Short break before the Blessed Month

10 to 12 days left.

Mashaa Allah, half the family went camping last week, and inshaa Allah, the rest of us will be joining them soon. This will take time from my cleaning-craze in preparation for Ramadan, but it is really needed I think. Just looking at the living room floor's carpet of feathers (the birds are moulting, which means no matter how often you clean, there's always more) lowers my spirits a bit now and then.

I've done some deep-cleaning of the kitchen sink and surrounds, cooker, washed slabs in the garden, and I've done one of the windows. All the old clothes have been ripped out of closets and the girls' room, where many were previously stored. A wobbly, really bad quality, chest of drawers has been completely emptied and I'm eyeing a new one on ebay :) which is much narrower and will fit in the corner between the bed and wall inshaa Allah. The girls' room will be much spacier soon, inshaa Allah.

I've washed through the laundry mountain I had after my washing machine broke (the result of washing too many heavy soiled clothes after the garden work was done) and more, alhamdu lillah, and I've tried home-made "laundry powder" (see above)! I want to make real laundry slime/gloop/detergent, inshaa Allah, but none of the stores I've been to stock borax! This is just grated Imperial Leather soap (Ivory), washing soda (sodium carbonate) and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). Washing soda is a good stain remover and water softener, the soap does washing well, but I added baking soda as it is a good deodoriser, and I needed that after some pants and bed-wetting accidents, alhamdu lillah. For fragrance I've used a few drops of tea tree oil, and I ran out of fabric conditioner again, so have washed lights and whites without (you don't really need fabric conditioner, right?) and coloured with malt vinegar.

I've got malt vinegar acting on some mold stains in the bath tub since yesterday evening, can't say I'm particularly fond of vinegar. The odours are everywhere, ugh. I'll wash it out today, inshaa Allah, and before we leave I'll get some tea tree oil on them (one teaspoon mixed with two cups of water in a spray bottle).

The big project for today is to empty my bed!!! I've dumped all the unwanted clothes there! *blush* Plus some un-folded washing. I really need to get my bedroom done before DH comes home today to pick us up.... hehe. And I've got to give food and water (with medicine) to the birds (tried to save a little two day old chick yesterday that had been kicked out of the nest, by hand-rearing - don't know if my efforts will help, I put it back yesterday evening), do some shopping in the morning, the usual house-chores and pack those bags! Hopefully I'll get some time to call the shed manufacturers that are left on my list *rolling eyes and feeling faint*

Khayr inshaa Allah.

Apart from cleaning etc, we've been watching videos on youtube about babies who sign and/or read (taken out my yellow flash cards again!), Krampf's experiments, and how to make a katana sword (!) - we were browsing expertvillage's youtube channel, saw some katana videos and from there stumbled over it. Really interesting, it talks about the different qualities of the steel and iron that is used in the samurai sword and how they achieve it. The outer, tougher steel is folded a dozen times or more! And the core is softer, more flexible. It is painted with two kinds of mixtures of clay and ashes, which is crucial in the heating up and cooling of the sword, giving it a distinct pattern and the characteristic bend! SubhaanAllah, a real art form and science!