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How To Enjoy Mineral Springs

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I love hot things. I love hot showers, hot drinks, warm blankets, and I love soaking in hot water. While a leisurely bath is not something I make time for at home, a soak in a mineral bath is a super relaxing and by going away from my home I can actually enjoy it and not be busy thinking about how I should get out of the bath and start the dishwasher.

There are mineral springs and hot springs all over the US and I encourage you to seek one out. I go to this place not far from me near Weed, CA http://www.stewartmineralsprings.com/. If you don’t know of any in your area, I suggest checking this website, http://www.spaindex.com/special-features/hot-springs-and-mineral-springs/  which is NOT an inclusive list, I admit, but it is a good place to start.

Or, you could Google either “mineral springs” or “hot springs” and see if Google is smart enough to find one near you. Let me know what you find!

A mineral spring is simply a spring of water (water that comes forth from the ground, often in a non-glamorous, non-geyser-like fashion) that has a high proportion of dissolved minerals. If you visit an establishment where you pay to soak in mineral water, you are soaking in heated water that has come up from the ground with minerals in it that can do a variety of beneficial things. I am in no way an expert, nor do I have a degree in anything science-y but I can report the claimed benefits and you can take it or leave it. The minerals can exfoliate the skin, so much so that many places have a statement of caution against soaking too long because your skin can become irritated. I experience this nearly every time I go because I love soaking and I get all cozy and relaxed and invariably soak too long. The minerals are said to aid in muscle relaxation and I don’t doubt that to be true either lest Epsom Salts wouldn’t be a bath additive.

A hot spring is a water coming forth from the ground (potentially in a glamorous and geyser-like fashion- think Yellowstone National Park) often heated by subterranean volcanic activity. There are of course establishments where you can soak in this naturally hot water and enjoy many of the same benefits. Soaking in a hot spring is on my list of things to experience and once I do, I promise to report back, dear readers.

Before I went to the mineral springs for the first time, a friend wisely cautioned me, “It is NOT like going to a spa.” True, some places are in new, modern buildings with many spa treatments and facilities. Others, like the ones I have been to and enjoy, are clean but old and funky and frequented by folks who aren’t necessarily subscribing to mainstream culture.

If you go, by all means, bring a friend, water, some flip flops, your own towel, and an open mind. Many establishments have saunas, cool showers, and other amenities to rotate through after you soak. Inquire at the front desk about your options. At Stewart Springs, the rotation includes a sauna and either a rinse in a cool shower OR a jump into a creek. As in a flowing body of water fed by melted snow, as cold as 40 degrees. The dip in is fast but exhilarating. Don’t skip it! Soaking in the hot mineral water is twice as delicious after the polar plunge.

Before your soak, remove your jewelry (minerals in the water can react with the metal and tarnish it pronto) and put your hair up lest the minerals react with your natural or purchased hair color. Set your cares aside and enjoy yourself!

In the comment section below, tell me your mineral or hot springs experience! Where’s a great place to go in your area?

I Funny Story about Dulce de Leche OR 1 Important Difference Between Sweetened Condensed Milk & Evaporated Milk

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So Dear Readers, I have many character flaws and this post directly relates to the particular flaw of haste. Yes, I know haste makes waste but I can’t seem to keep that lesson in mind for very long. During my latest trip to Costco (a terrific warehouse-type store where I shop only every other month or so because it is an hour and a half drive from my home), I snagged a flat of what I thought was sweetened condensed milk. I saw cans, some familiar text, loaded it into the giant cart, and on I went zooming down the aisles in search of a giant jug of olive oil. I gave the flat zero thought after that. A week later, I ran out of my dulce de leche and quickly set up my crockpot (as described in this post here), ripped the label off of one of the cans, and plunked it in the water. Here was the first red flag that I ignored in haste. The can of evaporated milk is about half an inch taller than the sweetened condensed and I thought, “huh, that’s strange” and set the can on its side so it would be completely submerged. Six hours later, I shut the crockpot off, and when it was cool I pulled the can from the water and heard a distinctive slosh. One detail I failed to mention explicitly in my post about dulce de leche was that once it is cooked, it is really thick and there is no sloshing about inside the can. I of course then realized my error. This error led me to a laugh at myself and led to a few important discoveries that I will share with you now.

Evaporated milk has no added sugar, thus heating it in a crock pot will NOT result in a caramel of any kind. Sweetened condensed milk is exactly that- sugar is added and it is cooked down, leaving less water and more milk and sugar, which is why it is so delicious in coffee. Evaporated milk cannot be interchanged with sweetened condensed milk unless sugar is added to the recipe. The type and quantity depend on the recipe at hand. Once you get into Ingredient Replacement 2.0, I feel like the risk of failure is a bit greater, so proceed with such replacements at your own risk and not on an important cooking day like Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t wish that kind of stress upon anyone, least of all my dear readers.

