#CleaningTips Talk About Calling The Kettle Black! You Can Fix That! lol! How to Clean Your Electric Kettle - With Lemon Juice - yahoo! #AllNaturalCleaner

How to Clean Your Electric Kettle With Lemon Juice 

This will work to clean your teapot, too!

So here's what happened to me, today (starting last night...)  - I really wanted to clean my favorite electric kettle, and I use bleach for a lot of things, is like a little miracle cleaner - will whiten men's socks so they look new (I've washed a lot of men's socks in my life, so this is a big issue for me - lol!), cleans a sink in seconds - just pour the bleach directly in the sink, instantly shiny and new.... will clean tiles like nothing else you've ever seen or used... anyway, so I wanted to clean my kettle, thought the bleach would be a good solution, right?  I had rationalized that I knew people who added a little bleach to their dishwasher, soooo, I thought, well, it's mostly water in the kettle, will add some bleach, boil it, then add some dish soap...

So I did that, was VERY bleachy in the house - yuck, so I put the kettle, still full of water, bleach and soap, out on the balcony, and left it there overnight.

This morning, I thought, yahoo, my kettle's gonna be soo clean, and it really wasn't - had to still scrub it to make it clean, then I had to boil water in it over and over again, trying to get rid of the bleach smell - and didn't want to ingest ANY traces of bleach...

Then, at my wit's end, and very upset that I had ruined my kettle - what a hassle it is to boil water outside of an electric kettle - lol - had no idea I was so dependent on my electric kettle... guess I make a lot of tea, throughout the day, and I love to make my fave Mr. Noodles for lunch, pretty much every day, but with Chicken OXO, parsley and chopped green onion - deelish... but I digress...

So then I thought, okay, this is pretty much a done deal on this kettle, now, so I thought, well, what if I pour in some lemon juice - just regular old lemon juice, it'll probably be in your fridge. I still had a full pot of water in the kettle, just poured in about a cup of lemon juice - I just poured it in, no measuring for me - I was just trying to get rid of the bleach smell, at this point...

THEN, I go back into the kitchen to have a look at my much loved kettle, thought, aahhh, it's a goner... opened the lid, much to my amazement, it's totally clean, like new!  Yahoo!!

If you have a grotty, hard water residue, problemo with your own kettle, you will be very impressed with how clean my kettle is! hahaha!  Sometimes it's the really little things that make us really happy!

Sooo, here's the trick - Use Lemon Juice right from the beginning - no worries about toxicity - yahoo!  Lemon Juice is an effective and non-toxic way to clean your electric kettle.

Soon your kettle will look like new, and what's the worst that can happen - your tea might have a little lemon flavour - soo much better than a bleach flavour (not a popular tea flavour! lol!).

Just fill your kettle with water, pour in some lemon juice, boil, and leave it to sit for a while - overnight, or maybe you're reading a good book, or you've got some good shows to watch - or you get stuck on FaceBook for a couple of hours - lol!  You'll go and check your beloved kettle, it'll be like new, too - done!  Lovely and clean!  See you soon!  Ailsa : )

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Okay, so I just cleaned my kettle, again, today - I couldn't see how much waer was in it - you know the little window at the side of your kettle, so you can see the water lines? Yeah, well, I couldn't see ANY water lines, sooo, finally I had the kettle cool for a minute (since I am forever making another fresh pot of tea - lol!)...

So I looked inside the kettle and... yikes! Talk about calling the kettle black! lol! 

Holy Ca'Moly, Batman! That's crrrazy! That's just from water? What kind of minerals are in there, me wonders, right? lol!

See the Lemon Juice? I just remembered that new-to-me trick, that I had learned the hard way (the way I've learned far too many of my 'lessons' hahaha!), last year, when I thought, cleverly, I wold just clean my kettle with bleach, since, you can clean your dishes with a little bleach, so let's see if it'll clean the kettle...

And the bleach DID clean the kettle, but it rendered it useless, because the smell was so strong, that I went out and bought another kettle... but, really, I should see if I still have that old guy in the cupboard, try the Lemon Juice Clean on him, too, right? Waste Not Want Not, if you can fix it! lol!

Anyway, so I poured in the water just past the top line, then poured in some Lemon Juice, plugged in the Electric Kettle and boiled it.... this is the first time through...see all the dirt is gone?

Like Magic, baby! I could take this trick to Vegas! haha! 

(Ailsa And Her Amazing Magic Kettle! lol!)

I let the kettle cool (okay, you got me, I heated up my Hot Sock, went and had a little nap - lol!)...

Then I plugged it in to boil the Lemon Water, again... and then I had another couple o' brilliant ideas...

