KOOL-AID LIP GLOSS

Yes that's right.....kool-aid lip gloss.

What you'll need:

1 tub petroleum jelly (vaseline)
1 pkg of kool-aid drink crystals - whatever flavour you want, or you can make a few
lip gloss containers
labels printed out on sticker paper
scissors or 1 inch paper punch
Directions:
1. put about 1 cup vaseline in a microwave safe bowl
2. heat the vaseline in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring between each heating. It took me about 7-8 minutes to melt each batch of vaseline. It will be liquid when it is fully melted. It will be very hot! Make sure you wear gloves or oven mitts and make sure children are being supervised.
3. take out of microwave and stir in kool-aid drink crystals until desired colour is reached - I used the whole package for each batch. Stir until the crystals are completely dissolved.
4. if starting to solidify you can heat again for another 30 seconds - skip this step if it is still liquidy
5. pour into your lip gloss containers and leave to solidify - a couple hours
6. repeat this whole process if making more flavours
7. print out labels on sticker paper
8. using either a 1 inch punch, or scissors, cut out the circle labels and attach to your lip gloss container
9. give to all your favourite people, but remember to save a few for yourself too!

SOURCE: Meet the Dubiens

CINNAMON ROLL FRENCH TOAST

Canned cinnamon rolls
Eggs
Milk

smash the rolls till they were nice and flat

then we put the pan into the oven to cook them until they were just done – probably about ten minuets or so. Then they broke and beat the eggs (their favorite part) and after getting the flattened rolls out of the oven they soaked them in the egg and dropped them onto the frying pan.

SOURCE: Quirky Momma

You can serve with butter and syrup or with the icing that comes with the canned cinnamon rolls. Great recipe for kids helping in the kitchen.

WINE BOX VEGGIE GARDEN

Now you got something to do with all those boxes left over after "pounding grape." :)

See more details on how to and more photos at LLH Designs.

HOME-SPIRATION

STYLE-SPIRATION

YOGA TIME

Five Ways Yoga Helps Creativity:

1. Yoga teaches you to test your boundaries, be brave, get know yourself and express it, just like art.

2. Yoga teaches joyful discipline, and art-making/writing needs that to see the light of day.

3. Yoga is a practice of being present, and whether writing or making art or making your day artful, its helpful to be in what you’re doing fully and completely and then let go of it when you’re not (aka how to avoid burnout).

4. Yoga gets you out of your head and into your body/breath/spirit so when you get back into your head its different in there. We are way more than our minds, and we need to be experientially reminded of that. The breath is a bridge to other places.

5. Yoga reminds us to plant seeds and let go of the results. Making art is similar. You do the best you can, but have to let go a lot, too.

MEDITATION

LOVE HER

“I love seeing Lady Gaga’s boobs and bum. I love seeing Katy Perry’s boobs and bum. Love it. But that’s not what my music is about. I don’t make music for eyes, I make music for ears.”
~ Adele, Rolling Stone Magazine

FORGIVE?

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.


Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, “What next?”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep again the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring. He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.”

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

SOURCE: FuckYeahYoga

YOGA TIME

Basic Yoga: Rabbit Pose

Stress can age you prematurely and deprive your skin of its natural healthy glow. The rabbit pose releases the tension in your back and shoulders all the way up to your neck and head.
Directions:
Kneel down. Lower yourself slowly so that you are sitting on your lower legs and feet.
Keeping your arms to the sides, lower your torso down to your thighs, and your head down towards the floor.
Press your forehead lightly to your knees.
Extend your arms backward and try to hold on to the base of your feet.
Inhale deeply.
Exhale as you gradually lift your hips.
Keep your forehead as close as possible to your knees and the top of your head near the floor or mat.
Contract your abdominal muscles and hold the pose for 5 seconds.
Relax and repeat.
Note: Cushion your head and knees with a folded towel

SOURCE: Rabbit Reporter

LIVE YOUR TRUTH

Live Your Truth.

There is one message I find myself repeating on a daily basis to those who desire to walk this earth brazenly & audaciously: Live your truth.This is the best advice I can ever give. In spite of how simple it is, it continues to hold the most weight, even within my own lifestyle.
What does it mean to live your truth?

