Baby Name Game, Pt. 3

Here's the 3rd clue.  For details on how to play the game, see this post. 

What's Cadie's favorite show?  _ _ _ _  _ _ (_)   _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I type this as Matt is playing with his new electric guitar and amp, Cadie is sleeping, and laundry is whirling.  We are in our last week of work before summer truly begins!  On Friday we are skedaddling to the mountain house for a weekend with friends and I can't wait!

Homemade Laundry Detergent

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make my own laundry detergent.  I read a bunch of stuff on the internet about how to do it, and then I ended up making it not quite as directed.  It was easy to mix up and WAY cheaper than regular detergent.  With this detergent, you only have to use 2 tablespoons per load so this batch will last quite awhile. 

The ingredients are pictured above: washing soda (not baking soda), 3 bars Ivory soap, Borax, and Sun Oxygen cleaner (generic oxyclean).  I found everything in the laundry aisle at Wal-mart except the ivory soap, which was with the other soap in the Health and Beauty area.  I grated all 3 bars of the Ivory with my box grater and then dumped everything into my metal laundry detergent tub and mixed very well.  All these ingredients together cost less than $10.

I've waited to post about this so I could report on the results as far as cleanliness and it seems to work just as well as the name brand detergents I was previously using.  I still need to use a pretreater on some stains (Cadence has a propensity for getting tomato sauce and chocolate things on her shirts), but I was doing that before.  The loss is the nice smell of our old detergent - this one doesn't smell at all - but I use scented fabric softener sheets, so it's all good.

Deals of the Week: Ingles Freebies

Two Zone Perfect bars - on sale for $1, I used two $1 off coupons - not sure where I got them
Breve Coffee Creamer - I got a coupon for this product from Vocalpoint.com - I usually just put milk in my coffee (well, I put a lot of milk in my coffee), so I'm excited to have something special

Baby Name Game, Pt. 2

Here's clue #2!  For details on the game, see this post. 

What's the musical term meaning rhythm and flow?  _ _ _ _ _ _ (_)

Pool Time

In between trying to pack up some boxes for our move next month and organize some baby girl things yesterday, I got out the little pool for Cadie.  We bought the pool last summer but for some reason (trying to sell our house and move, maybe?) we never blew it up.  As usual she wouldn't actually *look* at the camera for me to document this.

Bacon and Blue Cheese Tart

I made this for my book club last Sunday and it was super yum.  I adapted the recipe from the March Woman's Day magazine. 

Ingredients:
7 slices turkey bacon
1 large vidalia onion, thinly sliced
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
2 oz blue cheese crumbled*

Directions:
Heat oven to 400 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Cook bacon in skillet until crisp, move to paper towel-lined plate.  Crumble when cool.  Cook onions in bacon grease (there won't be much, this is turkey bacon)  until very tender and carmelized. Stir bacon back into skillet with pepper to taste. 

Place pastry flat on baking sheet.  Top with onion and bacon, then the blue cheese, leaving a border around the edge.  Bake until pastry is golden, around 25 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.  (Matt was eating it cold out of the fridge.)

*There is a huge price difference in the blue cheese sold in the cheese section in the deli of the grocery store and the blue cheese in the dairy case with the sliced and shredded cheeses.  The blue cheese is the dairy case is significantly cheaper.

Baby Name Game, Pt. 1

We are busy-pants around here!  I'm babysitting full-time for two little boys on campus (3 kids under the age of 4 all day = tired Mo) until the end of school and Matt is busy with all the end of the year activities.  We just got back from a whirlwind trip to High Point for my dear friend Amy's wedding (where we also got to visit with 3 other sweet families we miss!).  So, the blog posting here is going to be minimal for a bit, but we are starting the baby name game.  Here's how it works:

1. We'll give a trivia clue and provide blanks indicating the number of letters in the answer.  One of those blanks will have parentheses around it.  That's the letter you save because it goes somewhere in baby girl's name.  Here's an example: What state do we live in?  _ _ _ _ _ _ (_)  The answer is Georgia and the last letter is A - that would be the one to save for the unscrambling. 
2.  If you think you've figured out the name, feel free to ask Matt or I to confirm.  For privacy's sake, don't make the guess in the comments on the blog.
3. We will not, however, be answering questions about initials, potential name meanings, or whether we can name the baby what your Grandma or dog picked out. 
4. We picked a name that is meaningful and pretty to us and would appreciate no negativity. 

Ok, here's the first clue:

1. What's the name of the road we live on?  _ _ _ _ _ _ (_) _

The Name Game, Part 2: Coming Soon!

You longtime blog readers will remember the name game we played back in 2008 before Cadence was born.  We provided wrods to unscramble for a letter from her name to be revealed each week.  We're doing it again, though this time it will be trivia questions instead of scrambled words.  We settled on the questions (generally very easy) today so we'll start soon.