Autumn in the Air

Last week marked the official arrival of fall.  Although it's scary to think that winter is just around the corner, Fall is definitely my favourite season.  I love watching the leaves change, and it makes my commute to and from work far more bearable.

This is our first autumn in this house and so far, the show has been pretty spectacular.  Although our previous house was also more than 100 years old, there were very few large trees in that section of town.  Unfortunately they were all cut down just before we moved in, so although we didn't have much raking to do, we also never really got to enjoy the fall colours.

Here's a few shots of our front porch.  We picked up an old sap bucket at an antique place in town and added a few fall branches into it to bring some colour up onto the porch.

Our steps are lined with pumpkins(artificial) and lanterns which look great at night.

This amazing tree is right at the front of our yard.  The neighbours can't get over how it looks and people walking down the street often stop to take pictures of it.  It's even more stunning in the morning with the sun shining through the leaves.  Raking leaves doesn't seem so bad when you have this view every day.  If only it lasted longer!

We did up our baskets with fall plants a few weeks ago and they're still looking great. I love the peppers!

    
We haven't done much inside yet, but we're hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner so I'm sure we'll be busy getting stuff up soon!

Tea Time!

I was at an auction last week and spotted this great silver tea set.  Neither of us are really the "silver tea set" type, but I love the simple lines on it, and the fact that all of the pieces were engraved with the letter "M".  Although there wasn't much else at the auction that I was interested in, I hung around to see if I could get it at a reasonable price.  About an hour and $30 later, I was on my way home with thoughts of silver polish on my mind.

Because we don't have any other silver pieces, we also didn't have any silver polish in the house.  Instead, I found a great and easy three step method online at Tater Tots and Jello.

1) Line the kitchen sink with tin foil
2) Add in about 1 cup of baking soda and fill with very hot water
3) Place pieces to be polished in the sink so they are touch the tin foil

You can literally watch the tarnish fade away.  It actually came off our new tea pot in chunks.

 It took us about 30 minutes to do all 5 pieces, and Jeremy had to change the tin foil and water a few times as we found it wasn't working as well after a bit.  It was definitely much easier than trying to polish the thick layer of tarnish off though.

Before

After

It may not be fit for a queen, but I think it looks pretty awesome on our sideboard.  I don't know how much use we'll actually get out of it, but I like the sparkle that it adds to the dining room.

Squeaky Clean Bathtub

As you might have noticed, I'm a huge fan of Pinterest.  I love checking out new ideas for cooking, decorating, renovating and teaching.  One thing I'm not a huge fan of however, is cleaning.  I do it, but I don't enjoy it.  When I stumbled across this pin from Made From Pinterest I figured it was worth a try.

Made From Pinterest

Sometimes the ideas on Pinterest really work, and other times they're a total bust.  I wasn't sure about this one, so I wanted to do it as inexpensively as possible.  We bought the dish wand at the dollar store, the Wal Mart brand rinse agent, and we used the dish soap that we already had.  

   

Here's a before shot of our tub.  We have a hard water issue in our town, so soap scum builds up really fast.  You can kind of see it in this picture.  The original pin said to use a tsp. of soap and a drop of rinse agent, then fill the rest with water.  I filled half about 1/4 with soap, 1/4 with rinse agent and the last half with water.

     

Here are the during and after shots.  I like that it foams up, and the rinse aid really gives it a streak free finish.
   

No more soap scum!

The thing that I like the most about this method is that we leave the wand on the corner of the tub, and we clean the tub and doors while we're in the shower. Nice and easy, just how I like it!

Note: Next time, I would splurge on a better wand.  The one from the dollar store leaked, and I had to put a rubber washer in the cap to keep the liquid in.