Low Budget Baby Shower/New Mom Gift Idea

Homemade Cocoa Butter All-over Body Scrub

(paired with Young Living Tranquil Essential Oil Roll-on)

You will need:

1 jar/container and embellishments

Body Wash Scent/brand of your choice

Granulated Sugar

Baby Oil

I used this recipe that I found on Pinterest, but I used adult cocoa butter body wash (it was cheaper) and regular baby oil with vitamin E that I already had at home. I used pure cane sugar I already had at home. I also upped the amounts to 1/3 cup for the oil and wash so that I would have some left over for myself. It smelled great and I love it! It's a little runny, but that could easily be remedied with a bit more sugar. It filled an entire jar and then some, making it perfect :)

Really the scent options are whatever you like, or think they will like. Cucumber Melon, Cocoa Butter, Cherry Blossom, Lavender, etc. If you did an essential oil scent you could even add real oils to it and that would be a cool touch.

I tied the essential oil right onto the jar for a little added flare and included it's uses and the best places to apply it on the tag. In my opinion this should always be done for those who are unfamiliar with the oils :)

 As you can see pictured above I used a simple piece of pink material (my friend was having a girl) and a plain white ribbon as my embellishments. For your jar/container the options are really limitless. You can go simple like I did, you could bedazzle it, or anything in between. (If you decide to go my route I suggest using a little clear tape or hot glue to hold the ribbon in place so when they take it out of the bag it doesn't slip off.)

Husband's Christmas Project

My husband... what a guy. He amazes me at times and makes me crazy at others. You all know how it goes ;-)

He is a handy man, and although he has his personal training certification, he is still an incredibly creative guy and so good at what he does. 

He took on a cool project this past Christmas to hand-make a gift for his brother-in-law, who happens to be pretty in love with Jack Daniels. Typical guy, right?

So I just wanted to share a few photos of what he made! It's pretty cool!

First he found and cut out the right size board. Then I printed out a Jack Daniel's sign for him. He placed it on top of the board and used a ball point pen to trace out the letters pushing into each on to make an indent.

 He used a Drummel to trace/carve out the words in the Jack Daniel's font.

 After finishing with the drummel, he burned the letters with a torch, sanded, burned some more, sanded some more until he was satisfied, and then he stained it. 4 times. lol

He put hangers on the back and presto! Needless to say, the brother loves it and they are going to hang it up next to their bar in their basement which my husband also built.

I love being married to such an amazing man :)

Flower girl shoes!

Man oh man were these fun to do! My original idea was to get a pair of these for each girl and make them into mock ballet slippers by sewing brightly colored ribbon to the bottom in the back and tying it up the girl's legs. Turned out to be expensive and hard because I couldn't find all the sizes I needed.

While trying to figure out what our cute little flower girls were going to be wearing on their feet, I came across these cute plain white shoes at Walmart for only $5 a pair.

I had a thought... How easy would it be to make shiney shoe laces? SUPER EASY! Clear scotch tape and shiney ribbon! Vwa-la!

Of course they couldn't just be done, they needed a little something extra. Glitter! Who doesn't love a little glitter on their shoes? My girls sure do. So here's the finished product, and I think they turned out pretty dang cute :)

P.S. Using a cheap plastic shower cap or, as I used, the slip on food covers (I got a box of 20 at Dollar Tree for $1) is a great way to store shoes for travel. It protects your shoes AND the clothes and other things they are near!