Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

I've been using my 

homemade laundry detergent

for almost two years now 

and couldn't be happier with it.

Love it.

I decided to take the plunge and mix up some

homemade dishwasher detergent.

The only thing I needed to buy was a bottle of

Lemi Shine.  I had everything else on hand at home.

The results weren't quite what I hoped.  

I used it for about a week, with vinegar as a rinse aide,

and my dishes seemed clean, but they had a film and just 

didn't look sparkly to me. 

I'm planning to do some more research 
and tweaking this summer.

If anyone has had great success 
with homemade dishwasher detergent

please feel free to leave me a comment with suggestions!

Laying Again

Around Thanksgiving each year my hens begin to molt and kind of "go on strike" for awhile.

Eggs are hard to come by for a few months.

But usually sometime around mid January,
egg production starts up again,

and we can have scrambled eggs for breakfast
whenever we'd like 

and I don't have to ration my eggs for baking.

As a side note, I have been raising chickens for almost three years now.

My original flock started laying in January of 2011,

and in two years of egg production I have needed to buy only three dozen eggs 

to supplement my supply.

And I had free coupons for 2 cartons of them!