steeping…