Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Works for me Wednesday - Stain Removal Edition

Today, ladies, we're talkin' stains. I don't know what made me do this, but the other day, while I was cleaning, I decided to document some of the stain removal that took place. I do love a product that does what it says it will do and that is what I want to share with you.

I give you Exhibit A:


This is where my youngest little darling ate a red popsicle while sitting in my new chair, and apparently dropped it on the floor...unbeknownst to me. Now, some of you may say, "Just move that rug over a little and no one will be the wiser!" Well, I would know. End of discussion. Here it is a little closer up...


Closer...


That's close enough. If I were doing an infomercial, I would show you pictures of how I used everything under the sun to get this stain out and how I struggled and strained and made myself look like a complete idiot who had never even seen a rag before. Instead, I went right to the product that I knew would do the trick and I went straight to work.


Here is where I sprayed the product on the stain and already it's starting to work.

That's red popsicle on the rag there. It doesn't look as bright in the picture as it did in real life. I was impressed with how it picked it right up.


Oh wait, here's a better shot of the rag.


There's the place where the spot was. It has a little bit of a pinkish hue, but I have three girls so I'm not really afraid of the color pink. And besides, if anyone notices that I have a small pinkish colored hue on my carpet by my new chair, I think I'll just move the rug over a bit.

Aren't you just dying to know what this miracle cleaner is? Well I'll show you. Ladies, meet Folex. Folex, meet the ladies.


Now this is one of those cleaners that doesn't have any fancy packaging and kind of sits there in the cleaning aisle either on a shelf below or high above the national brands. I imagine it sitting there, just waiting for someone to take a chance on it. Knowing it has a big secret. What's that secret? IT WORKS! And I have my mother-in-law to thank for telling me about it. She has lots of pets. In the house. Dogs. And Cats. In the house. She goes through this stuff like you wouldn't believe. And I have a toddler. In the house. And we're potty training. In the house. Well, you get the idea. Nevertheless, it works every time.

Here's another problem area that I simply got tired of looking at the other day. I just had to do something about it.


This is an area right by the door that everyone comes in and out of. I can't even tell you what those stains are. They're the kind of stains generated by 4 kids. Some of them were sticky and some were hard. It wasn't pretty. This sounds like a job for Folex.


I know the carpet still looks a little dingy, but that's another problem all together. I barely put any elbow grease into those stains and look at how much better it looks.

I have one more product to share with you. This is the stuff I pull out when I've got a really stubborn stain. Like this one here. And don't underestimate this stain because of it's size.


You want to know what that is? That, my blogging friends, is a little glob of silly putty. The rest of it I found in the pocket of my daughter's favorite jeans. It has a nasty habit of melting wherever it lands and fusing itself to whatever it lands on. I tried to pick up this little bit of green goo no less than 10 times before I finally got it through my head that it was fused to the carpet and it wasn't going anywhere.


Now it looks a little more like chewing gum. Which would be equally impossible to get out.

Enter my new best friend, Stainz-R-Out. I bought it one day in a moment of weakness watching an infomercial. Some idiot lady was trying to figure out how to use a rag and suddenly all of her problems were solved by this little yellow bottle of goodness. I actually used all of my first order and had to call the 800 number on the back and order more. I love it.


I works particularly well on sticky and greasy things that seem to repel water based cleaners. It's made with banana oil so it gets in there and really breaks up the offending stuff. It does smell like bananas, though, so if you're like my friend Francesca and hate the smell of bananas, you won't like what you smell when you start using this stuff. I, on the other hand, don't mind the smell of bananas, so we get along great. Here's where that spot was.


I know, I know. You say you see a little bit of a greenish hue. Well, I'm not going to try to pick up that greenish hue 10 times while vacuuming. I'd say that's another victory for Stainz-R-Out!

