Updates on Homemade Products

Here's an update of some of the homemade things I made earlier this year and my progress with them.

Deodorant: I'm still using my homemade deodorant. No one has made any comment about me being extra stinky. I've made it two or three times in 2015.
In the summer it was easy to use because the temperature kept the coconut oil soft. At one point it got too hot and separated the oil from the other ingredients. Now that it's winter, it's challenging to use again. If I heat it with my hair drier or hold it up to the heater in the bathroom for a minute, it's easy to use again.





Acne wipes: This is a new thing I've been using for two months. Put a bunch of cotton rounds in the jar. In a separate measuring cup, mix something like 1/3 c of straight witch hazel with 15-20 drops of tea tree oil.  Carefully pour it over the cotton rounds. I watched to make sure the cotton rounds at the very bottom got soaked too. If it doesn't soak through, just add more witch hazel. If it feels too diluted, add a bit more tea tree oil. I like to add it into the witch hazel before I pour it over the rounds because I feel like it helps get the tea tree all the way to the bottom of the jars.




Face wash: I love my face wash so much. My friend closed her website for a while and didn't have her recipe handy, so I had to make it up. I put it on the label. It's roughly a 1:1.5:2:6 drops ratio of honey : castille soap : vegetable glycerin : tea tree oil.




Dry shampoo: This isn't specifically dry, but I like to use it on days between washings. It's a 1:4:1 ratio of cornstarch : water : rubbing alcohol. This has to be shaken really well before it's used, and it needs to be sealed up pretty well or the rubbing alcohol will evaporate.


Headache salve: I've used it a bit, but honestly I forget about it most of the time. I don't know if I think it helps, but it doesn't hurt to use.

Face powder: I still have it and use it occasionally. Normally it just goes over my liquid foundation to set it, but I don't wear liquid foundation very often.

Body wash: I made body wash twice this year, once with peppermint soap and once with rose soap and cinnamon. The peppermint was lovely, but I was just glad to see the end of the homemade body wash once I was done with the rose. Overall, the soap was stressful to make thanks to fears of not having everything clean enough and contaminating everything. Instead, we're trying this Soap for Every Body. We're enjoying it quite a lot, tho I'd like to get a non-coconut scent next time.




This year was fun to test new homemade products. I'm hoping to make some lotion soon. We'll see how that turns out.

What a year it has been

What a year 2015 has been. It's been very busy between getting engaged then married, my sister-in-law's wedding, three deaths in the family, far too many wedding receptions, remodeling at work, a honeymoon to Harry Potter world, and in general living my life. I meant to update my blog for it all, but it was too much or too fast or too whatever. Here'a  quick look at some pictures from this year.

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February: My engagement ring. White gold and sapphire. It is beautiful and not too much of anything. My birthstone is a sapphire, and I've had an affinity for the stone since a childhood make-believe game with my best friend.

March: a peculiar combination of nail polishes produced the effect of nails covered in orange highlighter and dunked in glitter. I haven't repeated this combo, but it's interesting.

April-May: I made a blanket from old jeans I cut up. It was a massive project, but the blanket is pretty great. We use it primarily for camping or outdoor activities since it's durable. I also have far too many cut up bits of denim left, so I have to do something else with them eventually.

May 23: We got married. One of our friends performed the ceremony and only 12 people were involved including us, our photographer, and officiate. I'm so glad it was small. Sadly, my father-in-law passed away three weeks before the day.

June: My sister and her partner graduated college, so we went to Corvallis, Oregon to celebrate with them. We took a few extra days for a camping trip to the coast.

July: Fawkes' first two baths. Over the summer, the cat wandered around outdoors on his own. Twice he came back covered in too much dirt for us to let him inside or allow him to clean off himself. He really doesn't like baths and has a minor fear of the bathroom now.

We've been playing around with cooking a lot this year. This was for a stir fry we made using some cashew carrot ginger soup.

September: Fawkes hates his skunk Halloween costume. The cat is fine wearing things, but not if it has a hood and messes with his ears. He hides every time we put this on him.

October: Face masks from the co-op. I like them quite a lot, even though I look scary when I wear them. 

