These Are a Few...

Hi everyone! Do you like to read? Reading is one of my favorite things to do. I thought that I'd share some of my favorite Christian authors with you. It's hard to find a good book to read sometimes. The thing that I like most about all of these books is that none of them are dull! They all have beautifully written stories and strong christian characters. What is your favorite type of book? When I was little I loved mysteries (I still do). My favorites were Nancy Drew Mysteries and the Mandie Collection. Now, I still enjoy books with in-depth characters and suspenseful plots. These are a few of my favorite things books!

Jane Austen ~ You can't go wrong with Jane Austen. Her Regency books will always be among my favorites. Regency dancing, teatime, novel reading, and a bit of matchmaking are all in her books. My personal favorites are Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

Lamplighter Books ~ I know this is not just one author but I had to include Lamplighter Publishing with my favorites. Lamplighter reprints old books and gives them beautiful covers. They aren't just any old books though. Each one is a beautiful story about a person who learns more about God or perhaps discovers God for the first time. They show that no one is perfect and life can be hard but God will help us through it. I highly recommend every single one of these books. My personal favorites: All OF  THEM!! :) More specifically though: A Lost Pearle, The Hidden Hand, House of Love, The Locked Cupboard, and The Orphan Queen.

Sarah E. Ladd ~ I recently discovered Sarah E. Ladd's books. Her books are very enjoyable and sweet. Most of them are set in the Regency Era. So far I've read The Heiress of Winterwood, and The Headmistress of Rosemere. 

Janette Oke ~ I've been reading Janette Oke's books for a long time. I'm pretty sure that I've read nearly all of them. She has written many series. I love how she makes her characters seem real and she shows how they grow in their faith even in difficult circumstances. Of all of her books, my favorites are Love Comes Softly Series, Return to the Canadian West Series, and Roses for Mama (a stand alone novel). My top favorite is a series she co-wrote with T. Davis Bunn called The Song of Acadia. 

Roseanna M. White ~ I've only read two of Roseanna M. White's books but they were amazing. They are written beautifully and are full of suspense. I've read The Lost Heiress, and A Lady Unrivaled. 

Julie Klassen ~ Every time I pick up one of Julie Klassen's books I have a very hard time setting it down. Then after I finish them I get sad and wish that they could keep going on. Wouldn't a never ending book be fun? You'd never have to be sad when it ends! The plots in her books are incredible. They're suspenseful and the characters are also super good. My favorites are The Secret of Pembrooke Park,  and The Silent Governess.

Kritsi Ann Hunter ~ I just picked up A Noble Masquerade in the library the other day and I have to say I was really surprised. I read it in two days. It was so good! It is set in the Regency era and has everything you could hope for in a book; dancing, mystery, spies, romance, a noble hero, and an amazing albeit stubborn main character. Do yourself a favor and go check out this book. It's seriously amazing! She has a free Novella available for kindle. It's called A Lady of Esteem. You're welcome. :) Although I liked A Noble Masquerade better, A Lady of Esteem is very enjoyable. I tend to like long books better than short ones. I think that there is more time for the story to develop thus more time to get to know the characters. Which do you prefer? 

Melanie Dickerson ~ I don't think that I can say enough good things about her books! She loosely bases her books after fairy tales adding more plots and Christian characters. Her stories are sweet and powerful. I count down the days every time she has a new book coming out. I really enjoyed The Merchant's Daughter, The Princess Spy, The Golden Braid, and The Beautiful Pretender. 

Now that you have a list all you have to do is check them out and read them all! Have you read any of these books before? What are your favorite books? Why do you like them? What is one thing that you like to see in a book? 

All that's left to do now is grab a cup of tea and a plate of scones and a couple rainy afternoons. Have fun reading! 

"If a book is well written, I always find it too short." ~ Jane Austen 

"The more that you read. The more things you will know. The more things that you learn, the more places you will go. ~ Dr. Seuss

"Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." C.S. Lewis 

Lavender London Fog Tea

Hello everyone, 

Today I'm going to show you how to make London Fog tea. I made it for the first time a couple days ago and it was amazing. I've made it several times since then. One of my favorite things is a nice warm cup of tea paired with a book and kitten curled up in my lap. I added a pinch of lavender in with the Earl Grey tea and it blended perfectly. Just be sure you don't put too much lavender. It is very easy to get it too strong and then it does not taste good at all. Trust me. Once I made some lavender sugar scones and put several tablespoons of dried lavender in them. If you've ever cooked with lavender, I'm sure you can imagine what they tasted like. Haha! Anyway, here's how to make lavender London fog.

