Get Rid of Stains on a Porcelain Sink

At our new place we have a beautiful white porcelain sink. Beautiful until you get close to it and you realize there are stains in it. It became my mission to get those stains out!

 

The after isn't perfect but it is much, much better than the "before".

 

I first started by cleaning the sink with just some hot water and dish soap, that did nothing but at least I knew it was clean.

 

Then I sprayed it with a generic all purpose kitchen cleaner with bleach. That made it slightly cleaner but not by that much.

 

Then I tried baking soda, it worked really well and wasn't too abrasive. The middle picture above is after the baking soda.

 

Next I sprinkled on Borax (I love that stuff!!) and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Now that stuff worked wonders!! Most of the stubborn stains came out.  I think that the next time I do this I will stick with the baking soda and the Borax, it'll make it go by a lot faster and no nasty bleach fumes!

 

To keep your sink sparkly clean try to rinse it out often, especially after there are food or drinks that stain, such as coffee. I think coffee is what stained our sink the most.

Happy cleaning!!

Checking In and getting Back to Basics

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a great week, I know I am. We took a family trip to a nearby apple orchard and did some picking! So much fun, and now we have a lot of yummy apples. I did have 2 apple cider donuts, at first I was upset with myself and then I realized that I have to splurge once in a while, and I only had 2 and we didn't bring any home. A few years ago, I would have not had any at the orchard but would buy some and then pig out on them later at home. (Man writing that last sentence almost made me cry. I don't know if I ever admitted how disordered my eating used to really be. I still struggle, but I do not struggle as much as I used to.) Anyways we had a  ton of fun, the weather was perfect, not too hot and not too chilly.

 

I'm planning on making a lot of applesauce, we already made baked apples..yummy!!

 

Now that I checked in, I want to get down to business. I have decided that I am going to force myself into getting back to the basics of weight loss. Each week I am going to challenge myself with a small change. This week I am challenging myself  to drink at least 64oz of water each day. Recently I haven't been drinking enough water, I know that is not good for me, I can see the effects of it too. My skin is horrible, I get more headaches and I am eating a lot more, probably because I am actually thirsty not hungry.

Are you going to challenge yourself this week too? Are you going to join my water challenge or pick a different small change for yourself?  Let me know in the comments!

Weigh In

It's my weigh in day, I'm still at 158 which is fine by me. Well lets be honest...mostly fine by me. I didn't gain so that is a big deal for me, I would have liked if I had lost weight this week, but I ate too much and didn't exercise enough.

I have been paying more attention to my portion sizes again, man was I going overboard on them! I am trying to focus on going back to the basics of my weight loss. This week I am mostly working on what I am eating (or not eating), once I get comfortable with this again I am going to concentrate on working out again and maintaining my healthy eating habits.

All about getting healthy, and living a long happy life. I have to remember that! It's not about looking good (although that's a nice bonus) it's about being a good example for my daughter and staying healthy.

I'm going to go chug some water now...you should too!!

Weekly Check In

Hey everyone! Hope you've been having a good week. Our week has been pretty good, for the most part.

KBeaner had her first big injury this past Saturday. We were at a friend's house, KBeaner was kneeling on the couch reaching over to pet our friend's cat  when she fell off the couch and land face first on the coffee table. She instantly did her "no-breath" cry, I picked her up and then realized that she had a cut on her forehead just over her eyebrow. Thankfully my friend was there to tell me to keep it together. I wanted so bad to cry or vomit. We took KBeaner right to the Urgent Care.

There they had a long discussion with me about whether or not to do stitches or Dermabond (pretty much super glue lol) or even bring her down to the hospital (30mins away) so that "plastics" could do it. I'm sorry but I wasn't thinking about scarring right now, I was more concerned about not traumatizing my child more. We decided on Dermabond which apparently stings A LOT, KBeaner moved once the Dermabond was on and the doctor's glove was stuck to her eyebrow, which then was ripped off because of her moving so fast...so part of her eyebrow went with the doctor's glove. Ugh I almost lost it then. I used to be okay with blood, but apparently not anymore. They finished the Dermabond without anymore problems and we were sent home. I had to be paying attention for any signs of concussion and had to wake her up every 1-2 hours that night. Thankfully she didn't show any signs of concussion and the cut hasn't really bothered her that much.

