DIY Laundry Detergent

I found a link on pinterest to a recipe for DIY laundry detergent and decided to try it. It comes from a family of 9 who uses it in their huge loads daily and said it works great. It cost just under $20 for all the supplies. They said it lasts them about 2.5 months, doing 1-2 stuffed full loads per day... I will have to see how long this ends up lasting us and see if it was worth it, but I figured why not try!

What You Need:
1 box super washing soda
1 box Borax
1 box Pure Baking Soda
1 (3 lb) container of Oxy-Clean
3 bars Fels-Naptha, shredded
Large bucket (at least 3 gallons)
1/4 cup scoop (I saved the scoop from the oxy clean)

What You Do:
You are going to mix all of the ingredients together, but since it is a lot of white powders it is best to do one at a time. 
Mix Borax and Super Washing soda in the bucket (with large spoon).
Then add Baking Soda and mix well. 
Add Oxy-clean and mix well (save the scoop!)
Lastly you will add the Fels-Naptha but you first have to shred it. They recommended a food processor, but since I didn't have one I simply used a grater and it worked awesome! 

Mix all of these together well and store with an airtight lid. 

For ease of use, I used the Oxy-Clean container to put a small amount of detergent in the laundry room and saved the large container in a different area. You will need 1/4 cup per large load (or 1/8 cup if you have a high efficiency washer). In order to not have to buy a measuring cup, I measured 1/4 cup of water in the Oxy-Clean scoop. It came up to the 3 line that is already drawn on there, so I marked it with a Sharpie for future reference. 

Spent Grain Dog Treats

Trey recently started brewing with actual grain (instead of extract) and so when he is done brewing he has a lot of grain left over, called spent grain. 

We looked up a recipe to bake dog treats with it... it is super easy and the dogs love it! We just put together the grain (4 cups), flour (2 cups), peanut butter (1 cup) and 2 eggs! Mix it all together and then cut it into "cookies" ... the only cookie cutter we actually have is a gingerbread man so that's what they got!

The dogs love them! 

Trolley Pub

We wanted to do something fun and different to celebrate Trey's birthday and decided to rent a Trolley Pub (really the Biker Bar NC in downtown Durham). We took a mid day tour that started at Bull City Burger and stopped at Fullsteam and then Triangle Brewing Company. We thought (were told before purchasing the trolley pub) that we would be stopping at each place to go on tours, but instead we were just told a little bit about them and then grabbed a drink. It was probably more fun than actually taking multiple tours though.

We were also able to bring our own drinks on the trolley. We had it booked for a weekend in late March and the weather was actually kind of rainy (but at least warm). So we came out in our rain gear and had a great time. The hills were a lot of fun, downhill was crazy and uphill was quite a workout!

Trey's Birthday Celebrations

Trey's birthday was about a week ago and we have enjoyed feast after feast to celebrate. Kanki sends you a free hibachi meal on your birthday so we used that first.We went there the night before Trey's actual birthday, it was so good. 

Jersey Mike's gives you a free sub for your birthday but it has to be ON your actual birthday. Since they were having a potluck at work for Trey's birthday, we decided to have Jersey Mike's for dinner that night. So he picked it up on the way home and we watched the basketball game while eating dinner! No clean up required :)

For Christmas, Trey got supplies to keg his homebrewed beer, and for his birthday he got (well is getting when it comes in) a keggle (a keg turned in to a bigger pot to brew in, to hold more liquid and make larger batches of beer) and a cooler that he converted to a mash tun (to use to brew from "scratch" with grain instead of buying extract that has already gone through that process). He was pretty excited about his new toys. 

We celebrated his birthday with his parents at the beach when we went down for St. Patrick's Day weekend. Frank grilled steaks, shrimp kabobs, we had asparagus and potatoes. And BJ topped us off with a lemon icebox pie. It was so good that we were basically in a food coma the rest of the night. 

And almost a week after we started, we finally wrapped up Trey's birthday feasts at Red Lobster with my family. His birthday always falls during Lobsterfest so it is our little tradition to go there for his birthday dinner. 

Fun Weekends with Friends

After our many snow days (and before a few more) the weather took a break and turned really nice for a couple of weekends lately. We were able to enjoy the nice weather with friends. 

We went to Carol's annual Mardis Gras party (a costume party, this year there was no specific theme). 

The next day was gorgeous so we took the dogs (including Barley, Jennifer and Ricks puppy) to Blue Jay Point to run around and swim a little bit. 

That night we went to Kristen and Ryan's for dinner,

she prepared a delicious low country boil!

 And of course her banana pudding for dessert... the boys loved it. 

Brew Dogs (a brewery in Scotland but also now a TV show that goes around and visits different breweries around the US and brews a beer "special" to that area) came to Fullsteam in Durham. Trey had just caught up on all of season 1 so he was super excited that they were starting season 2 locally. We went to the show taping and got to taste test the beer ourselves! 

 It was "the most calorific beer" .... a beer float: a stout brewed with fresh NC maple syrup and bacon (from Rose's meat market in Durham), topped with ice cream, maple syrup and bacon! It was delicious!

 Brewing on the porch on a nice Sunday:

We hadn't been to the beach in a while so we were free St. Patrick's Day weekend and headed down. Jennifer and Rick came down with us and took Barley to the beach for the first time!

 We went down to the Emerald Isle St. Patty's festival and beer tent.

 And we enjoyed relaxing at home and walking on the beach. 

 It was a very relaxing weekend... until Saturday night when Vegas woke up every hour or 2 to go throw up. She hadn't eaten her food in over 24 hours (probably too much excitement) and we think that was the culprit. She got chicken and rice the next 2 days that she thoroughly enjoyed... and seemed to feel much better Sunday and back to 100% by Monday. 

 Exhausted on the ride home.