Homemade Bath Bombs

Whaaaat a craft post, from me? I bet you didn't see that coming! :)

I've recently become Obsessed (<-see that capitol O? That's for extra emphasis!) with Lush products. If you don't know what Lush is, it's a sort of hippieish cosmetic/bath products store. All of their products are handmade with no preservatives or any junk, and almost everything is amazing.

Herein lies my dilemma. I do not live anywhere near a Lush, and not only are their products pricey (though well worth it!) so is shipping. I loathe paying for shipping.

So I decided that I would make my own! I spent a few weeks gathering supplies, some I had to order online, then spent last night making my lushlike creations. They were so easy, and so worth the effort! The fresher these bad boys are the more they fizz, so mine are super fizzy and fabulous. The fragrance I chose is called Monkey Farts, and while a little crass it's a lovely blend of banana, strawberry, kiwi tropicalness. Yum!

Here is the simple recipe, though making these is more of a process than a recipe:

1/2 cup citric acid
1/2 cup Epson Salt
1 cup baking soda
tap water in a spray bottle
mold of some sort (I used round Christmas ornament halves!)
Gel food coloring

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, make sure there are no clumps! add in your fragrance and color to your liking. Mix well. Spritz on two to three sprays of water and mix in well. The grab some in your fist and drop into the bowl. If it lands in the bowl with out breaking, you're ready to mold. If it breaks, repeat the spritzing.
Once you get it to drop without breaking, fill both of your mold haves tightly, then add extra mixture between and press together as hard as you can. Don't twist! The hardened ball should easily pop out of the mold.

Allow to dry for at least 24 hours (though you can use these right away!) before packaging.

I suggest watching some video on bath bomb making on YouTube before you dive in. You'll get a feel of the mixing technique and how the mixture should look before you mold. Have fun!

Around the World in 80 Dinners

Probably more than 80, actually! My husband and I have decided to start a new weekly tradition, instead of going out to eat, we will be making a dinner from a different country once a week. This was actually the H's idea, after he found an Italian cooking channel on Yahoo and spent nearly two days watching the chef make all sorts of delcious dishes.


So, we began our "journey" with Italy! I came home to a roast chicken and pancetta risotto! Quite impressive if you consider that the boy had never cooked either of those things in his life, and they both turned out delicious.



This week it's my turn, and I've chosen the bordering country of France. If you have any good French dishes, please let me know! I have to make it by Saturday and I haven't even begun my search.

Like I Forgot Somethin'

Hello Friends! It's been a long time and a much needed break, with all the hectic activity that's been my life for the past 6 months. To make a long story short, I shall tell it in bullet form

June- Moved out of our house to a town three hours away
July- I Couldn't find a job in time, came back to work. H stayed behind to work, so I got my own apartment.
Sept- Had to kick out the renter from my house due to breach of contract
Oct- Moved back into my house, continuing to look for work in San Jose
Nov - Husband was laid off from his job in San Jose, he moved back too!

Today:
That's my new, fully functional oven!


So, after a crazy experiment in relocating to another town, we are both home and things are returning to normal for me and mine ;) And baking commences this evening, so expect to see me a little more often! I've definitely missed you guys!

Updates and a break.

Hello!

As you may or may not have noticed, I never did come back and start updating on June 10th. I'm really not situated quite yet, and since I've yet to find a job in our new location, I'm currently commuting 3 hours to work and only going home on the weekends.

There are no crafts. There is no baking.

Maybe someday, if things ever get to be where I want them to be again, I will be back. As it is currently, I don't see myself updating my dear blog very often.

I have to say wow and thank you so much to the fact that I have 100 blog followers. That's amazing and I love you all, and I'm still reading your blogs.




p.s. My great nephew Marcelo was born on June. 8th and is the cutest thing that there ever was ;)

Changes

Sorry that I have been so quiet lately, but I am in the process of relocating to the Bay Area, and all of my craft and baking stuff has been packed away! Hopefully after I'm settled a bit, sometime after June 10th, I'll be back :)

Bassinet

Finally, the finished bassinet and quilt! It took my mom and I a few weeks and lots of hours to get this done (in the knick of time!)And here is my super pregnant niece (three weeks to go!) with the bassinet.