My second discovery is that there are MANY recipes that call for evaporated milk and you can bet your boots that once I come upon a great one, you dear readers will get to see how I use up all 12 cans of evaporated milk that I bought in haste.

Surely, I could have guessed that these ingredients (marketed in very similar cans, dang it) are not interchangeable but once I took to an internet search it was clear that I wasn’t the only hasty shopper to make such a mistake.

How can I use up 12 cans of evaporated milk, my wise wildflowers? Leave your pearls of milk wisdom in the comments below and happy cooking!

I Funny Story about Dulce de Leche OR 1 Important Difference Between Sweetened Condensed Milk & Evaporated Milk

2 Important Tools for Mending a Beaded Garment

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Want to know how to fix loose beads on a dress? Need to know how to mend a beaded sweater? This tutorial will share with you the 2 tools you need to fix those loose beads quickly and easily.

How to fix a beaded garment | The Domestic Wildflower Use this tutorial to fix loose beads on a dress or fix a beaded sweater- any beaded garment can be fixed with these two important tools!

This post may have affiliate links.

With these 2 important tools, a mending task went from nearly or entirely impossible to only detail-focused and a little tedious.

2 Important Tools for Fixing a Beaded Garment

You need a beading needle. One with a collapsable eye (the hole the thread goes through) is nice because they are easy to thread and accommodate tiny beads. If you buy or borrow a beading needle, you might use it to fix an earring or some other item. I love these needles here.

How to fix a beaded garment | The Domestic Wildflower Use this tutorial to fix loose beads on a dress or fix a beaded sweater- any beaded garment can be fixed with these two important tools!

You need invisible thread, aka monofilament. The monofilament can be used on wedding veils and dresses (I have added and moved a lot of bustle snaps for friends using monofilament) and it can be used with a regular sewing needle which will be less flexible and have a much bigger eye. The invisible thread will make it possible for your sewing to be less than perfect and for you to reattach any bead without your sewing being seen.

How to fix a beaded garment | The Domestic Wildflower Use this tutorial to fix loose beads on a dress or fix a beaded sweater- any beaded garment can be fixed with these two important tools!

If you have fishing line (also known as monofilament), be warned: invisible thread is very, very thin, and that’s what you want. IF you want to use fishing line, it has to be a very low “test” as in, a very small fish would break it. Also, fishing line is sold on the merit that it doesn’t readily kink or knot, but we want ours to knot (inside our dress or sweater, of course), so that is another reason fishing line isn’t exactly the right tool for the job.

I have had this pretty beaded sweater for over a year and it has sat in my mending stack for about 11 months because I knew I owned and could not find 2 very important tools for re-beading the loose beads on the front.

Sewing with monofilament is a lot like sewing with cobweb, so be warned: It is hard to see, hard to knot, it tangles easily in some situations, but because it fits through the tiny eye of a beading needle AND because it makes your repair job nearly invisible, it is preferable. Once you get the hang of using it, you’ll use it over and over. I love it.

The next step is securing your cobweb/monofilament to the fabric at hand. If you are mending a sweater, tying a knot at the end may not be sufficient. The knot just won’t end up big enough to anchor the monofilament to the backside of the sweater. What you can do if this is the case it pass the needle through from the backside to the front, and back through to the backside about a quarter inch from where you pushed up, being careful to leave a long tail for you to work with. Tie the tail in a square knot (or whatever knot you can tie handily) and trim the tail. Of course, if your monofilament is thicker, or your material is more closely woven (like a dress shirt) then a regular ol’ knot will do. Also, if you were able to get regular sewing thread through the eye of the beading needle then knotting will also be sufficient. There’s lots of variables here but if you are reading this I bet you have a lovely item that needs you to fix it to be enjoyed once again. Onward Wildflowers!

How to fix a beaded garment | The Domestic Wildflower Use this tutorial to fix loose beads on a dress or fix a beaded sweater- any beaded garment can be fixed with these two important tools!

Because my beads were sewn on (and coming undone) in a straight line, sewing them back down was a piece of cake. Don’t get hung up on perfection. Bring the needle up through the garment, through the bead, and back down again. Repeat. Don’t repeat so many times that you only have 3 inches of thread left to tie the above mentioned difficult knot. You need at least 6 inches and a prayer to tie off without frustration. On an all-over beaded design like mine, I worked from left to right, bottom to top. If you have a fairly large area, a little method to the madness is wise. Because my sweater, beads, and factory thread were all dark blue, it was tricky to see what I had resewn and what I hadn’t. A few beads on my sweater were lost, never to be found again, and that is okay. You hardly notice it and I am not going to worry about it. Fixing my sweater that had a LOT (maybe 25% of the whole front of the sweater) of loose beads, this took me about 40 minutes to mend.

