homemade body butters

recently, i've been doing something very indulgent and naughty... buying products from the store lush. i decided to try out something called buffy, an exfoliating body butter. it's $13 for one bar, which lasts about 2 weeks. unfortunately, i sort of loved it.

so i took a look at the ingredients, and decided i could make one of my own. it's mainly cocoa butter, shae butter, ground rice and almonds. i got shae butter from a beauty supply store around the corner, and shelled out for cocoa butter at whole foods.




i did my best at dividing up 1 oz each of the butters...

the shea was easy to portion, but the cocoa butter was very hard. i ended up breaking the tip of the knife that i was using to chop it with... beware! i almost had razorblade surprise butter. i'd suggest heating it slightly first...


after they were divvied, i:

~melted the butters in the microwave
~ cooled them in the fridge/ freezer so they would harden faster.
~ poured in the ground rice and almonds (which i used the magic bullet to chop with.)
~ note- if the mixture is too hot, the exfoliants will sink to the bottom, so you've got to keep a close eye on how fast it's hardening.



i used wild rice instead of regular rice :)


i then poured them into little heart molds.

...but was too impatient to wait for them to harden all the way. so i got one cracked heart, and one with a hole in it. sounds kind of like my life :P




next time i'll use less shae butter in my mixture... it was a little greasier than i'd like. other than that, i love! i i've been using it in the shower on the lower half of my body (ahem, legs & butt), and on my hands. it's sort of magic.

i'll make these again fo sho.




♥ listen to my new record on bandcamp ♥

coffee talk ~ marry yourself

people often see this ring and assume i'm married... even though it's on my right hand.

i bought it for myself when i got my first "real" job out of high school. my mother was working at the local casino, so she helped me score a front desk position at their newly constructed five-star hotel.

it was my first taste of "big money" ($8 an hour!!) and even though it was only three days a week, i had no rent or bills except for a car payment. so i did what any dysfunctional girl with a surplus of cash would: i compulsively shopped.

i bought cd's, ugly sweaters, novelty t-shirts, and girly lingerie.

i was very depressed and lonely.

on one trip to the mall, i ended up happening by the macy's counter and purchasing this white gold ring for $59. it is the one item from that time period that actually ended up lasting.


since then, i've had a lot of experiences, and gone through great self-transformations. the sadness isn't completely behind me, but i've always gotten through it and will continue to do so. unconsciously, i feel like i've kept this ring for so long as sort of a marriage pact to myself. a promise to never leave me.

it's not that romantic relationships aren't and shouldn't be important to us. of course they are. but i could never understand people's obsession with them. all those souls out there scurrying and worrying over finding the one to "complete them..." but that will never happen because they are already complete.

some perspective on you: you lack nothing. you are not broken. you are not a puzzle. you are simply an imperfect, amazing human. and you can't have a healthy relationship with another imperfect, amazing human without knowing this first.

so make a pact... never leave you. don't push yourself down so that someone else can feel better. don't sacrifice your feelings to make someone else more comfortable. don't tell yourself those negative garbage lies.

show yourself the love and kindness that you would a child.


don't get me wrong, some people are the type to flourish under harsh criticism and scrutiny.

i have never been one of those people.


it's kindness.

support.

love.

♥







♥ listen to my new record on bandcamp ♥

up to the moon ~ making the cd cover

good morning!

it is special day folks, as i've been planning this post for a long time... i wanted to show you guys how i made the little hanging stars and moons for my cd cover :)

when i came up with the title "up to the moon," i knew i wanted a strong visual aspect. thinking about the concept and playing around with ideas was a lot of fun!

i thought a lot about symbolism, and how the moon can be a symbol for people's wishes and dreams. having the moon on a string gave me the feeling that all your wishes could come true if you could just have that...


anyway, here are some of the supplies i used:






yarn, paper, mod podge, and glitter.

i started thinking of what other shapes i could also utilize. moons naturally go with stars, so that was a no brainer. i also thought hearts would be appropriate, since most of the songs on the ep have to do with love/ unrequitedness. i drew some paper cutouts...






next, i painted one side each with mod podge and glittered them. this was hard, because the glitter wouldn't stick in certain places, and some of them didn't come out perfect.

after i did this, i found out that there is such a thing as paper that is pre-glittered. it's used for scrapbooking. i wish i knew about it sooner- i would've just used that.

oh well! doesn't this look pretty?






i then glued the two sides of each shape together, with a piece of yarn in the middle.





after that, i had my moons, stars, and hearts all on strings!

if only we could do this in real life...




my original idea was to make them into a mobile, so i strung them all up on one. however, it wasn't photographing the way that i wanted. then i came up with the idea to just pin them against the white wall.

and that is how my cover idea evolved :) we still have them hung up in our apartment this way! they're too cute to take down.





xoxo!!




♥ listen to my new record on bandcamp ♥

salted rum limeade

moving away from some of the earlier frustrations in the week... i made some yummy drinks for you :) (too bad you can't sip through the screen...)

i showed the pictures to matt, and he said it looked like they were "taken in heaven." i can't lie, they kinda taste like heaven too. my old roommate made these at a bbq, and i've been in love ever since. at the time, she used "simply limeade," which actually worked great. but i wanted to try and make the juice from scratch.


i'm definitely a rum girl, and this is my favorite kind- gosling's black seal. (and no, it has nothing to do with ryan gosling.)




you'll need:

~ 15 limes
~ 1 1/2 cups sugar
~ 3 cups water
~ 1 1/2 cups ice (as needed)
~ 4 shots of rum
~ 1/4 tsp salt

i peeled the limes and ran them through the juicer, but you can hand-juice them...




next, i took the the juice, sugar, water, salt, and ice- and poured them back and forth between two different containers.




then, all you do is put a shot of rum each into four 8 or 10-ounce glasses, and pour the mixture over that. bam! delicious.

oh, and i recently got some of those super-cute paper straws to give my drinks a little more pizazz!!




the color of the cocktail is amber, because i used dark rum. you could use a lighter rum, and it would probably turn out the light green color.








♥ listen to my new record on bandcamp ♥