21-25 of 103 Randoms About Me

25. I have a horrible and disgusting habit...I bite my nails something awful : (

24. I have only moved twice in my life. Once when I was around 2 and the other when I was 20. I only moved an hour away from home and have lived in the same apartment since! I'm 27 now!

23. My favorite movie is Wicker Park with Josh Hartnett. Which is great because it's supporting a home-state hottie!

22. We've been without cable for a while now and have been watching LOTS of Smallville. Seasons on DVD are the best thing ever! I am now officially madly in love with Tom Welling! <3

21. I am a HUGE procrastinator. It is 5 days before Christmas and I still have gifts to make!

For the kiddos

I needed to come up with something to do for the kiddos in the families we're giving gifts to...so keeping with the homemade theme I made a few things for them!

Simple memory game with fabric instead of commercialized name brands or characters...

I then took scrap pieces of the fabric used for the game pieces and made a little baggie to store them in : )

I also used scraps from the same fabric to make bean bags filled with dried beans (of course!)...

They need something to do with the bean bags right?! I connected a few pieces of pipe cleaner together then wrapped some around it for more strength and covered it with a piece of black fleece...simply lay the ring on the ground and try to throw the bean bags into the ring. (For pretty young kids, so it didn't need to be too complicated.) There are many other uses for bean bags too, I can only imagine the things kids could come up with!

Squeaky Clean

I've wanted to learn how to make my own soap for a while now and Christmas seemed to be the perfect reason to learn! It would make a nice addition to the other homemade gifts we're giving.

My brother had made soap before so I emailed him asking him for his recipe. When told me that he would bring the recipe and the stuff needed to make it up with him when he came up for Thanksgiving, I was thrilled!

I was so excited to make it that I asked him to show me how to make it the day after he arrived, haha. He brought the recipe and enough lye for two batches of soap. We quickly made a run to the store and picked up the olive oil, shortening and coconut oil. That's it! That's all you need for a basic bar of soap. Simple enough, right?!

The lye scares me because it is a little dangerous if you don't know what you're doing with it...and I didn't have a clue! You must be careful to make sure you don't get any on your skin! However, we made it through the soap making process without incident.

After we made the soap was the hard part...you have to wait 3-4 weeks before you can use it!

Homemade Lip Balm

Since the theme of Christmas for us was homemade, I decided to make some lip balm for the ladies. Because I had never made lip balm before I went with a really simple recipe. Less ingredients = less loss if it doesn't work, right?!

(sorry for the slightly blurry photo, this was taken with my phone)

This recipe is soooo simple!

• 1/4 cup beeswax shavings not compacted, but not super loose (make sense? haha)
• a tiny bit less than a 1/4 cup sweet almond oil
• a few drops of whatever essential oils you prefer

I say a tiny bit less than 1/4 cup oil because when I used a full 1/4 cup I felt it was slightly too oily. Simply combine the wax and almond oil in a glass microwave approved vessel and nuke at 30 second intervals stirring in between each. Do this until completely melted but not burnt. The first time around I added the oils to the lip balm jars (only if using jars) until I figured out the desired scent. (Usually 3-6) Then simply fill the jars or tubes with the wax/almond oil mix and stir! Once I've gauged how many containers a batch makes I just mixed the proper amount of essential oils into the wax/almond oil blend.

You should try it! Simply adjust things to the way you like it, but this is a good starting point :) Some people like to add honey to this recipe...I wasn't a fan, because my honey never seemed to mix into the wax/almond oil blend well. Good luck and happy melting!

More posts after Christmas!

I am excited to tell you that I will officially have stuff to blog about after Christmas! We went with homemade gifts this year and I'll have blogs to show you them : )

We gave Gidget, our kitty, her Christmas gift early because unfortunately she will be spendy Christmas day alone : ( because we are going up north to spend the day with family. We are saving up to purchase a fancy-schmancy kitty tree for her, they're spendy! The 'cheap' one we like is $170! Ugh. I found for WAY less to be a 'for now' one...

The picture isn't the best because it's taken with my phone, but you get the idea...nothing fancy. She loves it tho! She's still a little scared of getting down from the top platform though.

Internetless

I have been internetless for a few weeks now...that's why no recent posts! Soon! Soon, I will be posting again! I just wanted to let you know : )

Out of the dark!

We've been having technical difficulties the past few days. The power goes out randomly over and over, haha. So it's lights, no lights, lights, no lights, etc. When the power goes out we have no lights, but we are lucky enough to have three outlets that work : ) Even tho we have a few outlets, I've been living by candle light. It's actually been kind of nice living without a lot of technology. I think people rely on technology far too much these days. Instead of finding something to entertain ourselves we simply click a button and flip through channels : (

Yesterday when the power went out at 6pm and stayed out all night I found myself knitting by candle light and listening to the delightful hum of the highway next to my house. Okay, delightful isn't exactly true, but you know... However, today Bob connected his desktop to one of the outlets and he has a 22 inch monitor that we are now using as a tv! So, back to technology! The power is back on at the moment I believe, but I'm blogging via candle light and watching Bones on the desk top monitor...woo!

And...

WE GOT A KITTY!!!

Well, actually we've had her for a little while now...she was a secret for a while tho. She was a stray and we weren't sure if our landlord would let her stay. Her name is Gidget, most oftenly refered to as Gidgey or Gidge. Look at her adorableness!!!

The last photo is the most recent one of her.

Peasant Bowl Lunch

We made a peasant bowl style lunch the other day....I left mine fairly simple with some seasonings, peppers, black soy beans and rice. It was yummy! : ) Bob, of course, made his filled with tons of things along with the rice. I only got a picture of my plain jane one, but here it is!

*Halloween*

So, Halloween was a bit unusual for us this year...usually we go out with friends and party it up and get a hotel room (to avoid driving issues.) This year it was just Bob and I. Our friends who were coming from out of town called last Thursday or Friday to tell us they weren't able to come because their little girl is sick, one friend just decided not to go out and the other girl (Carol) called the night of to inform us her child was sick as well so she couldn't come either.

I have to admit, I got a little disappointed after the last friend called...I wanted to tell Bob that I didn't even want to go out anymore. After a few minutes of my pity party, we decided to just grab a case of beer, a pizza and just hang out in the room. I had told a friend (Gena) who was going out with her mother that we would stop by and say hi at some point in the night...We still put our costumes on to go show my 'rents. The whole thing of only going out for one drink and staying in was a good idea since we spent over $100 going out the night before!!! YIKES!

We got ready in our costumes...swung by my parents place, ordered pizza, picked up beer, stopped at a gas station to pick up some candy then ran the candy over to Carol's house for her little boy who couldn't go trick or treating. Then we picked up the pizza and went back to the room and enjoyed a few beers, some tv and pizza. We then went out to meet Gena for a beer and had our palms read! Haha. As we were saying goodbye to Gena we ran into Bob's dad and some friends so we ended up hanging out with them for a few hours! Then hit up two more places for a beer or two at each then went back to the room for another beer then bedtime!