A contest!

Not mine, but another blog I read. You can see the details here. 

A summary. Go to her blog, read the rules and follow them. She is giving away a custom boutique Pillowcase Dress or Peasant Dress to a lucky winner! The winner will have their choice of style, fabric and size.

Check it out! If you do please use my name/e-mail(cacplus5@gmail.com) as a reference so I am given another entry! 

You know what doesn't stink? 


Homemade fabric refresher. I LOVE the smell of fresh clean sheets and towels. But lets be real, who washes their sheets and towels EVERY day? Not me. My sheets get it once a week and towels twice. (switch between 2 sets of towels). But in between washings I want my sheets and towels to smell just out of the dryer.


I'm sure lots of you have bought or use Febreze. Am I right? I hate that junk. It smells so chemical. I hate chemical, which is why I make all my own cleaners. 


Are you ready for how simple it is? You'll slap your head and wonder why you've been wasting money on store bought garbage or worse living with stinking towels and sheets. :) 


Get a small spray bottle, add a teaspoon or so, I never measure anything, or your favorite fabric softener or laundry soap. Add a small "glug" of rubbing alcohol, several drops of your favorite essential oil, my favorite is lavender. Fill the bottle the rest of the way with water, shake and spray. I spray my curtains with it also. 


Your sniffer and the environment will thank you. 




Disclaimer - Of course laundry soap and fabric softener aren't very "earth friendly" so you can skip that step if you are especially environmentally conscious. 


Don't forget to pick up some lemon or sweet orange essential oils as well for your counter and wood cleaners. 

New chicks stink.

After losing our chickens we didn't want to start over again with chicks. We raised our other chickens from 1 week and 5 weeks. Five weeks isn't a bad starting place because they are old enough to go straight into the coop, although maybe not so much when it's in the 20s and low 30s at night. But chicks? Ugh. They stink.

We got our first batch of new chicks Saturday morning. They do nothing but poop and eat. Kinda like a baby with less sleeping. They NEVER stop peeping. It's non-stop until they are like 12 weeks old.

They spent the first night in the laundry room, but by morning the stink was creeping into the house, so they were moved outside to the garage. Right now the weather is mild enough that they can stay there and during the day we bring the cage out into the grass.

We got them off craigslist.com and they were called "dark brahma". Which would have been wonderful. Brahmas are one of the largest and a very sweet breed of chicken. Dark Brahma's are beautiful. We had to buy them straight run, which means male and female alike. It's really hard/nearly impossible to tell rooster from pullet at this stage. We got 15. Maybe 4-5 are actually Dark Brahmas or at least partially, thankfully they appear to hopefully be pullets.

The rest of the chicks are a big stinky mystery. They appear to be either Jersey Giants, Black Australorps a mix of the two and some mutts. Hopefully they will just lay some eggs in June!