November: Honeymoon to Harry Potter world! We went to Universal Studios/Island of Adventure in Orlando, Florida for our honeymoon. Every time we started trying to plan the wedding, I just came to the conclusion I didn't want a wedding. I just wanted to be married and spend our money going to Harry Potter world. So we had a small ceremony, several receptions over the course of a few months, and went on our trip. It was a lovely week, though I now feel little desire to ever return.

November: Business Taco Cat. We got the taco costume on clearance after we returned from the honeymoon. This is one of my favorite pictures of my cat from this year. He is such a little businessman. 

December: 2015 ornaments finished. I used perler beads to create little candy canes for our families. Mine is the first one on the bottom row, my husband's is next to it, our cat's is the one next to that. I think they all came out pretty darn cute.

It's been quite a year for the books. Many times I've thought we deserve an award if we survive the entire year. Only a few more days left of this year, so I guess I better start thinking about some kind of award.

Homemade Tea Blend

My partner recently gave me the best tea ball (tea infuser) ever.

Yes, that is in fact the Death Star with TIE-fighter chain weight. This is such an awesome ball for so many reasons. Not only is the shape great, but it holds enough loose tea for a whole pot. It's just great.

For obvious reasons, I've become obsessed with the loose-leaf tea section of my local co-op. I recently bought a local tea called Moscow Mint that I'm excited to try (though I haven't as of writing this post). It has two mints, lavender, and lemon balm.

We spent some time in the bulk herb section of the co-op picking ingredients for my first ever homemade tea blend. Here's an image of all the beautiful ingredients.

Peppermint, spearmint, red raspberry leaf, orange peel, lavender, hibiscus flower, and lemon balm leaf.

I only blended a tiny bit up so far.

I used a regular small spoon to measure, so these are really not specific measurements, but here's the general idea of it. The number indicates roughly how much of the spoon I used in my first attempt (enough for two cups of tea).

1 1/2 peppermint
1 spearmint
1 lemon balm
1/2 lavender
1/3 orange peel
1/8 hibiscus
1/8 raspberry leaf

Why did I select some of these? Mostly based on smell and known-to-me benefits. It's a half and half of which were smells and which were known medicinal benefits.

I am prone to stress. No, I don't really have many reasons to be stressed, but I'm prone to feeling it more than I know I should. I'm trying to find ways to reduce stress. I've meditated before and really want to remember to do it again. Meanwhile, I try to keep myself calm in other ways. Like tea.

Peppermint, spearmint, lemon balm, and lavender are all known for helping manage stress. Chamomile is too, you probably know, but my partner is allergic to chamomile. Since I didn't want him to end up with a scratchy, slightly swollen throat, I opted to leave it out of this blend.

I knew these were flavors I wanted to include. I let my partner pick out most of the others.

 The raspberry leaf he picked because it was an interesting name and because it smelled "better than marshmallow root". My only tip is that if you think about using raspberry leaf is that it can specifically affect pregnancies and pregnant women. I can't remember exactly what the affects are, but I remember you have to be careful about when you drink it. If considering adding raspberry leaf to tea and you're anywhere in the pregnancy stages, please consult your doctor (or midwife, probably) first.

The hibiscus flower smelled really good. It smelled way better than rose hips for this particular tea. I don't know what kind of health benefits or concerns it has. I used a very small amount.

The orange peel just smelled like it would help round out the tea. I smelled the lemon peel but thought the orange would be better. Again, I'm not sure what the health impacts are.

Anyway, this is really good. I'm pleased with the blend. I don't know if it's fluke or actually something in my tea, but shortly after drinking it, I developed a bit of a headache. Since I'd had coffee earlier in the day, I'm guessing it was fluke.

I look forward to blending ingredients in the very near future to see what happens. 

Quick Shot: Recent Dinners

I know it's not always great to brag about having success with making food. And I know that a lot of times I'm not specific enough in my instructions to allow perfect imitation. And, quite frankly, half the time my dinners aren't exciting enough for an entire post. So here are two (sort of three) recent dinner I wanted to talk about without getting too in depth.

