I know we've been busy...

I'm just not sure what we've been doing! We did get about 20 inches of snow on Saturday. That was amazing! We haven't had snow like that in probably 20 years (and that just made me old since 20 years ago I was a freshman in high school).

Since we couldn't go anywhere, we started on some christmas presents...cause you know we really should have started them 3-4 weeks ago. We're giving away goodie bags full of yuumminess including homemade lip balm, sugar scrubs, and bath salts wrapped up in pretty little brown paper bags tied with raffia and an ornament. Saturday we did get the ornaments done and we made ornaments from paint sticks. I used this tutorial. My 4 year old daughter had a blast with helping me Modge Podge all of the ornaments. Dad even got into the fun and finished them up by tying on the wires. They really do look a lot cuter in real life than they do in the pictures. We used a brown spray paint that had gold glitter in it. We were able to use our ink jet printer with no smearing as long as I used the photo setting. (I'm really not sure why even picture I've taken today won't come out, I think the sun shining and the snow is throwing everything off).

Emily also helped me make her and her little brother some Christmas pillows.

You really can't get much simplier. Two pieces of fabric 11x17. We left an opening and Emily filled them full of polyfill from an old pillow we had laying around. The kids have no taken their regular pillows off their beds and will only sleep on their "Santa Pillows." You gotta love when the simple things in life make kids so happy!

Emily and I also made Chocolate Orange Lip Balm this morning and oh me oh my does the kitchen smell heavenly! So very easy. I tried taking a picture but between my flash, the bright snow sunshine and the clear tubes, it was not turning out. But here's the ingredients below.

Chocolate Orange Lip Balm
4 tbsp. Cocoa Butter
10 chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate but I think dark chocolate would taste even better)
1/2 tsp. Vitamin E oil
1/2 tsp. orange extract (I think vanilla would also be good!)

Melt the cocoa butter using a double boiler and remove from heat. Stir in chocolate chips, Vitamin E oil and extract. I used a syringe to place into lip balm tubes (placed in the freezer first). There was still some leakage in the tubes. I think if we continue to make this, I'd change to a pot container but for now since we have a ton of tubes, this works just fine!

We still have a ton of stuff to make but I think next we'll finish up the lip balms and then move onto the bath salts and scrubs.