I thought, ooh, this is a great opportunity to clean my Teapot, too - technically, it's a Coffee Pot, since my favorite Pansy Teapot has a little crack in it, and now I can't use it, in case it bursts apart (on account a' da crack - crack kills, stay away from crack - li'l Public Service, right there for you... ; )

So rather than just waste the Lemon Water, which is now Boiled Lemon Water, I poured some of it in the Teapot, and cleverly poured some on a Tea cloth, tea towel (kitchen towel? You know what I mean - the one that hangs on, or by, your stove - lol!)

Anyway, that was super lucky I had poured some of the boiling Lemon Water on the tea clothe (spelling? e or no e - man, what's with all the drug references, today? hahaha!) since I totally forgot to clean the lid for the teapot...

So I used the cloth I had soaked in the boiling lemon juice, and wiped the teapot lid, around the outside of the teapot - and now everything is sparkling clean! 

Pour some of the Boiling Lemon Juice and Water (mostly water!), into your Teapot, and some on a cloth, so you can use that to clean other things, like the top of the teapot! Clean your lid - lol!

Look at that! Can you believe that? and that's just from pouring some lemon juice (maybe a half a cup? I just poured in a little bit, or, what seemed to me to be a relatively small amount... not a lot of lemon juice, is my point, soo... this won't cost you very much, and the worst that could happen is your next pot of tea might be a little lemony, but we all love that, especially Wendy Williams (!) 

(Shout Out to Wendy Williams - she's my Girl! In my head, we're best friends, and her hilarious and lovely friend, Suzanne, is sooo much like my hilarious and lovely friend, Melinda... we're like a matching pair! How You' Doin'? lol!)

Wow, can you believe it? Is stunning, right? Look how clean the little window is, now! Yahoo! Now you can see right in the window - just like your neighbor's house! haha! 

Then I thought, oh, hey, would this lemon juice on the cloth clean my Silver Teapot, which I juuust remembered I had, when I thought my parents might need a teapot (turned out, they had one - lol!), but I had put it at the top of the kitchen cabinets - you know how you line things up at the top of the cabinets - unless you have up-lighting, at the top of your cabinets, which I HIGHLY recommend - is gooorgeous! Turn the rest of the lights out, just leave the uplighting on? All very romantic - lol! 

And there we go - the boiling lemon juice, poured onto the cloth, and it was cool enough to easily handle, gave this Silver Teapot a really nice little polish! That was soo easy! And fun, if you like to clean things - haha! I'm not a Clean Freak, but I do love to figure things out, fix da problemos! lol! 

And those are my favorite little Wire Crystal Trees that I love to make, and the Coffee Bean Candle, which I love - and the scent of the coffee beans, literally, lasts for years - sometimes you can just top it up with some fresh new coffee beans - or, some coffee beans from the freezer - yum! haha! 

Okay, better eat something! 

Hope you're having THE Best Day, ever! Your Little Cleaning Friend, Ailsa! : ) xoxo!!

The Bachelorette - Andi's Fightin' Her Way Through These Guys...

So, wow, that was such a difficult night on The Bachelorette with Andi, last night.  Was hard to figure out whether it's okay to write about it, right, since Eric passed away during the filming of The Bachelorette... but, Eric had some very serious flaws, and I think it's good, in a way, for millions of women to see this technique in action - the man who tries to put you down, make you feel less-than, to make you feel like you either have to please him, or change to please him, or that you really are less-than.... ugh. Hate those guys. And it's a Red Flag for an abuser, too - watch out, ladies, Andi did the right thing by not falling into his stoooopid trap, and making it seem like she was 'acting' and not really being herself, then he says, once he's riled her up, and she's all flustered and defensive, 'oh, now we see the real Andi'.... bleh!  Screw that type of guy - walk away, run away, don't fall for it.  And it's a classic 'Romance Novel' approach, too, which is even worse.... the 'mean guy' as the hero - no. If he's mean at first, you can bet he'll be mean all the way through. He might cover it up for a while, but that mean streak will be back, and just get meaner and meaner.  Sooo, it's very sad that Eric passed away, and I think they dealt with that pretty well on The Bachelorette, last night, skipping the Rose Ceremony, just Chris Harrison and Andi talking about it...how else would you deal with such a difficult situation?

