Handmade All-Natural Lip Balm Gifts

Hello and Happy New Year's Eve!  I hope your holiday season has been wonderful so far.  We stayed in town over Christmas and enjoyed time with Oklahoma family as well as some out-of-town relatives.

As usual, this winter break has been flying by.  Aside from all the holiday festivities, Jay and I are trying hard to get some "to-dos" accomplished  over break (like shampooing all the carpets!) while still making time for fun.  A couple days ago, we took a day trip to a nearby state park and hiked about seven miles.  It was so nice to get away for a bit and enjoy a change of scenery. 

On another note, now that all the Christmas gifts have been exchanged, I wanted to share a little bit about the lip balm my mom and I made this year for our friends and family.  

Last year's laundry soap was a big hit, so we decided to start a tradition of making a handmade gift together each year.  We settled on lip balm for this year's gift because it's something everyone can always use (especially in this freezing cold winter weather we've been having), and it seemed easy enough to make a large batch in a single afternoon.  

We combed through numerous recipes on the internet and selected four ingredients to use for the balms.  It took a little trial and error to figure out the best proportions, but the consistency of this final formula is just right. I was really happy with how it turned out.

Here is what we used:

6 tablespoons coconut oil
3 tablespoons beeswax
1 teaspoon vitamin E oil
10-12 drops essential oil

We bought the coconut oil at the grocery store, but the beeswax pellets and vitamin E oil were purchased from Amazon.  We used essential oils that we already had on hand, but they can be easily found online or at any health food store in a variety of scents.

To make the lip balm, we started by melting down the beeswax and coconut oil.  To avoid burning, we placed the ingredients into a small stainless steel mixing bowl which we then submerged in a larger pot of hot (almost boiling) water.  Of course you could also use a double boiler to do this, but our own makeshift method worked surprisingly well.

Once the beeswax and coconut oil were melted, we added in the vitamin E and essential oil and stirred it all together.  We experimented with several flavors of essential oils, but our favorite was the wintergreen.  It was much more noticeable than the orange and gave the balm a fresh, minty fragrance.

We used a small spoon and an eyedropper to fill up our little plastic containers (also purchased on Amazon).  One batch of the lip balm filled up about 18 of the small 5 gram pots.  By the end of the afternoon, we had made enough to fill 50 containers!

After about 15 minutes, the lip balm had cooled off and was ready to use.

To make the gifts a little more special, we decorated each lip balm with a festive sticker and attached it with a dab of hot glue to a small card that I designed on PicMonkey. 

The lip balms were very well received.  Many have commented that they love the way it feels on their lips, and I think everyone appreciated the simple, all-natural ingredients.  Plus, it always seems more special when a gift is made by hand.

I'm not sure exactly what the next few days have in store, but I am going to do my best to enjoy every minute  of my time off before the craziness of work resumes.

Wishing you all a very safe and healthy new year!

Beer Making 101

Jay has been dabbling in beer-making for a few years now, and he is becoming quite the pro!  The ingredients are sometimes a bit inconvenient to buy locally, so for his birthday in February I signed him up for a beer-kit-of-the-month club.

Now, all of the necessary ingredients are delivered right to our doorstep each month to make a unique and seasonally appropriate beer.  It's fun trying so many new varieties!

While Jay is the primary beer-maker in our household, I usually always help him out along the way.  It does require some special equipment, but you can always start with a beginner kit that provides everything you need.  Jay used a "Mr. Beer" kit when he first began brewing, but he has since graduated to more advanced equipment to make larger batches (five gallons) from scratch.

I won’t go into too much detail, but here is an overview of the basic process that we used to make a “Flat Tire” style ale. (Thanks to Jay for helping me write it out.)  The steps will vary a bit depending on the type of beer you make.

Step 1: Steep the grains in 2-3 gallons of water.

The grains are put into what is basically a giant tea bag and steeped for 10-30 minutes at 155 degrees.

Step 2: Add in the malt extract while the pot is off the burner. The kits usually come with either a dry malt extract (DME) or a liquid malt extract (LME).

Step 3: Bring mixture to a boil and add bittering hops.

The mixture then has to simmer for an hour, so at this point we took a break and watched a couple episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” while we waited. The beer-making process involves a lot of waiting around and babysitting the pot!

Step 4: Add in flavor hops for the last 2-5 minutes of boiling. You now have “wort”(pronounced wert).  Everything that comes in contact with the wort needs to be sanitized from this point onward.

Step 5: Cool the wort and transfer to the primary fermenter.  Add water until you have reached 5 gallons.

It takes a while to cool this much liquid, but you want to do it as quickly as possible.  It's important because the heat will kill the yeast if it’s too hot.  Luckily for us, there was snow on the ground when we first started this batch!

