Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Coffee Scrub (aka HEAVEN)

I have been using this scrub for six or more months now and I'm in love. It smells AMAZING and makes my skin soft and my showers feel like a spa experience. 

Ingredients Needed:
  • 1/2 cup coffee grounds 
  • 1 1/2 cup epson salt (I use this kind)
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil
  • 5 - 10 drops of tea tree oil
Materials Needed:
  • Bowl for mixing
  • Jar for storing 
  • Spoon/fork for stirring
  • Measuring cup (for measuring!) 

Combine all the ingredients listed below into a bowl and stir! I actually ended up heating the mixture a bit this time to soften and better incorporate the coconut oil since it's cold here now and this oil is hard/somewhat solid at colder temperatures.


Once you get all the ingredients mixed together the scrub will be dark, and smell amazing (thought sometimes the tea tree oil overpowers everything as you stir). Put the scrub in a container and you're good to go. I used a little glass jar but you could do plastic or flip-top container. Whatever works! 


I actually cannot express to you how wonderful this smells when you open it up and use it in the shower. I love coffee so that accounts for some of my extreme obsession with this coffee scrub, but it's the cinnamon smell too. It's sort of like a breakfast cookie. In short: WONDERFUL. And, my skin is super soft and well moisturized even in these winter months. I tend to get ingrown hairs or little bumps where my hair follicles are (TMI?) and since using this as an exfoliant it's not been an issue! Plus, coffee is supposed to be great for your skin. AND my little cuts and scrapes seem to heal so much faster, I assume it's a result of the tea tree and coconut oil magic. Though I have been known to believe that tea tree oil cures/solves most/all problems, THIS IS FOR REAL. Promise. (I am not a doctor or a healer so this is not a legit claim or anything. Do I need a lawyer now?)

RE: saw a scrub similar to this at Whole Foods recently, made in store and selling for almost $15 a pound! He was all like, LAURA YOU NEED TO OPEN A STORE AND SELL YOUR SCRUBS IMMEDIATELY. Ha! Do yourself a favor and make this at home. Just one more way to TREAT YO SELF for pennies.  

Monday, December 1, 2014

Wrangling in the Shades

I dislike, very much, when I can't find something. I'm generally very organized but sometimes my processes need some fine-tuning. I, after momentarily misplacing my sunglasses a few times, decided my sunglass placement/storage needed a face-lift. As per my usual, I pulled together some things I had on hand to create something to store my sunglasses.

Materials Needed:



Begin by staining your balsa wood. I stained the front and the sides. The back will only see the wall, so it's not necessary to stain that side. After staining the wood, while it was drying, I cut out little foam pieces to glue to the picture hooks. The foam "grabs" the sunglasses and helps them to stay in the picture hooks better. Below is a close-up of the hooks so you can see how and where I attached the foam. I used superglue to attach the foam to the hooks.


After the foam dried, I lightly sanded the back of the hooks, so the glue would hold better when I glued them to the balsa wood. I checked out the general size of my sunglasses and determined I would need 3.5 inches of space in between the hooks on the wood. I measured and marked (in the center of the front of the wood) every 3.5 inches on the front of the balsa wood. The wood was 4 inches wide, so my center line was 2 inches in from either side. I used a regular pencil to mark the wood. To glue the hooks to the wood I put a dab of superglue on the back of each hook and glued the hooks to the pencil marked spot, covering up the pencil marks neatly in the process!


After waiting an hour or so for the glue to set, I used the 3M Command strips, hung my wood strip up, and loaded it with sunglasses. See the finished product above. Funnily enough, the colored sunglass frames pull out some of the colors in the art we have hanging on the wall in our hallway. 


Shine bright everyone, I'll be here with my shades on.