But there was a lot of weird stuff in this episode - what is with the daredevil crap, reppelling down a 26 storey building? Bleh!!  That's soo stupid. Makes me so mad.  I think it's better judgement to get to the top, let's say it really WAS Andi's idea, which I highly doubt it really was, then say, together, you know what? This is insane. Let's take these stoooopid harnesses off, go have a drink, chat, and get to really know each other. Pretty sure you don't have to leap off a tall building to get to know if you like someone enough to maybe marry them, one day.  But pretty bizarre when they got down to the bottom of the building, after repelling down the whole dammmm thing... and Andi says it was some sort of test?  Aaarrrgghh!  I think that might be a young woman's game, the 'testing' thing. Don't 'test' people, Andi!  Yuck. Women don't want to be 'tested' ,and men don't want to be tested, either. (Watch out for men who 'test' you, too - man, it's a miracle there are any good relationships out there, what with all these annoying traits so many people have - hahahaaha!)

Hmmm.... there's something about Markus that I don't like - he seems very stalkerish... (am I bringing too much of my own baggage in here? Yikes!).  But I didn't like when he asked Andi if she believed in love at first sight... you CAN believe in love at first sight, of course, and God Knows I've 'fallen in love' with someone 'at first sight' (I jus' wanna make a little joke in here, 'hope he saw me, too!' - hahahahaaha!), but, really, I have fallen very quickly (errrr, a few times! lol!), and that definitely can happen, but here we are, on a TV show, literally, 26 other super-handsome guys, all maybe feeling the same way?  I dunno, gave me the creeps when he said that, all hidden away in the dark doorway... yick! haha!  Silly, like any of this really matters... but I do love it!  Thank God for something watchable on TV! lol!

Oh, but I do like Markel - he's so nice, really funny - not so sure that Andi is really looking for someone nice and funny - she seems to like the creep-factor - yick, I no likee da Nick.... what was with that hideous bomber jacket from 1982, at the dinner in Santa Barbara?  What the hell??  Really, no suit jacket?  A bomber jacket?? hahahahaha!  Made me laugh...and Andi is always trying to 'convince' Nick that he really could find love on a Reality TV show... he's Mr. Cynic. Andi seems to like all the ones I don't like... I really like Brian, what a cutie, and Josh M. - so handsome, really nice smile...and I loved JJ as an old guy - what a great sport, and another guy with a great sense of humor...

Oooh, and here's another thing da be botherin' me - that's a whole lot o' kissin'... yuck!  Even hookers don't kiss that much!  Not the mouth, please, not da mouth... lol... sooo, really, you're that attracted to that many of the men, you need to go in for ALL those kisses?  Yick. And I don't see that as a double standard with the male version of The Bachelor - it was just as gross when Juan "Ees Alright' Pablo was going around, kissing every girl, then shaming them for it, every chance he got... hahahaha - so gross! I love it!  All very entertaining for me!  And you, since you a'readin' this! lol!

Okay, at least we're al having fun watching The Bachelorette, and I hope they have another Bachelor Pad, this summer - would be more fun to watch a bunch of men, and a bunch of women, equally numbered, just hanging about... but wait, didn't they already try this?  Jersey Shore ring a bell? lol!

Hope you're out having your own fancy dates, and hope they're all good! See you soon, Ailsa : )

Mini-Banana Splits - Delicious, and Good for Your Diet : ) #Chocolate #Bananas! #Yum!

Mini-Banana Splits - Yuuummm!!

So I was poking around in the kitchen, last night, just gonna have a banana for a wee treat - and, yes, bananas are VERY good for you - one of the perfect foods, and they're readily available, everywhere, and relatively inexpensive.... and delicious!  I know there's a whole thing, out there, that says, oooh, you're gonna get sooo fat if you ever eat a banana - yeah, not so.  What's gonna happen, is, you'll have a healthy snack, it'll be soo good for your body, and some very annoying weight-loss company who is potentially making a fortune selling their own fake-a-dake products, happily telling people - mostly women - not to EVER eat a banana - bleh!  those people are horrible!  That's terrible information.... they shouldn't be allowed to put all that misinformation out there - believe me, no one ever got 'fat' over a banana....

Soo, given all that, embrace your love of bananas! lol!

If this is just a little schnack for you, just use one banana, and if you have anyone else who might be within seeing distance (in that, they can totally see you enjoying your delicious new mini-banana split snack - lol, then just add one banana per person, or maybe half a banana for younger kids... you be the Big Decider, you know your own self, and whoever else you might be making lovely things for, right?  Trust yourself - you do know best : )

Ingredients:  I know, looks tricky! haha!

1 Banana, thick slices

Mini-Chocolate Chips - sprinkle on

Caramel (optional, but delicious - lol!)

Whip Cream (also optional, also delicious! hahaha!)

