A Day of Cooking and Cleaning!

Mr. Squirrel under the bird feeder.

Baby birds kicked out of the nest.

My lunch for the day.

We have lots of patio tomatoes and they are so good!

Some of the cleaning products that I use and love.

Some of the bath products I love!

Today I decided to stay at home and clean. I cooked a light dinner since I was cleaning and moving furniture around. I decided to cook a pot of purple-hull peas that we had in the freezer. I also fixed cucumber, tomato, and onion salad. I added black sesame seeds to this salad this time. My daughter told me that she had that dish at a luncheon and the person had added those and it added a good flavor. I always like a little purple onion with my peas and I love homemade hot sauce with it too! And of course, my meal would not be complete without my diet Dr. Pepper! I have been washing all of my quilts today. I thought I would share with you what I use to wash these quilts. I used to own a fabric store as I mentioned in an earlier post and I bought a product called "Quilt Soap". This is great for vintage quilts or just your everyday quilts. It only takes 1 tablespoon of the soap and it cleans and removes the stains from the quilts. If your quilt is really old and needs special handling they recommend putting it in the bathtub and lightly swishing it around several washings until the rinse water is clear. This is a gentle way of handling those beautiful antique quilts. I have tried this method on some of my old quilts and it works great. It's a little gross how much dirt and grime ooze out of the old quilts but it's amazing at how wonderful they look in the end. My favorite detergent these days are new TIDE detergents. I was using the one in the purple bottle at first but I decided to try the Baking Soda with White Lilac scent and I like it even better. And the best part is they all have the dryer sheets to match the smell of your detergent. I also use another product called Oxi-Clean in a liquid form. One of my students that plays softball for me told me about it. She had gotten grass stains and red dirt stains on her workout clothes and I told her you are not going to be able to get those stains out of my workout clothes. She said, "Oh yes, I will, I use Oxi-Clean and gets all the stains out of my clothes and it makes my tennis shoes extra white". I couldn't believe how well this product worked for me. I use it to whiten everything and to get out stains. As I was cleaning in one of the bedrooms I kept hearing this loud shrieking noise outside my bedroom doors. I finally went to see what all the disturbance was about. Well the first thing I saw was "Mr. Squirrel" under the bird feeder with about 10 Cardinals pitching a hissy fit! Yeah, he knew he had been caught when I came to the door. Then to my right there were 4 baby birds that were screaming as well. I guess momma bird kicked them out today and they were not at all happy! I think these are chimney swifts from our fireplace chimney and I'm not sure if these little fellows are going to make it or not. They just seem too little to be on their own.
The man who is going to do my cabinet countertops called today with his bid and we are going to get started very soon! I am so excited about this project. When the countertops are finished I am going to get new hardware and have the cabinets refinished and the kitchen painted.

And after a long day of working in and around the house I took a nice hot bath with some of my favorite bath salts!The charm around the jar came from my shopping trip last week to a small town nearby. I thought they were cute on the apothecary jars in my bath. Dresses them up a little! My favorite bath salts are found at Central Market in Austin. They have the neatest section in their store where they sell facial and spa products. You scoop up however much you want and put it in one of their containers.