Easy 3 Ingredient Homemade Lip Balm
By kristinabjornbak | Category: Healthy Living, It Worked 4 Me, Recipes & Kitchen Tips | Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2012
I want to thank Kristina for this great guest post on how to make your own homemade lip balm! ~Heather
After having some trouble finding an all natural lip balm that I liked, I started looking around at lip balm recipes. I was floored by the amount of ingredients in some of them. Five ingredients? Ten??? The cost just to set up was staggering. Not only that, many of the ingredients I would use only for the lip balm, making the cost seem even more dizzyingly high. I just wanted something easy, something simple, something natural. That’s why I was delighted when I stumbled upon Green Bee‘s recipe for homemade lip balm. Super quick, super easy, and only three natural ingredients!
Of course, like most recipes I find, I modify them just a bit as I see fit. Below you find my slightly modified recipe for a nice mildly minty lip balm.
Ingredients:
- 2 teaspoons grated beeswax
- 2 and 3/4 teaspoons sweet almond oil (not bitter almond oil!)
- 5 drops peppermint essential oil
Materials needed:
- 2-3 lip balm tubes
- small pot
- Pyrex or heat resistant 1 cup measuring cup
Do Together Craft: Easy Wreath Ornaments
By kristinabjornbak | Category: Activities with Kids, Home Crafts, Kids Crafts | Posted Monday, November 28, 2011
Christmas is rapidly approaching. Usually, this is the time of year that I bust out the paper crafts with my kids, but this year I thought we could make some ornaments. Enter these adorable, easy, and super cheap wreaths. This is truly a do-together craft, as some steps the kids can do, and some steps the adults or older kids have to do, such as the hot glueing. Even better, these little wreaths are fully customizable. If you have four kids doing this craft, you will have four completely different wreaths. Even better, if you are a sewer or crafter, I can nearly guarantee you have the materials needed around your house. Can you say, “Scrap busting time!” If you aren’t a crafter don’t worry! The materials for this craft are very inexpensive.
Clean and Sparkly Green Window Cleaner
By kristinabjornbak | Category: Healthy Living, It Worked 4 Me, Moneywi$e, Recipes & Kitchen Tips | Posted Monday, November 21, 2011
Getting ready for company coming over this week for Thanksgiving?
I’ll admit that cleaning the windows, mirros, and glass doors of our house is something that frequently goes by the wayside. When I do remember, I generally use a store bought window cleaner like most other people, but I find I need to wear gloves to use it. The smell just stays on my hands. But what else besides the scent is staying on my hands? Whatever it is, I figure that it can’t be healthy.
Eventually, I ran out of my usual window cleaner and decided to look around for some of the green recipes that I knew were out there somewhere. In my search, I came across Crunchy Betty, a site that I have never heard of before. However, in the archives I found something wonderful: Battle of the Homemade Glass Cleaners! Ms. Crunchy Betty was kind enough to test drive several glass cleaning recipes and report back the results of her tests and therefore the best glass cleaning recipe. The winning recipe contained alcohol, water, vinegar, and cornstarch. Yes, cornstarch! She wasn’t wrong when she assumed that readers would find it an odd addition. I certainly did. But, with a whole morning and a lot of dirty glass before me, I decided to give her “Alvin Corn Homemade Glass Cleaner” a try.
When I first sprayed it and wiped it (best done with a lint free cloth), it seemed like it was going to leave a cloudy film. Nope! After wiping until almost dry, the glass cleared right up and wowee wow wow! This recipe worked even better than the store bought stuff! I quickly went through the house, cleaning mirrors, doors, and windows. Everything was sparkly, even where the dog plants her nose prints and the dreaded mirrored closet doors in the kids’ room.
As a final note, I want to say that I was really worried that the cornstarch would scratch the glass. I didn’t notice any scratches that I’m pretty sure weren’t already there, but if you are worried, test on a small area first before you go all out. Also, I know some people don’t like using rubbing alcohol. If that’s the case, check out Heather’s glass recipe instead.
Happy cleaning!
Behavior Charts
By kristinabjornbak | Category: It Worked 4 Me | Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Getting kids to do what you want them to do.
This is a challenge at some point for all parents. If you ask 20 parents how to best address this and I bet you will get 20 different answers (goal charts, time outs, spankings, etc). There are a lot of factors to consider including the child’s age, personality as well as if they are simply being forgetful, distractible or downright defiant. Mom 4 Life Kristina shares what is working for her below and we would love for you to leave a comment and let us know what works for you!
Hair Accessory Holder Tutorial
By kristinabjornbak | Category: Home Crafts, It Worked 4 Me | Posted Monday, July 18, 2011
My hair ties, clips, and headbands are always getting lost. I find them in drawers, under the bed, closet floor, behind furniture. After several attempts to keep them organized, I decided to make a hair accessory holder. You can, too! It’s quick, easy, pretty, and a great way to use up scraps of fabric, ribbon, and ric rac.
Materials needed:
- cardboard
- ribbon or ric rac/rickrack
- fabric scraps
- glue gun and hot glue sticks
- scrap batting (optional, but a nice touch)
Step one: Prep your cardboard. You can really use whatever you have around the house as long as you trim it to the size you want. I used an empty cereal box, but because I wanted it a little more stiff, I glued the two sides together using just plain white school glue. Place your cardboard on top of the batting (if you are using any). I used a very small amount of glue to just hold the cardboard in place. Also, since the batting I was using is very thin and I want my holder to be kind of puffy, I doubled the batting over to use two layers. Trim, but leave a decent amount extra. This will eventually get folded to the back.
Step two: place your fabric face down on your work surface. Place your cardboard+batting on top. You should now have a sandwich of fabric (face down), then the batting, then the cardboard. Trim the fabric, but like before, leave extra on each side.
Step three: Fold the extra batting and fabric to the back of the cardboard and hot glue into place. Don’t try to do this with white glue. Trust me, it doesn’t work.
Step fou: Arrange ribbons or ric rac on top to get a feel of where you want them. Leave extra on each end. Fold the ends to the back, hot glue the ends only into place. Add an extra bit of ribbon at the top for hanging.
Ta-da! Now, hopefully, your hair accessories won’t get quite so lost.
Not feeling crafty? You might like the cute handcrafted felt hair clip holders by Giddy Giddy that Mom 4 Life carries.
Kristina is a stay-at-home mom of two boys. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English and spends her down time sewing, baking, doing crafts with her children, and experimenting with recipes with her husband.