What you will need:

• Two cups of water
• 1/4 cup of cream 
• Honey 
• Earl Grey tea bag 
• Dried lavender (Make sure that it is food grade lavender) 
• Vanilla extract 
• Teacup and tea strainer 

Gather all of you ingredients, and then you can start! 

Boil the water in the microwave and then put the tea bag in the cup. Next put a tiny pinch of lavender in the tea strainer. Once the water is hot pour it in your mug and let it steep for five to seven minutes. 

While you are waiting for the tea to brew mix the cream and vanilla and simmer them in the microwave. Once it gets warm whisk until it is foamy. 

Take the lavender and tea out of the mug and then add honey. Use one or two tablespoons depending on how sweet you like it. 

Add the cream and you're done. Your warm creamy lavender London fog is ready. It is sooo yummy! :) Grab your favorite book or cat and enjoy!

Growing Bulbs Part Two

Growing the bulbs inside was a lot of fun. It was interesting to see how much they would grow in one week and also to see them bloom. One gorgeous purple Hyacinth bloomed. See my picture below. After  a couple of weeks the green stems started to turn yellow. I thought that it could be because of lack of sunlight, so I set them on a sunny part of our porch for a couple hours everyday. Nemo, one of my cats decided to drink some water out of one of the jars. Maybe he thought that he was helping me out. :) 

This would probably work best if you started the bulbs inside and then transplanted them into the ground once it got warmer outside. The bulbs were missing out on the nutrients of the dirt and the light from the sun. However, it was fun to see how they would turn out. 

(Do you see the Hyacinth beginning to bloom?) 

This is Nemo's head. 

That's all for now, hopefully I will have another post coming up soon. 

Growing Bulbs Indoors Part One

This spring I decided to plant a LOT of flowers. With all of this warm weather, I've had plenty of opportunity to do just that. I mean, who doesn't like flowers? You get to watch the sprouts grow up and blossom into bright, beautiful, colorful flowers. Flowers are just so much fun! A while back I got some bulbs; I'm pretty sure it was right before Christmas. I put them in the fridge for eight weeks. This is supposed to be a substitute for when the ground freezes, because in Louisiana there are only a few winters where the ground actually freezes. I'm not kidding. Last Christmas it was about 80 degrees. Warm weather has it's good sides though such as being able to plant flower seeds sooner. It's pretty awesome. Back to the bulbs now. I had planted all of the bulbs I wanted to and still had leftovers. What was I supposed to do with the leftover ones? Well, I saw this cool picture where someone had taken a bulb and put it in a jar with water and marbles. Sounds easy right? Well guess what? It really is. I'm going to show you how I did mine and also share some tips. All you need are these five things...

• Flower bulbs - I found mine at Lowe's a few months ago. I recently saw some bulb packs at Sam's. 
• Mason Jars 
• Glass marbles- You can get a bag of these at Dollar Tree.
• A window with tons of sunlight. 
• Water, of course. :)

Okay! Lets get started. Grab everything listed above and find somewhere to do this project. First, you need to decide how many jars you want to do. You could do seven or twelve or twenty jars. Just do however many you want. Hey, you could even fill all of the windows of your house up with these things, except you'd need sunlight in every window. Keep in mind as you start these some might not work. If you are planning for a certain number you may need to plant a few extra. 

Start with the marbles. Fill the jar 1/3 or 1/2 full with marbles. The flash on my camera made the marbles glow. It was kind of cool.

Next choose one bulb and put it on top of the marbles. To support the bulb you can also put a couple marbles beside it. 

Now pour water in the jar until it just touches the bottom of the roots. It is very important that you don't cover the bulb in water. I did that with one of mine and it um, rotted. Lol!

Finally put all of your lovely jars in a window and watch them grow. 

Every few days you will need to change the water in the jars and also wash the roots off. This will keep the bulbs from rotting. 

After a couple weeks your bulbs will begin to sprout! This is what mine looked like after almost two weeks.

This is what they looked like after four weeks. They were almost twice as tall. 

Do you see that little one in the right corner? It doesn't want to sprout. I don't think it ever wants to sprout. I'm still keeping it in the window though just in case it decides to sprout. All of the others are doing good. Once the flowers begin to bloom I will post a update for all of you. Until then I hope you try growing bulbs for yourself! 

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!