I’ve started and stopped on this sweater for the last month, but got the majority of the knitting done on it in the last week or so. (Can we say every season of the West Wing on DVD?) I started knitting it on size 9 needles and ended up on 11’s for the body and 10.5’s for the ribbing. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I just wish that Rowan wouldn’t have discontinued the yarn.

Stats:
Yarn: Rowan Soft Tweed
Pattern: My own, although it’s based on one by Stefanie Japel

I’ve been trying to do a better job of washing my face every night. (Flossing my teeth too!) But my problem always is that I can’t get my eye makeup off. See? It takes a lot of mascara to get those babies looking even this long.

I used to use a makeup remover made by Beauti Control, but I never wanted to track down a rep to reorder it. I’ve saved my bottle from the last time I had ordered, so I decided to utilize that great container and make my own. I can’t for the life of me find where I got this recipe, but it’s wonderful! I’ve customized it to my preference for baby shampoo and oil:

2 Tbs Burts Bees Baby Wash
1/4tsp sweet almond oil
1 cup distilled water

Mix together and store in an airtight container. Saturate a cotton pad, let rest on your eye for a few seconds and the makeup swishes right off.

Environmentally friendly and cheap too!

Tonight I whipped up a batch of bath bombs. I’ve wanted to make bath bombs for a long time but have always been intimidated by the process. Turns out they’re the simplest thing in the world to make. For mine I used a muffin tin to for the molds, but I’m thinking about all kinds of ideas for different shapes. I’m especially excited about finding a butterfly mini cake mold.

The recipe was simple and I had everything on hand. The citric acid was leftover from my dishwasher detergent attempts. I had picked it up at our local beer/wine brewing shop (right across the street from Tangle!). I had a bottle of sweet almond oil in the fridge from my lip balm making days. The rest was in my pantry. The only change I made to the recipe was to cut way back on the essential oils – I figured 2+ tsp’s of peppermint oil would be a little much – adding more sweet almond oil to make up the difference.

I took pictures, but rather than waiting to load them onto my computer, I think I’ll test out the bombs in the bath!

edit: mediocre pictures!

::recipe::

I’m a big fan of method cleaning products so I recently bought some of the daily shower spray. The smell, however, smells sort of like feminine hygiene products… not something I’d love my bathroom to smell like. So I emptied the contents of the spray bottle into a jar to be foisted off onto some unsuspecting friend and whipped up my own batch using peppermint scented Dr. Bronners. The smell is MUCH better, we’ll see how well it cleans!

::Recipe:: ::Dr. Bronners::

Menu – week of january 5 2009

Originally uploaded by pretendingsanity

monday – asian beef lettuce wraps
tuesday – pasta with tuna and lemon
wednesday – date night
thursday – italian wedding soup
friday – spaghetti and meat balls
saturday – fish tacos or burgers with green chile
sunday – sauteed chicken with tomatoes and spinach

The final result

Originally uploaded by pretendingsanity

Happy new year!

melted snowman cupcake attempt one

Originally uploaded by pretendingsanity

Monday
Spaghetti with tuna and lemon

Tuesday
Date Night

Wednesday
New Years Eve

Thursday
Sledding! so maybe leftovers for dinner or we’ll just grab something somewhere, maybe takeout on the way down the mountain.

Friday
Chicken with tomatoes and spinach

Saturday
Tortilla Soup

Sunday
Italian Wedding Soup

(We really like soup around these here parts.)

Eden watching parent trap

Originally uploaded by pretendingsanity

Mom, this movie is realistic fiction.

I’m making candy tonight with some of my friends. I’ve been scouring Martha’s website for recipes. Here are a few intriguing ones:

peppermint meringues with chocolate filling.

chocolate covered peppermint sticks – I’ve made these before and they are SO fun!