... that's a medallion on the new box of baking soda I just opened ( Read more... )

Today was a day of truly epic yard sale finds. We didn't even go to that many yard sales, relatively speaking- just three. However, we got forms for making English muffins, plastic Easter eggs for nefarious purposes, a cute little wooden box, and...


( Read more... )

My father used this recipe to clean the huge plate-glass windows of our family business.  It is comparable to Windex and has saved our family a small fortune over the years:

1 gallon hot water
1/2 cup ammonia
1/3 cup distilled white vinegar
2 Tbsp baking soda

The mixture doesn't have to stay hot to work properly, the hot water just helps the baking soda ( Read more... )

Anyone on my friend's list have a favourite brand of chemical paint stripper? I'm getting some gunky white paint off the wood trim in my house (seriously, former owner: it's WOOD. It's beautiful. Why even paint it?). I'm using 3M's Safe Strip, and it's OK, but I'm not convinced that there isn't something better. Any recommendations ( Read more... )

BLAGH! Why do food manufacturers go putting artificial sweetners in "diet" shit? I grabbed some "diet" iced green tea with my lunch, figuring it would be less sweet than most commercial iced tea, or, to put it another way, a normal level of fucking iced tea sweetness. However, it's more sweet and has that strange petrochemical aftertaste, owing ( Read more... )

My living room smells like a drycleaner's dumpster and I no longer have fingerprints on my right hand, but I'm happy.

Several weeks ago, trouble4hire spilt some rubber cement on our carpet.  It's really an acceptably nice Persian carpet, a gift from my father-in-law.  We did what we could to scrape up the rubber cement before it dried, but it still left a large ( Read more... )