Things I have recently made that have gone really well

I have recently made two new food items and a household item that I was pretty pleased with. I got all of the "recipes" from the interweb, but the shared success is a result of reading all of the comments I could find on these recipes, because people often point things out that I am either too stupid or busy to realize OR everyone has the same problem with a recipe and someone comes along and fixes it and I can avoid all the problems by reading the comments.

So, I made Italian Beef sandwiches, laundry soap, and funfetti cookies. In that order. Ty dubbed the sandwiches "better than firehouse or subway" (heck, yeah!) and also requested them for his birthday. When I stupidly questioned if he really wanted the sandwiches instead of the previously requested Little Caesar's pizza, he quickly rescinded. BUT, it was a nice gesture from an almost-teenager.

1. Italian beef. A friend gave me a recipe for these years ago and I made them and they were SO SPICY that Jerry and I couldn't even eat them and I never made them again. I never forgot about them, either, I just needed a bit milder of a recipe. I think I read 900+ versions of italian beef sandwich recipes the week before I made them. Here's my new, less spicy version:
I put a couple of pounds of some kind of beef roast in the crock pot with 1 can of beef broth, 1/2 jar of pepperocini juice and 8 pepperocinis, 1 bottle (or can) of beer, 1 chopped onion, several smashed garlic cloves (maybe 5 or 6), and random italian spices. Let it cook on low all day. Shred with forks. place beef on crusty rolls, with provolone cheese and broil in the oven until cheese melts but not long enough for the bread to burn. Generally this is a couple of minutes, but I'm new to broiling so keep your eye on it. Otherwise your meal with be RUINED! Not really, you can use a bread knife and slice off the layer of over-toasted bread. But it's easier if you pull it out of the oven before that happens.
This is really good with a side of roasted veggies. Look up your own recipe for that. Or share your veggie roasting secrets with me, because mine are just a touch on the soggy side.

2. Laundry soap. I know, I'm not super granola or green or THAT cheap, but I pinned a laundry soap recipe on pinterest and I just had the urge to go for it. So I did.
Here's the link for the recipe I used: http://www.howdoesshe.com/cheaper-and-better-diy-laundry-detergent
Here's what I did:
a box of borax (they only had 1 size box at walmart)
4 lbs baking soda
1 box of arm and hammer super washing soda (it's in the laundry aisle by the borax)
1 container of oxyclean
2 bars of zote soap OR 5-6 bars of fels naptha soap. In the laundry aisle. (If they have the powdered version of the zote soap get it, you will save yourself most of the work of making this stuff)
1-2 bottles of purex crystals or downy unstoppables (just for scent, get what you like. I got 1 bottle and it was fine)
(As noted in the comments on the original recipe) It would be helpful to have a 5 gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid and small children to roll the bucket around. I didn't have the bucket, so I couldn't use the children for rolling.
The only real work involved is grating the bars of soap. I got Ty to do it with me. I grated 5 in the time it took him to grate 1, but that's okay, we were working together to accomplish a goal AND watching the olympics, so win-win.
Anyway, once you grate the soap, mix all the ingredients up in a very large container of some kind. It's pretty dense, so I poured it back and forth between 2 containers several times. or you could try layering and mixing. Or the giant bucket + lid + children method.
It costs about $28 for all the ingredients (minus the bucket and children. Children are expensive and it takes years of raising them before they can help with such tasks, so don't have some just so you can make laundry soap.)
You can use a coffee scoop ($1 at walmart) and measure 1 scoopful for each load. Put it in the drum before you load your clothes. It is allegedly safe for HE washers. As for it's effectivenes? Eh, my clothes seem no cleaner or dirtier than they were with other laundry detergents. I'm trying to figure out if it's having any effect on the colors. Sometimes I think some of my clothes are dingier, but then I realize it's my 11-year-old's socks and those things haven't been white since the day I bought them, sooo.....yeah, it seems to work fine and it does smell good. And I'm just so dang proud of myself for MAKING LAUNDRY SOAP that I'm getting a little giddy about doing the laundry these days. Yeah, that'll last....

3. Funfetti cookies. Alright, why have I never heard of these and why has no one made them for me and why has no one told me about them????? SO EASY!!!!
1 box of funfetti cake mix (or any flavor, really)
2 eggs
1/4-1/3 cup oil
Mix ingredients until moist. Drop by spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10ish minutes at 350*.
In reading comments on versions of this recipe I discovered that pillsbury has apparently reduced the amount of cake mix in a box from 18oz to 15.5oz. You didn't know that doughboy was so stingy, did you? Anyway, it seems that if your cake mix is 18oz you will need 1/3 cup and if it's 15.5oz you will need a little less. Mine was 15.5 and I used about a 1/4 cup of oil and it turned out fine.
The other secret to these things seems to be to let them cool on the pan for about 2 minutes before you transfer them to a cooling rack. They're very soft at first, but give 'em a minute and they'll come off in whole cookies instead of crumbling for smooshing.
Also, I read if you are making chocolate cookies with chocolate cake mix you should add a bit of water.  I'd mix them up first, then add water by the teaspoonful.
You can also add chocolate chips (or any flavor baking chips) or nuts or oatmeal, allegedly.

So there you go, these are the things that went well for me in the past week. If you have any cool things to make, let me know!