Prairie Scraps

Whether you set resolutions or not, there is just something about wanting to have a clean house in the new year!  I'm going to be putting together a series for the month of January to not only clean your house, but to clean it as green as possible. In the last 6 months, I've had a weekly cleaning job, where my boss wanted the house cleaned with as few chemicals as possible.  That began my search for products that would work, not take too long to use, and do the job right. I'm going to share with you ideas, tricks and how-tos for getting your house deep cleaned month of January.  I'll be taking the entire job a little at a time, one or two areas at a time, so the even the busiest person can get through the entire house with deep cleaning.  Some people may deep clean their entire house all at once, but I dread doing that, so break it up a little at a time.  I try to clean as I go. One thing that will need to be done, while doing these extra deep clean...

I always try to do all my laundry on Mondays, washed and folded!  All of it for seven people in in our house!!! It may seem impossible to some.  I hear so many of my friends that only have 2-3 kids talk about how overwhelmed they are with laundry!  I've even been to their houses and they haven't a chair in the living room to sit on because laundry is on every surface. During school, we are down to just 3 kids, and I have to say, it's so easy to do this, but it does take discipline to finish the laundry.  My reward: being finished for the remainder of the week!! For the first time in a long time, I actually got behind and took until Wednesday night to finish!  Of course, four of my kids, with excitement of the holidays, forgot to bring their laundry down to me to get washed, so I was doing 2 weeks of laundry for over half of our household.  It feels wonderful to have it finished, now!  For the Personalized Laundry Baskets For tips and to learn how ...

December, you can save big on gifts, organizational products, bags and purses, as well as supporting my Direct Sales Business!   Know that your purchase go to help my family of 7 and yes I do make a commission off of all sales on my website.  Please check it out!    Also, if you need some organizing ideas for my upcoming series in January on 31 Days of Green Deep Cleaning Your House, this sale will help you get those closets and shelves looking neat and orderly! Stay tuned, starting January 1, 2017 for this Winter Cleaning How-to Series! I'm going to share Green Cleaning tips every day of January!

As a piano teacher, I thought I'd put out there some of my top recommendations for great, yet practical and fun gifts for the piano student this holiday season!   1.  Piano Maybe you weren't totally sold on your child playing piano, or maybe you got an instrument to get you thru the interim, until you find or can afford that better instrument, but what student wouldn't be ecstatic about receiving a better one for Christmas (or consider buying it for your family)?   Here's a great article that will get you started in  making the right decision: The Ins and Outs of Buying a Piano.     If you're wanting to order a digital piano, here are two recommendations: Be sure that you have a stand, pedal, and bench for use with the digital piano. 2.  Metronome I love this one But this one is great too!   3.  New Music Ok, so this one takes a little research.  Ask your piano ...

I have these stoneware pans that have the beautiful ceramic on the outside.  For years, I have only used them for family, because they look dirty and disgusting on the outside.  I understand that the stones are supposed to get seasoned on the inside, but I just can't see the point in glazing the outside of them, when this is the result!    I decided to give my Cleaning Paste and my Spirisponge a try on it to get the cooked on gunk off.  This worked so nicely, that it felt like I was just wiping it off!  I love the results.  It's like I have brand new pans! I now won't be so embarrassed to take this beautiful glazed stoneware to a potluck!   Any purchases from the links above, do assist and bless our family of 7!  Thank you for checking it out!

Do you support small business people during the holidays?  Well, what better way to support families directly than to buy from a direct sales consultant.  I've recently started to my own journey, getting rid of chemicals in my home AND helping my family financially by becoming an Independent Norwex Consultant.   Please consider supporting my family this Christmas by purchasing from my website! Thanks in advance.  Here's a limited time special that you'll want to take advantage of! http://doristowell.norwex.biz

This blog is really about all the Scraps of my life.  They may seem pretty chaotic at times, but let's face it, so is my life! Recently, I was on a search for cleaning products for a cleaning job that not only work, but use little to no chemicals. Well, I've known about Norwex for a very long time, but didn't really pay attention when all of my friends were using it years ago. Then, when I was trying to get the streaks out of the windows I clean every week, I decided to investigate. I couldn't believe that an Envirocloth and a Window Cloth  could clean butter off the window, so I had to try it myself!  Please feel free to support this one scrap of my life.  I'm a new Independent Norwex Consultant because I love all the results I'm getting  with their products!  Try them - they have a 2 year guarantee!

Just some of the things that inspired me at The Vintage Industry in Eugene, OR.  You can see more of those pictures HERE.  Don't ask why I was so fascinated with these mushrooms (I've got more pictures to come).  Maybe because our friend is looking for wood crafts to sell and this made me think of him.  I love this blue with a hint of the old red underneath!   I NEED at least one of these potting benches around, don't you?  A twist on the test tubes - a mop hang up was used to hang the tube this time!  Why not use old kitchen tools for a floral display?  Always love me a linen pillow.  Banners and Pennants always have a special place in my heart!  There was nothing really special about this little table, except that knob sure makes a huge impact!  I spotted one of these on Amy Roloff's front door one day on the "Little People, Big World" episode.  I even backed up and had to watch it ag...

 Well, you don't have to ask me twice!  It might be right up there with Spice for me!!!  One of the things I love about losing weight with healthy meal replacement shakes is that this company literally shakes it up in flavors.  Each season, there's a new one added for a limited time! If that's not enough reason to join me in losing weight without exercise, then check out the breakdown!  It's not a comparison for me -  I actually crave the Complete meal on the right myself AND can make it in the comfort of my own home!  Love that!  Which do you choose?

