Mint Chocolate Lip Scrub DIY

This year I purchased the Lush Mint Juleps Lip Scrub and fell in love. It is wonderful. I love the scent, the taste and what it does to my lips when I use it. The problem is the price tag especially in Korea where there is an even bigger mark up than in the States or the UK. But I loved it and it took a while for me to use up.

I had heard that it was possible to make your own lip scrub. I knew it was something I wanted to try to attempt at some point but I had the Mint Juleps so I put it off. Eventually I used up the lip scrub and while I did repurchase the Mint Juleps (seriously, it's heavenly) I saved the old jar for when I decided to try my hand at making my own.

I did a little bit of research on different recipes and while each recipe was different I wanted to use products that I already had at home. Lush uses castor sugar for their scrubs and while this is perfectly fine I didn't want to buy a whole thing of castor sugar just for my lip scrub. So I used regular white sugar that most everyone has at home anyway.



Ingredients:

1 tablespoon  white sugar
1/2 teaspoon cacao powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon jojoba oil
1-2 drops peppermint essential oil

That's it. Mix ingredients and store in a container of your choice. I used my old glass Mint Juleps container.

Exfoliate and enjoy!

Birthday Baking

So a couple weeks ago was my birthday. I LOVE my birthday. It's the time of year that I feel like I can do almost anything I want and it be ok. :) Since I am getting a little older I don't really have birthday parties (sad I know) and no party means no cake, right? I don't think so. That means I have to make my own cake. However, this year I decided to give making 'cake pops' a try. Here's how it went:

First, the ingredients are super simple. Cake mix, icing, almond bark chocolate. (The great thing about these cake pops is that you can use any mixture that you want. I started out simple. White cake mix, vanilla icing, and white chocolate. But I think it would be awesome to make a strawberry cake pop or carrot cake pops or even german chocolate cake pops. YUM!)

Next I decided that I wanted to make the cake bright colors so I divided the batter and dyed the batter blue and yellow. :)

After baking the colors stayed pretty good! I didn't take a picture but I crumbled the cake with my hands and mixed in the icing. Then I rolled the batter into balls, dipped a stick in white chocolate and stuck it in the cake ball.

I cooled the pops in the refridgerator/freezer.

 Now it's time to be dipped in white chocolate!

After I dipped them in white chocolate, I sprinkled colorful sprinkles all over them and then stuck the stick end in styrofoam to dry. Aren't they pretty?

Then I put them in individual bags and tied curling ribbon around the bottom to keep them fresh.

Yummy and Pretty!

As for my birthday celebration, Zack and I took a weekend trip to Atlanta. Both of my favorite MLB teams (Braves and Phillies) were playing each other on my birthday (which happened to fall on a saturday this year) so we went to the game. Then to our surprise it was civil rights weekend in ATL so Ludacris performed a free (included) concert after the game. So cool! It was such a fantastic weekend. Zack and I got some good quality time in and we just had a relaxing weekend in the ATL. :)

The Start of My Jar Collection

So I want to start reusing my jars for different things around the house. And I have to perfect jar for the start of this project!

First I bought a jar candle about 6 weeks ago and have been burning it for about that long. It finally started to dwindle and I decided that I really wanted to reuse the jar (it has an awesome lid). So I lit the rest of the wick this afternoon to melt the rest of the wax.

 I dumped the wax and washed the jar.

And NOW I keep it on top of my microwave and use it to keep my granola/Larabars handy. :)

How cute is that?!? I LOVE IT. :)

Hopefully there are more fun jars to come.