Here's one last story. You know those things little kids bring home from Chuck E. Cheeses or Mr. Gatti's that look like a mini lava lamp? It's a clear plastic tube that has goo in it and you tilt it back and forth watching the goo slowly move from one end to the other like slow moving waves? Then you wonder what that goo would do if it were outside of the confines of that plastic tube and you throw to see if it will break? Well, my son wondered that very thing and I'll be darned if that goo didn't leave a permanent stain on my mother-in-law's carpet that would come and go at will. Some days it was really dark and sticky and some days you couldn't really see it at all. When I got my Stainz-R-Out, I was really excited about how well it worked so I took it over there and it got almost all of it out. Even I couldn't believe it. Here's the link because I know you want it.

That's all for this edition. If you want more fun tips checkout the other WFMW participants!

And by the way, the Pink Martini review is coming soon complete with pictures and hopefully video, if I can get it to work!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Visions of Old Yeller

Well, folks, I think I'm finally ready to give a rundown of the past week and a half.

The following events actually did take place. They were not made up for your reading enjoyment. If you find yourself saying, out loud, "Are you kidding me?", you are not alone.

Tuesday, March 18th - My family, including my mother-in-law, goes down to the local animal shelter to pick out a dog for our son, John. My mother-in-law also finds a dog and we adopt them together. Chloe is our sweet little 4 month old lab/hound mix and Patty is my mil's mild mannered adult border collie. The two dogs are great friends/previous cell mates and spend most of their time together going back and forth from our house to my in laws house across the street. It's beautiful.

Saturday, April 26th - John has his best friend, Kheland, over to spend the night and while E and I go out, my mother-in-law watches them at her house. They spend the evening rolling around the yard with Chloe and Patty and doing boy stuff.

Daily - Chloe, being the puppy that she is, jumps on the kids and licks on them from head to toe, generally terrorizing the girls on a daily basis.

Sunday, May 4th - We get home from church and the girls notice that Chloe is with Patty at their grandmother's house so they are free to run around the yard and play without fear of being jumped on and licked to death. They are happy!

Monday, May 5th - Chloe is gone most of the day, until I get home from picking up the kids from school. She comes up to me as I unload the kids from the van and rests her head on the floorboard and whines. I pet her and ask her what's wrong. She walks over to the bird bath and tries to get a drink. Her full water bowl is where it usually is and when we show it to her, she reluctantly drinks while keeping an eye on all of us. She's acting really weird. And there's a small string of foam dangling from her mouth. Hmmmm.

Tuesday, May 6th - E takes Chloe to the vet around lunch time. They say they will call us to let us know how she's doing. Around 3, they call and tell me that she's worse than before and they think it would be best if they put her down and send her head to Austin to see what was making her sick. [Yes, the vet actually said that to me.]

Wednesday, May 7th - Turned 37. Spent the day helping E out at the studio, had lunch with Brenda, and a little birthday celebration at Caleb and Kelly's.

Thursay, May 8th - My mom comes for a visit to see one of John's baseball games. I am cooking dinner for the Wilson family. Chicken fried steak paraphernalia is strewn about my kitchen when the phone rings. It's the Clyde animal control guy. He tells me that Chloe's test results came back from Austin and they show that Chloe tested positive for Rabies. RABIES!
The conversation goes something like this:
Animal Control guy: I need to know who had exposure to the dog from April 25 thru May 6th.
Me: Well, our whole family had exposure to the dog. It's a family dog.
AC guy: So, there's just the four of you, right?
Me: There's four kids, then there's me and E and his mom and dad and I think one of my son's friends was over during that time.
AC guy: Well, anyone who had exposure to the dog needs to get the Rabies vaccine.
Me: What's considered exposure?
AC guy: Anyone who was bitten, scratched, slobbered on or generally anyone who looked at the dog. [Sarcasm by me]
Me: So who do I need to contact?
AC guy: Your kid's pediatrician and you and your husband's doctor. Remember, Rabies is fatal. It's really important that you get those shots.

