Homemade All-Purpose Cleaner (Herbal Infused Vinegar)

I've always used a 50/50 mixture of water and vinegar as my all-purpose cleaner (except on glass), but today I enhanced my standard cleaner with rosemary.

Why would you want to make your own cleaner? Good question! Because it's healthier to me and the members of my household (one cat and two bunnies), it's easy, it's completely free of chemicals, and it cost me a whopping $1.18 and will last me several months!

The cool thing about this recipe is that you can create any combination of oil and herbs that appeal to you. I got the initial recipe from this site and adapted it to what I preferred.

Here's how you do it...

Homemade All-Purpose Cleaner

(Herbal Infused Vinegar)

Step 1: Infusing the Vinegar (takes 2 weeks).

Step 2: Mixing the infusion with more vinegar and essential oil (optional).

Step 1: Infuse Your Vinegar for Two Weeks

Items needed: Distilled white vinegar, disinfecting herbs of your choosing (rosemary, peppermint, thyme, lemon balm, pine needles, lavender, orange, grapefruit, or lemon peels).

Instructions:

1. Measure out 1/2 c. total dried herbs into a clean jar. Cover with approximately 1-1/2 c. distilled white vinegar.

2. Put the lid on it. Shake it. Store it for 2 weeks (shaking it when you remember, every day or every couple of days).

3. After 2 weeks, move onto step 2, if desired.

Step 2: Mix Your Infused Vinegar (optional)

Items needed: Infused vinegar from step 1, more distilled white vinegar, essential oils of your choosing, an empty spray bottle.

Instructions:

1. Strain all the herbs out of your vinegar using a fine-mesh sieve or a coffee filter.

2. Pour all of your infused vinegar into the spray bottle and add 1 c. regular distilled white vinegar (this is just to add “new” and potent vinegar to your cleaning).

3. Drop in about 30-50 total drops of essential oil (Good “Cleaning” Essential Oils: Lemon, orange, pink grapefruit, rosemary, tea tree, eucalyptus, peppermint, lavender.)

1. Shake it.

Makes 2-1/2 c.

This will keep for several months.

Total Cost:

Herbs: $0.24

Vinegar: $0.79

Essential oils: (approximate) $0.15

Total: $1.18

Washing Your Face with Honey - Challenge!

I stumbled across this challenge on Twitter a couple days ago. Honey immediately went on my shopping list. Here's how it works: you wash your face with honey for 2 weeks, all the while seeing the difference in your skin. (By the way, pretty sure this is mainly for females, seeing as the honey really gets stuck in hair and most men have facial hair - that would suck.)

So, I started the challenge this morning and already my skin is so much smoother! I'm using a local honey from my area, which I actually found at Walmart. It's raw and unfiltered, which is going to be the best for your skin because you don't want all the added sugars. (Added sugar never did anyone much good.)

Here's the link to the original challenge.

Who's with me?!

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Update: It's been 6 days since I started the Honey Challenge and here are my results - my face is smoother than ever and I have NOT had any new breakouts! That last part has me the most excited. I'm definitely going to keep this up on a long-term basis, but I think I'm going to try infusing the honey next ---> see this link for details.

Final Update: It's been almost 3 weeks and I'm definitely convinced! Honey will be my new face wash and face mask. It's wonderful. The next thing I'm going to try is infusing it with herbs for double the face washing power.

Excerpts Up

I've posted some excerpts on the individual pages up top. I hope you enjoy them. Leave comments if you like anything!

Updating the Blog

As you can see, this blog is under construction. Blogspot has a few new features that I've been waiting for and I'm doing my best to utilize them.

The biggest changes are the tabs at the top of the Home page, right under the Header. These tabs are links to additional pages about all the novels I've written. None of them are published, but I'm currently looking into ebook publishing. (If you'd like to see that happen, please let me know.)

When these additional pages are finished, I'll let you know.

ODK Finished!

My third novel, OF DEMONS AND KEEPERS, is officially finished! Well...at least the writing process :)

It ended just over 62K and is now going through the first round of edits. Boyfriend read it a couple weeks ago after I was completely stuck and at the point of adding stupid scenes just to figure out what was missing. Turns out, it wasn't missing anything! I was just so obsessed with word count that I let my imagination get out of control.

