Friday, May 22, 2015

The Royal Treatment

My amazing husband surprised me with a spa basket when he came home after work.

I've felt sick all day, and last night I started to feel nauseous, too. :( So he decided to give me a restock of my bathroom spa supplies, and it was perfect! I had the facial, Epsom's salt, coconut milk, exfoliation, sugar scrub, everything. So tonight I thought it's been a while since I've blogged, and I decided to share my personal skin care regimen with everyone.

To start, I love anything coconut. I'll eat it, wear it, soak in it. It's amazing. I've done this since I was 13. I absolutely LOVE coconut milk especially. I use it in my baths every night.

I usually add around 1/4 cup of coconut milk to a luke warm (not hot!!!) bath, I add bubbles, Epsom's salt, bath beads, or anything like that if I want to.

I use a sponge, a buff puff and nail brush. I use these near the end of my bath, because first I like to soak and read a good book with a glass of wine, some relaxing tea, or even coffee or a martini etc. It doesn't really matter how long you soak. I soak for a good 20-30 minutes, then wash, exfoliate, shave and step out.

Before dressing, I moisturize. Not just my face, I moisturize my legs, my arms, my neck. Your skin needs moisture. So I am really big on moisturizing and exfoliating. It's amazing and my skin stays super soft and smooth all year round.

I am a big exfoliation buff. I exfoliate with a number of things, from Brazilian nut to caffeine and coconut. I like to use whatever I am in the mood for. But I always make sure to use one every weekend.

I do the facial masks as well, and I moisturize moisturize moisturize! I can't stress how important keeping skin clean and moisturizing is for me. It's something I never fail to do each day and night.

I also don't eat a ton of sugary foods, or salty things. I'm not a huge pasta fan and I love water and I drink plenty which also helps your skin stay beautiful.

I don't know if it's just genetics, but I've never had a pimple in my life. It's weird. I've never had acne or anything either, not even in high school. But my mom and my grandma were really big on skin care and so they taught me a lot about taking care of yourself.

I also shave every night. I can't stand the prickly feel of leg hair. I guess I'm weird that way, too, haha. But I've always found my legs rubbing on pant legs or the sheets to be really annoying and so I prefer smooth legs at all times. (It's just me).

After my bath, I rub vitamin E oil or coconut oil into my nails and cuticles. I apply hand cream and read more of my book and have more wine or tea and then go to bed all clean and moisturized.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Wow! So much is going on this year and I've had very little chance to get on here to update or do anything else besides cooking, kids, cleaning and wedding planning! While it's true, my husband and I are technically married, (we were privately married four years ago and none of our family or all of our close friends could make it due to us not making our marriage public back when it happened), so we decided to have an actual ceremony where we exchange our vows and celebrate with our close family and friends.

It feels like we have been waiting for this special day forever! And now it's almost here! We only have 5 months to go. I can't believe how fast this year is flying by!

Well, between wedding planning, I've been doing a lot of things with the kids indoors due to the weather taking a bad turn this past weekend, freezing cold temps and frost and cold rain. Yuck! I know we need it, it is Spring after all, but the cold temperatures I could do without. We also need sunshine. :-/

Our days have been centered mostly around arts and crafts, indoor games, reading and other things that usually fail to keep my otherwise repetitive childrens' minds occupied. They have about a 3 second rebound rate at this age, so I am trying to do everything possible so I do not go insane haha.

I love my kids so much and I absolutely love what I do, so I'm not complaining. I do, however, see the humor in everything and just laugh about it all. Like I do with just about everything in life ;).

This week, the kids learned about frogs. It's one of their favorite animals. For whatever reason they love reading about them and my son especially loves them. I don't know where it comes from, although I love frogs. :)

Yesterday, for Father's Day coming up, we made a frog card out of construction paper and a paper plate. My son painted the plate green on one side, then colored it pink on the other side. We folded it in half and glued a scrunched up (accordion style) piece of pink paper into the folded inside of the frog's mouth and wrote Happy Father's Day on it, so when you pull the tongue out you can read what it says.





We cut out legs and arms for the frog out of green construction paper, and glued that to the paper plate in the back. We took two cotton balls, glued them to the face, marked two nostrils with a black marker, and then glued googly eyes to the cotton balls. I can't wait to give it to Tim! I know he is going to love it. And this is the first year Lukas has been able to make anything for him, last year we did finger paints and other cool things. But this year we got way more creative! ;)



Today we made a chart out of construction paper and frog pictures from Lukas' used up preschool book. I ended up having to cut out the frog pictures because they were so small, but Lukas helped me with the rest and it turned out pretty awesome! We purposely shaped it like a lily pad. I wasn't really sure where we were going with it all at first, but everything came together the further we worked at it. This is the result:


Well, the kids are asleep and so now I plan to do more DIY wedding stuff, and then read a good book with a glass of wine and then get some rest! (Hopefully). My daughter still wakes up at night, so I can use all the sleep I can get at this point! Between her growing, teething and everything she has been a little stinker when it comes to a full night's sleep. :-/ Oh well. Such is parenthood! :)