DIY Failures

After writing yesterday's blog about why people do things for themselves, I started thinking about some of my DIY failures. Sometimes it's good to laugh at yourself and it's great to learn from your mistakes. So I'm going to share a few failures that I've experienced.

Liquid Laundry Soap
The recipe I was using said to melt some grated soap (I used Ivory) in some water on top of the stove in a large pot. Then I was supposed to add baking soda. Well when I did, it foamed up as if I had added the baking soda to vinegar. It was everywhere! Once I cleaned it up, I had a really CLEAN stove top. So next time I made it on the burner of my propane BBQ grill. (No, I didn't learn the first time.) I used a bigger pot, but for some reason it foamed up again. Only this time it killed my propane burner. David had to pull it all apart. Let's just say he wasn't very happy. Now I make dry laundry soap, but I still make my own.

Toothpaste
A while back I started getting canker sores in my mouth. I never had them before in my life so I started searching the Internet for a way to heal those sores "naturally" and found that some toothpastes contain ingredients that can actually make your mouth susceptible to canker sores. I also read that coconut oil which is usually solid at room temperature is great for brushing your teeth. As an added benefit, coconut oil is antibacterial. I poured some coconut oil into an old spice bottle and proceeded to use it on my teeth. As I continued to read various blogs I decided to add to my "toothpaste". I had used about half my toothpaste bottle up so I set it in some warm water to melt the coconut oil. Then I added some baking soda and a little salt for it's scrubbing ability and some hydrogen peroxide for whitening and to kill germs. It filled the bottle to the top. The next morning I found a huge mess on my bathroom counter top. I guess the hydrogen peroxide was bubbling and the coconut oil expanded as it cooled. Although I had a mess on my hands, the "toothpaste" works really well. I'll just be sure to mix it in a larger bowl and let it solidify before I put it in the bottle next time.

Deodorant
Some times my mind doesn't work so well and I forget things. We've all heard the horror stories about the aluminum in deodorant contributing to Alzheimers so I was trying to find a replacement. I came across a recipe on a blog calling for several ingredients to make my own under arm deodorant. Here they are: 

• 1/4 cup baking soda
• 1/8 cup aloe vera gel (99% pure)
• 1 tablespoon vegetable glycerin
• 1/2 tsp coconut oil (you can use another type of oil, like apricot, if you wish)
• 1/8 tsp tea tree oil (use lavender oil if you are pregnant or allergic to tea tree oil)

I had to buy the aloe vera gel and the vegetable glycerin and I was all set to go. Of course like an idiot I decided to double the batch. I was all set to try it out. Only problem, turns out my underarms don't like tea tree oil - I broke out in a rash and it burned like crazy. So right now I'm using baby powder and aloe vera gel. And I shower daily. When the weather starts to warm up, I'll try again with lavender oil which I prefer anyway. Tea tree oil smells like Pine Sol and I don't really like that smell that much.

Potatoes
I wrote a blog about growing potatoes in boxes. I researched it on the web and everything. The method I chose to use was to plant the potatoes in the soil at the bottom of the box then add straw around the plants as they grew. The premiss is that more potatoes would form along the stems of the plants in the straw. The problem was that the straw didn't hug the plants closely enough. So I grew a lot of plant with hardly any potatoes at all. Last year I tried again with dirt, but it still didn't seem to work. I think our summers are just too warm. But I won't give up. I'll keep trying to grow my own potatoes because I know they taste better than store bought.

There are several other projects that I've tried and haven't turned out so well. Sometimes it's a recipe or a crochet project. I'm always experimenting and it doesn't always work. But you get the idea. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Half the fun is in the trying.