How to fix a beaded garment | The Domestic Wildflower Use this tutorial to fix loose beads on a dress or fix a beaded sweater- any beaded garment can be fixed with these two important tools!
All mended up!

If you want to learn how to sew, check out the courses HERE!

Filed Under: Sew

Cloth Diapers Part 2: The Gritty Details

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Cloth Diapering Part 2: The Gritty Details

The very same concerns come up every time I talk to people about cloth diapering and I will try to address them here. Cloth diapers are not dirty, they are easy to use when out and about, and they are not more time consuming than disposables.

Cloth diapers are a very clean choice for many reasons. The brand of diapers I use is gdiapers and I LOVE them and highly recommend them but there are other great companies out there that are certainly excellent also. Gdiapers sell a product that helped take the yuck factor out of poopy diapers. The cloth liner is a product not unlike a stiff piece of toilet paper that fits right on top of the cloth. After baby poops, Mom can lift the stiff paper-y cloth liner out and plop the poop into the toilet (where poop belongs!). In the event that you don’t have a liner when baby poops, it is not a big deal. Read: It is NOT a big deal! Lots of times, the poop can be plopped into the toilet, or I just swish them in the toilet and then put them in the diaper pail.

Cloth diapers are washed in a washing machine using the hottest water setting (which kills germs, last time I checked), using the longest cycle and soap that is appropriate for cloth diapers (agitation and soap removes the “stuff” from the cloth). I separate the white cloth and white gpouch (an elasticized liner that keeps the absorbent cloth close to baby’s skin) and put it into the diaper pail. The colored and oh-so-cute outside part (called gpants in this brand’s system) gets velcroed shut and tossed in my regular laundry. That has kept the colors brighter and velcro and elastic lasting strong through two children.

I use Rockin’ Green soap because it is plant-based and comes in a formula for hard water, which I have. It isn’t any more expensive than Tide or other petroleum-based soap and I have found it to work very well.

I use a Bambino Mio brand diaper pail and that particular diaper pail has a lock which has been handy for keeping toddlers at bay. Because I wash diapers every day or every other day, my house doesn’t smell like diapers. I assure you, I have some bloodhound women in my family and they’d let me know if my home was smelly.

As for time, consider first the time one would spend going to the store, the aisle, and the checkout line to buy disposable diapers. Then consider the time one would spend to take the now very full trash bag out, to the curb, and the money spent to pay to get rid of the garbage. All that is time that has to be considered first. Now consider that as a new parent, your laundry needs have increased significantly. Babies dirty onesies at a terrific pace, and as a new mom I know I rarely went a whole day with the same outfit on because I’d spill or leak something terrible on my shirt. All this means is that new parents do more loads of wash. I found it to be of no inconvenience to throw one more load a day in the machine. I’d bet dumping the diaper pail into the washing machine takes under a minute. I chose to hang my cloth diapers on the line to dry because I really like saving money, I like my washline, and with my first baby, my dryer didn’t work well. That doesn’t take much time either and then I guess the only other time consuming part is making a stack of the diapers and putting them pack in the changing station.

As for going out and about with baby, my wet cloth diapers go in a wet bag that is likely designed to put wet swimsuits in. When I get home from my outing I put the wet contents in the diaper pail along with the wet bag and that’s it.

As for wipes, I use cloth wipes because of all the reasons I chose to use cloth diapers. Also, they are so small (washcloth sized) that they don’t create more laundry- they don’t make an additional load of wash, they just increase the size of the load by a little bit. I do use the gdiaper brand plant based wipes for when I am out where there isn’t a faucet nearby. Because I have saved a lot of money by using cloth diapers, I don’t feel like it is frivolous to buy slightly more expensive biodegradable wipes that are made with what I refer to as, “plants and fairy dust.”

Speaking of plants and fairy dust, gdiapers makes a biodegradable insert to use instead of the cloth. The idea is that you can have the cute, colored outside part and inside you have an absorbent part made of plant matter (and said fairy dust) and you can compost, flush, or toss and it will decompose in a landfill in 50 days. This was one selling point of the gdiaper brand that I felt comforted by. If ever I was behind on laundry or on a trip (to an imaginary place where there are no washers and dryers) I could and would use the disposable inserts. I actually use them when on a long car ride or overnight sometimes because my babies have been very big (more potty) and deep, long sleepers (also more potty) and the disposable inserts are a little bit more absorbent in those situations.

