When we moved into our home we painted practically every room – except for the little girl’s room. That’s where we were storing a bunch of stuff until we could get it unpacked. Besides, at the time she was sleeping with us anyway so we thought we could hold off on painting. Fast forward two years later and her room still isn’t painted. So after some prep work, it looks like we will be painting this week.

I decided to paint her closet red since we had some left over red paint. Rae loves to play in her closet and since it isn’t very big, we turned it into a play area. One wall is painted with chalkboard paint while another one is cover with a wipe board. We even put up some cork panels to make a place for her to hand her art work.

Now to get the rest of her room painted. It should be really cute once everything is in place.

Raegan has a lot of toys. She is like most kids that when I try to get rid of some of her toys, she suddenly begins to play with them. It’s almost like she knows their days are numbered. Most of the time I get rid of the toys she isn’t playing with so that she has room for all of her current ones.

She plays in her room, the living room, bathroom, kitchen, etc. In fact, if I sit down for longer than a few minutes, I will have toys in my lap. So today I was cleaning up when I noticed a couple of her toys on the table. Here is how she had them posed -

I guess the dinosaur was looking for a light snack and the unicorn was just the right size.

In a move to simplify, I’ve decided to close a couple of my blogs. Not this one! But I was posting so infrequently on the others that it seemed silly to keep them around.

Occasionally I may post something here that I would have place on one of those blogs – a photo blog and a Mommy craft blog. Geeky Housewife will still remain primarily focused on household tips but now there will be an occasional craft article or photo that I just feel the need to share like this one.

My sunflowers are blooming. I’m so excited and can’t wait to plant more since I actually grew them from seeds.

I’m kind of looking forward to sharing more of my hobbies on GH rather than just posting about laundry, cleaning, and organization.

Does your dryer ‘eat’ socks? Well, apparently the dryer isn’t the culprit – it could be your washer. While washing, some times socks get pushed to the bottom of the tub and get wrapped around the agitator of the washing machine. You might want to check there – although it might not be that easy – for those missing socks. If you prefer not to have to take your washer apart, place your socks on top of the load of laundry. This way they are less likely to wind up at the bottom of the tub.

Other ways to keep your socks from going MIA include pinning them together and/or placing them in a laundry mesh bag.

I always keep my old toothbrushes since they really come in handy when cleaning. The other day I dropped some chocolate onto a white t-shirt. When treating it before the laundry, I thought of another purpose for my old toothbrush. I use Oral B Pulsar toothbrushes that vibrate and thought treating this stain might be a good use for this toothbrush. I have seen in the stores what looks to be a large vibrating toothbrush for sale in the laundry aisle. Instead of forking over the $10 for it, I will just use my old toothbrush that still has some battery life left.

It worked well enough. The stain is gone and that’s all the really matters – plus I get to re-purpose a toothbrush. Now I’m no longer tempted to buy yet another gizmo since I have something at home that probably works just as well.

Part of our daily routine has become at least one dip in the pool. Of course, before we get in, I put sunblock on both my little girl and me. There are two ingredients that are used in the United States to make true sunblock – zinc oxide and titanuim dioxide. The Coppertone for Kids is sunscreen. The Banana Boat Baby is sunblock and lists titanium dioxide as one of its ingredients(in the whopping list of inactive ingredients). So it’s good to know that our sunblock does contain titanium dioxide. Here is a website that lists some kids sunblocks as well as sunscreen/sunblocks.

When I was a kid, I tried to plant a piece of cactus. My brother told me that if it grew then I definitely had a green thumb. Sadly the piece didn’t grow and I didn’t earn my literal green thumb as I was hoping to do.

I’ve never been much of a gardener but recently I’ve been very interested in doing more. I planted a few herbs earlier this year that seem to be taken over by weeds. I did also plant some sunflowers in a container. The seeds were a year old, so I wasn’t sure if they would come up at all. After a few weeks, I started to see some progress.

Now about a month has passed and they have really started to grow. It almost looks like they are getting close to blooming.

I’m very excited as this is the first flower I’ve grown from seeds. It’s very encouraging to see it grow and prosper. I try to water early in the morning or in the evening since it’s bad to water flowers in the heat.

I might do some fall planting but will have to do some research on which plants/flowers work best in our climate.

One of my favorite desserts is Key Lime Pie. Usually we just buy it frozen or by the slice. Recently I decided to make one from scratch.

Key Lime Pie is very simple to make especially if you use an already made graham cracker crust. The most difficult part is squeezing the limes. The recipe I was using didn’t have a meringue. To me it really needed it or at the very least a whipped topping.

Also I didn’t have a proper zester so I think a lot of the white part of the lime made it into the zest. This is very bitter. So before I tried my second attempt, I bought two things – a zester and a juicer(manual). I also topped it with meringue, too.

The juicer – even if it was manual – helped greatly with squeezing the limes. It was so much easier than trying to do it by hand. I didn’t use as much zest on the second one and mainly used it on top of the pie. I’ll be making this again soon. It’s a great summer dessert.