Homemade is Better

 

Today I'm canning tomato juice.  Last year I canned very little juice as we were living in a camper during the majority of the canning season. ( Long story that I'll tell some other time. )  Anyway, at the time I thought it would make little difference because tomato juice is fairly inexpensive in the store.  Little did I know how wrong I was.

We use tomato juice a number of different ways.  I use it to make homemade tomato soup, chili, spanish rice, and a number of different casseroles and we also enjoy drinking it chilled as a snack.  Sadly the tomato juice from the store tastes VERY different from the home canned variety.

I soon realized that my home version of tomato juice is really more like a V8 juice.  I put onions, green peppers, and some seasonings in my tomato juice.  The store variety has tomatoes, water, and salt listed as the ingredients.  Also it has a weird metallic taste to it that I can't identify, but do not enjoy.  We even tried the kind that comes in a plastic bottle, and it STILL tasted of metal.

Anyway, my conclusion is that the extra effort that it takes to can tomato juice is well worth it for our family. 

What do you can that can't be compared to "store bought?" 

I'm Seeing Red

I love yard sales.  There is something so invigorating about buying something that you need for so much less than what it retails for in the store.  I have bought clothes, furniture, dishes, linens, and even Christmas and birthday gifts at yard sales. 

If you think it's weird or disgusting to buy gifts at a yard sale let me ask you one question.  What is the difference between new Lego's and yard sale Lego's?  This was what got me thinking about whether it really mattered if some of my children's gifts were second hand.  Besides, I don't want my children to only value things that come in shiny new wrappers. 

I've also noticed that I can often find higher quality items that I could never afford new at garage and yard sales.  Many of my yard sale bargains have outlasted things that I bought new.

This is my latest yard sale purchase.  (No, I'm not talking about the dog.)  I bought eight red cloth napkins for 50 cents a piece.  My kitchen is red and these napkins look perfect there.  They don't look too bad on my clothesline either with all the green grass in the background.

  I also purchased a couple of pillow slips that are striped and match my boys sheets.  For some reason they are extra hard on pillow slips and they wear out before the sheets.  Possibly because they get used for impromptu sack races across the family room.

Last, but not least I bought a Jenga game.  This game retails for around $15.00 new, and I paid $1.50.

The best part about it is I didn't make a special trip to save all this money.  I was on my way home from running some errands, saw the yard sale and stopped.  So, I didn't spend any extra money in gas. 

 That's why I'm seeing red or maybe I should say green. :)

Cleaning Blinds

                                     


Even tho they are not my favorite window treatment I have quite a few venetian blinds throughout my house.  Probably my main reason for disliking them is their tendency to collect dust and how difficult they are to clean.  In the past I cleaned them by swishing them in a bathtub of warm water with dish soap and ammonia in it.  The problem was they didn't seem to get all that clean.  Somehow the dirt and dust seems to cement itself onto those little blind slats, and it won't let go.

If you remember my list for last week included cleaning the blinds in our master bedroom.  These were especially dusty because we had done some drywall work in the master bathroom and the drywall dust was thick on the blinds.

I was filling the tub with hot water when I realized that I didn't have any ammonia in the house.  I frantically searched my mind for an alternative to wash the blinds in and on a whim I squirted a tablespoon or two of laundry detergent into my water.

Amazingly, the laundry soap seemed to work better than anything else I've ever used-including ammonia.  The blinds came out looking shiny and clean.

I thought that I would pass on the tip to all you blind owners out there.  I used Tide laundry soap, and I made the water as hot as I could.  I let the blinds soak about 5 minutes, and then sloshed them around a little-pulled them out and drained them on a couple bath towels on the floor and hung them while still damp. 

When you hang them make sure all the slats are separated and the blind is open otherwise they will not dry fully, and depending on the moisture level in your home they might mildew.

Lilacs

If I had to choose a favorite flower it would probably be the lilac.  We have a huge mass of lilac bushes in our back yard.  The property that we live on was at one time part of the city dump.  The office building was on our land and the majority of the dump was on our neighbors land.  They must have had lilacs somewhere near the office and they have grown huge.  I don't mind this at all. : )



This picture is only about half of the entire bush.  The scent is so powerful right now that when I went for my walk yesterday I could smell them a long time before I could see them.  I wish there was a way you could bottle this scent and save it to smell all year.