Something a little different

I must admit, I have been feeling a lack of blogging inspiration lately. I'm not quite sure why. I mean, yes I'm crazy busy with school, but normally I still have the desire to blog. I was considering going on a break from blogging, but I have decided to do something different instead. I tend to blog about recent antique finds, vintage-y places or things I've seen, scans from my magazine and ephemera collection, and a few outfit posts. And that's about it. I have plenty of other interests and I have no idea why I don't share them on here. I've gotten it into my head they aren't "vintage" enough, but as an experiment over the next few weeks I might try posting about some different stuff.

After a rather brutal week in school (like really really bad....), I decided to spend the weekend catching up on things around the house. I cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, and then got busy making stuff in the kitchen. I love to cook and try new recipes. The first thing I tried to make was sugar-free vanilla macaroons. They seemed really great until I tried to pick one up and it crumbled into a million pieces. I know have a jar of toasted vanilla shredded coconut which, although not what I planned, is super delicious.

Next up was something for dinner. I saw this recipe for Tomato and Feta Tarts. Oh my goodness, were they good! I may make them for company in the future since they were very simple but rather impressive. And did I mention tasty?

Whoops! I forgot to take a picture before starting to eat it!

And then I made Ginger Beer from scratch. Not quite sure why I decided to make ginger beer, since I've never really been a big fan. However I've found that homemade almost always tastes better than store bought, and I am incredibly in love with my ginger beer! It was a lot less difficult that I imagined and produced a LOT of ginger beer. I would highly recommend this recipe.

Then to finish off a lovely evening in the kitchen, I made three non-food items. I am a huge fan of natural beauty products. In fact, I've tried to cut virtually all nasty chemicals out of my daily routine. I love experimenting with making creams and other beauty products. I decided to make myself a solid perfume, natural gel air-freshener, and what turned out to be a great lip balm.

The first thing I made was a solid perfume locket. This has been on my to-make list for a while so I'm glad I finally got a chance to. I loosely followed this method, and used cinnamon, clove, sweet orange, and vanilla oils to scent it. It smells amazing and makes my skin super soft wherever I apply it. I would use a higher concentration of essential oils if I made it again, but other than that it was a success.

Last time I was home I picked up some packets of gelatin that we have had sitting around for at least 15 years. As a vegetarian, gelatin is not something I would normally buy, but since it would have to be thrown out anyways I decided to make a gel air freshener. Once again I used cinnamon, clove, sweet orange, and vanilla oils. It worked well but not quite as well as last time I made one (using peppermint oil). I think I should have added more oil or used a stronger scent (such as lavender or peppermint).

The last thing I made was actually an attempt to make a hair pomade. A long, long time ago I posted a recipe for homemade hair pomade. I used it for a couple weeks and loved it, but it was a little too solid and I no longer tend to use it. I was trying to create a better recipe and ended up with an amazing lip balm instead. If you want to make your own it's basically:
1 part cocoa butter
2 parts beeswax
4 parts coconut oil
Step 1) Melt together (I used the microwave in short bursts)
Step 2) Stir and pour into your container
Step 3) Let cool and harden.
And that's it! If you don't like coconut you could add some other oils/flavorings, but I love coconut and find it tastes lovely. I may remelt it and pour into a proper container. I thought it was going to be a pomade so my choice of container wasn't the best!

Well that turned out to be a bit of a longer post than I expected. Please let me know what you think. I know this is my blog and I can write what I want, but I would like to post about stuff my readers actually find interesting. Now I'm off to spend an afternoon curled up watching old movies and knitting. I plan on making the most out of my one free weekend :D

That's All.