The good kind of strawberries

Hi everyone!

Valentine's day just passed and even though I'm not into the whole Valentine's day thing, I am into the whole, "stuff your face with chocolate" thing. Like always, Pinterest gets me excited over every little thing and makes me think I can do anything. I stumbled upon this post on Pinterest:

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/50/49/a1/5049a1ec4fe77faff34edeeed8922d82.jpg

I LOVE  chocolate covered strawberries and adding a little kick to the same old, same old, really grabbed my attention.  I already had a bottle of marshmallow flavored vodka laying around that was begging to be used anyway, so I went ahead and used that one. This recipe calls for:

• Chocolate
• Two pots (to create a double boiler)
• Strawberries
• Vodka (a sweet flavored one preferably)
• wax paper

First thing first, please wash your strawberries!! AFTER you wash them, set them in a container that has a lid and fill the container up with your vodka of choice.  Leave them in there for 24 hours and place them in the fridge. 

After you wait the 24 hours, drain your strawberries from the vodka and stick them in the freezer for an hour. After the hour take them out of the freezer and they should look like this:

Dry your strawberries with a paper towel and leave them out to continue drying.  Grab your two pots to start using them as a double boiler.  Your going to have to fill a pot with water and put the other on top with the chocolate.

I set my stove to a 7.5 and it worked well. Stir the chocolate every so often to make sure it melts correctly. 

Once the chocolate is completely melted, start dipping your dry strawberries into it carefully. After you dip them, lay them on your sheet of wax paper to cool off and dry.

I have to admit, these strawberries were SO disgusting.  I don't think that it was because of anything I did wrong, it was probably the vodka flavor.  I suggest that if you try this recipe, you should try a chocolate flavored vodka or even a strawberry flavored. I plan on trying this again once I buy a new bottle.

I was sad that they weren't as great as I thought they would be but I will definitely attempt to make them again!

DIY FACE MASK

Dear God,

Why did you give me acne?  I am sure I was a sweet baby angel before I stepped foot upon this horrible earth, so why, why, WHY, did you give me a crater face?! 

Ok, in all seriousness, my acne has improved drastically throughout the years.  I am always willing to try new things and new face masks.  I have burnt my skin many times from all my at home experiments, but I never learn!  I found an interesting face mask on Pinterest that was both for acne and exfoliation, (ooooh scandalous!) I decided to try it because I actually had all three of the ingredients at home and I was extremely bored on Friday night. 

Here is the pin that showed me how to do this

http://codenamedredin.blogspot.com/2014/01/diy-facial-scrub.html

Things you will need for this mask:

• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• bowl
• spoon

Here are pictures of my ingredients. Please, use a disposable bowl and spoon, ain't nobody got time for washing dishes. 

First, dump all your ingredients into the bowl and start mixing.  The texture of this mask is really slimey and grimey. Think about muddy sand with honey, yeah, exactly like that.

Once you have this thick consistency and vomit looking color going on, it's time to put it on your face. Yes, I know, EXCITING! I used the back of the spoon that I used to mix to put it on my clean face.

Once it's all on, you're going to look so sexy and so fabulous, you're going to want to take a lot of pictures of yourself and send them to your loved ones. You're probably going to look like this:

Keep the mask on for five minutes, then rinse off with warm water. As you are rinsing off, you should take the opportunity to scrub as your remove the mask.  Don't scrub too hard, you don't want to irritate your face.

In the end you face should feel nice smooth.  I really liked the results from this masks, I want to do it at least once a week to remove all the dead skin and crap I accumulate from just being a filthy human being. As I walked around the house with this mask on, my dad had so much fun making fun of me and how silly I looked, he ran out of nicknames to call me.  Yes, I looked THAT special, but it was all in the name of BEAUTY! Us girls are crazy, I'll admit. 

- Gabby

UPCYCLING OLD CRAP, awesome!

Hi everyone!

If you are anything like me, I am a sucker for Bath & Body Works, so much that I even made the mistake of working there for a couple of months, (eww, never again).  What is it about lotion, body spray, soaps, and candles?  Why does buying from this over-priced store make me so freaking happy?  I'll admit that my inner cheap-stake waits for the semi-annual sales, saves all the gift cards I have received from Christmas/my birthday, and STILL shops at the outlet store rather than the regular store.  I like to wait until I get the ULTIMATE DEAL, but even then, at the end of the day, its freaking lotion! When did it get so complicated?