Step 6: Sprinkle the yeast on top. This is where the magic happens. The yeast will consume the sugars, resulting in alcohol and CO2. You can watch the process be taking hydrometer readings and watching the CO2 bubble out of the airlock.

Step 7: After a week, we transferred the beer into a glass carboy and allowed it to continue fermenting for another week. This step isn't totally necessary, but it filters out some of the sediments on the bottom.

I forgot to take a picture, but here is an old photo of a previous batch in the glass carboy right before being transferred to the keg.

(Don't worry, the little yellow floaties are just lemon peels!)

Step 8: After two weeks total, add sugar and transfer beer to bottles or keg. Store in cool, dry place for at least two more weeks.

We like to use a kegging system because it is a LOT easier to clean one keg than it is to clean and cap 54 - 12 ounce bottles. Once you add more sugar to a closed pressure system (keg), the yeast will again consume the sugar and the CO2 will pressurize the keg naturally!

Jay built us a kegerator a few years ago.  Sparkling water on the left, beer on the right.

Step 9: Chill your beer. For best results, allow beer to chill for another week or two (if you can wait that long) before drinking. Since liquid volume compresses in cold temperatures, we have found that the beer is better carbonated (and tastes better) if you wait at least one week after chilling. 

Then, you are ready to enjoy your home brew!

The entire process takes about 6 weeks, but, as you can see, most of it is just waiting around.  It is so much fun when you finally get to taste your creation (and the beer tastes even better when you know you made it yourself!).  Plus, you get 5 gallons of high quality beer on tap for only around $.75/beer.  Can't beat that!

After having a little cold all week, I am happy to be feeling better just in time for the new beer to be ready.  I've already enjoyed a couple of these this weekend!

Cheers!

Valentine's Day Decor

Valentine's Day is on my short list of favorite holidays.  It gives Jay and me a good excuse (although we really shouldn't need one) to plan a special date night that we might not otherwise carve out time for.  We usually opt for something low-key, like cooking a fancy dinner together at home, but it always ends up being really nice.  Not to mention the fact that I never get tired of receiving flowers or chocolates (who does?!), and pink is my favorite color!

Last year at this time, we had just moved into our new house and were up to our ears in boxes.  Decorating for Valentine's Day was the last thing on my mind.  This year, I had a little more time to put up some festive decorations.  It may not be a major holiday, but I enjoy having some little reminders around the house of what's to come. 

I almost forgot about this door hanging that I made the year before last, and I was thrilled when I pulled it out of holiday storage.  

This project was super easy to put together.  I bought some wooden Xs and Os at Michael's and covered them with fun pink and red patterned scrapbook paper. I embellished the letters with some felt stickers that I also found in the scrapbook section.  Then, using a hot glue gun, I attached the letters to a white ribbon and tied a bow at the top.  I hung mine on my front door, but it would look cute anywhere in the house. 

I also took the time to update my chalkboard and frame a Valentine's print that I found at Pizzazzerie.com.  They have a bunch of cute ones to choose from!

Now our house is feeling the love!  XOXO

Guest Post by Jay {Part I} - How to Make Your Own Sparkling Water

I have been wanting to write a guest post for some time now, and since today is the last day of my winter break, it’s probably now or never! Because this may turn into a long post, I will break it up into two parts - part one being on how to make sparkling water from home, and part two on the quality of the water going into the keg.

PART 1:

This may sound like a lame gift, but I gave Laura her own sparkling water system for Christmas. It is kind of like a Soda Stream on steroids. I simply added another home brew kegging system to our current kegerator. You can purchase all this equipment online and convert any refrigerator or freezer.  (If you are interested in building your own kegerator, you can find instructions here.)

My kegerator resides in the garage.  Here is what it looks like:


Laura has been putting lemon-lime water in the keg, although you can use just about any fruit or vegetable to flavor the water. Not only is this habit delicious, it's also a very good way to keep your antioxidant levels up. Here is a great video by nutritionfacts.org that explains why this is important:

I like to think of the recommended daily allowance for antioxidants as a steady amount flowing in the bloodstream, rather than a giant bucket that needs to be filled up just once per day.

Making lemon-lime sparkling water is simple!

Step 1: Add lemon and/or lime juice to your keg. We used roughly one cup of fresh squeezed lemon and lime juice for a 5 gallon ball lock keg. A great trick for getting more juice from the lemon or lime is to microwave it for about 15 seconds before squeezing.

You could also use other fresh fruits or juices to flavor the water.  We plan to experiment with pomegranate juice, berries, and more.

Step 2: Fill up the 5 gallon keg with water and cool it to 32 degrees (or as close to it as possible).  You can use ice or just put the keg in the kegerator for a while to cool. Leave a little bit of room at the top for carbonating and shaking purposes.

Step 3: Pressurize the keg to 30 psi and shake for about 5 minutes. This will carbonate the water. 

Step 4: Reduce the pressure to 12 psi and serve!

Cheers!

