Attempting to switch over to all Natural cleaning stuff

I have been thinking about this for some time now.  I really like the idea of a cleaning my house and laundry with greener and more natural products.  Safer and in some cases, as I will explain here, cheaper.
This post is mostly about my homemade laundry soap.  I go through tons of laundry at my house, mountains of it.  A lot of them are pastels for my girls, who simply love the mud and anything else they can possibly get on them.
So started my journey.  With the economy as it is these days, we make barely enough money to pay the bills and get a few basic groceries.  I have read online how homemade laundry soap is so much cheaper.  I thought about this, cheaper is great, but does it clean?  So instead of buying my usual detergent 2 months ago, I bought the ingredients to make it and then would just hope for the best.  The first few formulas were a disaster!  I browsed some more and found new ones, and took the ones that worked fairly good and changed it to how I liked it.  I finally succeeded with 2 formulas, one powder and one liquid.
Make no mistake, these are no miracle workers, I still have to pre-soak and pre-treat.  Sometimes I will pull something out of the washer and spray it down and throw it back in the laundry for the next round.  All in all, my close are clean and smell good too!
To go along with my homemade laundry soap, I have made some fabric softener and pre-treating spray.
As I have the supplies to make soap, I get to choose from a variety of different scents.  (I also so have a soap shop on Etsy-link to the left)
I make my laundry soap with my hand-poured goats milk soap, great scents, even cheaper than buying soap, and still works nicely.
I am currently selling a Make Your Own Liquid Laundry Soap Kit in my soap shop so you can make some of this at home.  I will post my formulas for pre-treating spray and softener in a later post, when I make sure they are perfect.
More posts on making my house greener, safer and more natural will come as I slowly switch over.
By the way, to buy all the ingredients and make my own laundry items really has been a lot cheaper!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow!  I have been so busy focusing on my Etsy shop that I have neglected my baking and cooking section.  I will get something made and the recipe and picture hopefully posted soon.  Don't give up on me :)

Yum Yum!

I still have not tried the agave in my divity....Not sure if I want to just yet. I did make some delicious vanilla pudding with agave and it turned out real good. I made it with whole eggs, next time I am going for just the yolks. There was little tiny white things in it that made it a bit difficult to eat. My boys just loved it and gobble it all up!

Not Good

My attempt at Divinity was a complete failure. One yucky ooy-gooey mess, no fluffy clouds. This one is going to take some time to figure out. Any ideas are more than welcome. I think the honey is my problem...going to try agave next. Wish me luck!

Yummy cookies

Today I tried my luck at Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, which turned out wonderful and yummy too. No sugar, just agave and honey as sweeteners and whole wheat too! With the oats, it is hard to tell they were whole wheat. Chocolate Chip cookies will present a problem when I attempt those:) Another success to add to my book. Too bad I can't post smells too, they smelled sooooo good.

This week's Success

My granola was a great success! I was at first skeptical about it...it has no refined sugar, cept the coconut. It smelled so good baking in the oven.