I've been working on a couple of fun trash to treasure projects to post today for the Trash to Treasure Tuesday at
Reinvented, but something is wrong with my memory card. It seems to have no memory of it's job of transferring photographs from the camera to the computer so instead I am going to regale you with the tale of my grungy burned pot that was rescued and formed cool crystals during the dark and stormy night while we all slept peacefully in our beds. Kind of a trash to treasure story in a way. Also, a good housekeeping tip for those unfortunate times when you burn something in your favorite pan and no amount of scrubbing and scouring can remove a smidge of it. Not that any of us burn anything to the bottoms of our favorite pans, but in case some unthinking person should burn something in your favorite pan, now you can work a little kitchen chemistry and salvage your pan.
Above you see an example of a pan with a nice layer of black gunk, pour 1/4 cup of Borax in your pan, add some water, bring it to a boil and let it sit overnight. In the morning rinse out the pan and wipe/scrub out the black gunk and, ta-da! your pan is like new! Last time I did the Borax water treatment on a pan, in the morning it had formed these cool crystals. I was amazed, I showed my kids, they were amazed. If I had been a really awesome homeschool mom, we could have researched why borax and water made these big crystals but I am low on the really awesome factor lately so we just looked at them. Then I set about to clean my pan.
Yeah! What a nice shiny non-black pan that is! By the way, if you aren't familiar with Borax you can get it in the laundry section of any store. It is great to add to any laundry, especially linens and cloth diapers, you can do general cleaning with it and tough cleaning jobs (like charcoal in a pan), and I use it to make laundry detergent. My favorite use for it this year was a safe and 100% effective ant killer. Following the Great Ant Invasion of 2009 I made some ant killer with it and finally got rid of the sugar ants that had moved in with us. Everyone I knew had ants swarming in their house. I was so excited about my ant killer that I considered patenting the stuff and handing out samples at the grocery store but then I remembered that I would have to take all the kids with me so I decided to just stay at my ant-free home and read. So, get you some Borax and you will be prepared for any emergency that involved burned on crust or small crawling insects. You will be prepared!!
One of my latest projects has been this simple clipboard. My mom gave it to me and when I turned it over, my name was scrawled on the back! I remember using this clipboard for my grade school projects. That memory reminded me of how much I loved clipboards as a kid. The years had not been kind however and the front was pretty rough. Inspired as usual by all the great Trash to Treasure project at Reinvented, I grabbed my handy can of spray paint and got busy.
A week before I found this cute scrapbook paper on sale at Hobby Lobby and picked up a couple of sheets. It was the larger size so I trimmed it down using the Exacto knife that stays hidden at the very back of a very high cabinet. Living with boys will eventually teach you something about precautions. By the way, concealed under the clipboard is the big broken piece of my cutting mat. What did I tell you about precautions, this took a licking before I learned to hide things.
After decoupaging the paper on the board and letting it dry, I attached a piece of braided hemp trim under the clip and with some very professional masking tape to the back so I could display smaller things on the board. Feeling very Martha-ish, I found some silver leaf beads in my bead stash and put them on the paperclips. Now as I stand at my sink I can read my verses and bits of encouragement. Makes me happy. Makes me want to raise my right hand in the air and give myself a pat on the back like my first grade teacher taught us to do.