Uhhh, yum!  I think I'll use this regular Caramel topping, the next time I make this little Mini-Banana Split treat for myself or my son... I think it'll be a whole lot faster and easier, and you just want a little dob of caramel, since it's just a little slice o' banana, right? lol!  : )

Hmmm, I hope you can see this, because even I was pretty surprised by this... I just checked it out a minute ago... so, last night I happened to use the Whipped Topping, which I normally never buy, since I like 'real' anything - I figure, if you're gonna eat it, you should totally enjoy it, so I rarely buy anything that is fat-free, and never, ever, buy anything that is 'sugar-free', since it is generally very bad for you, and I'm allergic to all the fake sugars...

So check that out - the 'Real Whipped Cream' has LESS fat and sugar than the 'Whipped Topping' - shocking, right?  At the very least, makes you say, whaat?  Hmmm... and the Real Whip Cream is better for you, in general. Wherever you can, go with a natural product (that chocolate is natural, right? I no wants to burst my happy bubble! hahaha!).

So, first I thought, oh, I'll have a banana. Then I thought, oh, I've got that new caramel that I just bought, maybe a month ago, but hadn't gotten around to trying it, yet.  So I put that on the Banana Slices.

Then I thought, oooh, I think I'll add some mini-chocolate chips - just a wee taste o' chocolate, right? haha!

THEN I thought, whaaat??  I could totally put a little fancy drop of Whip Cream on just some of the Banana Slices... and then you can see what happened - all the slices ended up with caramel, chocolate chips, AND whip cream - and they were deeeelicious!!  You are'a gonna love these!  They're so cute and little, you'll have a lovely wee treat, you'll have had a taste o' your favourite chocolate - and whip cream?!  It's all good, baby!! 

Yum!! They didn't last very long!  And about the same fat and sugar you would get in a couple of cookies - that's doable, right?  Enjoy!!


Online Grocery Delivery - Yes, Please! Oooh... Order it here, they'll bring it to you, there.... yahoo! 

This is so cool - let's say you've now been binge watching your fave shows, and you STILL have 4 more seasons left of your brand new-to-you show, soo you don't want to get up off the couch, but, also, you know you should probably get you' some groceries?

Problem - Solution! lol! 

Check and see if your area is covered by either VONS or Safeway... they cover some of the same areas, and some different areas - does that make sense? lol!

I loove this Delivery Service for Groceries and whatever you might need, right to your door, just in general, but what a great idea in bad weather, no more stooopid traffic, or if you're not feeling up to going out to the store, or you just don't feeeel like going out to the store...or if you're like me, and get so caught up in whatever you're working on, and don't want to stop just 'for food' - haha! And no need for Taxis, if you need to take a cab to the grocery store...that's a huge savings, right there, right?

Wow, Grocery Delivery Service - that's fantastico!! Yippee!!  Hello, Future - you look great! : )

I think this is such an amazing new service for your groceries - and anything you ever need from the grocery store - if you've ever had a time when you had a tiny baby, or you're super-busy (same thing - hahaha! All the New Moms will be laughing, now - lol!)..but if you're busy at work, or busy at home, or traffic, or you're busy binge-watching your favorite shows - hahahahaha! This might be the new wave of the future, right? Ordering your groceries online?

And I would imagine you would save a lot of money, since you would just buy what you actually need... might really work for dieting, too, since, well, if we're in the store, and be 'we', I mean 'me'...anyway, let's say I've got my grocery list, then I'm at the store, and I think, you know what, I'll just nick down the Candy Aisle, see if Chocolate is on sale (see how much I like Sale Chocolate - hahaha! Is it tastier, or just less expensive?? We'll never know! It's all gone, now - hahaha!)

Not that you couldn't just 'browse' for that, anyway... right? Me thinkin', now, o' course, where is the Sale Chocolate, online?? hahaha! But let's say you're you, and not me, and you have a LOT more self control than maybe ME do... so you order all the things you really wanted, and not just a whole cart full o' Wunderbars, on sale... hahahaha! Wouldn't THAT be fun - just a cartful of Sale Chocolate?? haha! Okay, clearly, me needs a treat! lol! : ) #SaleChocolate! Ha!

Shop Gifts Under $10 from See's Candies!Create your own Custom Chocolate Mix at See's Candies!  Okay, this is MY kind o' Luxury Reward - me always 'reward' mah'self wit' da delicious chocolates! hahaha!  I loove Sees Candies - soo deeelish! The Walnut Squares (#43 - is it bad for me to know the number?? hahahahaha!) (I've got your number..oooh, is it #43??  I hope so! lol!) Ooh, and I see that Sees has a sale, right now, Take $4 off of $20? Yahoo! Sale Chocolate - yes, please! haha! Yum! Don't mind if ah' do...lol! : )