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| We made peppermint candy cane sugar scrub using this Pinterest idea! It's FABULOUS! I use it every day. |
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| We also did Brown Sugar Scrub from this Pinterest idea, and it was super easy and works fantastically! |
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| We made Strawberries 'n Cream Drink mix from this Pinterest idea! I used bigger jars and did more layering with mine than what was pictured, though. In hindsight, I'd use smaller jars. |
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| Homemade Vanilla! We just used whole vanilla beans, split down the center, and vodka! We let it cure for at least 3 months, and it probably could have cured even longer! I wish I could have done more of these, but I didn't think ahead to get more apothecary jars. Next year, I'll get a ton of jars and such from Ikea! |
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| Here's the vanilla with the free printable labels I found! |
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| Last, we did hot cocoa drink mix the same way we did the Strawberries 'n Cream drink mix, but we used hot chocolate mix instead of Strawberry drink mix. |
We got to bed very, very late on Christmas Eve. I was up baking my famous banana bread at the request of my mom for our breakfast at her house this morning, and we still had a few (small) gifts to wrap. I was feeling exhausted on Christmas Day. Robert woke me up at 8:15 (sounds late, usually!), and it was hard to pull myself out of bed. He went to bed even later than me, but we had a Skype Date with Uncle Eno & Auntie J, as they are away from home right now. (They were the first to know that we are having a little girl!)
After the Skype call, I got to see what Santa brought! In my stocking I got the movie Soul Surfer - which I started asking for when we were on one of our Hawaii trips in the last couple of years, and again when we were in Las Vegas in January - and some Lindor truffles! As usual, Santa left an apple and an orange, too. :) My "big" Santa gift was a new ironing board! I was so excited when I saw it!! It's sturdy, and very padded, and I'm super excited to get to use it! (I'm probably the only wife in the United States who would enjoy a gift such as an ironing board or new vacuum, lol!) Robert got some baseball cards, new ear buds, and some peanut butter Lindor truffles in his stocking. The little gift I got him was already (accidentally) revealed to him a few months back.
Leave it to me to run a home-based business on Etsy with my husband, completely forget when it's his day to fill orders, and he sees something I ordered for him for Christmas on there. Sigh. Thankfully, he was sweet and told me he'd "forgotten" about it, and was thrilled to open it!
It's hand-crafted s'mores soap! I really wanted to get some for Bryce, too, but there was only one available, and Robert says he will share, lol.
My gift from Robert is way cooler than what I got him - for creativity, if no other reason. He went and retrieved a card from somewhere in the house (I forgot to buy him a card - pregnancy brain), and I opened it up and read it (it's super cute!), and found a bunch of cash in there. Like, a lot of cash. Cash that I don't usually ever see, because I just do the financial management on the "back end" of things here at the house. I was confused by it, because I had no idea where the money came from or why he would give it to me. So he pulled out 5 more envelopes. I was instructed to choose one to open, so I did. It was this:
He said I could choose to buy a Kindle Fire HD, or (open the next envelope)....
...a new, really nice DVD case (ours are small and not going to hold much more) or (open the third envelope)....
...a new sewing machine! By no coincidence the same one that my BFF Jenny has! He even reached out to her and asked her what one she has, knowing that I love it! I had two more options (open the fourth envelope)....
....a new iPod! Mine is pretty much dying, and as of this month, is considered a "classic" or "antiquated" model through the Apple Store. It wouldn't be a necessity, except that for my job, I do a lot of document comparison and tedious web content editing sometimes, and I always have that iPod going to keep my ADD in check while I work. The last option was (open the 5th envelope)....
....a page full of a bunch of little stuff that I could purchase all at once and combine what I wanted. Some of these things included: a new sewing kit, a smaller and less expensive DVD rack, a label maker, a laminator, a thread holder for my sewing kit, and a choice of two shoe racks for this Pinterest idea. (scroll down a little to see it).
He told me it was difficult to "siphon" out some of his tip money throughout the last month to make my special Christmas gift possible, lol. (Gee, that couldn't possibly be because I re-did our budget and spreadsheets in November, and monitor them daily, could it?) We are 100% open about all things in our home, and money is no exception. Anyway, he explained that he wanted me to have something really nice, especially with the baby on the way. So sweet! I only requested to wait to purchase what I wanted until after Christmas was over so that I didn't accidentally buy something twice.
Since my parents got me pretty much everything on the "small gifts" page, I did choose to order the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, and I even had enough money to get the 32GB instead of the 16GB, with the money my dad gave me. (He totally specified it's not for savings or bills or baby; it's for me, lol. I think he knows me pretty well.)
All in all, I think we got spoiled rotten, and Ellie Jo even got a ton of gifts, too! We feel so blessed :)
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