Over the course of the next hour, I was on the phone with the animal control guy, the vet, the woman who is over the state health department for this area of the state, the local state health department lady, Debra, in charge of immunizations, the kid's doctor, and I left messages with Trish Trueblood and Andrea Cheek.

Went to Anna's kindergarten graduation and then ate at Los Arcos. The chips and hot sauce were flowin' as were the Rabies jokes. We kept having to shoosh John because he was asking questions, out loud, like, "Are we going to die of Rabies?" and "I just want to know about Rabies before I die!"

Friday, May 9th - My mother-in-law comes over with her big, fat Suburban and she, myself, my mom, E, Autie, April, John and Anna load up and head to Dr. Capra's for our first Rabies vaccination adventure!

Dr. Capra weighs all of us and then writes prescriptions for all of us. He pretty much tells us that anyone who looked at the dog needs to get vaccinated. Rabies is a ground penetrating missile that you don't want to mess around with. He says not to let cost be a factor in our decision. I take the prescriptions and head over to the state health department by KMart and talk to Debra about getting the vaccine. She tells me that Dr. Capra is right, do not let cost be a factor in deciding who should get the vaccine. Then she tells me that Abilene doesn't have enough for all of us. We are probably going to need to go to Cook's or JPS in Ft Worth for all of us to be vaccinated at the same time. Then she tells me the schedule and the cost. We are going to need to be vaccinated on day 0, 3, 7, 14 and 28 and the cost for our whole family for the vaccine alone will come to around $7000! What? I didn't hear you. Did you say $700? No, I said $7000! [That's the conversation that I kept having in my head all day]
Again, don't let cost be a factor in your decision whether or not to get the vaccine.

I go back to Dr. Capra's office, which by this time is closed. The nurse is basically waiting around to give us our shots, which we can't get because there's not enough vaccine. Thankfully, the kids are playing in the courtyard, not in the waiting room of the office. We load up the Suburban again and head to the department of health office to talk to Debra about our options at this point.

My mother-in-law decides to go ahead and get her shots because they have enough for her so we take her to the health department office where they give shots and we head back to Clyde to get ready for our spontaneous trip to Ft Worth.

My mom, thinking that she's not going to get to see John play in his baseball game and knowing that we are going to be going to within a half hour of her house in Arlington, decides to go on home.

We get a call that Cook's and JPS are out of the vaccine so there's no point going to Ft Worth. Debra, tells me that if she combines Brownwood's supply and Abilene's supply of the vaccine, we can get started the next day. She drives to Brownwood to get the vaccine because she doesn't want our family to have to do anymore travelling. [Not in her job description. She's an angel!] I call Dr. J's office and confirm that they are open on Saturday's and that they can administer the vaccine to our whole family in the morning.

John doesn't miss his baseball game, but my mom does. John hits a grand slam and they win the game!

Saturday, May 10th - We load up and meet Debra at Dr. J's office at 9am and start the process of getting our first round of shots. April goes first. One shot in the arm and one in the thigh. She is thoroughly traumatized and her leg hurts enough that she has a little trouble walking.
Next is E. He admits to being a little nervous. One shot in the arm and one in each hip. He says it wasn't bad at all. And on down the line we go. Everyone else gets the same amount of shots and then last, but not least, it's Autie's turn. She wanted to watch everyone else so by now she is pretty freaked out. She gets the one in the arm and is a little shaken, but not too bad. Then she gets one in the side of her butt. That one hurt and she's decided she's going to pass on the third one. She starts screaming and trying to run so Dr. J, the nurse with the English accent and I hold her down and they give her the last shot in her thigh.

Everyone recovers and we go to McDonald's to reward the kids for their bravery.

Tuesday, May 13th - Happy anniversary! E and I have been married for 13 years today and we celebrate by taking all the kids to the health department again for the second round of shots. Everyone did great and the kids got free ice cream coupons for Dairy Queen so that's where we went.

We will be going to the health department again on May 19th, 27th and June 2nd.

