V-Day or D-Day??

Valentine's Day

or

Doom's Day??

There's always a lot of discussion when

Valentine's Day comes around whether it is a:

good holiday

or a:

bad holiday.

I say good.

The hubby says bad.

There are many stories and legends surrounding how this holiday came about. The story I have heard is about the Roman emperor Claudius. He banned marriage for young soldiers because he believed that men were better soldiers if they had no wives or children. Upon hearing this outrageous ban St. Valentine took it upon himself to secretly perform marriages for young lovers. Claudius found out about these secret marriages and eventually executed St. Valentine on February 14th. I told Eric this story and he said St. Valentine should have been executed but only because the event brought about such a stupid holiday. D-Day all the way I'm sure he'd say.




Valentine's Day is associated with young lovers hence all the commercialism of gifts and flowers for couples. I think that's mostly why Eric hates this holiday. Too much commercialism. I think Valentine's day should be marketed better for love in general (if you believe in marketing at all) and not just for couples. Everyone has someone they love whether it's family or a friend. At least I hope everyone has someone to love. This holiday has the highest suicide rate second only to Christmas. It also leaves singles with feelings of loneliness and sadness.




Despite all the bad hype that Valentine's Day
gets I just can't help myself but to love it!

I love:

cutsie cards
heart shaped breakfasts
pink dinners
valentine crafts
making valentine cookies
conversation heart candy
chocolate!!
spending time with loved ones
& just the plain old excuse to party.



I'm looking forward to Valentine's day even if it ends up being only Carlee and I to celebrate it. Eric has to work that night (which he's told me he's glad). Collin might go with grandpa to pick up his new truck (not sure on that yet). So, if its just us girls that will be okay too. We'll have a day to appreciate each other. I see Valentine's day as just another day to celebrate loved ones. We should be doing that every day anyways! So, to all you V-Day haters: don't hate, appreciate. You don't have to be married or have a boyfriend/girlfriend to celebrate Valentine's day. Just appreciate the loved ones you do have in your life. Or spend the day appreciating someone most people don't celebrate often enough: yourself!


Hope you have a:

Paper Practice

Yesterday my little miss Carlee decided she needed to

practiceher paper cutting skills. She sat there saying,

"Cutting...cutting...I cutting."

Of course she had to taste the scissors too!

Everything has to go into her mouth which

in her case can sometimes be dangerous (e.g.

swallowing plant food and bag balm).

I have been so impressed with her lately! She is picking

up on new skills and learning more words. Preschool has

been wonderful for her. She has a patient teacher and

wonderful speech therapists to help guide her. Even her

patience has been improving. THANK HEAVENS!!

Of course with a new skill learned comes BIG

messes. Oh well, at least she cleaned it all up!

Friday Fill-Ins

1. Please don't tell me I have to work today! I do? Bummer...

2. Can you not eat in the morning? My hubby and son can but Carlee and I have to eat first thing.

3. The color yellow makes me want to think of summer sunshine! I could use some right now.

4. I have a craving for graham crackers and fudge frosting. Yummy!

5. If my life had a pause button, I'd pause it right now. I really don't want my kids to get any older.

6. Eyes are the disdain of my whole face. They are too small and sunken in. Oh well, you get what you get I guess. At least I can see, for the most part!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to goofing with my kids and unfortunately doing laundry, tomorrow my plans include going to a stake breakfast and then heading to Idaho Falls to get V-Day stuff for the kids and for our "heart attack" activity days night and Sunday, I want to bake valentine cookies after church to send to my brother! He was a little valentine baby.




Wanna play? http://www.fridayfillins.blogspot.com/

Wordless Wednesday

More Entertaining Than the Superbowl!

I had every intention of watching the big game on Sunday,

but I kept getting distracted!

My little cuties decided to put on

a dress-up fashion show. How

could I say no to watching that instead?

Carlee kept going up to Collin and saying,

"I pretty! I pretty!"

Collin was trying to find stuff to

dress up like an indian. This is as

close as he found. I guess momma

needs to stock up the dress-up box!

I also kept getting distracted by

my stomach. I always think I have to

stuff my face on Superbowl Sunday.

I ate leftover chicken salad puffs...

...with a Cherry 7-Up Spritzer.

I also just had to have chocolate!

I made these babies with pumpkin

instead of oil so they were at least

a little bit healthier. Does that

justify eating more? Hmmm...

You can see the recipe on my food blog.

No one even noticed the change!

I did eventually watch some of the

game. I didn't expect it to be so close though.

I also only saw a couple commercials.

I usually like watching those more

than the game!

What did you do Superbowl Sunday??

Homemade Spa Recipes

Homemade Spa Recipes

Here are a few examples of the recipes I made

for our spa-theme baby shower.

Spa Index Bath Cookies
***
Ingredients:
2 cups finely ground sea salt
1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 T. light oil
1 tsp. vitamin E oil
2 eggs
5-6 drops essential oil of your choice
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all the listed ingredients and form into a dough. Using a teaspoon or so of dough at a time, roll it gently in the palm of your hand until it forms a ball. Form all dough into one teaspoon balls, and gently place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Consider sprinkling the bath balls with herbs, flower petals, cloves, citrus zest and similar aromatic ingredients. Bake your bath cookies for ten minutes, until they are lightly browned. Do not over bake. Allow the bath cookies to cool completely. To use, drip 1 or 2 cookies into a warm bath and allow to dissolve. Yield: 24 cookies, enough for 12 baths.
Note: If you have little ones in the house make sure these are out of reach. Like my son says, "Those look good enough to eat!"

