I love shiny things!

I have too many keys on my keychain.  I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem, since the stores sell so many key covers and things so people can tell their keys apart.  I'm too cheap to buy something like this, and it feels like it would be cheating since it's gotta be so easy to make a key look different!!

So I saw this (on Pinterest, of course!) http://wrightlife.webs.com/  Scroll all the way down to the bottom for the glitter key post.

I made mine a little different since I'm no longer a renter (woo hoooo!!!) and I'll have my house key for a very very very long time, or so I'm planning.

This is what I started with..lots of keys..all either silver or gold. Cue me struggling at my door making sure I grab the right one

Instead of using clear nail polish since I'm not worried about having to give my key back, I used spray glue and a clear spray sealer.

 I taped off the part of the key that needs to stay glitter free using painter's tape.  Make sure you cover the whole length of the key if you're using spray glue, it gets everywhere!!

 Spray one side at a time and cover in your glitter

 Let it dry for a while. Don't forget to get the edges of the key too, or you will have gold edges peeking out.

 I did 2 coats of spray and glitter, just because I liked a little more depth to the glitter.  You can do however many you want.  It might also look interesting if you layered different colors!

Then I sprayed a coat of sealer on each side and let it dry some more.  It doesn't take long for either the spray glue or the sealant to dry, just a few minutes.

 The finished product, back among it's fellow keys but looking fabulous!!  I love being able to quickly grab my house key and not have to fiddle around with all the keys.  It's got a different texture too so if it's dark I can feel which one it is!  This is great because many many many (uh, yeah, really this many!) days we forget to turn the outside light on before we leave.

And I just love looking at shiny, sparkly things.  They make me smile.  So now I look at my keys and smile!

Some good clean fun!

This is one of those projects that took me weeks to finish.  I don't think it would take your average person this long, but for me, weeks!
I had seen lots of people making their own liquid hand soap from just 3 ingredients, grated bar soap, glycerin, and water, and I usually get annoyed at having to buy liquid hand soap so often.  I mean, really!  Why is the stuff so expensive??? I know it's mostly water, but until the magic that is pinterest, I had no idea I could make it myself!
I had also heard that if you microwave Ivory soap, it does fun things.

Put the two together, and BAM!  Some good, clean fun!

I don't have any kids to do this with, but I do have a fiancee who is open to any type of fun, so I began with this.  We put it in the microwave for 1 minute increments, each time watching in amazement as it grew bigger and bigger!!

It looks delicious!! Looks can be deceiving though, believe me!! haha!

Anyways...once the fluffy soap cooled off (that cake is full of steam on the inside, be careful!) it gets kinda brittle and crumbly.  I figured, hey, I can just break it up into little pieces instead of having to grate it, right?

So into the pot with one gallon of water and 1 tablespoon of the glycerin. 

 

I let it 'cook' on low heat until it looked like all the soap had dissolved.  It just looked like soapy water, which really, is what is was. Then I turned off the heat and just let it sit there until it got cold.  Enter the reason it took me so long to actually complete this project.

The first time it came out a little too thick.

See?  I remembered reading that you can just add water and mix it in with a mixer to make it not so thick.  So I tried. 

I just guessed at how much water to put in.  When I was done, I had enough soap to fill a gallon jug + an old liquid soap container that I had.

It took another two weeks to use up the soap we already had in the dispensers, and when it did I got very excited.  I get to try my homemade soap now!!!!  That didn't last very long, because when I pulled out my gallon jug that had been full of soap, this is what I saw: 

What happened??? How could my beautiful liquid soap have turned into this thick, clumpy mess??

I'm still not sure if it's because the soap didn't actually melt all the way or if it's because the soap was cold when I tried to mix in more water.  Whichever it was, I went back to square 1...or square 2 really, and heated it back up on the stove.  I added a tsp more glycerin and some more water too, just to be safe. 

After letting it get cool again (and having to transfer half into another container because of all the water I added)  This time it turned out too thin!!!  Ahhhh! I just can't get it right!

Frustrated, I let it sit for another week, mulling over how I can fix this soap disaster.

I decide to grate 1/2 a bar of Ivory soap, cook it with a small amount of water (just enough so it makes a liquid) and then add this 'thickener' to the too thin soap a little at a time, waiting in between to make sure I don't make it too thick.

So far so good, but I've still got my fingers crossed!!  The soap seems to be perfect, or as near as I'm willing to get it, consistency.  In the pan it looked kind of like snot, but then in the containers it seems just right.

So for those of you who need more precise measurements than my 'a little of this a little of that' description..here goes:

Ingredients: 

1 bar Ivory soap

1.5 gallons water

1 Tbsp glycerin

Grate Ivory soap.  Or have some fun watching it get huge in the microwave, just be SURE you crumble it into tiny tiny pieces.  And be careful of the steam.

Mix all the ingredients in a pot and heat on low heat, stirring occasionally, until all the soap is dissolved.

Turn off heat, let cool.  This takes a few hours, so find something else to do while you wait!

Check the consistency, it should be snot-like and gooey.  If it is too thick, reheat and add a small amount of water.  If it's too thin, reheat and add some more grated soap.  This part is a little trial and error until you get it right.

Once your consistency is where you like it, get a lot of empty containers to put your new soap in and enjoy!

The Saga of the Neverending Shower project

So the shower is finally fixed!!  It only took 4 weeks!  And it really just started as an attempt to fix the grout that was missing between the tiles.

But I promised before and after pictures, so here goes.

I don’t have a true before picture..I mean, I have a picture of the whole bathroom, but who really takes a picture of the inside of their shower?? Unless it’s a super spa quality shower, which, obviously, ours was not.  So the first picture is from after the grab bar decided to not grab anymore.

After we pulled all the old yucky tiles down off the wall.

 Ugh, messy bathroom.

I wish we had the time/money/energy to get NEW tiles to do the shower, but, alas, we have none of those 3 right now.  Some day!

We went with one of those 5 piece shower surround kits, we bought the middle quality one.  Not too cheap that it will fall apart in another 2 years but not so expensive that we have to eat ramen for weeks.  We bought it from Home Depot, and I used my shop.com/getonmycloud account.  So I actually bought it online, then went to the store to pick it (and whatever other last minute stuff we needed).  They had it all together at the customer service counter AND I got $7.90 cash back!! (which is pretty awesome since we would have spend the exact same amount if we went into the store and bought the same stuff, might as well get some of it back)   It was pretty easy to put up too, the biggest issue we had was with the new faucet that we bought (since we had everything opened up anyways).  It leaked in a couple spots, but that was easy to fix with the help of our new plumber friend J

So the neverending shower saga is now complete, and I’m a happy camper.  Back to fun projects!!!