The first dinner was steak with twice-baked potatoes, green salad, and garlic bread.
We used our George Foreman grill for the steaks (seasoned with garlic pepper and dried minced onion).
It was my first time making twice-baked potatoes, but they turned out so well! (Bake potato at 400° for 50 minutes, cut in half, scoop out inside, mash, add sour cream, butter, garlic powder, salt, pepper, freeze-dried chives, stick back in skins, cover with cheese, bake at 400° for 15 minutes.)
The garlic bread was the pre-made stuff from the store.
The salad is only notable because we didn't actually have many ingredients for it. We ended up doing green leaf lettuce, fresh spinach (my partner uses it on the sandwich he eats every work day), baby carrots, an almond-dried cranberry topping thing from a bag, Mrs. Dash table blend, tomato-basil feta (recently bought for gyros) and Vidalia onion dressing. The almond-dried cranberry thing was hidden in the cupboard but it and the feta helped us feel like we were eating something really fancy. Also, never underestimate the power of a bit of Mrs. Dash.

The second dinner was a truly amazingly delicious pizza.
The crust was a pre-made thing.
We used jarred pizza sauce first. Then we mixed together a jar of pesto with some of the frozen fresh pesto I try to have on hand and swirled that on to mix the two sauces up. (I use this recipe for spinach-basil pesto usually, but this last time I left out the spinach)
Next we added fresh tomato, fresh spinach, and fancy-ish fresh mozzarella.
We threw it all in the oven for a bit, then pulled it out, sliced it, and ate the delicious flavor.


I don't have a picture for the third dinner. Sorry. So this is super short.
I wanted to make stuffed shells, but trying to undercook the shells lead to them falling all apart. So I laid them in the casserole dish kinda like lasagna noodles.
I mixed together ricotta cheese and the remaining pesto mixture from the above mentioned pizza. That's it. I put that in on top of the pasta. Put a bit more destroyed shells on top of the cheese, cover in jarred sauce, top with mozzarella cheese, bake, enjoy.

I'm going to make my shell stuffing with just ricotta and pesto (maybe some spinach too) from now on. It didn't fall apart and was delicious.

Tip: How to Cut Onions (When You're Super Sensitive)

I have a tip for today!

I can't hardly cut raw onions. I tear up so fast it's almost like a magic trick. We only buy sweet onions because the fumes aren't as bad. Even when I make my partner cut them across the apartment with the oven hood on to sweep up the fumes, there are times I'm still wiping tears away for several minutes.

This is a problem since I really love cooking with onion. I'm not a huge fan of raw onion flavor, but if it gets cooked even halfway to soft, I'm a fan. 

I very recently discovered two things that help me cut onions with ease now. I've been an onion cutting fool since I figured it out, so I have to share.

Yes, I now cut onions with swim goggles on! These are fairly old goggles -- probably 6 or 7 years old now. I took a couple swimming classes in college, and my best friend (who was on the high school swim team) helped me get my goggles and hair cap. I remember being really surprised how snug the goggles were supposed to be. It's that snugness now that makes these the perfect tool in the kitchen. After all, science explains that it's the "fumes" from the onion that hits your eyeballs and creates watering (check this video if you want more info or other tips about cutting onions).

Since they're old-ish, not being used under water, and I have to wear glasses, they're actually kind of foggy when I use them in the kitchen. It's totally worth it, though.

I use those gloves just so I don't smell like onion for the next three days. Nothing is weirder than realizing in your Wednesday shower that your hands still smell like Sunday's onions.

If you have swim goggles and are super sensitive to cutting onions, try this! It may not work for you, but I think it has a really good chance. 

Chicken Soup Success

When we were trying to recover from our colds last month, I decided to make chicken noodle soup. I've had fairly average success making it before, but I like the idea of making it more than buying a can of it.

Here are my ingredients:

It's nothing at all unexpected. Frozen chicken breasts, a box of chicken broth (cut with a bit of water), frozen onion (I am super sensitive to cutting raw onion), frozen peas and carrots (because it's a nice shortcut on cutting carrots), thin spaghetti (I meant to use thicker stuff but accidentally bought the thin), fresh parsley (not often found in my house, but it was there for a different recipe), green onion, celery, garlic, and assorted spices in the jar on the left.

