{Homemade Brown Sugar Scrub}

I had been racking my brain for something as a teacher gift. Last year I put together a popcorn gift set w/ theatre candy & popcorn with a Blockbuster gift card. I didn't want to do it this year. Instead, I used my special canning jars that I found on clearance at Target earlier and made homemade brown sugar scrubs.


Here is the recipe I found online.

Brown Sugar Scrub

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 c sweet almond oil

1 tsp Vitamin E oil

1 tsp vanilla

Mix together and place in a jar!

Now, I found out that I could've used olive oil instead, or even canola oil, but the almond oil has many benefits for your skin. It was also pretty pricey as well. I looked in the cooking aisle, and found it on sale for $7.58 for 8 1/2 oz. Then I went to the health food part of our store (it's a huge awesome store) and found almond oil MUCH cheaper in that section. I bought a 16 oz bottle for $9.29, and it's also food grade too, so you can cook with it as well. When you add the Vitamin E oil, it softens the skin, and the vanilla just adds a pleasant smell to it (unless it makes you want to eat your arm!).

To give you an idea of how much it makes, I made two batches of this, and it made 3 of the small canning jars full. I'll complete with cute tags on the side w/ colorful ribbon later today! Enjoy!

{My School Project}

I probably should say it's Maddie's school project, since she was supposed to do it.... but it was WAY too hard for her to do! So, I did it. Yes, I did my daughter's homework, and I'll be the first to admit I did it.

Last Monday Maddie comes home w/ a homework assignment to take a paper doll, cut it out (she did that part, so she DID do something), and dress it up like someone from another country, in their style of dress using cloth, felt, construction paper, markers, etc.

We (and I mean ME) decided on a Scottish Dancer, so we did the country Scotland. That's the only country I know anything about b/c the girls dance Scottish dance. So, I went about making a kilt out of Katie's old fabric, and contructed ghillies, a vest (complete w/ glitter for the outline of it) & a shirt out of construction paper, using ribbons as the laces of the ghillies, and yarn for the hair. Course I was a little ticked off that "someone" (aka Madison) used up all the pink construction paper, so it didn't exactly match her kilt. We (and I mean ME) settled for a red vest. There is supposed to be a silver trim on the edge of the vest, and I had silver glitter.... so that was fun! Oh, Madison did help with that, so that's TWO things she did on this project! I did make sure her socks were folded down properly in true Scottish dance sense, but you can't tell here. The hair was too out of place for me, and I couldn't figure out how to make it into a bun (proper Scottish traditions, y'know?), so the perfectionist in me did two ponytails complete with ribbon. OVERDONE you say? Yep... but my kid's gonna have the best dressed paper doll there. I hope.. unless another mom or dad like me did their kids' homework assignment too.

(PSST.... that's what a Scottish dancer is supposed to look like (look up), so it's pretty accurate, huh?) :)

{The True Face of Sisterhood}

Last Sunday I set out to capture my girls' picture in front of the Christmas tree for our cards... in hopes of finding their inner beauty shown out. This is what I get....

OK ... the smile was a little fake & cheesy for both girls.

Katie's giving Maddie a weird look at this point b/c Maddie's throwing these weird smiles

Katie's finally had enough... THIS is what my life is like!

Ah... finally. A perfect picture! (after 100 times!)

{Please don't think...}

Just wanted to post a quick word to my blogger friends who may think I don't love them anymore b/c I stopped commenting on their blogs. :)

..... for my friends who have music on their blog: for some reason I cannot make it to your blog b/c on both my computers, the page freezes up, so unless I can get on my laptop to shut your music off (which doesn't always work too), I have a hard time making it to your blog. Many apologies... don't know why it's doing that. I had to change my music to where people start it themselves if they wanted to hear the music otherwise I couldn't get on my own blog!

AND... a quick shout out to ANDREA..... I can't comment on your blog!! Not sure why.... I did realize it's set up differently, somehow....

And for the rest of my friends.... I will be coming back w/ a great recipe for homemade french bread and a yummy soup!!

{Kufi Hats}

Madison has been loving hats lately. This child of mine has her own style and way of doing things. She loves wearing boots with her capris, scarfs wrapped around her neck in her pj's (you get the idea of her fashion sense? there is none!). Well, since she's currently onto hats, I found Kufi hats (or beanie hats)! I showed them to Madison online, complete with a flower (which she hardly wears anymore nor ribbons... much to my sadness). She fell in love with them!

So I found a screaming good deal on ebay, bought 4 of them in brown, black, white and pink. They arrived on Monday. Tuesday Maddie wore one of them, and when I went to pick her up at school, I received so many compliments on her behalf .... "ooh, she's so fashionable!" and "ooh... isn't she a doll?"

I also managed to put up one of my favorite finds at my "after Christmas" shopping last year. I love this tree... and adding the ornaments really makes it stand out! Sadly, I couldn't find any huge ornaments to add to it that I would've liked (like red!), so I used what I had at home. I might be able to find some after Christmas this year!

I managed to take pictures of the girls for our cards on Sunday... I'll blog about that another day. The pictures themselves are hilarious, complete w/ Katie acting as a typical big sister w/ her finger pointing at Maddie sternly and weird, funny faces. I did order my cards, but I didn't order enough... oops! I thought 30 cards would be plenty, but I didn't realize I have more than 30 friends & family members! :(

{There's this boy....}

There's this boy. He's cute. Very cute....according to Katie & Darcy (Katie's friend). And he has shaggy hair. The "fall in your face and hangs past your ears" shaggy.

