Monday, January 07, 2008

Zout It Out

This is the most amazing stuff I've found in -- well, almost ever. I can't tell you how many shirts I have ruined with oil stains. You know the ones. You're eating salad and suddenly there's a piece of it on you and it leaves the spot of oil from the dressing. It's really just about impossible to get out. The stain stick and Shout never got those out.

A few weeks ago, an oil spot showed up on one of the DH's favorite sweatshirts. Plus, it had already been through the dryer when it was discovered and then made at least one more trip through the drier before I started working on the stain. I also splattered butter on a fairly new sweater, so I was determined to figure out how to get the stains out.

I went to a great book Queen of Clean Cleans Everything. It's a fantastic book for figuring out how to get almost anything clean, including bad luandry issues. First, I found the recommendation to put WD-40 on it. I sprayed it on, waited five minutes, and then rubbed in dish detergent, as directed by the queen, then laundered as usual. It just left a different stain. Her second suggestion was Zout. I found it for $2.99 at Target and sprayed it on the sweatshirt and another sweater that had set-in stains. One trip through the washer and dryer and both were good as new.

For my money, that's about as good a value as you can get. For $3 I saved two pieces of clothing so far and expect to do the same with more.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Still Christmas Crafting

This is the last of my Christmas projects. I just finished this one today, but it still counts. It's for a few gifts that I'll be giving next week when I see the rest of the Stake Relief Society presidency. Hopefully none of them are reading this and spoiling the surprise.


To make these, I used cardstock for the front and back covers and then used decorative papers and stickers to embelish and make them look cool. I found wonderful papers to use, so that helped things turn out very nicely. I made four, so after the ladies choose theirs, there will be one left for me!