Years ago my mom went through all her spices and typed up this reference chart of spices down the side, types of protein and ingredients along the top, and a notes field on the far right side. Basically the chart just tells you exactly which spices go best with which ingredients based on what the spice can says. I forget I have it, but when it's time to experiment with things like soup, I pull out the chart and look for ideas. I don't remember what was in it, but I'd guess some salt, pepper, possibly garlic powder, maybe some cumin, and thyme. Maybe sage? I don't really remember. 

I ended up taking that peeled clove of garlic, the parsley, and bay leaves and wrapped them in cheesecloth tied with kitchen twine. 

My theory was that I definitely wanted the flavors but no one wants to get the whole clove of garlic in their soup or a whole bay leaf or sprig of parsley. Plus, I recently bought the twine and really wanted to see how it worked out. I'm very pleased with the results.

I used both frozen chopped white onion and fresh green onion. Since the flavors are pretty different (as far as onion goes), I didn't think it would really overwhelm the soup. There also wasn't more than maybe a 1/2 cup of chopped frozen onion, so it wasn't as much as it sounds like.

My partner doesn't like celery very much, but I love using it. Also, I'm aware enough of what cooking does to the vegetables he doesn't like to know how to incorporate them without overwhelming the dish. Mushroom, while delicious, wouldn't have been easy to mask in this soup, so I left it out. Anyway, this is what it looked like after I threw everything together. You can see the cheesecloth package of flavorings in there too.

I put two chicken breasts in frozen because I knew they'd thoroughly cook. I also like making soup with real meat flavor (in addition to broth) when I can.  After they cooked down a bunch, I pulled the chicken out and cubes it before I returned it to the soup. Everything ended up fairly similar sized in the end.

 I broke the noodles in half before I added them. I wanted to get them in thirds, but it was going to take far too much effort.

I honestly don't know how long I cooked it for. I think I probably cooked it without noodles for a half hour, then stuck the noodles in and cooked it another 15 minutes. I like doing soup that's really low maintenance like this. As you probably guessed, the starch in the noodles thickened up my broth.

That's pretty much what it looked like. I tried to make a small batch, but I still haven't perfected the cooking-for-two thing. We ate it off and on for about two weeks. It held up super well. The only issue was the noodles sucked up so much broth that it was almost not soup by the end. It was startlingly good, though. I think the thyme really helped. I wish I'd actually kept track of what I ended up putting in at the end.

I think it's the victories like this that really help me feel confident experimenting more.

Berry Smoothie with Kale

We're still on a quest for good smoothies. My partner still wants to use kale. While he was out of town in January, I tried a new smoothie that has kale but is primarily fruit.

We tried the second smoothie (kale and banana) on this page a while ago. It was good, but the cinnamon was too strong. This time I made the third smoothie. The instructions (such as they are) read:

If green drinks creep you out, give this recipe a whirl. Fresh raspberries and strawberries help disguise the kale and produce a pretty pink smoothie. Add pineapple, banana, a splash of milk, Greek yogurt, and protein powder to try it.

I had almost all the ingredients, but I made a few changes.

Firstly, everything was frozen except the milk, yogurt, and banana.
Secondly, I didn't use protein powder.
Thirdly, I used regular vanilla yogurt. I had vanilla Greek yogurt, but I'm actually not a huge fan of Greek yogurt. Sometimes I feel like it, but usually I just don't like it much.

My smoothie turned out so pretty!

I was pretty surprised it wasn't green at all, but that was the point of this smoothie, right? I don't know if the kale being frozen had anything to do with it staying so amazingly not-green, but it definitely made the process easier. With everything being frozen, though, it was crazy thick.

Without a doubt, this is the tastiest smoothie (read: no ice cream) I've made yet.
It made probably 24 oz of smoothie. I put most of it in my 20 oz insulated Klean Kanteen and took it to work with me. It was hard to drink because it was insulated so well the smoothie couldn't really melt.

I'm really excited to make this one again and have my partner try it. We have some frozen spinach, so I may throw a bit of that in there too. Or maybe that will be for the third attempt.