Work In Progress: the forever blanket

About a year and a half ago, I started making granny squares and fell in love with a cool little trick that made a granny square with a big fat polka dot in the middle.  "Make a blanket for the couch," I thought to myself; "I'll never get sick of yellow & grey," I thought.

"How long could it *POSSIBLY* take?!"

I took this picture today when I found the bag containing this half-assembled hot mess.  I'm 5 squares short and even shorter on the patience required to stitch all of these squares together, obviously.

I've decided to just go ahead and finish the darn thing up already.  I'll make the remaining squares tonight and start the incredibly boring task of stitching it all up tomorrow.  I need the motivation to complete it because I just found a really cute idea for matching pixel art blankets to make for my nephews this year (but that's another work in progress post for another day).

What are YOU working on?

Clementine Cleaner DIY (with many, MANY pictures)

I've seen plenty of recipes for orange cleaner on the internet for awhile now.  

We've been a clementine family ever since Sullivan was 3 or 4 and could peel it himself so I decided to try my luck with clementine cleaner awhile back.  Citrus is citrus, right?  

Much to my surprise, not only is this stuff amazing on it's own or diluted in a spray bottle with your normal cleaner...

but it completely OWNS those pesky upc stickers on the bottoms of my candle jars.

Even diluted, I spray this on the stickers, wait 30 seconds and they all just peel right off in one piece.  it's crazy good, you guys.  CRAZY. GOOD.

Here's what you need:

Clementines, vinegar & a jar.

seriously, that's it.

I used apple cider vinegar for awhile but I started with white vinegar originally.  

The only difference I've noticed is color and smell but not in the quality of the cleaner.

Step 1:

Peel your clementines.  Put peels in jar, put fruit in mouth.

Cuties is KILLING IT with this sticker.  too cute.

 

Step 2:

Pour vinegar over the peels, almost to the top of the peels.

Ok you caught me, there are 2 different vinegars being poured here.  I finished off my apple cider vinegar about halfway up.  I could have gone out to the store for more but today is the coldest day in Chicago in a very long time, so... no.  I finished off with some rice vinegar I had on hand.  slightly less acidic than most vinegars but it still does the trick.

Step 3:

Set your jar aside.  

Somewhere it's out of the way but still close enough that you can drop more peels in there as you go and add more vinegar.  That's its home for the next 2 weeks.  You might want to hire a metal guard chicken as well, but it's your call.

When your beautiful, bright orange peels look grey and soggy, it's harvest time!

Here I just use a glass measuring cup and hope for the best but feel free to make this process as easy or complicated as you like it to be. 

potato masher? hey, if that's what you're into...

Put the lid back on tightly, make the jar pretty if you like...

but there you go. 

Natural concentrated cleaner and sticky cleanup solution

A purpose for everyday kitchen scraps