How to Clean Grout on Floor Tiles

Have I ever told you how much I dislike grout?  The reason I do not like grout is because it is very porous and a lot of dirt gets trapped in it.  After trying several different products, methods, and DIY recipes, I found that white distilled vinegar works wonders on "my floor".  It may not work for everyone, due to the type of grout that may be in place.  My grout had a light seal.

After trying one product for cleaning my iron, I should have known that one simple product would do the trick on my grout. All I used to clean the grout was a small old brush,  a rag, a small container to pour your vinegar in, and the white vinegar.


This is what I started with, dirt, dirt, and more dirt.  I grabbed an old toothbrush and a plastic cup to dip my brush and begun brushing the grout. The wonderful thing is, vinegar evaporates rather quickly, so there is no residue and no big mess.

Look at that!!  Got to love natural products for cleaning.  Can you see the difference below with the cleaned section and the dirty section?  It's magic!  The only bad thing about this is that your grout will get dirty again over time and may have to do this again just like cleaning anything in your home.  I love that there is no chemical odor. Bleach gives me a headache and other products trigger my asthma, so this is my to go cleaning grout product.

Have you tried this on your floor grout?  Do you have any natural home cleaning items that you use for your home?

Making Magazines with Blurb’s BookWright: An Interview with Trevor Ehle

**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.



Recently, I had the chance to chat with Trevor Ehle, the Senior Product Manager at Blurb who’s been working on BookWright. BookWright is a great new way to make a book, and more importantly, a magazine. Let me share his insider information about the new things you can do with Blurb that make it pretty easy to make a magazine—whether you’re an experienced designer or not.

Apparently, building the foundation for your magazine using words and images in BookWright is pretty much the same process as making a book—but there are some differences, according to Trevor Ehle, that you should keep in mind before you start. 
Here are Trevor's tips for making a stunning magazine...

1. "The magazine format has the option of printing images and/or text on the inside of the front and back cover. We think this is a nice design addition that is exclusive to this print format. You’ll find it in the 'Covers' section of BookWright."


2. "To keep printing costs as low as possible, Blurb requires that all magazine page counts be divisible by four—so keep that in mind when setting up the content for the pages portion of your book. You can always add blank sheets at the end to make your magazine fit this page count. But don’t worry—BookWright will let you know on upload if your magazine’s page count is incorrect."


3. "The magazine’s spine is relatively small, even at larger page number counts, so it might be best to use an image, background color, or texture on the spine in place of text. Given the limited space that is available and the variation of the printing process, you are more likely to get a final product you are happy with if you stay away from using text."


4. "BookWright has soft proofing built in. If you have ever visited our [color management page] you know how complicated this can be—yet it’s an important part of your book design process. We’ve takenBlurb's ICC Profile for color management and integrated it directly into BookWright to help save you time and make it available for everyone—regardless of technical ability."


5. "As you drop images into your book, we automatically apply the color profile to help manage colors more closely. (However, this can also be disabled in your Preferences view, if you wish to work without it.) If you are designing an ebook, BookWright will disable the profile automatically so you see the true colors, since digital files do not, obviously, need to be calibrated for print."


Are your creative juices flowing? I know that mine are.  Are you ready to publish the next Life magazine? Bookmark these tips, then head on over to Blurb. Right now, Blurb is offering 15% off on all printed products for returning customers and 25% off for first purchases made by new customers through May 31st! Simply use the code MYFIRST at checkout for new customers and 15%SAVINGS for returning customers. These deals expire next week, so if you're going to grab one, you better hurry! 

Pavers for the Backyard

The days for outdoor entertaining are here and to get ready, we have been working on updating our backyard.  It's a long term process, but Mr. M has layed out the pavers which is the biggest part of this project.  We are now focusing on the sides of the pavement and since they did not have sod available for us, we have planted seeds in order to have grass by the summer.

It is a lot of work, digging, measuring, layering, and leveling.  But if you remember this post, you will know that this is something we have wanted to do for a long time.  We decided to keep this project simple because Mr. M did all the work himself; the less complicated the better.
In the image you see above you will notice a huge rectangular section which was dug out to be completely pavered, but in order to keep costs down, we went with the smaller centered square as seen instead.

After the pavers were layed out, he added the sand to fill in the gaps and hold the pavers in place. When you add the water, it solidifies the sand.
Now all we need to do is add grass to the sides, perhaps plants too.  The project continues and I will post more as we go along later on. I have been working on outdoor seating and will post those soon as well.  Are you working on any outdoor projects?  Gardening?

They Sold my Domain

What a headache, heartache and frustration I've had.  My domain was sold by GoDaddy and I can't believe it! Not my decision and I was not notified.  I have gone back to the original blogspot domain for now and I am contemplating on what steps to take next.  So many social media sites direct photos and post to the old domain: www.inspirationsbyd.com.  It makes me sick at the thought that I lost so many readers due to that change.  If Barbie is reading this, I should have listened to you and gone with Wordpress.  Google was of no help either, sigh!

What to do, what to do now.  Shall I continue with the blogspot, change the .com to .org or .net or move my site all together to a whole new host?  Dear readers if you can make me feel a little better, please share your thoughts if you have had similar experiences.

My current domain is : www.inspirationsbyd.blogspot.com please make note of that.