Law Student to Life Student: November 2013

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Ornament Wreath

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We sure did. Our tofurkey and sides were great. :)

I have been wanting to make an ornament wreath, so with my time off for Turkey Day, I did.

Supplies:
--wreath form
--shatterproof ornaments
--glue gun and glue
--ribbon (optional) (for hanger and/or to make the bow)

This wreath was much cheaper than some of the other ones, like my balloon wreath and ribbon wreath. I ended up using this package of ornaments, plus some ornaments I already had. For my hanger and bow, I used scraps of ribbon I already had.

Step 1: Gather your supplies and figure out your arrangement.

Step 2: If you are adding a bow or hanger, add them, so that you know where to place your ornaments. I made the bow by cutting strips of 2 types of ribbon, gluing the edges to the middle, and then wrapping the center with ribbon. It's super easy. I added the bell for a small embellishment.

Step 3: Glue on your ornaments.

Step 4: Hang it up, step back, and find any large holes or places that need more ornaments. Add those ornaments.

Step 5: You are done. Hang up you new holiday wreath. Enjoy!

Interested in another type of holiday wreath? Here are my holiday wreaths from last year:

Candy Wreath

String Wreath

Monday, November 18, 2013

Holiday Sugar Scrubs: Testing Various Supplies

Sugar scrubs are super popular holiday DIY gifts right now. I have seen a lot of great recipes on Pinterest. Instead of trying to come up with a new recipe, I decided to test out some different supplies.

I made 2 variations of the basic sugar scrub:

red dyed light brown sugar with olive oil
green dyed white sugar with vegetable oil

I used the following ingredients in both scrubs

3 C sugar
1 C + 2tbsp oil
15-25 drops essential oils
food coloring
storage jars

Note: You can spend a lot for storage jars or very little. I got mine half off at Hobby Lobby. You need something with a tight lid, preferably sealed. Each sugar scrub filled 4 of these little jars.

Brown Sugar Scrub

For my brown sugar scrub, I mixed together all of the ingredients listed above, using brown sugar and olive oil. I used peppermint essential oil and mixed in red food coloring.

I stirred and stirred, but the olive oil and sugar do separate. They go back together pretty quickly. I used the entire bottle of red food coloring. As you can see, the color is a dark red. I used nearly 25 drops of peppermint oil. The olive oil has a stronger smell and kind of covers the essential oil a little bit. The brown sugar scrub with the food coloring did not appear to stain my skin.

White Sugar Scrub

Next, I made a white sugar scrub. For the white sugar scrub, I mixed together all of the ingredients listed above, using white sugar and vegetable oil. I used cucumber melon essential oil and mixed in green food coloring.

There were some noticeable differences from the brown sugar scrub when I made this one. For one thing, the color was very bright, which I would think is a result of starting with a lighter base. I really like how the color turned out. Another difference is that the vegetable oil had a much lighter smell and I needed less essential oil. Additionally, the scrub mix didn't separate. It stayed pretty consistently together. I'm not sure if the stability is about the sugar, oil, or both, but it was much better. Finally, I did notice that my finger tips were very slightly green after using the scrub, but it did wash off pretty quickly.

So, there you have it. Two types of DIY Sugar scrubs. Both were inexpensive and easy to make. The two scrubs are very different, but they both seemed effective, and I like how they turned out.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Curry and Cornucopia

Curry

Husband and I recently decided to try out some Indian recipes for dinner. One of my favorites is naan with cilantro chutney. Husband found recipes for those dishes as well as one for a yogurt curry. Everything turned out really delicious. The main changes to the recipes are that we added green bell pepper to the curry and we made the naan on the George Foreman grill. Yes, that's right, I did say George Foreman grill. It was really easy to make it that way.

Here are some foodie pics and links to the recipes:

Delicious mushroom yogurt curry

Cilantro chutney

Naan

Cornucopia

For this week's craft, I decided to make the cornucopia pattern I shared last week as part of the Thanksgiving Roundup. This pattern is offered for free on Lion Brand Yarn's website.

The horn and vegetables/fruit were easy to make. The one change I would make would be to increase the opening of the horn. It was a challenge stuffing in the 4 food items...and the original pattern shows 5 foods. The one item I didn't make was the squash. In the pic below you can better see how the food items are practically bursting out of the horn.

I put away my witch, but here's the cornucopia with the other pumpkins. (You can find the pattern links for the pumpkins and pie on my Pumpkin Roundup post.)

Monday, November 4, 2013

20 Free DIY Crochet Thanksgiving Decorations

I had another busy week, and I didn't really do much crafting. So for this week I put together a list of 20 free DIY Thanksgiving themed crochet decoration patterns. There are a lot of very cute free patterns. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Happy Thanksgiving wreath by Lily Sugar'n Cream
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