Attempting Soap Making

2020, great time to learn how to make soap, right?

Inspired by this tutorial, the ingredients I used are below and then I just followed the directions on the tutorial.

Orange Cinnamon Clove Bars

Ingredients:
-1lb. hemp melt-and-pour soap base
-couple of orange peels
-1 tbsp smashed cloves
-10 drops of cinnamon essential oil
-4 drops of clove essential oil

It seems to work great and bonus that you end up smelling like fall.

New outdoor decorates

We have upped our game with the Halloween decorates this year.

I found some flamingos on Buy Nothing, skeleton spiders & skulls from the Dollar Tree and picked up spray paint from Target. Plus bought pumpkins anytime we were at Trader Joes.

Flamingo tutorials & inspiration can be found here and here.

Extra in love with our spooky and cozy house this year.

Halloween Countdown

I finished our Halloween Countdown Calendar (better late than never)! It’s a panel from Ruby Star Society by Sarah Watts.

Some of the things I stuffed ours with…

Candy (obviously)

Stickers by Pipsticks

Temporary tattoos (Dollar section at Target)

Mini bubbles

Calico Critters (I found this set last year)

And then I wrote out a few activities on fake leaves from the Dollar Store (pumpkin patch, rainbow leaf walk, carve pumpkins, spooky movie night, etc.)

Flannery is seriously so excited and I love a new tradition plus it makes me very happy to see hanging in the living room.

Harry Potter and the Half-Burnt Pears

After not being able to go all summer, Isaac and I decided to pack up the car and head to the drive-in for our fall activity of the weekend. We saw the first Harry Potter movie, complete with Hippeas and chocolate-covered banana chips. You know, typical movie snacks.

We woke up on Sunday and drove down to our new favorite trail to find some leaves for our craft. It turned out to be much more difficult than we expected as the leaves have barely started to fall here. Plus, I accidentally touched a slug. But it wasn’t a complete disaster, we eventually found what we were looking for and saw some really nice dogs.

For dinner, we made this recipe for Vegan Pumpkin Ricotta Stuffed Shells (god bless cashew-free alfredo sauce) and balsamic brussels sprouts. For dessert, we made a variation of these Baked Pears. Due to the fact that I may or may not have a tree nut allergy that is getting increasingly worse, I made a crumb topping for mine using flour, vegan butter, oats, cinnamon, and coconut sugar instead of the walnuts. It was all fun and games until we started thinking we could get fancy and put them on broil to get crispy and ended up burning most of the walnuts. Still delicious.

For our craft, we tried making some clay, leaf print bowls which are currently drying. We’ll see how they turn out in the next few days.

All the Trees

A long walk for cinnamon waffles, collecting acorns, leaves and tiny pinecones was how we kicked off our first Fall Craft Sunday of the season.

Our craft was a process art painting on canvas, to create our own birch trees. I did a combo of these tutorials I found on Pinterest. For the paint, I did 2 tablespoons of baking soda, 2 tablespoons of liquid watercolor paint and 3/4 cup of water.

It ended with Goldie drinking vinegar, dumping watercolors on herself and screaming while Flannery continued to make little paint explosions on the canvas. Like a said process painting.

We watched Mulan (not a fall movie) and Caleb made delicious chili and cornbread.

My big idea for the week was to make fall ice cream cookie sandwiches. The cookie recipe were for these snickerdoodles by Sweet Laurel. We used brown sugar instead of date sugar on the outside. While we were making them Flannery had the idea to turn them into pumpkin shapes, this dough is super sticky but with a little extra almond flour we were able to roll it out between two pieces of parchment paper. The ice cream was from our favorite local shop, Frankie & Jo’s. They have this incredible seasonal flavor called, All the Trees and I knew they would be perfect together. I highly recommend both, separate or together.

(I am not a food blogger however this is the only vanilla extract you will ever need!)