So here we are, 62K later. I'm happy with it.

I've started compiling a list of literary agents. Once I get it all edited and research the agents a little bit more, I'll start drafting query letters and sending those out.

This is the hard part.

Do I Belong Here?

Hello, everyone. If you do not remember me, I am the “owner” of this blog. Hah! It’s been quite a while (almost a year, actually) since my last post. I have a lot more to write about now that my life has gotten into a routine again (shouldn’t it be the other way around?). Let’s recap real quick, shall we?

Last year:

-Moved out on my own

-Graduated college with Bachelor’s Degree in English, Minor in Writing

-Got a full-time job where I had been working part-time (not using college degree)

-Given lots more responsibility, including a Stage Crew to manage

-Now working side-by-side with Boyfriend

-Lots of OT

-NaNo 2010

This year:

-Moved apartments

-Cat got real sick and was in/out of the vet for a couple months

-Lots of debt later, she’s doing very well and on steady medication (poor baby)

-I’m on a make-it-from-scratch kick

-I live to eat

-Boyfriend and I are coming up on 1.5 years together ... I’m waiting for the “question”

-He may join the Air Force (fully supportive if he does)

-I want to move to Europe

-Boyfriend gave me August 31st deadline to finish my favorite writing project, Of Demons and Keepers, which I’ve been working on for over 2 years now

-Next week, we are going to Colorado and I’m going to treat half of the vacation like a writing retreat - Boyfriend knows and supports this (he’ll probably be asleep anyway)

Wow. Looking back on it like that, I don’t feel like I’ve done much. Well, technically, that’s just the general overview of everything. Of course I’ve accomplished a lot of other things (reading fantastic new authors’ books, cooking, learning new things, good quality time with Boyfriend, new life experiences...), but you get the main idea.

Now currently, I’m working on something I did NOT accomplish last year because of school and my “new” job: reading 50 books in 2010. I didn’t get very far at all. This year I’m trying to do the same thing, but without the number goal. I’d just like to read as much as I can while still having a life. Boyfriend bought me a Nook for Christmas last year and I have not been able to put it down. I always wanted an eReader, but constantly second guessed my decision to actually follow through. Finally, I bit the bullet and told Boyfriend, yes, I definitely want one, and don’t let me change my mind. So we went out and bought the NookCOLOR, and BOY, OH, BOY! Let me just say... if you do not have one and are thinking about getting one, GET ONE. I love it more than anything else I own. The only thing that I would add to it, is being able to hook up a keyboard so I don’t have to drag around my computer. They don’t have a lot of apps out for it yet (Android is always really slow about that, it seems), but I didn’t really buy the device for games and such anyway. I bought it for the eReader.

Now in my list up top, I mentioned that I’m currently trying to finish OF DEMONS AND KEEPERS by August 31st. I’m definitely going to make that deadline. I really am pumped about finishing this book. Currently I’m in the nitty gritty part where I have the skeleton and am lacking the flesh, muscle, veins, organs, etc. I’m almost 60K into the novel and just need to add in everything that’s lacking. I know that’s not very specific, but maybe this will explain it better than I can. After all, I’m still learning....

Recently I found some blog posts by Stacia Kane. She talks about how she writes a novel in three acts - 30K for each act. There are a total of three blog posts where she delves into how she approaches writing her novels using three acts. It’s quite genius and opened up my mind to a lot of new ideas. Follow this link and see what you think.

Also, while you’re there, look into her Book section on her website. Her Chess Putnam (Downside series) books are AMAZING. Did you hear me? They’re... FANTASTIC. I don’t know how else to say it. Frankly, all three current books (there will be six total) kept me up at night for two reasons: 1) I couldn’t stop reading. 2) I was scared. Now, okay, it doesn’t take a lot to scare me, but it does take damn good writing to make me feel anything. And Stacia Kane is a damn good writer. Check her out for yourself. And if you sign up to be a member of the Downside Army, she’ll email out newsletters every now and then and sometimes includes member-only snippets of her stories. I promise, you won’t regret reading her work.

Okay, I’m finished ranting for today. I need to go make some word count before Boyfriend gets here to help me cook dinner, then it’s MasterChef time! Wooh!