Santa's bringing homemade sugar and salt scrubs this year!

This year, M and I have been totally stumped thinking of Christmas gifts for our families. Our parents already have everything they want, and our siblings pretty much do too. Because of that, we decided to do a lot of little things for our family members, and to try and go handmade as much as possible. Who doesn't love something handmade that they can use? I hope our families will love these homemade sugar and salt scrubs. 

First, I made a Pumpkin Pie Scrub, and found the recipe here. I added just a little more pumpkin pie spice than the recipe called for and it came out perfectly! 

Next, I used the recipes I found on that page to make a tangerine vanilla face scrub (which can be used pretty much anywhere, not just your face). To make that one, I added 1/2 cup of sugar and almond oil, 1 tsp. vitamin E oil, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, and 9 drops of tangerine essential oil. 

Then I found this recipe, and made both a lemon and thyme salt scrub and a lemon and lavender sugar scrub using it. 

Here is what I used... (sugar not pictured). We even grew the thyme ourselves during the summer! 

I love lemon zest!

I doubled the recipe... so here are my two teaspoons. Smells amazing already!

The final product! Pictured here: lemon thyme sea salt scrub, lemon lavender sugar scrub, brown sugar pumpkin pie scrub, and tangerine vanilla sugar scrub.

The only thing left to do is to cut out some pretty pieces of fabric to wrap around the top of the little jars and make cute little labels to tie on with festive ribbons. 

I used some of the pumpkin pie scrub in the shower yesterday, and it is AMAZING. I smelled like a cookie and it made my skin so soft! 

Are you doing handmade gifts this year? What are you making? I would love to hear about it. :) 

Loud 80s Shirtdress Refashion

I have had this loud 80s dress for a while now, just sitting, waiting for me to do something with it. Of course... I could not just wear this alone. It is terrible! Especially the shoulder pads... ugh. How I hate shoulder pads!

You see what I am talking about...

Here it is on my dress form: 

Please pardon the mess in the background. I took that picture several weeks ago when it was still snowy outside. So many shoes in the entryway! 

Anyway, I hate some stuff about this dress, but I thought it had a lot of potential, especially since this skirt length is actually in style right now! 

I began by grabbing my seam ripper, intending to remove the sleeves. I realized when I went to remove them that there were some weird little flaps that go over the shoulders (making them even MORE pronounced... as if shoulder pads were not enough!). I ripped those apart too, and took off the sleeves. 

Clyde "helped".

Those flaps left quite a bit of fabric once they were undone (since they were just folds), so I had to cut some of it off before sewing it so that I would not be left looking like I was wearing one of those 80s cut off sweatshirts. 

I then cut off the collar...

And began the difficult task of folding the fabric over to create a finished edge. That part is always my least favorite, as this fabric (along with many others) is slippery and can bunch easily. I pinned, sewed, and added a belt.

What do you think?

I hope you like it! I think this will be great with some sky high wedges too.

Spring Pink Refashion

I feel like I say this WAY too much lately, but it has been a while!

Life has become incredibly busy up here in the DC area, and I am adjusting nicely . I just cannot believe how fast time seems to go by here.

Anyway... recently I had to go back down South to help with some family stuff (which can be so complicated, and is another reason I have been neglecting my blog), and I was lucky enough to get to go to my favorite stuff-a-bag-for-$4 thrift store! I found a few gems, and I thought this outdated pink dress would be the perfect color for spring.

This has to be from the 80s, right?

Please excuse all of those shoes in the entryway! This dress had a lot of positives the fact that I could put a belt with it, the zipper up the back is nice and sturdy, and the color is great. The negatives: WHAT IS THAT WEIRD DRAPEY THING?? and it was just a little too long. It is also just a little bit big for me, but I figured that could be taken care of with a belt. :)

Oh, and of course it had shoulder pads.

I took them out, and used a seam-ripper to detach the weird drape. It was a little complicated to remove the drape because the fabric attached to it from the back formed a kind of pocket that the other side fit into. It was just a little tricky to sew back together without it looking awful.

The next thing I had to do was shorten this just a little bit. I wanted this to be a nice spring dress to wear to work, so I definitely did not want it to be as short as I usually wear my refashioned dresses. I usually get the hem a little crooked, and I did not want to waste time, so I folded the original hem over several times. This made it a little thicker (and probably not what I would do in hindsight), but at least since it is heavier it will weigh my dress down and it will be way less likely to blow up at gas stations. I can't tell you how often that happens to me. Very embarrassing!

I apologize for the terrible selfie, but here is how the dress turned out:

Hope you're enjoying spring! I know I am! :)