Showing off her new My Little Ponies! I had to give her lots of presents after she had been so brave!

I'm proud to say I didn't stress eat that much...emphasis on "that much".

I also had a lot of exercise in disguise on Monday, I helped a friend of mine who is a housekeeper clean  for 6 hours. It was a lot of fun actually and working with my friend made the time go by.

All that cleaning gave me the cleaning bug so be on the look out for some new tutorials and posts about cleaning things. First up is how to clean a porcelain sink!

Can you tell she loves Hello Kitty?!

a new outlook?

 I've been feeling guilty a lot this summer that I haven't been blogging enough, and when I do blog I feel that I am just writing the same thing over and over again.

"I'm going to try harder"
"I'm getting back on track"

blah blah blah...

Well I have been thinking a lot about my weight loss journey and how I am not at the end of it, I'm not at a weight that I'm super happy with, I'd like to be smack in the middle of my healthy weight range so somewhere in the 140s. I've realized though that even if I get to whatever weight is my perfect weight I am still going to have to continue to maintain, I think I'll always struggle to some degree with staying a healthy weight. I just hope that it isn't a daily struggle.

I have made the realization that I need to cut myself some slack, I get all stressed out about not losing weight, which then makes me start my old bad habits, which makes me gain weight which makes me stress out more and eat more, and so on.

It's an obnoxious cycle.

I need to take a step back and enjoy life, not stress out about food, eat to fuel my body and to keep myself healthy. Not eat to fix my feelings, or get all worked up about eating the wrong type of food.

I have to also get it through my head that the weight that I am now (fluctuating between 151-160 although I'm 158 this week) is OK, its more than OK it's great!!! Even amazing compared to the 263 that I was 3 1/2 years ago.

I am going to have to work on this, its not going to be easy. I have been telling myself for a long, long time that my weight is not OK and that I need to lose weight. I just have to keep reminding myself to be positive, and relax a little.

If you've lost a good amount of weight, how have you retrained your brain to view yourself differently? Or have you not had this problem?

ABC Card Game



 I've been trying to help KBeaner learn her alphabet, she knows the alphabet song, but she can't always tell which letter is which when looking at them. I know you can buy cards that have the letters on it but come on "frugal" is in my blog's name!!

At my friend's house we did it for KBeaner and her daughter with index cards and different

colored sharpies, which worked but the girls were rough with them and the cards ended up all dented.

When I came home, I decided to make them again with card stock. I cut out 52 rectangles out, then I wrote out the alphabet, upper case and lower case. I decided to laminate them....and by laminate I mean put clear packing tape on them..it works the same and I already had that on hand.

Then I let KBeaner go at it and play all she wanted! She matched a bunch of them and then we decided to play "Go Fish" instead of asking her if she had an "A" or whatever letter I needed I would show her the card and ask her to name the letter. A lot of times she needed help with which letter was which but I think that it did help her learn some of them. Plus she had a lot of fun!

You could even get creative and draw pictures that correspond with each letter such as "A is for Apple" Let me know if you make the ABC cards!

Weekly Check In

Alright so last Wednesday I was all pumped about eating healthy and working out.. it lasted until Friday, I was sore from working out and it was one of my best friend's birthday weekend... so of course that meant yummy food and some drinks.  I like to say that I did WW about 60% of the time.

Well all that showed on Wednesday which was my weigh in day... I'm 160lbs. Ugh that's a gain of 3lbs. Not happy with that at all. I am going to force myself to be focused... I will not gain all this weight back! I am not letting it happen! I want to stay healthy and get stronger.

I went for a 2 mile walk with KBeaner on Wednesday and I tracked all my points, yesterday I did a lot of house work but no official exercise but I tracked all of my points and I stayed within the daily points.

All I can do is take it one day at a time. I know I can keep it up!! I just have to keep telling myself that!