Gluten-Free Lip Balm

I don't know about you, but my skin is taking the brunt of this winter weather. And my lips take the worst of it. To top it all off, I can never seem to find chapstick that's free of all the things I'm allergic to. There are a few out there, but they don't seem to work too well. So the only thing to do is make my own.

This recipe was super easy. The hardest part is the double boiler, and that's really simple. Just a heatsafe bowl or pan inside another pan. The bigger of the two is filled with water and brought to a boil. Then the ingredients go into the other one to gently melt the wax and oils. Easy peasy.

Pinterest Fail

Ah, Pinterest. Like so many others, I find it at once incredibly useful and terribly depressing. Why don't my projects come out like that? Why can't I shoot photos that well? 

I have an answer. I don't stay at home all day, I don't have unlimited resources, and this stuff I do is just a hobby. That doesn't mean that I don't care if it looks nice (I do), but it does mean that if a project's not working out, I go to plan B.

Like this recipe, as seen on Pinterest. I was going to make some stellar tortillas, and then make an awesome bacon-avocado-egg wrap with them. 

So I mixed up some batter, poured it in the pan, and let it do its thing. So far so good.

Until I tried to flip it.

Ick. And guess what - it tasted wayyyy too much like coconut for me.

At least my avocado was pinterest-worthy. And a nice change from looking at pictures of perfectly manicured hands curled around a bottle of nail polish.

So instead of my pinterest-inspired wrap, I had bacon, eggs, avocado, and a toasted gf English muffin. Maybe it wasn't perfect or even pinterest-worthy, but it was delicious.

And ultimately, isn't that the point of enjoying life? Not so much to show others how good it looks, but to actually enjoy it...

It's the Little Things

It's a little early for irises, I know. But I saw these at my Whole Foods, and for a reasonable price. ($5 for 10 stems. I bought 2 bunches, for a total of $10.)

When I got them, they were still wrapped up in tight little buds. Mike said he would never have picked them out because he had no idea what they would become.

But in just a matter of days - hours, even - they opened up into their full glory.

I wish I had a garden full of these, but for now, I'm content to do with the occasional pleasure brought home from the store.

It really is the little things that brighten our days.

Harebrained

First, a little rant. It drives me nuts that people don't know how to spell anymore. And that they don't care to check their spelling. In case you were wondering, the proper spelling is harebrained, not hairbrained. 

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I've had a harebrained idea. With slightly less than 40 weeks to go before the wedding, still trying to nail down a theme (travel? birds? shabby chic? Colonial sampler?), I thought, wouldn't handkerchiefs be a sweet wedding favor? They could even use them to wave us away for the departure since we're not allowed to have confetti, or rice, or sparklers at our venue. 

Now, I know I'm probably not the first to have any of these ideas. I was thinking vintage, or at least something that felt handmade. Nothing cheap-looking or mass produced. And definitely nothing that looks remotely close to machine-embroidery. (It can go very well, but more often goes horribly, horribly wrong. And the machine I have can't do too much.)

The only thing is, after looking at prices of hankies online and at local antique shops, I found them to be a little bit out of my price range. At five to ten dollars apiece, plus shipping, that could take a big old bit out of our wedding budget. 

Three hankies I found while thrifting. Gorgeous and great for inspiration, but a bit pricey.

So then I sourced linen prices and found some amazing quality linen for an amazing price. If I make them all myself, the materials will cost less than a dollar per hanky. I even came up with my own embroidery motifs, and keep having more ideas. I like cohesion in my theme, but a little bit of variety is nice too.

There are birds in a love tree:

My first border (for a man's handkerchief)

 Birds over a heart-flower motif:

And another border for a man's hanky, this one super-subtle:

Sounds brilliant, right? Right. Just factor in the fact that it takes me an hour to make each hand-rolled hem, and another hour or two to do the embroidery, and you see how harebrained the idea is.

A stack of hemmed hankies ready for embroidery.

 Of course it's nuts. It's beyond nuts. But I think I'm past the point of no return. I've already done the math, and realized that if I make ten hankies a week, I can totally do this and get it done well before the wedding.

A stack of freshly cut fabric. Something I'll be seeing a lot of this year.

 And instead of harebrained, maybe we'll go with labor of love from now on. Even though there might not be so much difference between the two.