Soft Scrub

It works great to get white tubs and things white again.

Here's my kitchen sink this morning with this past week's collection of scum, blackberry stain, and pot scrapes, etc:

Then I squirt some of this around the edges and over the spots:

I let it sit for a minute or two and then take a rag and spread it throughout the sink, scrubbing softly, and:

Within minutes my sink is white again.  It is a "soft scrub." It doesn't scrub off the enamel or dull the sink like a weekly scrub with a rougher agent like Comet would.

And The Lord Added to Their Numbers...

My husband and I and our two little girls are overjoyed to announce that Baby Paul Benjamin arrived last Saturday night, August 18th. He weighed a healthy 8 lbs 14 oz. Once again I am amazed at what a miracle a baby is - a very undeserved miracle. We are very thankful for Paul, and for all the friends and family who have been taking such good care of us all over the last week. 

I won't bore you by posting all the hundreds of the photos we've already taken of Baby Paul, showing how amazing he is, how sweet his long little fingers look, how he stretches out his toes, etc. After all, this is a site for mothers and we each know that our own babies are the most perfect, incredible little babies ever, right? However, I will take my opportunity to post two quick photos.

Paul Benjamin ~ 2 days old

Paul Benjamin with sisters Lucy & Helen

And the winner...

of the random $25 Amazon gift certificate giveaway for the recipe link-up entrants is...

Mrs. White!

Congratulations!

 Wow, it's a world record (for us)... 16 recipes! Haha!

There are a few of these recipes I definitely plan to make in the near future.  One is, coincidentally, Mrs. White's thin no rise pizza dough, because my husband's always asking how we can get our dough thinner and crispier when we grill pizzas.

Thank you all so much for sharing ladies!

(By the way, the Oatmeal Share Cake recipe that Michelle@Glad2BHome put up is one of the best cakes I've ever tasted. Just the topping is worth it! I have made that cake literally dozens of times and nearly every time that I've brought it to a pot luck or school event I've been asked for the recipe, so try it!  You won't be sorry.)

Mrs. White, if you will be kind enough to email me (email link is over on the right sidebar) the email address you would like me to send the online certificate to I will zip that over to you as soon as possible. :)

Thank you so much everyone!  I appreciate each and every one of your entries.

Quote for the Day

“Don’t be too easily convinced that God really wants you to do all sorts of work you needn’t do. 

Each must do his duty ‘in that state of life to which God has called him.’  Remember that a belief in the virtues of doing for doing’s sake is characteristically feminine, characteristically American, and characteristically modern: so that three veils may divide you from the correct view!  There can be intemperance in work just as in drink.  What feels like zeal may be only fidgets or even the flattering of one’s self-importance.  As MacDonald says, ‘In holy things may be unholy greed!’ And by doing what ‘one’s station and its duties’ does not demand, one can make oneself less fit for the duties it does demand and so commit some injustice.   Just you give Mary a chance as well as Martha!”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to An American Lady

A Wise Saying

One of my friends once passed on to me something a wise woman had once told her,

"You don't wash the floor to keep it clean, 

you wash the floor to get it clean."

Now I know that sounds simple, but if you let the full implication of those words sink in, and then extend them to include the host of household duties you perform each day, you may find it extremely comforting.

Someone is going to drip Popsicle on the freshly scrubbed floor.  Someone is going to use the bathroom five minutes after it's been cleaned.  Someone is going to dump the basket of toys out on the newly vacuumed carpet.  Someone is going to rummage thoughtlessly through the just organized dresser drawer.  Someone is going to wear that newly ironed shirt.  Because people live here!  That's who it's all for!  Life is never going to hold still long enough for anything to remain in that sterile and glistening state that I strive to get it to every week! (Proverbs 14:4)

That doesn't mean I'm going to throw my Clorox Clean-Up out the window, but it means that I can look at my care for this home as an ongoing lifelong cycle.  It will never be "done." I will keep tending to it all, because that is the vocation I have been given as a wife, a mother, and a homemaker, to daily bring order out of chaos, to say "let there be light" in this kitchen each and every morning as I start all over again.

From-the-Hearth: Recipe Link-Up (with a give-away!)

So I'm putting up another recipe link-up.

This time I'm adding something special!
Everyone who links up a recipe will be entered to win a $25 amazon.com gift certificate!

The conditions are these: there have to be at least ten entrants (excluding my own).  That's it.

You have the next two weeks to link a recipe, and then on August 23rd I'll enter all you wonderful recipe linker ladies into an online automatic raffle winner picker and then I will email the downloadable certificate to the winner!

I thought it would be fun to add a tad of excitement to this one.
So tell your friends about it if you'd like.  Surely we can find ten people to grace our humble little site with a recipe.  :D

I, for one, am always looking for new recipe ideas so please put one up!

Thanks :)