Our insurance provider told me that they don't cover these vaccines, but after talking to E, they have assured us that they will be covering some of it. We won't know how much until after they get the claim. Be praying.

The lesson in all of this? Keep your pets indoors at all times? Stay away from animals of every kind? No. The lesson in all of this is, just when you think the enemy is finished messing with your finances, he will, no doubt, come back with a vengeance and pull some outlandish prank to try and set you back several grand. But, my God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and all the Immune globulin and Rabivert you could ever need, for that matter. He's got our back so we can look back at this and laugh. Here's something I found to help with that...

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Milk tales

When I go grocery shopping at HEB, I usually buy 4 gallons of organic milk [more if it's close to the exp date and on sale] and put all but one of them in the freezer for later. Lately, though, I have been getting a gallon of raw milk once a week from Slow Poke Farms and lately it's been two gallons. For the past week, we've had 2 and a half gallons we'd been working on and yesterday, we finally finished off the last bit.

I knew we'd need some milk for breakfast this morning, so last night I set out a gallon to thaw that I had froze and this morning it was ready for the kid's cereal.

John took a bite of his cereal and said, "Ewwww, mom. This milk tastes like water."

"No" I said, "I just forgot to shake it up. After it's been frozen, it sometimes separates."

I fixed a bowl for myself and started to eat it and said, "John, you're right. This milk does taste like water. I wonder what's wrong with it?"

I realized while I was cleaning up the kitchen what it was and the mystery was solved.

2%. The milk we had drank this morning was 2%. I used to love it. My kids used to love it. But we have been drinking strictly raw milk for about 2 weeks now and I guess we're a little spoiled. It really did taste like water to me. I almost couldn't finish my cereal.

This is going to be an expensive habit.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

More of the incredible, climbing Parks!

Those of you who know my kids, know that they are definitely climbers. They don't stay in their cribs long and soon they're scaling everything in sight.

The other day, Autie said, "Moooom. April's on the car."

I looked outside and sure enough, she was on top of the van with her arms in the air. I honestly couldn't figure out how she did it.

Yesterday, I caught her in the act and took some pictures. Here's the evidence.




I believe this is the part where she says, "Tada!"

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Guess what I did?

That title kind of sounds like it could be a regular feature. I'm really hoping it doesn't turn out to be!

Last week I did my usual grocery shopping at HEB and bought a cart load of all our favorites. I had some meals planned, but mostly I bought things that my stomach told me to buy because I was STARVING!

Anyway, I saw this big, beautiful pork roast and had visions of me cooking it nice and slow and feeding it to my adoring family and friends. I know I have said that I can't buy regular beef or chicken at the store anymore, but this is pork we're talking about. Whatever convictions I have about food, pork is always the last to go. Did I mention my love for bacon? (Ok, ok, I didn't realize I had already mentioned it!)

I was unloading all the frozen stuff into the upright deep freezer when some of the food in there started to tumble out. I did a little dance because I did not want a frozen anything landing on my precious toes! In my hand was the big, beautiful pork roast still in the plastic grocery bag. I dropped it behind me and proceeded to rearrange the freezer. Basically, I pushed all the same stuff to the back that I've been pushing back there for a year or so. Stuff I have no intention of eating, but feel guilty throwing away. I managed to get everything stacked just so and my new grocery items in there and then I moved on to the pantry items.

Fast forward a couple of days ago. My deep freeze is located in my laundry room and every time I would go in there, there was this smell. At first, it just smelled like someone, son or husband, had gone in there and "released some gas" so I didn't think anything of it. Then, the next day, it smelled more like a dirty diaper and I didn't remember putting one in the trash can in there. We're also potty training so I searched really good for a surprise hidden somewhere. Nope. No diapers or surprises.

Yesterday, I couldn't take it anymore. It smelled like something had gone into my laundry to die, actually died and had begun the process of decomposition.

