Cleaning My Dyson

 While I was surfing around Pinterest I saw a pin about cleaning your Dyson vacuum.  I said to myself, "You are supposed to clean them?"  I have emptied the canister and clean the hair off the bottom, but that is about it.

In the eight years I have had this vacuum, I will confess it has never been deep cleaned.  So one sunny spring day I set out to clean my Dyson. 

Now Dyson has many different versions so yours may not have the same parts.  But I think the concepts are the same. Remember not to force any parts off. 

Open your trap door on the bottom of your canister and then take off the screws.  Next gently pull off the handled top.   

 Watch out for the giant dust cloud that explodes all around you!  OK, it is a miracle anything gets clean with this thing, YUCK! 

I took a hose to all of these pieces.  I kept rinsing until the water ran clear.  Then I took them inside and scrubbed them with a soapy toothbrush  

 Next I found the filter.  Never knew it had one, but there are stickers on the machine telling me where it is. OOPS!

That filter is supposed to be blue.

 I brought it inside and rinsed it until it ran clear.  It was like squeezing mud out of that thing. Then I found out I am supposed to clean that thing every six months.  

 So next up is the roller brush area.  Yes, we all probably cut the hair and string off now and again.  But today I am taking the plastic housing off.  

My roller didn't come off all the way, so I had to work around the brush.  

 So I found a couple more parts that came off.  I rinsed and wiped all the parts.  I am leaving them to dry in the sun today.  Then I will let them dry inside for a couple of days.  You don't want moisture inside your vacuum.  

So there you have it!  One sparkling clean vacuum.  I thought it would be a simple task, but it took a couple hours to take apart and clean all the parts.  But now I have a "brand new" vacuum, that should last another 8 years. 

 Well, I hope so anyway.

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!

Does It Work????

 I have been doing some deep cleaning lately.  On Pinterest I found so homemade cleaners.  

This one cleans your tub/shower.  I have a textured bottom and no matter what I have tried (bleach, plain baking soda, scouring powder...) it just didn't come clean.  Then I found this site that claimed to have the cure to clean your stubborn shower scum.   

So I thought I would give it a try. 

The recipe calls for:

1/2 c. white vinegar

1/2 c. Original Blue Dawn Dish Soap

4 T. Baking Soda

Heat the vinegar in the microwave for about 90 seconds.  Let it cool a few minutes.  I began to add the baking soda a little at a time.  There was too much foam so I added the soap and gave it a stir.  Then I added the rest of the baking soda.

This made a bowl of foamy goodness.

Now I clean my shower every week and still have this gross looking bottom.  Don't judge.

 So I spread the mixture all over the bottom.  I had to make another batch to cover the entire area.

Now you let it sit for two hours.  When I came back and started to scrub it didn't seem to get all the crevasses so I smeared it around again and left it for another hour.

 I took a scrub brush and gave it a good scrubbing.  Some areas needed a bit more elbow grease than others, but it came clean.   

This made me very happy.  If you have a textured bath/shower.  Give it try!  

This next concoction is a grease cutter.  When I fist saw it I thought a grease cutter that uses oil?????  But it is AWESOME.  You can read the blog post HERE.

The recipe is:
1 part vegetable oil
2 part baking soda

Mix it in a small bowl and grab an old toothbrush.  The site claimed to get that greasy gunk off you cabinets.  Since I have light colored cabinets, pictures really didn't show a change.  But you could feel how clean the wood and knobs were after I scrubbed a bit.  So I was thinking maybe it would work on my stove.  

I have a stainless steel stove and it took all the little grease marks right off.  It is a miracle cleaner! It also took off the black grease around the burners.  It is a little messy but worth the extra clean up.

So there you have two easy cleansers that you whip up at home.  Happy spring cleaning!

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!

House Keeping Tip

As many of you know we supplement our heat with a wood stove in the winter.  I love the smell and the flicker of the flames.  What I don't like as much is keeping the area clean.  I am constantly cleaning up ash and soot.

 After a week of fires the glass is covered in soot and I can't see the flames so much anymore.

When we first moved in (being a wood stove newby) I tried to clean the glass with glass cleaner.  Well that didn't work. So I googled "how to clean fireplace glass". I love google!

Well I didn't beilive the answer I found.  It said to get a damp paper towel and dip it in the ashes and then rub the glass.  