Sadly I didn't get any pictures of the inside, but my mom sewed it so that the green flannel lining it was tufted (so cute!) and there was a bumper along the front made out of the jungle fabric.

Now all I have to do is wait for this baby :)

Dusting off the old sew machine!

Suddenly my craft desk feels very small!

Until last night, my poor sew machine had been banished to the shelf ever since I got my Cricut last September. I had to dust it off because this weekend is my Niece's baby shower (that's right folks, I'm going to be a 24 year old GREAT aunt! So weird, but I'm excited!). There is a wicker bassinet that has been in my family for 43 years, and almost every sibling, niece and nephew and a few friends and cousins has spent the first month or so of their life in it, and every baby gets new bassinet decor.
This baby's (still nameless, but a little boy!) nursery theme is jungle, so my Mom and I decided to go with that. After hunting through the fabric stores and coming home empty handed three times, we finally decided on a jungle baby print with green flannel lining and a jungly quilt. Yes I made up the word jungly. Deal with it.

So, I made the skirt that covers the legs last night.I can't wait to show you the completed bassinet. Heck, I can't wait to see it myself! It's going to be pretty stinking cute.


And tonight, I'm making (my first ever!) cheater quilt. I bought the top fully assembled at JoAnn's for 50% off, thanks to the nicest counter cutter I've ever encountered there (say that three times fast!) and I'm both nervous and excited to get started.I'm going to add satin tags along the edges of the quilt because I know how much little boys love silky things :)

Wish me luck!

The Camo Cake

Last weekend my husband turned 25, and as is tradition, I had to make him an awesome cake! (see Last year and the year before).
This year he asked for chocolate, extra chocolately. One of the things that would make me a bad food blogger (if I were one) is that once I find a recipe that I like, I stick to it. But since this was a birthday cake I knew I couldn't use my old faithful Black Magic Cake recipe, and I opted to go with this Dark Chocolate cake that I had bookmarked awhile back.
I did use my old trusty Ganache, butter cream and fondant recipes, though.
I wanted to make this cake camo because, as some of you know, DH is a big bird hunting fan, and, like any good redneck, has a green truck, a brown dog, and lots of camo. (He doesn't wear it in public though, only for hunting! I'm thankful for the little things :)


This cake was *really* tasty. Now choosing which chocolate cake to make is going to be hard!

I love my office

So, as many of you know, I am considered an "administrative professional" and Wednesday was administrative professionals day. Well, pretty much everyone in my office completely forgot (including me!), except for my student assistant Jaci, who placed this on my desk that afternoon:
Awww!

Anyways, today I came in to find a package from my supervisor Karen wrapped on my desk (along with a box of Jujyfruits, she knows me so well!):
How adorable are these pink and black tools in their adorable case?! I'm super excited.

I've had a paper piercer on my wishlist for quite awhile now, so I'm most excited about . Maybe having some pretty new tools will get me back in my craft room!

I have awesome coworkers :)

Something Different

Aside from being Mini Eggs season (3 bags down, so far), Spring is when my yard really starts to come alive. The yard was the one thing that really sold us this house, and we LOVE it. It's a little worse for the wear since we got Bill, but the two of them (the yard and Bill) are starting to get used to each other, and I'm really happy with how it's looking now! I'm not gonna lie, though, that first year when Bill was a puppy the yard wept for it's future :) We had to remove most of the plants because he had a tendency to eat them, and some are poisonous to curious puppies.yeah, I have a creepy lawn gnome. He was less creepy when he was new...but oh well. Oh, and he's got brothers.

Anyways, we've been working (playing) in my yard all weekend, so I thought I would share some of the prettiness with you! I did also make a card (yes, just one lol) this weekend, but I'll save it for another post.

