Beautiful Card

Another beautiful card by Karina :)

Trinity's Ornaments

Today Trinity sewed her second thing. She made two Christmas
ornaments. She did a great job sewing these. I did assisst her some
with pinning and talking her through the steps. She really enjoys
sewing.

Sent from my iPhone

Yay!

I think I got my "feed" fixed for my blog for those of you that said you were having trouble "following" my blog.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who voted in my last poll :) For those of you who didn't, don't worry the poll is anonymous so I don't know who's voting. But now you have a chance to vote in my new poll :D

Look At All The Pretty Soaps!!!

Today I went to my friend Lynn's house. She showed me how to make some diffrent types of soaps. We made 4 diffrent kinds today. It was alot of fun since she had lots of EO and FO and colors. Plus I learned some things I didn't know.




The brownish soap is pumkin spice and it smells really good! The blue one I made for Shane. I chose sea shore for the scent since it was stronger and he likes strong smells. When he smelled it he said he really liked it.

This was colored pink, but turned into a light orange and is scented with warm vanilla and sugar.

This one is my favorite!!! It is oatmeal, milk, and honey. I just wanna eat it, it smells so good. And I love the oatmeal in it. I can't wait to try it.

Thanks again Lynn for taking the time to do this with me. I really appreciate it!

New Soap Batch

Ok, the soap looks a little funky, but it came out great! I am VERY happy with it. I used my own recipe..which really isn't that original...lol. But I used Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, and Palm Oil, and I used just a touch of tangerine EO. The smell came out great with just a hint of tangerine. The soap itself, without the tangerine, has a good smell as well.

Soap Failure

Here is my orange soap out of the mold. We tried to cut it, but it kept flaking and was very crumbley. My good friend Lynne (who has been making soap for years) said we probably added to much lye. Which is probably what happened since we didnt' have a good scale and was measureing it incorrectly. So today I tried to rebatch it, but that didn't happen either.



I cut and crumbled my soap up and put it into my pot. Then I added some whole milk and put it in the oven on 150. I stirred it every 15 minutes. But after 4 hours it still was not completely melted so Shane said I should try the microwave method. Needless to say it got burned in there. Not sure if because the soap just sucked all around or if maybe because I did half in the oven and half in the microwave. Anyways, when I was filling up my pot with water to wash it, it filled up nice and high with bubbles from the left over soap in the pot. I cleaned the pot completley with that soap and it washed up really good. It left my hands feeling soft and the tangerine smelled really good. Off to try my next batch...

We Made Soap!

Tonight Shane and I made soap for the first time. We used this recipe. It's a pretty simple and basic recipe. Except we added orange crayons for coloring and tangerine EO for the scent.

Measuring out the lye.
Melting the Crisco.

The lye mixture

Melting the crayons

The melted Crisco

Mixing the crayons with the Crisco.

Pouring into the soap mold.

I Made Butter!

Well, today I decided to try my hand at making butter. I used this tutorial to show me how. I had alot of fun and it was sooooo cool to see the process happen.


I used 64 fluid ozs of heavy whipping cream.
Here's the cream coming to room temperature

Thankfully I have an automatic whisk that I was able to use to make the butter.

Here it is becoming more stiff

Here it is turning to butter and separating from the buttermilk.

I got about 1 quart of buttermilk from it. Which homemade buttermilk tastes pretty darn good.

Here it is while I'm still trying to get all the buttermilk out.

Here I am rinsing the butter with water to completely clean out the buttermilk. I probably rinsed and stirred it 15-20 times. I wanted to make sure it was really clean :D

Here I'm trying to get all of the water out. (this was the part I hated the most)

Here it is all finished. The butter in my tupperware is in my refrigerator waiting to be used. And the two wrapped up are in my freezer.

It tastes really good!!!

Peach Crisp

Today I made some peach crisp with some fresh peaches my mommy brought me. We had sooooo many I needed to do something with them before they went bad.

Using my fresh ground pastry flour :D

Laudry Detergent

Finally!!!!! I made my laundry detergent. I tried it on my laundry and it came out great. Hopefully soon I can use homemade soap to make this. Thanks Gloria for the tutorial!

ALL DONE!!!!

Best Mommy Ever

My Mom made this dress for me before I started sewing. I needed a "fancy" dress for a military ball. So my Mom and I went and picked out the fabric and the pattern for it. She made this a little over 5 years ago and this is the second time I have worn it. I have a "tea party" tonight that I am going to and this is what I am wearing. Thanks Mom!

Closer pic of the dress. It's kinda wrinkled at the bottom...I did iron it, but I guess after 5 years of being "bagged up" the wrinkles were a litttle stubborn.

This is just a head shot that Shane took. He is working on "something" and needs head shots of all of us so he went ahead and took mine....and whatever it is he said the background won't be in it. And my eyes are open...

Here is the peppermint wreath that I made for our tree.

Here are some of the peppermint wreaths I made. I made some of these along time ago before we had children and liked them so much. So I was happy I rememberd how to make them.

Here are some homemade hot cocoa jars I made...ok they are not really in jars. It's a ziploc container. The last two still need "hats" though.

Here are the natural rice bags that I made. They are made of flannel and can be used as heating pads or ice packs. Christi made some and her's are really cute. I got the instructions for these here.

Scarecrows

Here is the craft the kids and I did today. They are suppose to be scarecrows. However we did not have any straw or raffia to put on them. We went outside to get some pinestraw, but once I got it inside I didn't wanna deal with trying to put it on them. The kids had a lot of fun putting them together. They chose the colors for all of their clothing. And we made Trin's scarecrow a little dress instead of pants. I think they are really cute. We have them up on the playroom wall underneath their calender. They even made them holding hands. I got the idea for this project here.

Contest

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Ok here is the contest.... The kids made these macaroni projects today while we did school. This is the one Mycah made. He took the glue, drew his pic, then placed the macaroni on. There are a few macaroni on there that "don't really belong". Now the contest is who can tell me what this is suppose to be??? I will wait a few days and see how the guesses are coming then I will give hint as to what it is. It really does kinda look like what it is..but then again I KNOW what it is....lol. I think it might take a trained mother's eye to see it...lol. Anyone who wants to guess is fine, even those of you who visit but never comment ;) Good luck to all.

Here's Trin macaroni project. Feel free to guess what her's is. Although I think her's is pretty easy :)

Korker Hairbow

Here's Trin with her cheesey smile and her new korker hairbow. The colors we used for this one was white and pink. Some more just came out of the oven. We haven't gotten the right clips yet to attach them too so hopefully today we will be able to get the ones we want, but this one is working for now. I think Trin's favorite part was picking out her ribbon. Thanks Just Another Army Wife for the great tutorial. I think we will be making more :)