The Most Sparkly (and non-toxic) Toilet You've Ever Seen

My new favorite natural cleaning recipe: vinegar and baking soda for cleaning your toilet bowl. Not only are those store bought toilet bowl cleaners filled with horrible chemicals, but they're expensive too! I've been thinking there has got to be a better way to get rid of that lovely ring around the toilet bowl. I recently came across this recipe using these two ingredients I now consider staples around my house.

Here's how i did it:

1) flush the toilet and turn off the water when the water is out of the bowl, before it fills up. It's fine if there is some water in there, but you want to have less than a full bowl worth.

2) pour in a splash of vinegar. I used about 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup.

3) pour some baking soda in there and watch it fizz with the vinegar.

4) take your toilet bowl brush and scrub the bowl out.

5) leave it for about 20 minutes before flushing and turning the water back on.

There you go! Easy shmeasy, and totally non-toxic! Not to mention CHEAP! Now you can enjoy your sparkly clean toilet bowl. Have at it, ladies!

Our First Egg

We got three more hens last night from some nice lady on Freecycle. These three are Buff Orphingtons, and they join our lone little Rhode Island Red, who lost her mate, the rooster, to our chicken soup for tonight's dinner. They've been figuring out their pecking order all day long. Blood has been drawn, and chickens can be found pacing back and forth in the coop, as they decide who is where in the order.
So, we got our first egg today! One of the new ladies left it in the nesting box this morning. I took The Princess down to get it out this afternoon, when she woke up from her nap. I let her hold the egg, knowing full well that it might not make it to the house alive. It didn't. It ended up all over both of us while The Princess cried from the fall she took while trying to walk up the rocky path oh-so-carefully. It was a memorable first egg. There will be more tomorrow! (hopefully).

Here goes...

So, I've thought about blogging for a loooong time. Why haven't I done it? Partly because I don't know where in the world I will find the time. But partly because I'm a little afraid that nobody will want to read it, or that I'm not a good enough writer. But I've decided that I want to chronicle my kids' childhoods, to document our adventures in learning to homestead, and that I need to make the time because these reasons are important enough to do so. And if people read it, great. If they don't, then, well, that's great too.