After Bath Oil

If you are sensitive to dyes and preservatives in body care products, you might consider using an after bath oil to moisturize your skin instead of a lotion. Lotion is an emulsion of water and oil. The mixing of oil and water creates an environment ripe for bacteria. It takes preservatives to prevent unfriendly guests from invading your moisturizer. Avoid the need for preservatives by avoiding the mixture. I must warn you that any oil in the bath will make you very slippery until it absorbs into your skin, so be careful. The idea here is to use light oils that quickly absorb into skin. I measure by weighing the oils into my container, but you could measure by volume. One ounce of oil has the volume of about two tablespoons.

2.5 oz Safflower Oil
2.5 oz Extra Virgin Olive Oil (if you can find it, extra-extra virgin would be even better)
1 oz Sunflower Oil
1 oz Jojoba Oil (You can substitute apricot kernel oil or sweet almond oil or just leave the jojoba out.)
.10 oz Vitamin E Oil (Open up a few capsules of vitamin e supplements)
10 drops of your favorite essential oil (optional)

I pour the ingredients into an 8 oz bottle, put the lid on, and shake well. Apply a thin layer to your skin after you towel off. It should absorb quickly. I put it in a spray bottle, but it doesn't spray out in a fine mist, it comes out in a stream. Enjoy!

Decluttering: A New Project for a New Year

I've decided to simplify our possessions. I'm tired of spending so much of my precious time managing stuff. I want to spend more time enjoying my family. Plus, we hope to move this year. I've decided to employ this awesome calender in my efforts. Here's what I have done with a few of the de-cluttered items:


Bean Bags made out of expired beans in the pantry and some fabric scraps. Check out some cool bean bag games here


Mocha mix made from coffee creamer, instant coffee, and hot cocoa mix hidden in the pantry. I used this recipe


Dosed our liquid hand soap with a tablespoon or two of expired vanilla to make some wonderful smelling bubbles. Hasn't stained our vanity top, but if you had a more porous surface, it might discolor.


Made play dough with old salt and Kool-aid from the pantry. Molded it into a volcano. Erupted the volcano with old baking soda and vinegar from the pantry. Even the baby loved this one. Find the play dough recipe here

I'm so excited to see what the next few weeks bring us in the wild world of decluttering.

The Bogner Missing Toe

Families have genetic markers: detached ear lobes, tall foreheads, pug noses... Almost everyone in the family, no matter how little they look alike or how distantly related, will show that characteristic. In my family we have a wide gap between our first toe and the other four toes. The gap is so large that it appears we have one toe missing. It seems to be pretty dominate too. Most of my cousins have it. My son has it. It's a genetic marker that's been passed on threw hundreds of generations. I've been thinking about it lately. My ancestors lived their lives hundreds of years ago. They wrote about their lives or others wrote for them. They interacted with friends and community members. Now time has erased their names from history. But this little piece of them remains, the Bogner missing toe. That's neat to think about. When time has moved me into antiquity and scrambled our language to the future generations, some little memories of me will still remain in the genetic traits that I leave behind to my children and my children's children, and their children...