Really???? Ewwwwww

 

It really works!

 So if you have dirty fireplace glass, 

use this handy tip to keep it clean.

If you like this tip, please share it on Pinterest.

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!

DIY Chalkboard Wall

My friend Kim made this cool chalkboard wall a few weeks ago.  I thought that was a real fun idea, so I decided to create one in my kitchen.  

I went to Lowes and bought some chalkboard paint, primer, and rollers.  I was thinking to make mine magnetic, but the paint did not get good reviews, so I stuck with plain chalkboard paint.  The paint was 9 bucks.  So if you have the other things in your garage, this would be an inexpensive project.  I like using disposable rollers, so I don't have to clean anything.  

 


Next I primed the surface with two coats of primer.  Then I put on three coats of chalkboard paint.  I waited four hours between coats to make sure it was really dry.  Then you have to wait 24 hours before you can write on the wall.

 The next step is IMPORTANT!  You have to prime the surface of the wall.  Rub chalk all over your wall.  I used the side of chalk and this went pretty quickly.    I was a bit dusty, but it wiped up real fast.  If you don't do this step you will get shadows left behind of everything you write on the board and will have to repaint the wall more often.  

Priming the wall gave it a real nice look.  It didn't look so stark black.  Can you tell the difference in the picture below?

   When you wipe it off, use a cotton piece of material.  I used an old t shirt.  This worked great.  Plus you can just rinse it out and throw it in the wash. 

Now comes the fun part.  You all know I am a doodler, so this was fun.  I can change out the art/doodles, notes, lists (I love lists!) all the time!

This project was a bit time consuming project.  It was sooooo hard to let it dry for 24 hours and NOT draw on it.  I love how it turned out.

Thanks for stopping by.

Have a blessed day!  

Fall Pennant Banners

It is fall festival time at my church and I volunteered to help make decorations.  

Any time I can use my crafty talents I am ALL in!  So I thought I would create a little tutorial for you, so you can do some fall decorating too.

 

I went to JoAnns and bought 6 yards of burlap.   I had these stamps in my stash.  I used the triangle pattern left over from when I made a billion banners for a very special wedding, a few years ago.  You can see those banners HERE. 

All you need to do is trace the triangles 

and cut them out with fabric scissors.  

BEWARE, burlap is very rough and itchy!  

I was left with some great scraps that will be used to decorate mason jars.  

Next I used acrylic paints and stamped some of the pennants.

I made some that will welcome guests to the festival.  I used my Cricut to cut out 3 inch letter stencils from paper scraps.

Use a foam brush to "stamp" the letters onto the burlap.  

I used twine an hot glue to make the banner.  It is nice if you have a helper to assist in the process!  

Looking Good!

Thanks for stopping by and have a blessed day!

"As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace." 1 Peter 4:10

Storm Damage

Last weekend storms ripped through Virginia.  Here is the damage left behind.  We had tons of branches and twigs covering our lot.

Back in our woods we lost two trees. 

We will be chopping them up for firewood.

Here are the two trees.  They fell toward the shed.  Only a few shingles were ripped off the shed. 

Man, we were lucky it wasn't smashed.

Here is the root from one of the trees. 

There are a bunch of flat rocks in the roots that

we pulled out to use around our pond. 

Here is the other side of the shed.

We were blessed that our house did not get hit by any trees.  We just have some major wood chopping to do. 

Happenings......LONG!

We had 3 dead trees cut down around

our house.  We needed to protect our home from them smooshing us.  The guys

climbed them and they were up to 150 feet high!

I read a lot of craft blogs.  I got this idea of for a table cloth.  I used it at our 4^th of July BBQ. 

Then Sarah came to visit and she brought her beads.  We worked on making some jewelry.   I made this necklace and bracelet.  She was a the first person to share my craft room with me. 

Sarah wanted to learn how to crochet.  She picked it up real fast.  She made her kitty a little bed to curl up in. She picked out a little backpack that was a bit hard for a beginner so I made it for her.  I have never made anything but blankets and a few hats.  So this was a new thing for me.  But it turned out ok.  I may even make myself one some day.

We had all the kids over one night and had a fire to make one of my favorite treats SMORES!  It was nice spending time with all the kids.

It has been a good couple of weeks!