Spring Cleaning Tips

When Spring arrives it’s time to put all those Spring Cleaning Tips to work!Spring has definitely arrived in Portland. The flowers are blooming and the sun is shining. After a long, rainy winter I always love those first days of Spring. Today I’m sharing some of my favorite spring cleaning tips and tricks for welcoming spring. Learn how to quickly and easily spruce up the house and welcome in that sun!

The first place I always start is the front door. That is the first thing people see when they come to the house and it is the first place you welcome people into your home. After the winter I like to replace my front mat with a new one and add a new wreath to my door.

Adding some fresh flowers or plants to the planters by the front door is also an easy way to make your home more welcoming.

As soon as the sun starts shining through the windows I can see the remains of the rainy winter. Between rain and people in and out, my windows and glass doors are always in need of a good cleaning.

Today I am partnering with Albertsons and Safeway and their new line of cleaning products. Open Nature™ has a full line of household cleaning products. All their cleaners are premium quality and safe for your home and family. The paper towels are 100% recycled paper and dye free. They also have fragrance free and perfume free options for their cleaning products. I love knowing that when I use Open Nature cleaning products things are really getting clean. Open Nature cleaners kill 99.9% of viruses, bacteria and germs!

Open Nature is the perfect thing to help put those spring cleaning tips into action.

I love using products that are not only safe for our environment and my family but ones that really work! Open Nature products provide effective cleaning power for your toughest messes.

In addition to freshening up my front door and giving the windows a good spring clean, I like to freshen up my guest bathroom too with some new hand soap. I’m loving the Water Lily and Jasmine Scented Soap from Open Nature. Picking up a couple of fresh new hand towels helps bring spring inside too!

Bringing some of those spring flowers into the house is another great way to welcome spring and bring it indoors. I’m lucky to have a beautiful lilac bush in my backyard and I love bringing them inside so I can smell the wonderful fragrance.

I’d love to hear what some of your top spring cleaning tips are!

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Birthday Party Cart with Italian Soda Bar

A birthday party cart is the perfect thing to hold your cake, presents and an italian soda bar.

This post is sponsored by Reddi-wip®  but all opinions are my own. #PartyReddi

I love birthday parties!  When my kids were little I must admit I may have sometimes gone a little over the top with my party planning.  There was the year we had a Easter Bunny theme because one of my boys was born a few days before Easter.  Everything and I mean everything at the party was shaped like an Easter bunny.  It was a little out of control, if I do say so myself.  Especially considering the party was for a bunch of children under three!  They could have cared less that their pear looked like an Easter bunny.  All they wanted to do was eat it!

Believe it or not, in my old age, I have learned how to simplify a bit but still make things look like you spent hours and hours.  Today’s Birthday Party Cart is a fun way to simplify while still making it look special.  This bar cart sits in my dining room and it comes in handy at party time.  It also makes your party portable.  You can move it inside or outside.

The first thing every party needs is a cake.  You can’t have a birthday party without a birthday cake.  Growing up, my birthday cake of choice was always angel food cake.  My kids always wanted one too.  Now you could make an angel food cake from scratch or you can head to Walmart, grab an angel food cake from their bakery, a can or two of Reddi-wip® whipped topping, and a package or two of fresh berries. Walmart is perfect because it has all the birthday supplies you might need, just one stop for your party needs.

Nothing makes a party more fun than  Reddi-wip®!  Kids love it and adults love it.  Just make sure you have plenty on hand because that stuff goes fast.  To create my easy strawberry angel food birthday cake I just cut the cake in half and put a nice layer of Reddi-wip® on top of the bottom layer and then covered it with sliced strawberries.

Add the top of the cake and then cover it with more Reddi-wip® and sliced strawberries.  So easy and so yummy.  It looks pretty too!

Just put  your cake on the Birthday Party Cart.  I always like to have some kind of hands on food activity for my party guests to do.  It keeps them busy and interacting with each other.  An Italian Soda Bar is the perfect solution.  You may remember the fun Italian Soda Bar we did for my daughter’s high school graduation party.  It was a huge hit!  For specific directions on how to make an Italian Soda see this post.

I just placed a selection of syrups on the birthday party cart along with soda water, glasses, straws and of course lots of Reddi-wip®.

Trust me on this one – have LOTS of Reddi-wip®  Not only will it be going on everyone’s Italian Soda but it will be going directly into a lot of people’s mouth too!!  Who can resist squirting some right into their mouth of the can!!  Real dairy cream is the number one ingredient in Reddi-wip®.

Your Birthday Party Cart has everything for your party all in one place – cake, drinks, flowers and gifts.

And of course no birthday party could be complete without balloons.  Just add them to your birthday party cart!  If you’re celebrating your little one’s first birthday, you can grab a smash cake from Walmart for free with any bakery purchase of $14.98!

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