ANYWAY, I am obsessed with candles from Bath & Body Works.  Regular price for one of these babies is $20.00!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT. THE. HELL???????? There is so much more I'd rather do with twenty dollars! I found a pin on Pinterest that caught my attention the other day and it showed how to upcylce a Bath & Body Works candle.  I immediately fell in love with the idea and decided that I must try it for myself.

This was the pin I found:

http://www.terryannstreasures.com/2012/10/upcycled-candles.html

For this project you will need:

• An empty glass candle container
• A freezer
• A dull knife
• Soap and water
• A sponge
• A glue gun
• Anything you want to decorate the top of your candle, (beads, yarn, fabric, etc.)

I started with a candle that looked like this:

Obviously it still had a little bit of wax so I had to take care of that.  Try to burn the candle until it can't burn anymore and get rid of the remaining wax.  After it has dried up again, stick it in the freezer overnight. 

When you take it out it should look like this:

 Grab a dull knife and start stabbing the wax and scraping it off. Don't forget to remove the wicks. It shouldn't be too hard to remove the wax once it is frozen.  

After this step, get your glass jar under warm water and use the soap and sponge to remove the remaining wax.  You should also remove the label and scrub that too to remove any residue. 

Your empty jar should look beautiful, like THIS:

Now, grab the lid that came with the candle and any of the decorations you chose to use to decorate the top of the candle.  I had a couple of random beads and broken necklace pieces laying around.

I started glueing the beads and heart on top of the lid until I was satisfied with how it looked.

In the end I decided I wanted to use this cute jar for Q-tips. This is how it looked displayed in my bathroom.

I thought this project was so cute and useful because I usually just throw away those candles once I am done with them. I hope you guys enjoyed this up-cycled DIY project.  I definitely loved the finished product and can't wait to make more of these. 

-Gabby

Chinese Lanterns

Hello, hi, hello, hello, hi, hello!

Ok, now that I got that out of the way, I am excited to show you my next DIY project! I just recently started interning at the Museum of Arts and Science in McAllen, better known as the IMAS.  It has been really fun and this weekend we celebrated Chinese New Year by hosting a huge event. Along with learning a lot about the culture and all of those fascinating things, I also learned how to make a paper Chinese lantern.  Now, whether this is authentic or not, it was still pretty cook to make.  Everyone that would pass by my station was really interested as to how we were making these cool looking things. I was in charge of helping kids and adults make these lanterns, so that pretty much makes me an expert. Let me just add "lantern maker" to my resume before we begin. :)

Things you will need:

• Paper, any kind, any color
• Something circular that you can trace, (I used a can of peanuts)
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Hot glue gun
• Thread of any color
• PATIENCE

We'll begin by tracing the circular object that you chose to make your circles.  You're going to need 8 circles for this lantern.  

After this you will cut them out as perfectly as possible

Once they are cut, they are ready to be folded.  You will be folding each circle into a triangle.  I will break this step up a little more because I found that most people had trouble folding the circles into triangles.

First you make one point of the triangle:

then you fold the other side in:

Once all eight circle are folded into triangles, you can start using your glue stick to glue them together.

Start by putting glue on two sides of one triangle:

Then glue three more triangles to your original triangle:

Once you have four triangles glued together, glue them all together:

Repeat the previous step again with the remaining four triangles.

Once you have two separate hut looking things:

GLUE THEM TOGETHER!

After you are done, tie some string into a loop:

and use the hot glue gun the glue it to the top of the lantern.

After that cut several strings the same length and tie them together

Glue these strings to the opposite end of the lantern.

And there you go, you have a Chinese lantern! Go ahead and start taking pictures of your amazing new room decor, upload the pictures to Instagram and make all your friends jealous.

I did this project with kids of all ages and even adults, they all seemed to really enjoy it.  Hopefully my instructions were pretty clear, if not, just follow the pictures!  Thank you all for stopping by! 

- Gabby