My chickens have been laying a ton of eggs lately.  We raised 11 new chicks this spring to add to our hens and they've begun to lay.  In addition to that, we gained 9 new to us hens, because someone realized they aren't farmers after getting them.  Added to our 28 hens already we have an Egg Surplus!   I've tried to find a few more customers for eggs, but right now, I'm just not finding them.  So, I've been coming up with creative ways to save them for the future.  The first thing I made were breakfast sandwiches for the freezer.    For this recipe, you will need: eggs Salt & Pepper to taste butter sliced cheese deli ham English muffins and/or bagels saran wrap First, spread butter on the inside of each muffin or bagel.  I think you could leave this out, but I wanted them to taste really good.  Sprayed muffin tins with butter spray and cracked an egg in each tin.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper...

Last weekend, I visited my daughter at college in Eugene, Oregon for my birthday. Her college roommate knew the owner of a Shabby Chic store that she thought we would enjoy.  Well, I went pretty crazy with the pictures!  I feel so inspired by all that I saw, that of course, my craft closet is going to get back into the swing of things!    For whatever reason, I have hung up my crafting cap lately, but there's nothing like a visit to a wonderful shop to inspire you!  I will be having multiple posts to share just some of the things that inspired me.  If you are in the Eugene/Springfield, Oregon area, I highly recommend a visit with a very large wallet, because it was so much fun!  My favorite season is fall, and my favorite thing in fall are the pumpkins!  So I will begin with all of the pumpkins I found that I love!  Of course, what really surprised me was that all of the shabby chic pumpkins that I've been making for years, are sti...

With two kids in college, both away for the first time this year, I've been trying to send them Happy Mail on occasion.  This is one of the first ones I sent.  I always comb thru all the boxed candies at the Dollar Tree for idea of candy to mail out to them.  I wanted to send chocolate, but with the warm weather in and out, I didn't want to mail chocolate that would melt so thought that Cow Tales would work. I literally, put the address label on the back of the box, the message sticker on the front and then popped it into the mail. As long as it weighs less than 13 ounces, you can mail it General postage.  My message said: "A little reminder of your routes: The Cow/Dairy State!" We have only lived in Idaho for five years, but before that, we were always in Wisconsin.  I thought this was fun.  If you wanted to send this for your customers in Direct Sales, you could say: "I'm not telling a TALE, you're and awesome hostess! Thank you!" ...

On a better note for the NFL, the Packers made a $200,000 donation to the Green Bay Police Department!  While all the negativity around the knee taking in the NFL, I love to hear a good, heartwarming story of the NFL giving back in a positive way.  And of course, it's great to hear that it's my beloved Packers!  Please check out the article about their donation HERE.   I would love to see the players, personally filling up the Police Departments side of donations so the department can get these matching funds! Of course, if you haven't read my first article about this, here's the article on Taking the Knee to the NFL.  Now will the rest of the NFL league follow suit and do something positive in our country?

Try as I might, I just can't keep my mouth shut about the NFL players that are taking a knee during the National Anthem before games.  On one hand I definitely don't agree with what they are kneeling for at all, but I'm not going to rant about that one in this post.  That flag that they are disrespecting, has given them the freedom to have their opinion and express that opinion.  Here's where I rant:  Source for photo and list of players Players are expressing their own personal opinions on the job!!!  Yes that's right, they are in the employ of their NFL team.  Now I have lots of opinions, that I would love to share with people all the time, but sometimes, it's not appropriate.  I worked as a Music Therapist in a nursing home where people were dying. There were so many times where I would be called to their bedsides to play music for them to sooth and calm them.  I personally, would have rather prayed with them or played hymns ...

If you saw my previous post on Spinners for WunderKeys Games  you'll know that I'm pretty pumped about getting my new spinners.  Of course, I had to come up with some more games to use during my WunderKeys  Preschool Piano Lessons.  This one is actually two fold.   What you will need: White Dry Erase board Dry erase marker Magnetic Finger Friends Magnetic spinner What to do: 1.  For our patterning portion of lessons, we first divided our white board with a marker in to 5 parts with the middle coming to a point. (I promise, this is the most difficult part!) 2.  Next put one Finger Friend in each section. 3.  Ask student to sort all of the Friends in to each section. 4.  Keep this board for the Game Time at the end. 5. For game time, place the spinner in the middle of your sorted sections. 6.  Have the student spin the spinner.  Whichever Finger Friend it lands on, she needs to name it and show us ...

If you saw my previous post on Spinners for WunderKeys Games  you'll know that I'm pretty pumped about getting my new spinners.  Of course, I had to come up with some more games to use during my WunderKeys  Preschool Piano Lessons.  This one is actually two fold.   What you will need: White Dry Erase board Dry erase marker Magnetic Finger Friends Magnetic spinner What to do: 1.  For our patterning portion of lessons, we first divided our white board with a marker in to 5 parts with the middle coming to a point. (I promise, this is the most difficult part!) 2.  Next put one Finger Friend in each section. 3.  Ask student to sort all of the Friends in to each section. 4.  Keep this board for the Game Time at the end. 5. For game time, place the spinner in the middle of your sorted sections. 6.  Have the student spin the spinner.  Whichever Finger Friend it lands on, she needs to name it and show us ...

As fall rolls around, many parents are beginning to think about what their child's schedule will look like in the fall, and trying to figure out what sports, classes and of course, music lessons will be added to their schedules.  As a homeschool parent and piano teacher, I'm thinking of this for my own kids as well as, putting together my fall music lesson schedule.  As a part of getting my fall lesson schedule together, I have carefully put together a policy as well as a schedule.  Then the fun begins!  I give my students (and their parents) a chance to tell me what their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices are for lessons each week, and then I try my best to give them that schedule.  Not always easy, but this year, it seems to be coming together nicely. Along with my past students, I'm also taking new students.  It's always nice to add a new student or two to the mix of students I currently have.  I teach piano, trumpet or drums (must have piano exp...