ramblings of a reluctant homemaker
Some people talk about spring cleaning, but if you’re like me, the fall is a time when you suddenly want to work on home improvement and cleaning projects. The weather is mild enough to throw open the windows without the dreary rain of spring. Winter is coming and I want the house a bit fresher and cleaner for those cold winter months when we’ll be stuck inside.
Below are some of our top tips on cleaning and organizing your house this fall.
My daughter recently joined the Sigma Kappas at Indiana University Southeast. She is so excited to be a pledge in this sorority, so I thought I’d surprise her after she got her bid with a wall decal for her bedroom or perhaps to use for your sorority. She loves to decorate her walls with different things and I knew she’d enjoy these whatever she used them for.
After searching around the Internet, I decided to order from Vinyl Disorder. They create car and wall decals. They had a really nice selection of different size and colors and their prices seemed reasonable to me. Plus, I had a coupon and you know how I am with my coupons.
I love vinyl lettering and images for walls. They are very easy to remove if you get tired of them or want to redesign things, but they look great and can be displayed with other objects for a unique look. The quality of the vinyl used by Vinyl Disorder was fabulous. These letters will hold up. We didn’t actually place them on the wall yet, though. Hailey is deciding whether to live on/near campus still or stay at home and she wanted to wait before putting them up until she decides. So, I did a careful investigation of them and I have to say that they are nice and thick and would hold up really well for a long time.
Like I said, we didn’t actually put them up yet, so I had to do some investigation on this topic. Other users say they are very easy to put up and I also liked that they came with detailed instructions. I don’t have to guess what to do. It is laid out clearly for me.
I was actually waiting before I wrote up this review because I wanted to see how they handled a situation I ran into.
First, I want to note that when you are ordering, pay careful attention to the sizing. I got confused between length and height. The other sites I had visited displayed by height and I just assumed that longest section would be the height. This was not correct in this case because the Greek letters were so fat.
In fact, I would encourage you to phone the company if you aren’t sure of the exact dimensions. While it was my fault for not reading more carefully, I wasn’t very happy when the letters arrived and were 9″ tall instead of 18″ tall. That wasn’t at all what we had wanted.
I wrote them a letter, because at first I thought I’d been sent the wrong thing. We had a few bumps in the road on this one until I had a chance to speak to the manager. The manager was wonderful. He explained the entire process of how they figure sizes and why the sizing was the way it was and that making it 18″ tall would make the letters 40″ wide (too wide for what I wanted), but he offered to scrunch the letters together as long as I understood they’d look a bit different.
The company replaced the initial order for me and although I offered to pay postage, they said they’d cover it. I had the new letters within a week. They are a beautiful gold color, too. As I said, the vinyl is very high quality.
I have to say that even though this was technically my fault for not reading more carefully, at the end of the day the company went out of their way to make me happy and keep me as a customer. I will definitely be ordering from them again as I am in the process of starting redecorating our 11-year-old home.
The bottom line? I highly recommend them and their product. Just keep an eye on the measurements and if you are unsure, go ahead and call them to find out the exact dimensions before you order. I also want to add that I wasn’t paid and am not affiliated with this company. I simply ordered a product from them and had a problem with that initial order which the manager fixed for me.
I don’t get any percentages if you order from them. You can trust that when I say that I genuinely liked the product and the customer service I received from the manager.
By the way, that is not my picture up there. Just a random woman thinking as she looks out a window. It matched my mood, what can I say? I am not that young or beautiful and I have blue eyes not brown. A lot of you probably remember that my two daughters are basically grown (not really, because they still live at home and still rely on Mom a lot, but essentially they are legal adults at 18 and 22). Looking back on the years I spent raising them, there are some stark things I wish I’d done more.
I wish I’d focused less on creating amazing superstars and more on these things.
I love my children. I did the best I knew. I’m not a bad mom. However, looking back on it, I realize how very precious those years were and how fast they passed. I hope that this list touches the heart of a mom just starting the journey and reminds her to take the time for the little things. Children are only children for a heartbeat, and then they are grown.
Have you ever wished you could come up with something really unique to take to a gathering, but you don’t have a lot of time to throw together a new recipe? Well, you will love this very easy fudge recipe. Plus, it is highly unlikely anyone will bring the same thing you’re bringing. This is also a fun recipe to make with kids because it is so very easy and you can cut it into shapes, such as hearts or stars, very easily.
One of my favorite memories of fall is scooping out the insides of pumpkins, cleaning the seeds, roasting them and enjoying the salty, crunchy treat. While we don’t often do this anymore, I started wondering why.
Pumpkin seeds are one of those healthy treats that fill you up quickly. You can use the rest of the pumpkin for other recipes from scratch as well, or simply carve out the pumpkin and turn it into a fun jack-o-lantern to grace your porch.
If you’ve been looking for a new fall tradition to start with your family, give this one a try.
*If you have more than about a cup of pumpkin seeds, you'll want to use more water and salt when boiling and more salt when roasting.