Jay

DIY Laundry Soap Gifts

I've been loving the homemade laundry soap that I've been using, so much so that my mom and I decided to make gifts out of it for Christmas!  (I know this post is quite belated, but I didn't want to risk any of the recipients seeing their gifts ahead of time.)  We figured the soap would make unique and useful presents, since laundry is something that unfortunately we all must do.

We started off with 24 1-liter Ball jars, 5 boxes of Borax, 5 boxes of washing soda, and 10 bars of Fels Naptha soap (to which we later added two more).  It was quite the operation.  

We made two batches at a time, using a food processor to grate the soap and then shaking up all the ingredients in a big plastic bucket.  (You can see the exact recipe here.)

We then carefully transferred the soap into the jars.  It took a total of approximately 12 batches to fill them all up.

To finish up the project, we tied some cute tags (borrowed and printed out from this website) to each jar with some natural jute string and signed our names plus the batch number.

It was a long afternoon of soap making, but I was really happy with the end result.  The gifts have been a big hit with all of our family and friends.  I felt like it was a fun alternative to all the typical baked goods and candies that are so common around the holidays.

Laundry soap could make a fun gift at other times of year, too.  I think it would make a really cute housewarming present, among other things.  Anything to make this never-ending chore a bit more enjoyable!

Things I'm Loving Lately - Christmas Present Edition

I received so many awesome presents for Christmas this year from friends and family!  Here are just a few of my faves:

1. Cuisinart Coffee Maker Plus Hot Water System

This coffee maker is just like our old one, but it has an additional instant hot water feature.  Jay and I drink a lot of tea, so we are really loving this product!  The hot water is ready in seconds to use for tea, hot cocoa, oatmeal, or whatever your heart desires.  This model is just a few dollars more than the regular Cuisinart Brew Central, and in my opinion it is worth every penny!

2. Freaker Koozies

Jay and I found these koozies in our stockings, and, as a koozie expert, I can honestly say that these are these are the best of the best.  I love the fun colors and patterns, but the greatest thing is that they will fit over any bottle, can, or jar known to man.  Anything from a regular beer bottle to a bottle of wine to a 2 liter of soda!  It is truly amazing!

3. TOMS Nepal Boots

I think I have worn these boots every single day since my mom gave them to me on Christmas Day.  The super soft fleece lining is so warm and comfortable - I feel like I am wearing slippers all day long.  And I love that TOMS donates a pair of shoes to a child in need with every purchase.

4. Bath and Body Works Snow Day Candle

Bath and Body Works makes the BEST candles!  Somehow the fragrances radiate throughout the house without being overbearing or air-freshener-y.  Since snow days are my most favorite things ever, this candle is perfect for me!  I can't wait to enjoy it on chilly days off from work yet to come.  Thanks, Zenie!

5. Oklahoma Bamboo Cutting Board

My cousin and his wife gave us this beautiful bamboo cutting board in the shape of our home state.  I love that it can be used as a cutting board, serving tray, or just a piece of art.  We currently have it hanging up in our dining room, and it looks great on the wall!  If I ever want to use it for serving, I can just pull it down.  And it can be ordered on Amazon in the shape of any state.  What a great gift!

6. Self-Watering Wine Bottle Flower Pot

My cousin Elise wins the award for most creative gift.  She made these self-watering flower pots out of old wine bottles!  It looks so pretty on our bar, and hopefully it will be really hard to kill the adorable flower she planted.  The above link takes you to a tutorial on Pinterest if you want to attempt the project yourself.

Best wishes for a happy New Year!  See you in 2014!!

Healthy Sooner Holiday Decor

I know this post isn't exactly health related, but I couldn't resist sharing some of our holiday decorations with you all.  I love how cozy the house feels with the tree all decorated, the stockings hung, and a warm fire in the fireplace.  

I have a feeling we will be spending a lot of time indoors enjoying the decorations over the next few days with a forecast like this! Yikes...

Here is a glimpse of the living room. 

I bought the stockings from Target and attached some wooden letters that I spray-painted gold.  It was a cheap way to get a more personalized feel.

For the entry table, I framed a cute print that I found here and added a poinsettia with a couple of ornaments.   

I made a quick centerpiece for our dining room table with candles, ornaments, and pine cones on a gold charger. 

And, of course, I updated our chalkboard in the entryway. 

Jay also worked on the lights over the break, and I think our little house looks quite festive!

Last year, we were in-between houses over the holidays and didn't even bother to put up a tree.  I think I missed the decorating more than I realized, because this year I have been super gung ho.  I even have my Christmas cards sent out!  (And I spent waay too much time addressing them all cute and Pinterest-y...I hope the recipients appreciate my efforts!)

Oliver is also getting into the holiday spirit...he wanted me to share this message with you.  

This picture makes me smiles every time I look at it.  What a ham!

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season as much as we are!