Pin 2: Ice-Trapped Toys

Time: 1 minute to throw together - overnight to freeze
Cost: $0
Results: Fair

First pinned from: crumbbums.com


I've seen many variations of the ice block excavation activity on Pinterest. I knew I wanted to do a kids' activity today and this is the first one that popped into my mind. Quick and easy to throw together, I looked forward to the  30 minutes to an hour of quiet out-door playtime it would buy me. I'm such a selfless parent!

1st mistake: I only froze the block for a few hours...definitely freeze it overnight. It was still liquid in the middle, which made it very easy to break

2nd mistake: I didn't really talk about it with the kids before-hand or prep any 'digging tools'. As a result, the kids just started wailing on it...which was still fun. But when the last toy was stuck 'hopelessly' in the ice, Specs had a huge melt-down with lots of 'help mommy' and 'fix a zebra mommy' with me trying to explain solutions over his screaming.

Still, it was a fun 5 or 6 minutes, completely free, and something to cool off on a hot day, so certainly not a total fail. I think I'll try it again keeping today's mistakes in mind.

Pin 1: Home-made oven cleaner

Time: 12 hours - but only 1 hour of physical effort
Cost: $0
Results: Good

What better way to start my daily projects than with a freebie that tackles a chore I've been putting off far too long.

Before: (I can't even believe I'm showing you this. It looks like it belongs in a crack den...although...do crack-heads cook? I bet their oven is even cleaner than mine!)

How does it even get this gross?!

During: As seen on the OneGoodThing blog:

I first pre-heated the oven to 200 while boiling a large pan of water (for the record, I can't highly recommend you follow in my steps and decide to do all this on one of the hottest days of summer)

Then I selected a large bowl and filled it about half-way with ammonia. Phew...I almost passed OUT!

Turn the oven off just before placing the bowl of ammonia on the top rack and the pan of boiling water on the bottom rack. Shut the oven door and let it sit overnight. The rest of the evening the whole house had the faint, nose-hair tingling aroma of ammonia.

This morning, I opened the oven and gave it a quick wipe-down. It definitely made a HUGE difference, but some elbow grease was still needed

After first Wipe-down:

After brillo pad:
  Once I pulled out the big-guns, the door required virtually NO scrubbing, and the inside only light scrubbing. It's not perfect (obviously) but I'm pretty thrilled with the results.