Looks like I need to get some slug poison around my tulips, the slugs are really going to town :(

Have a great week!

Birds nest cupcakes

Anyone that knows me knows that Spring is Mini Eggs season for me. I don't care about anything else, but mini eggs.


On Thursday we finally got our oven fixed after a few weeks of it being non operational, so I had to celebrate with cupcakes! I had seen these cute cupcakes at a local shop where the baker had made tiny chicks out of mini eggs and put them on a nest of toasted coconut. Now, I didn't have the patience for the faces, but I thought eggs in a nest would be just as cute!
So, here are my recreations! They were super cute and tasty, and I'm beyond thrilled to have an oven again ;)

Those cupcake liners are from Paula Deen and they say "A balanced diet is a cupcake in each hand", lol! My mom bought them for me and I was excited to get a chance to use them.

I finally filled up my cupcake stand that I got for Christmas!

p.s. if anyone is local and wants to know the name of the business I got this idea from, shoot me an email or leave me a comment, and I'll email it to you! While I'd love to support her, I don't like to share with the interwebs exactly where I live~

Cranes for Kids

Many of you probably saw this yesterday, but if you make a paper crane and post a photo to OshKoshbGosh's facebook wall, they'll send an article of clothing to a child in Japan.

Here are some simple instructions

This is such a great way to get involved, even if you are super busy this only takes a second and could mean the world to a kid (you never know...). I made mine using copy paper at my desk at work :)

Tuesday Treat: Lining an envelope

It's my turn for a Tuesday Treat over at Card Cupids, and I made a little video that shows how I line the envelopes for my cards. This is my very last Tuesday Treat for the Card Cupids design team, I hope you enjoy!

Blog Love

I thought I'd take a break from my normal card posting to share some blogs that I'm loving lately. I think they all deserve a little more attention (even if some have lots of followers!), so I thought I'd share and give you a way to kill time at work this week ;)

1. Scraps by Sissy - Laurie is the mom of a friend of mine, and I was thrilled to discover she was a card maker too. At first, Laurie was the only person other than me that I knew in real life who had a Cricut machine! I love Laurie's cards, they're so cute and detailed and she's always so positive on her blog.

2. Veronika's Blushing- This girl is super cute. I think she dresses adorably, and what I really love is that she wears stuff that I can wear. I adore fashion blogs, but if they're wearing hammer pants and Louboutins everyday, there's not much inspiration I can glean there!

3. 26 and counting - Another adorable girl with a wearable fashion blog. She's also a young professional, and I could wear everything she wears to work, so I love that. Plusalso she has great hair.

4. Paperhoot - Janet has made some of my absolute favorite cards using a Cricut that I've ever seen. She does very detailed work and it's always whimsical and adorable. Basically, I wish I had her talent!

5. Hobby Hopping - I know I've talked about Christy's blog before, but she's one of the most talented people I have ever met. I'm always thrilled when I see she has a new blog post (and when she started her blog I was soooo excited!), and it's never the same thing. She has so much variety in her work that I never get bored of her posts.

So there are five blogs that I adore, and always click on when I see they've made a new post. I hope you check them out and find them fun too!

Have a good week!

Scraplifter!

A few weeks ago I watched Sarah, of Live, Love and Scrap's, youtube video where she made what I thought was the cutest card EVER. She used the new Scrappy Mom's Kids Incorporated set, along with the Sweet Treats cartridge, both of which I happen to have, so I knew I needed to make something similar.
Now, Sarah is amazing (if you've never watched her videos, you should) and she has a patience with her cards that I will probably never posses...so I could never duplicate it exactly. I would go nuts with all of those eensy details! So I did eliminate some of the details and make my cuts a little larger, but I love how my card turned out.

So, thank Sarah for the inspiration! I hope you continue to make videos for a long time :)

p.s. sorry for the crummy iPhone photo, apparently I've become too lazy to dig out my camera and cord lately!