Coffee Hand Scrub

I enjoy cooking - what I don't enjoy are the smells that can end up on your hands when you cook, especially when you cook with things like garlic and onions.

Recently I heard that you can use coffee grounds to remove the smell from your hands - we don't drink coffee here so I bought a container of coffee and tried it. Sure enough it worked.

I figured I could get more, so I researched making my own scrub and thought you might like to make it too. It works great!

Materials:

• Ground coffee - I'd imagine you could use your left over grounds...
• Liquid hand soap
• Olive oil
• Jars
• Mixing bowl & something to stir with

Step 1 - Measure out enough coffee to fill your jar about 80% full... And poor it in your bowl. 

Step 2 - Add the hand soap and olive oil. I was making enough scrub to fill 3 jars, so I used about a cup of soap and 1/4 cup of olive oil. You can adjust it however you like, you might want more soap for cleaning or more olive oil for moisturizing.

Then stir:

You might find that you need to add more liquid, just keep stirring it 'till the coffee is all completely coated in the liquids. 

Step 3 - Then simply fill your jars.

Then when you've that garlic smell on your hands, simply open the jar, scoop some out and watch your hands as you normally would.

There you go! No more stinky hands - and I've got to say, the scrub feels great to wash your hands with. 

Staged Shelves

Things with the kitchen renovation have been moving slower than I had hoped, a mix of lack of proper motivation, time and help.

But I think I've almost got the items on the shelves arranged the way I want and I thought I'd share that little victory with you.

I picked up this bowl from a local artisan guild, it has me dreaming of leaning to throw pottery... that and pop corn, it is the perfect pop corn bowl so it also has me dreaming of pop corn a lot.

And I present - the original inspiration for the shelves, I needed a place to display these (the cook books not the creamer and sugar bowl):

You know how people talk about what they would take from their house in the event of fire, well these are on my list. And not because they are cookbooks, while I like cooking, I don't like it enough to get all jazzed up over a cookbook. I love them because of this:

And this:

See the 2nd line there? "The WGBH-TV Crew..." My dad was a part of that crew. The autographs above were to my parents, Pat is my mom, Mark, my dad. I didn't really know my dad, he died when I was 3, so having these cookbooks, this part of his career, means so much to me.

I'm so happy to have a place to display them know, they bring a smile to my face each time I see them.

Custom Kitchen Canisters

I've never understood kitchen canisters. You buy a product in a package, why not store it in the same package? Of course this stems from the fact that I have no open storage, well I actually have no counter space which means no open storage.

That is about to change.

As part of our mini-kitchen make over, we will be getting 20+ linear feet of open storage in the form of 2 7' long café shelves and a new 8' section of counter top. Yahooo!!!

So I've been keeping my eye out for fun open storage solutions when I came across these at Target:

I know, they don't scream "Fun open storage" just yet do they? But they will, I assembled some materials:

• Set of canisters, found at Target for $15.00 (which after researching I realized was a really good deal.)
• Black Vinyl
• My Cricut Expression
• Sure Cuts A Lot Sofware
• Contact Paper
• Various Cricut tools

First I explore the free fonts available at DaFont.com, found something I liked and created initials for each of the 7 canisters plus full names for the tops of each.

Next I cut what I created from my computer, with my cricut via Sure Cuts A Lot... (for those of you have been avoiding a cricut because of the expensive carts, this is the way around it, you can cut anything you want with SCAL)

After the designs had been kiss-cut on the cricut I weeded out the sections of vinyl that surrounded the letter.

I applied contact paper over the design and burnished with the burnishing tool so that the vinyl would stick to my contact paper, not to it's paper backing.

Next, peal up the contact paper and make sure the vinyl design has come with it.

Finally, apply the vinyl design to the canister, burnishing over the letter to make sure the vinyl sticks to the canister so that you can remove the contact paper:

Using the same method above, apply the full name to the top of the canister.

Repeat until you have the entire set:

A few close ups:

I can't wait 'till the kitchen is done so these can be where they belong... on our Café Shelves!!!

Tea Towel Aprons

This turned into another dollar store project... so I've got another project for  Linday's upcoming $5 Challenge. 

I got this idea from Jane at Finding Fabulous and her's turned out much cuter than mine so I'd advise you to see her adorable tutorial and great pictures....


Our methods were a bit different so rather than just show you the finished product, I'll show you how I got from point A to point B in case it appeals to anyone to do it this way.

Here is what we started with:

 

• Tea Towel, purchased at dollar store for $1...
• Coordinating Ribbon
• Thread
• Sewing machine
• scissors
• 2 little girls who need aprons. 

Step 1 - cut the tea towel in half:

 

Step 2 - Fold down the cut edge and pin to the wrong side:

Step 3 - Sew:

 

(My very excited little girl, her first sewing project... we started on her little machine but finished with mine. She's been waiting 3 year for this, 6 if you ask her, but I doubt she really has wanted to do this since birth. Then again, she is my little girl, maybe she has.)

Step 4 - Cut length of ribbon that is 1 and a half times around the waist of the apron wearer. Center, then pin onto the right side of the apron and sew:

Tie around adorable little girls and put them to work:

 

We had the ribbon on hand,  and one towel made 2 kids aprons meaning the total cost was $.50 per apron!!!

I did make a few for myself, but figured you didn't need to see those modeled... Not with Jane doing such a cute job on her blog. These were not cut in half as the kids were, so 1 towel = 1 apron... not bad for a buck.

(And my little confession for those who've made it this far... I wash my hands a MILLION times while cooking dinner and having the towel apron around my waist has saved me an EMBARRASSING amount of paper towels.)

He won't eat cake...

There are times when if I hadn't been so aware of things when my son was born, I wouldn't believe he was my child.

He won't eat cake.

How can a child of mine not eat cake. My daughter at least eats frosting... but son, won't touch frosting if it is attached to cake. A cookie, well that is another story.

So last year, for his 2nd birthday - I decided that even though it broke with every childhood tradition. We would skip the cake and go for something that he would like, a tower of cookies.

Not sure what we'll do this year... I've got a couple of weeks to figure it out.