Christmas!!

I love Christmas! Everything about Christmas is amazing: the Christmas tree, sweet treats, Christmas songs, cold weather (sometimes) and most importantly the Christmas story. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share about some things I did during Christmas! 

This is our Christmas tree. We have been getting real Christmas trees for a few years now. I always love decorating the tree! 

This is one of my favorite ornaments. My sweet sister Heather designed it for me last Christmas. :) What is your most special ornament? 

We also helped daddy put up Christmas lights on our house outside. I love how the Christmas tree shows in the window! The pictures kind of fuzzy because it was so dark outside. 

What is your favorite thing to drink in the winter? We made some homemade cocoa mix a few weeks ago. It is perfect for when you are cold. I really like this tea! It's called Sugar Plum Spice and it taste exactly like Christmas! It's sweet and has a bunch of different spices in it.

I love baking and eating anything sweet during Christmas. This year I made some peppermint patties. they are so yummy! I think I could eat the whole batch if everyone let me, but I guess I have to share. :D I attempted to put snowflakes on top with white chocolate. They turned out interesting... 

What do you like to do for Christmas gifts? I like to try to make things for everyone. This past year my sister and I learned how to knit from a lady at our library. I decided to put my knitting skills to the test and knit everyone scarves!  I had so much fun knitting them but I'm glad I finished them in time. I knitted Pappy a pillow because he broke his foot. Almost everyone else got a scarf. 

I even let the kitties join in on the fun. I knit them a mini scarf. It is the cutest thing ever! This is Tigger modeling it. 

I think she likes it! When she comes inside I put it on her. She never stops purring when she wears it! 

Isn't she adorable? My little brother found a little Santa hat so we put it on one of our kittens.. It was really really hard trying to get the hat to stay on a wiggling cats head.. Somehow we managed to get this kinda blurry picture of Tabby. The hat is the perfect size and it is so cute on her! 

I decided I needed to match her so I grabbed a bigger Santa hat and tried to hold a wiggling cat with a smaller Santa hat. It was a lot harder than it looks.. A lot of the time Tabby managed to get the thing off of her head and roll over and play with it. It was quite funny! 

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Never forget God's amazing gift to us!  

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the messiah, the Lord.                                                                                Luke 2:10-11 

Sugar Scrub Hearts

Hi everyone! I hope the beginning of fall has been great for you.

For this post I am going to show you how to make sugar scrub hearts. 

These sugar scrub hearts are a lot like sugar scrub but the sugar is all in one piece. Using just a few ingredients you can make these awesome sugar scrub cubes for yourself. I like using them on my hands and in the shower. If you have dry skin these are perfect! The sugar works great to exfoliate and the coconut oil is great for moisturizing. These things are so much fun to make. You don't have to stick to my recipe. Be creative and come up with your own versions! This recipe makes about 12 small hearts. 

What you will need:

• Shea butter soap base
• Coconut oil
• Brown and/or white sugar
• Soap scent of your choice
• Double boiler
• Soap mold (you can find some inexpensive ones at Hobby Lobby) 
• A heat proof bowl or container you don't mind smelling like soap scents forever
• A butter knife and several spoons

Now we can start. You will need to use 1/4 of a cup of shea butter soap base. In my container it is two cubes. 

Cut those two cubes up into smaller pieces. This will make them melt a whole lot faster. 

Once you have them cut, put them into the top pot of your double boiler. Next put 1/8th of a cup of coconut oil in with the shea butter. I just use a heaping tablespoon. 

Now fill the bottom pot of the double boiler halfway with water. Most of the time I kept the heat on high. While the shea butter is melting, you can start getting the sugar ready. 

For the sugar you can pretty much do what you want. All together you will need a 1/2 cup of sugar. I normally go with 1/4th brown sugar and 1/4th white sugar. I've found that if you do soap dye just using white sugar will make the color more vibrant. The brown sugar makes a softer sugar scrub. Since brown sugar is finer it absorbs more so you might need a little more than 1/2 a cup. Put the sugar in your container and mix them together. Be sure to mash any clumps of sugar or it won't mix as well.

 By now your shea butter and coconut oil should look kind of like this:

Use a spoon and stir them up. Don't worry about the shea butter and coconut oil if they don't mix together. It will all mix once you add it to the sugar. Now you need to have your soap scent, mold, and sugar ready. 

While your double boiler is still on the stove top,  add your soap scent. I don't really measure it. Some of the scents are stronger than others, so just add a little at a time until it gets strong enough. 

When you add all of this to your sugar you have to work fast because it hardens fast. 