Well, remember that big, beautiful pork roast I had such visions for? It was still in the plastic grocery bag where I left it only now it was covered with a dirty t-shirt and some socks and it reaked of dead animal. Sometimes, when I leave something out (oh, yes, I've done this before) I find it during that gray time when you're not sure if it's had a chance to spoil. Like eggs, or milk, or not so frozen vegetables. I always take a minute to struggle over whether I should throw it out or not. This time, my only decision was where to put the rotting thing. Trash pick-up was scheduled for the next day, so I could just put it in there and never look back. E suggested I boil the thing and give it to the dog. No way. I love Chloe but I'm not fixing her a gourmet meal of rotting meat just so I can feel a little better about wasting $11!

So, in the big blue trash container it went, along with every fly in the neighborhood. "Have at it!" I said.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Thank you, it's good to be back.

Oh my goodness! Have I been busy. That was a statement, not a question. I feel so out of the loop. Actually I've been in the middle of a very big loop, I just haven't shared any of it with you. But today, you are going to get so much information about me and what I've been up to that you won't want to hear from me for at least another month!

Here's a photo list of some of the things that have been going on around here:

Road trip to the metroplex to see a now out-of-state friend and let the kids see Nana.


Got a dog for John and named her Chloe.


Had a princess party for my 6 year old princess.

With lots of fancy goodies to eat,

and lots of goodies to take home,

one very grown up girl...

and six candles!


Had another party for my 2 year old princess.


Watching my son play baseball. Go Tigers!


Helped host a baby shower for Francesca.


Made my first pound cake and forgot to add the flour. I got it out and set it on the counter and then proceeded to leave it there, unopened, while I finished the cake and put it in the oven. Did I mention that I'll be turning 37 next month? I'm sure that has nothing to do with it.

Didn't just talk about a garden, but actually started it!

Here's my tomato plants.

Potatoes are coming up nicely!



And last, but certainly not least, I just finished setting up my church's blog yesterday. And you know I wouldn't do that much work and not give you a link to it. Be sure to put a link on your blog if you have one, visit often and comment even more. It'll make Brandon's day!


So, that's just about it. Those are the things I took pictures of anyway. I promise I'll try to be more regular. Maybe fiber will help.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Works for me Wednesday

Yes, this is the same WFMW tip I posted last week, but I've had some people ask me about it so I'm running it again. I've also added a few steps at the end to make it even easier to keep up with!

Here's the scenario. Someone you know has a new baby or surgery or maybe both and you are asked if you'd like to fix a meal for that person and their family. I don't know about you, but I immediately freeze up and can't think of a single meal I could make. I forget I even know how to cook. I tell the person, "I'll call you and let you know." Then I pore over all my cookbooks, second guess myself and, eventually, never make the call.

I now have a solution. This idea came from another chef friend of mine and I'm just getting around to implementing it, but so far it's working.

I have been keeping a list of meals that my family likes and that friends have said they like and also some generally simple meals that anyone would like. I've taken that list and formed a menu that the new mom/surgery patient can order from. Here's my version...

Sorry it's so small. If you click on it, you can see it better.

Anyway, I will take this menu and give it along with my gift, at the person's baby shower and they can fill it out and mail it back in the self addressed, stamped envelope. That way, they don't have to think about it again. When that sign-up sheet comes around to me, all I have to do is pick the day that works best for me and start cooking! (If you're doing this for some other reason, it's not hard to adapt it to the situation.)

Update: I don't have a printer right now so I haven't been able to do this yet, but my plan is to get a binder notebook and keep copies of the menu sheets in the side pocket along with self-addressed stamped envelopes and in the binder part, have all the recipes and their list of ingredients printed out and in order so when I get that menu returned to me with a meal selected, I can just go to that menu, make my list, and get started! It might also be a good idea to put a tab in the back of the binder and keep those menu's for future reference. If you evey want to make dinner for that person again in the future, you can surprise them and know that they will love what you made because they picked it out!

And that, my friends, is what works for me!