I’ve been busy cutting out dresses. I had 10 ready to sew. I say had because I’ve got one down and almost another down… So yes, I’ve been busy with these. Here’s the stash of dresses ready to be sewn: 
Lots of gray because that’s what they’re in to these days…neutral colors to go with anything they want to layer on top.
Here’s the one dress that’s finished. Well, all but hemming the skirt. This style of dress is a bit harder to cut out, because it’s a knit fabric. But then it is fast to sew together. I have a serger, so I sew it all on there, except for the places I need to hem; I do those with a zig-zag stitch on my regular sewing machine. My girls, especially the two oldest, are all in to wearing this kind of dress right now…
And then, there’s our new shampooer. I have been quite pleased with the results. Or should I say disgusted.
Now, if you happen to be one of those people that faithfully deep cleans their house once (or twice) a year, or if you happen to be a person who shampoos their carpets several times a year. I ask of you to please STOP reading. The rest of this post is not for you!!! 🙂
(I don’t want to hear your horrified gasp or see your look of disgust 😉 )
This is telling on me…I do like having a clean house….BUT (you knew it was coming, right?!) Cleaning is not one of my hobbies. It seems easier now, in some ways, to get basic cleaning done around here, now that I’ve got four great helpers. But, there’s also more dirt getting tracked in than there used to be…
Shampooing carpets has been something that I just kept putting off. It wasn’t convenient. Didn’t have time. Where and how would we do it, and so on.
To be fair, the main floor in our home doesn’t really have much carpeting. Our bedroom, and then the other two rooms intended for bedrooms that are being used as a sewing room and a storage room. Our living room has an area rug, and we just replaced our old one with a new one about a month ago.
Well…we’ve actually lived here now for 15 years. Yes, you read that right. And no, I hadn’t ever shampooed any carpets. We do have an excellent vacuum cleaner (Miele upright), so we’ve depended on that to keep our carpets clean. 
We finally decided it was time. Amazon was shopped and we found a shampooer for a very reasonable price.
I searched on pinterest for recipes to make my own carpet shampooer/cleaner concoction.
Last Saturday, we moved all the furniture in our bedroom around and gave that carpet a good shampooing. Let me tell you, it was high time! We were quite amazingly disgusted with the results. I went over it 5 times (at least in the high traffic areas) and each time the water still looked quite brown. I finally decided enough was enough for one day….
Today I decided to shampoo one of our armchairs in the living room. Now, this chair has also been in our home for some time. Soon after we were married, we went to LaZBoy and bought ourselves two armchairs. (see above picture–because they are kind of a dark burgundy in color, the dirt really didn’t show up that much.) They’ve been used quite a lot. The one I shampooed has probably been the most used chair in the house. So I did that one first. Gag! It is absolutely unbelievable what kind of dirt you can find…
Yes, I’m sold on my shampooer!
Because I have it right here in my home, available whenever I need it, I have high hopes of not letting this happen again! 😉
Now I better get a move on, I still have another armchair, a couch, and a loveseat to shampoo…if not today, then in the near future! 🙂
Tell me, how often do you shampoo things in your home? Carpets? Furniture? What works good for you? (Please tell me I’m not the only one who is major procrastinator when it comes to things of this nature!!!)
All-of-a-kind Mom 