Spa Birthday Party Invitations & Free Download

It's that time a year... birthday season in the Davis house. The kids have birthday's only three weeks apart, with the 4th of July right in between, add all of that to summer break, and you get one big challenge. Usually, because of this, we do one big family party for both of the kids, but they're getting older and want to have their own parties with friends. After going back and forth on all of the available options, Danika decided on having a spa party with a few of her friends.

DIY All-Natural Oatmeal and Honey Scrub Great for Face, Body, Hands, & Lips with Free Printable Labels

Here in the high desert, Winter can be very harsh on the skin. As the winter months roll on, your skin starts to really show the damage and regular lotions alone just don't cut it. As counter intuitive as it may seem, exfoliating is a huge part of keeping skin fresh and hydrated. It sloughs of dry, dead skin cells, and allows for new, renewed cells to form. Although there are tons of commercial products on the market, we prefer our DIY all-natural oatmeal and honey scrub to aid in dealing with dry skin.

Easily made from items most people will find in their cupboards, our oatmeal and honey scrub is great for the face, body, hands and lips, and is even edible! As a fan of lipstick, I noticed that as the winter progressed, my lipstick started to look cracked and uneven. My lips had dried out too and began forming a layer of dry, dead skin on the top. Simply using a small amount of this all-natural oatmeal and honey scrub on my lips worked wonders at creating a fresh pallet to put lipstick on.

Using Plastic Chocolate Candy Molds For Hard Candy, A Precautionary Tale

I am not an amateur in the kitchen, not even an amateur at working with candy molds. I am however, quite the amateur hard candy maker! Melting and pouring chocolates into molds is more my candy making style. Which would explain why I had way more chocolate molds than I had silicone candy molds. It didn't even occur to me that what I was about to do would result in melted plastic and inedible "candy", or in our case, homemade herbal cough drops.

When I set out to make the homemade herbal cough drop recipe, I rummaged through my bins of candy making supplies, and keeping the desired size in mind, grabbed a plastic mold that fit the bill. Although it was Christmas themed, I thought the size would work well. I must have thought at least four times before I began pouring the syrup that I should use the silicone molds instead, but I wasn't a huge fan of how deep they were.

Homemade Herbal Cough Drops For The Cold Or Flu, Long-Term Food Storage Friendly

A few weeks ago the kids came down with a cold that plagued them with sore throats and a nasty cough. After running out of our store-bought cough drops, and not wanting to take two sick kids to the grocery store, I decided to make some at home. The homemade herbal cough drops for the cold or flu are easy to make, and more likely than not, you already have the ingredients you need.

We started with my cold and flu busting homemade herbal tea and even made a homemade herbal cough syrup .  You can us the herbal tea recipe I used, or just some herbal tea you have around the house. I have read that simply honey is better than any other cough medicine for alleviating a sore throat or cough, so using another liquid should be fine too as long as honey is the base ingredient.