A Challenge

Hey friends!

So sorry for the lack of posting lately. It is finals week for the class that I am in and I have been really sick this week, thus no crafting or DIY-ing has been done.

In my absence, I wanted to share something with you all that I truly think you should read. My husband is a brilliant man and an amazing writer, and he shares his thoughts on his own blog. The post that he wrote today has really challenged me and I know others have found it very insightful. You should go and read it! Here is a link:

http://malee2.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/love-others/

I promise...let me get back to good health and submit this research paper that is due in 1.5 hours (yikes!) and I will have fun posts to share! LOVE you guys!

Homemade Hand Soap and Dispenser

You may remember a couple of days ago (in this post) when I showed you a gift basket of homemade items that I made for my sister in law. Today I thought I would share a little about one of the items in that basket!

Next time I make a batch of hand soap (which will not be for a while...I will show you why!) I will be sure to take step by step pictures to share with you guys. Basically, you find a bar of soap that you really like. You use a cheese grater to grate said bar of soap (4 oz is plenty unless you add more water). While you are grating the soap, heat a gallon of water on the stove just until it is steaming. Once it steams, remove it from the heat and pour in your ground soap. Let it sit for 15 minutes. After that, you will need to whip it with a hand mixer until it is well stirred. This is what mine looked like:

After this step it will need to sit for a minimum of 15 hours, overnight is best. In the meantime I decided to start working on my dispenser. I took a cute little smooth side mason jar.

And a soap pump that I had been saving for a project such as this.

Now the fixtures in their house are all Oil Rubbed Bronze, so I wanted to make this match. I taped off the pump head (paint would rub off with use) and the straw to the pump like this:

And I took it as well as the jar lid outside and sprayed them with Krylon ORB spray paint. In the meantime, my soap had been settling long enough. Now is the harder part (which is still not hard). The soap should be a big squishy blob in your bowl. Take your hand mixer and beat it well until it is smooth consistency like hand soap. It will probably form a froth on top like mine did. If it is too solid you can add just a little more water to thin it a bit. That is all you have to do!

I had my husband drill a hole in the lip of my jar to slide the pump through.

Then I simply used hot glue to secure the pump in place.

I filled my jar with soap and voila! A super cute Mason jar soap dispenser! I plan to make another one soon but witha cute twist! Can't wait to share it!

Now the reason I will not have the need to make soap to show you is this:

Yep! AFTER filling that large Mason jar, I still have a gallon of hand soap! I added a bit of lotion to this recipe by the way. It was just an unscented moisture cream. Made the texture so smooth! I highly recomment this recipe! So easy and you can totally choose your scent!

A Ducky First Birthday Cake!

As you may or may not know, one of my hobbies is cake making. I have always loved to do it. Well a few weeks ago, a friend who I had made a bridal shower and baby shower cake for contacted me to ask if I would be able to make a cake for her sweet baby boy's first birthday. Of course I was more than happy to! First birthday cakes are so fun! I thought I would share it with you guys :)

 She did not do a theme for the party, just a color scheme of lime green, yellow royal blue and light blue. The little ducky was the perfect way to incorporate some fun and color!

 The cake flavor was a vanilla pound cake and the icing is white buttercream. This was the first time I have tried that particular vanilla cake recipe but I think it is by far my new favorite!

 The top tier was removeable to use for his smash cake. Initially the duck was going to go on top, but I wanted more fun, colorful icing on the smash cake so I opted to move the duck down and pipe a big colorful "1" on the top.

 But the duck is still so cute! And he can play with it after the party :)

 To give credit where it is due, my mom found the little ducky. He was totally her idea!

There you have it. A super cute first birthday cake for a super cute boy!

Home Made Gift Basket

Friday was my sister-in-law's birthday. When I started thinking about what we weregoing to give her, I wanted to do something thoughtful. She has had a tough year, so I thought giving her something relaxing would be fun. And then I started thinking about how fun it would be to have this gift be all home made! So I decided to make her brown sugar honey body scrub, lavender lotion with vitamin E, home made lip balm, hand soap in a cute little dispenser. I also made a rice-filled heat pouch that she can use in the microwave. I placed all of the items in a basket and put it in a basket bag.

I used some extra linen fabric that I used on the jar lids and for the heat pouch to create a rosette and then made cutie little burlap leaves and then I hot glued this to the front of the basket (inside the bag so that it will be on there if she wants to use it in her house.)

Here is a kind of "aerial" view if you will. I plan to go back through and share how I made some of the items in other posts.

That little green and white thing in the back is the heat pouch. I sewed a stripe of green and white damask fabric to the white litten before sewing it basically like you would a pillow. It turned out so cute! Unfortunately, I was not thinking and did not get a better photo of it than this!

I topped it all off with a burlap bow. I was SO pleased with the way it turned out and she loved it! My favorite thing about it was that it was almost entirely home made. The only thing that I did not make was the basket and there is a candle down in there that I just purchased. Now I want to go back and make myself a batch of everything!

Linking this to

DIY Thursday: Pet Food Canister

Its DIY Thursday!

Today's project shows how I used EAD Designs Vinyl to create a cute alternative to kitty chow bags taking up visual space in our kitchen! It is such an easy project and literally takes about 3 minutes! Head on over to EAD Designs to see how I did it!

A Little Friday Humor

Saw this on facebook and it is so true! Especially living in almost walking distance from a Target. I am sure it will be even worse once the SuperTarget transformation is finished and I try to grocery shop there! Figured probably 99% of you can relate!

Happy Friday, friends!

DIY Thursday: In This House

Its DIY Thursday!

Today's project shows how I used EAD Designs Vinyl to spruce up our closet makeover that I did last weekend! It was the perfect touch. Head on over to EAD Designs to see how I did it!