Matter of fact, almost ALL boys have shaggy hair.

Whatever happened to the nice, clean haircuts for boys?

Thanks to Hollywood, and thanks to Zac Efron & the Jonas Brothers... mothers like me are SO thrilled that boys want to look shaggy like these cutie-patooties. But please remember Hollywood.... most people can't pull off this look, nor do they have stylists everyday to do their hair so it looks "oh so cool".... so it looks, well, just shaggy!

I'm counting the days until the clean cuts come back into style. I hope it's soon.

{Service Project}

Yesterday the girl's Primary group (children's Sunday classes at church) had an opportunity to do a service project at a nursing home. I was excited about this opportunity, b/c rarely do children have opportunities to do service to others. I have always enjoyed going to nursing homes because the people there are so lonely, they are just so starved for attention & love.

We started reading a Christmas story each night in the month of December. So far each of the stories have a moral that ends with "it's more blessed to give than to receive", so this was a great opportunity to teach the girls.... to give of their talents to others. I think they finally got it. :)

Prior to going to the nursing home, all the kids made jingle bell bracelts, as well as hats w/ "reindeer" hands, and some ornaments to hand out to the elderly. My girls were asked to dance their Highland Dance, so they dressed up for it (much to their excitement) and did the Highland Fling. They did a great job. I had to talk to them prior to coming about the importance of service to others, so they had a much better attitude about it during their time there than they did before we left home. ::gigging::

Friday night we put up our Christmas tree. When we moved to Texas, we didn't have room in our truck to haul the tree. It was getting old anyways, and the base was made of plastic and was broken, so it kept falling over (who makes plastic stands to hold HUGE HEAVY trees up? No one but trusty Walmart!). So, I went on a hunt for a cheap, but practical and cute tree. I found one at Sam's for $125, and it was a slim 7.5 foot tree that was already prelit, which is a major bonus in my mind! I'm always stringing the lights, and I hate it! Anyways, got the tree, and the girls went to town on it Friday night, decorating it. A few ornaments got broken... thanks to the tile we have throughout the house. I had forgotten I had bought some great ornaments after the Christmas season at Target, so we added some color of red, dark green, lime green to our tree! I love it!

It's so hard to get a decent picture of the tree.... nothing can ever capture what it really looks like in your eyes, on camera.

I was just playing around w/ my camera. For some reason, it's acting up on me, so I was playing w/ the color accent, and took a picture from the bottom up. Kind of cool looking....

{Amazing Caverns}

Yesterday I joined Katie's class for a trip to the Natural Bridge Caverns. I love caves.... ever since Mike & I took Katie to the Branson caves, I was intrigued. This cave, however, BLEW ME AWAY! Literally! When we first got there, we see this.... it is a rock this is literally a bridge. You see the top first, then you'll go down, and you'll see the bridge while almost standing under it.

Then, after we hear the warnings of the Cave Creed: Look ~ don't touch anything. Kill nothing inside ~ only time .... and I can't remember the final creed. Basically, hold on to the bars at all time b/c it's a LONG way to the bottom baby! Oh, and it's wet, so don't drag your feet, and expect drops of water to fall on your head at any given moment (which did happen). This cave took us 18 stories down! Whoo!

Here is the group going down into the cave...

This is the little tiny hole where the cave was found.... story was that the family who owned this land knew about the rock bridge, but had no clue about anything else. In the '60's, a few scientists asked to explore around this bridge to see if there was anything worth exploring, and they found it was. Several HUGE rooms full of the stuff as saw. So, the owners decided to make big time moolah and open it up to the public.

This is going all the way down... WAY down. I had to really add some lighting in my edit, so I'm sure my pictures look like crap, but I wanted everyone to get the idea of what it looked like inside. Just breathtaking!




For this final picture... the guide kept telling us we'll see Snoopy. Me and another parent couldn't figure out how they got Snoopy out of this, but finally some kid moved, and we saw the nose. THEN it looked like Snoopy! Can you see Snoopy? (hint... nose is on the left, ears on the right)

{Check it out!}

Hey girls (and guys? do I even have guys who read this?) ....

My friend Hannah has an amazing blog that is giving away 12 days of goodies, as well as 12 days of free stuff! :) Check out her link HERE.... today she is giving away a Modmum (those fancy slings to carry your babe in!). You have a few days to enter for each item! Check in every day!!

Enjoy!

{Sea World with Grandma}

Mike's mom came with the girls & I to Sea World on Tuesday. We enjoyed a wonderful warm day of around 70's of weather. Sadly, there were only about 4 shows that we could enjoy, so we hit the Shamu show first... it truly is one of our favorites!!

Towards the end of the day on our way out of the park, we discovered the dolphin cove!! What a great place to be! I think we could've easily stayed there for hours. I got some great pictures of the dolphins up close, and Maddie went to town trying to pet them and gain their attention. She had a wonderful time... this from a little girl who is scared to death of all things furry (like Barney, clowns, Arthur, etc).

Maddie & Katie both wanted to go on water rides, but it was SO cold for those type of rides! I finally agreed to the log ride, and we left Grandma on a bench and walked to the log ride. Got a tad bit wet there, and went to enjoy a 4D movie of the Polar Express shortened to 18 minutes worth of a movie, complete w/ snowflakes falling down during the movie. Very impressive! I am so easily entertained!