Cleaning frenzy, red velvet cake and a laundry tip...

I had twenty guests in my house on Saturday evening!  I love having company over every few months because it causes me to clean and to see things oddly placed in my house and get them back to their appropriate places.  For example, the Advil bottle in my kitchen window sill is now in the med cabinet.  The odd assortment of toys that collect on the surfaces in all the rooms of the house are in some kid room - well, they were before the party.  Now I can see the redistribution of some of the things that were put away.  I am not a fussy housekeeper. I’d rather do anything else, but I do love to have a clean house every now and then.

I was working myself to death all day baking and cleaning, I don’t remember eating or if anything tasted good.  I do remember that I didn’t have enough lemonade for the kids.  After the party I went upstairs and realized that I’d left all kinds of cleaners out in the bathroom and hadn’t “finished” what I started up there.  I also had pulled out a wad of grossness from my vacuum and put it on a table and forgot to get it to a trash can. So, that made a nice decoration...

I made a red velvet cake for the first time this weekend, and it turned out okay, but I am a little freaked out that it took two entire bottles of red food coloring.  Can that really be good?  I made the cake at the request of my daughter who turned 11 and wanted to serve this cake at her birthday party.  It looked and tasted fine - the cream cheese/marshmallow frosting was wildly good!  I am just not sure I will make the cake part again. 

Laundry tip!

In all the madness I tried a laundry tip that worked great so I have to share this with you:  My daughter had a buttery grease stain on a dress (she loves to help in the kitchen!).  My first attempt with a regular stain remover didn’t work at all. Then Mom told me to try some shampoo - I rubbed some on the stain and washed the dress again and it totally got the stain out! I used Pert.  If you try this, tell me if it works for you and what shampoo you used.  There goes the buzzer. Why don’t dryers have a more pleasant way of alerting you - why can’t there be ring-tones that you can pick??  More on that later...