Bath Salts

***

(simple small batch)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Epsom salt

5-6 drops essential oil of your choice

2-3 drops soap coloring

Directions:

Combine ingredients thoroughly. Pour into desired jar or container.

Sparkling Bath Salts
(the tallest jar)
***
Ingredients:
1/4 cup Baking Soda
2 T. Citric Acid (can be found at local pharmacy desk)
3/4 cup Fine Sea Salts or Epsom Salts
20-25 drops Essential oil of your choice
Instructions:
1. Combine 1/4 cup baking soda and 2 tablespoons citric acid in a glass bowl. Mix together thoroughly.
2. Add 20-25 drops of your desired essential oil blend. Mix thoroughly until no lumps remain in the mixture.
3. Add 3/4 cup of fine sea salts or Epsom salts to the mixture and blend thoroughly.
4. Pour the salt mixture into an 8 oz. decorative glass bottle or container (or several smaller containers) to store.
5. To use these bath salts, fill a bath with warm water and pour approximately 1/4 cup of the salt mixture into the filled tub. The salts will add a sparkling fizz as soon as they come in contact with the warm water. Give the water a gentle stir to help disburse the salts throughout the tub, and then get in and enjoy your naturally aromatic mineral bath! Do not ingest this mixture.

Cherry Vanilla Bubble Bath ***
(3rd from left)
Ingredients:
1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 cup unscented shampoo
2 T. rose water (recipe below)
1 T. liquid glycerin
1/2 tsp. table salt
5 drops cherry fragrance oil
5 drops vanilla fragrance oil or 1 T. vanilla extract
Directions:
Whisk all ingredients until well blended. Pour desired amount under running water in the bath, and, open the lid of a pint of Cherry Vanilla Ice Cream. Eat while bathing (that part is optional!).
* Note: I substituted orange fragrance oil for the cherry and it turned out great!
***
Rose Water
***
Ingredients:
1 cup rose petals
1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
1 1/2 cups water
Directions:
Simmer rose petals in water for 10 minutes. Strain. Add alcohol (optional, but acts as a preservative.) Keeps in fridge for up to 2 weeks with alcohol, or, 1 week without. Note: Rosewater without a bit of alcohol will quickly develop a residue on its surface.

***


Go check out http://www.spaindex.com/
They have a huge list of homemade spa treatments.
It's a lot of fun making your own beauty supplies!

Spa Baby

Our spa themed baby shower for my friend Julie is finally over! I think I'm getting too old to throw parties. I am so worn out from all the prep work that went into this! Most of the work was in making homemade invitations (they were shaped like sleep masks to go with the theme) and making spa books with recipes of treatments that you can make at home. Talk about a ton of cutting and pasting!

I also had to spend a tremendous amount of time cleaning and getting my house back to normal from the Christmas holidays. Procrastinator!! I still had all my Christmas decorations piled up in one of the bedrooms that I had to haul to the basement. Then I had to put back all my normal knick knacks. Phew! That was a job.

The food for the party turned out so yummy! We had chicken cream puffs, meat and cheese trays, and fresh veggies and fruit. We wanted to keep the food "spa" like and healthy.

Of course that didn't stop us from bringing on the dessert though! My mom made delicious pink lemonade cupcakes and my mother in law Tina made butterscotch and pistachio layered pudding and cream cheese desserts. I forgot to take a picture of those but they were really good.

Everyone loved the food and went back for seconds!

After a couple baby shower games we moved onto our spa theme. Tina did a really nice presentation of relaxation techniques that made most of the ladies want to fall asleep right then and there. She also found some wonderful videos on YouTube that show you meditation relief and relaxation techniques. Here are some links if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLEweEr-Ow0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Jmf7Mo6dA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbyLIYr_HVc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtqeomC_0ko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz-KDXWsepl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrgGp2jaafs

Then we moved onto making bath salts. I was too busy hosting to take any pics but everyone had a lot of fun smelling the different essential oils and mixing colors. We used just a simple recipe using Epsom salts and Collin had to make some too. His favorite color is orange so he had to use orange oil and also color his orange. He begged me all that night and the next day to take a bath with them. I finally let him use them tonight and he said he could hardly even smell 'em. Eric and I sure could though. It smelled so wonderful that I wanted to jump in too!

We ended the party with presents. Julie's daughter Lyndsey and another little helper handed her presents to open.

The party was worth all the stress and work when I saw Julie enjoy herself. She has been such a good friend to me since she moved down my lane. She is sooo ready to get her baby girl into this world and be done with the whole pregnancy thing. We joked that she couldn't go into labor until after the baby shower so now we're just waiting on her. She's not due until the 10th but she looks ready now.

I had fun getting in some girly time but now I'm really ready for a long soak with some homemade bath recipes! I'll post some of the recipes on the next post.