Stir this up really well. You definitely don't want any loose sugar in the bottom of your container. This is when the fun begins. Haha! I have found that when the mixture is too runny its harder to put it into the molds.

See how thick this is? It's almost the same consistency of  play-dough. All you have to do is grab some and press it into the mold but you have to do it fast. It hardens in almost one minute. If you need it to stay softer longer you can put it in the bottom of your pot with the water like this. 

After you put it all into the mold put plastic wrap on top and slide them into the freezer for fifteen minutes. This will help them finish setting. If you have a little sugar scrub left over that won't fit into the mold usually you can go ahead and take out the first one you did and put the leftovers in there. 

After they have been in  the freezer for fifteen minutes take them out and pop them out of their molds. 

Now they are finished! They don't take as long to make as you might think. I timed the process from the beginning of putting the shea butter in the pot to putting them into the freezer and it only took about fifteen minutes. 

I found these cool glass jars with a chalkboard labels at Micheal's craft store. 

You can try all different things in these sugar scrubs. One of the things that I really like adding is apricot seeds. The apricot seeds and sugar work well together for more exfoliation. I just add about a tablespoon into the sugar.

You can even add in all different colors! Just add in a few drops to the shea butter and coconut oil and stir it up.

For another version I made sparkly peppermint hearts. To make them you will need soap sparkles and peppermint essential oil or soap scent. For these you can use brown and white sugar but I just used white sugar to make it seem like snow. :)

Look how cool they are when they are done!

Now find jars or bags for yours and package them up. These will make great gifts! To fill my jars up it takes almost two batches. The great thing about doing multiple batches at a time is you don't have you wash the dishes in between unless you add different scents. 

Here are some of mine completed.

I added some scrapbook paper circles on the side with the ingredients on them. 

There you have it! They are super easy to make and so much fun to use! 

Kittens!!!

Cats are one of my favorite animals. They are so fun to have around! One of my cats named Elsa had kittens recently. Last Monday they were six weeks old so I thought I would share some pictures with you. This is when they were first born. There are four white kittens and one tabby. 

We kept them inside while they were really little. Last week we put them outside in a pen and they are trying every possible way to get out. 

This is one of my favorite kittens. Isn't she pretty? It was really hard to get a picture of her. She would not stay still. I think I probably took thirty pictures before I got a good one of her. 

This one is also my favorite. Maybe I should just say they are all my favorites! When they were first born I couldn't tell the difference between the white kittens but now they are all a little different. 

When the kittens were just one or two weeks old, my little brother came home from my grandparents house with a stray kitten. He was super skinny but also really cute. We've had him for a little while and he is still sticking around. I think he adopted us. ;) He is a really good cat. Every time anyone picks him up he starts to purr. Joseph (my little brother) named him Hiro off of one of his favorite movies. Sorry this picture is kind of blurry. 

This last picture is one of my favorites. If I were to keep this kitten I would name it fluffy something. :) When it gets scared it scrunches up and all you can see is white fluffy fur.

Which of the kittens is your favorite? If you had the tabby kitten what would you name her? I have another blog post coming up hopefully soon. Thanks for reading!

Homemade Ink From Berries

Spring is here! That means bunnies, rain, and.... berries. We have been picking blackberries and mulberries. I can't decide which of the two I like better.

Today I will be showing you how to make ink out of berries. It is really fun and a little messy. 

What you need: 

• 1/2 cup of berries
• 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Begin by picking your berries. For my ink I used blackberries. 

Watch out for the thorns because they hurt! Also, you may want to wear old clothes because the berry juice gets everywhere. 

I picked about a half of a cup of berries the first time and got plenty of juice out of them.

 After you pick them put them in a glass bowl. 

Here comes the fun part. :) Now you can start squishing the berries. I just used a spoon. Don't worry about the seeds or stems. 

Once you squish all of the juice out, pour it into a bowl.

Add the vinegar and the salt and then stir until it dissolves.

You don't have to be precise with your measurements, just guess. 

I experimented with the unripe red blackberries just for fun. This is what the difference in colors looks like. I didn't get a very bright color with the unripe berries. It was a light pink. I wouldn't suggest it for writing with but if you want some different shades of pinks for painting it works well.  

The unripe berry ink is on the left and the ripe berry ink is on the right. 

Don't just throw out the left over berry pieces. If you have chickens they love it! 

Finally you can start writing or painting with your ink. Here are some things that I did with mine. 

Book marks! It's a little hard to write with a paint brush. :)

You could use it as paint, too. Do whatever you want to with it. I'm not sure exactly how long the berry ink will last but I wouldn't suggest keeping it for more than a few days. Have fun with it!