My cloth diaper “test” was when my first born was 4 months old and I had to jump in the car and spend several days away from home, sans husband, to be with an aunt who was very ill. I had no time to plan and hardly time to pack but I grabbed my wet bag, a stack of cloth diapers and a package of the disposables. I was in and out of the hospital visiting for several days and I never even opened the pack of disposables because at the end of the day I just used my cousin’s washing machine. After that trip I was convinced that they’d work in any situation. I wish I could find the blog post I read when I was first reading about using cloth. A couple used them successfully on a yacht, sailing around the world. After reading that, I was completely on board.

As a mom who values time, money, and quality I have been so, so happy I chose to use cloth diapers. I know as an expectant mother the last thing you want to do is make the wrong choice. I truly would say that any new mom should try them. I’d love to hear from a mom who used cloth and did NOT have a washer and dryer in the home. I know there’s a frugal wildflower out there who’s done it- let me know how you made it work!

Cloth Diapers Part 3: Shopping

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Buying cloth diapers is an investment but it is a fun one because they are inarguably cute, money-saving, and there are lots of choices available.

I should start out by mentioning that many people have said to me, “why don’t you sew your own Jenny?” It is a good question. I sew well and often and I chose (and would choose, again and again) to buy my cloth diapers. Buying fabric, elastic or snaps, velcro, etc. would NOT have been worth it, especially when combined with the time it would have taken to sew the diapers. If you, dear reader, can and want to sew them I encourage you but I found that it would have taken a lot of time to source the correct elastic that would be next to baby’s sensitive skin and a lot of time to cut out and sew the diapers. I worked at Joann’s Fabrics while in college (for five years!) and while I am not currently in the fabric biz I feel pretty confident that a person wouldn’t end up saving that much money if any by sewing them.

First I would encourage a new mama to read up on the different types of cloth diapers. “Changing Diapers” by Kelly Wels was an excellent resource and well worth the Amazon purchase. I chose gdiapers, and I would encourage anyone else to also, but there are lots of great companies out there and it is likely that their products are great also. I think that if you’re in the cloth diaper business it isn’t for the glamour and fame- they probably care about their customer and product quite a bit. Choose a type of diaper with confidence, dear reader!

I chose to use gdiapers exclusively but I know a few moms who have used a mix of types and brands and it doesn’t seem to be a hassle at all for them. You likely have different types of socks to sort in the wash, right? Sorting diapers can easily be part of the new laundry system.

Quantity: I would say that you need about 12 gpants (cute, colored outside part of another brand) minimum of each size. Some cloth diapers are adjustable but I didn’t use them and thus can’t speak with confidence about how many you might use but I’d bet it is about the same. I used about 12 small, 18 medium, and about 18 large. My babies are off-the-charts-big so I spent a lot of calendar months in mediums and larges. I spent very few months in smalls and my smalls are in beautiful shape as a result. I ended up buying 6 XL because my babies have gigantic thighs and the larges just were too tight. I would suggest buying 18 minimum cloth (the absorbent part, doing the same job a maxi pad does) for each size. This might sound confusing but you need 18 cloth in small and 18 in the next size up, called M/L/XL. The smalls are really little, and the next size up fits in the medium, large, and extra large outside parts.

I bought 2 dozen cloth wipes and it is handy to have that many but I could have used 18 or fewer but I believe they came in a 24 pack. They are of course useful beyond diapering and will be useful as regular washcloths when I am done with the diapering part of parenting.

Cost: Between 2 children, I have spent about 550 dollars total on cloth diapers. My diapers are in good enough shape that they easily could be used through at least one more child, if not more. I didn’t thoroughly explore buying used cloth, nor do I live in a big enough area to have a used cloth shopping option but I encourage you to check it out.

Things to look for include :

elasticity remaining in elastic

broken snaps

velcro that isn’t very “sticky” anymore

Velcro is actually really easy to replace if you sew even at a beginning level. Gdiapers sent me FREE replacement velcro, cut to the exact size I needed for the few diapers that needed it.

I would NOT worry about faded cloth because washing it hot water makes cloth fade, period.

Consider buying gender neutral designs. This can be a money saver for you on subsequent babies and be a selling point if and when you sell them.

Of course, 500 bucks is a lot of money in any universe. If you considering using them, you could buy the sizes you need in small and try it out. I used up all the disposables given to me at my baby shower and then switched to exclusively cloth and haven’t looked back. Happy shopping!