It means being brutally honest. It means doing what you want & saying how you feel. It means becoming open & vulnerable. It means making peace with the part of you that desires to live unapologetically. It means seeing your most heartfelt dreams as possibilities, rather than outlandish fantasies.
Living your truth embodies the art of marching to the beat of your own drum. It’s expressing yourself colorfully & uninhibitedly in everything you do, big or small.
You have experienced this boldness before, perhaps for only a few seconds. There is a deep-seated part of you that is desperate to come out & act naturally.

So do it. Act naturally.

If you want to quit your day job & become a trapeze artist, do it because it is your truth.

If you want to be a storyteller who opens the eyes of others through your poignant words, do it & spread your truth.

If you want to tell your friend how he truly makes you feel, tell him because it is your truth.

If you want to fully manifest your sexual orientation, do it because it is your truth.

If the relationship you are in is stifling the way you communicate your love in this world, leave it because you deserve to live your truth.


SOURCE: Sex, Love, & Liberation
PHOTO SOURCE: Brooklyn Hawii

ROPE SWIRL TAPESTRY

These look simple and fun to make on a rainy day stuck inside.  Thinking of making 3 or so and hanging them on the wall together.  Cute......

Get more pics and full tutorial on how to make at FREE PEOPLE BLOG

GETTING PERSONAL

This has become a challenge for me at making my blog more personal.  There are just some things I have a hard time getting out.  I guess I was kind of raised and self taught that airing your dirty laundry is just......trashy.  Even though this is my blog and my journey and probably only a hand full of people read it.....I've still had trouble breaking through that barrier of sharing more personal stuff.  I share a lot of what is interesting me at the moment whether it be fashion, home stuff, gardens, photos.  But getting "down and dirty" is my barrier.  I have always looked at sharing to much as a weakness.  I may get angry and do a generic rant, but no one knows what I am talking about and how it relates to me personally.  Scaring of sharing......that's me.

I just still have so many dreams and goals and it seems kind of like I am cheating myself by not being totally brutally honest on here.  This is after all my journal....right?  I actually keep a private journal.  I have in the past post blurbs of my private journal.  And actually lately I haven't even been writing in my private journal.  I haven't been sharing that much on here either.
Lately I have felt a little lost.  I've kind of been floating through my everyday life.  I've been heart broken and hurt and healing and heart broken and hurt and healing.  I step a little into the healing and the cycle starts over.  So I've kind of been a wanderer as of lately.

I am functioning wanderer.  I can maintain my everyday obligations and life while feeling lost and wandering.  I'm not one of those who can't get out of bed or who can't keep their job, just because everything feel like it is falling apart around them.  A functioning wanderer......maybe I should change my blog name. :)

It really doesn't matter why or what is falling apart.  What matters and how I handle it and what I am doing to make my life better.

For one......stop talking about what I want to do and do it.  Just live my life.  I made the changes 9 months ago so I could live the life I wanted to live.  So I could feel free to be myself and do the things I wanted to and live the way I wanted to live. 

So what was that I wanted to change?

The way I felt about my self, the way I felt about what other people thought of me, doing more, feeling more, living more.

I wanted to go to church on Sundays. Yet on Sundays I loligag around and then feel guilty I didn't just get up and go.  So what am I doing now? I get up and go to church on Sunday.  No matter if I'm tired, get up late, the kids are being bad or don't really feel like it. I just get up and go.  I know there will never be any regrets that I got up and went to church.  But I sure feel guilty when I get up and don't. So.......GO!!!

I wanted to live material wise smaller and life bigger. I wanted to feel like my home represented me. So what did I do? I left a $270,000+ huge home in TX to live in MO in a small just enough space rental house probably worth $100,000 cute cozy kwirky decorated with my photography and art and thrift finds, enough bedrooms for my boys and me, a small yard with apple trees and flower garden area and nature and close to my parents and my sisters and old friends.

I wanted to be in love and be loved by someone that loved and respected me and the ways I felt I deserved. So what did I do? Well to to put it bluntly and not drag out the story I left the man I had been with for 10+ years. We didn't want the same things. We were so far from each other we weren't even friends anymore. I wasn't getting the respect or what I felt any respect that I deserved.  I didn't feel loved for who I was or even like I could just be me.  We had different beliefs, morals, behaviors, goals.  The only thing we had in common were 2 wonderful boys which made every bit of that 10+ years worth every second.  I will say I am not ready to take that next step into finding that person to be in love/to be love/respect, etc.  One step at a time baby.  One step at a time. :)

I wanted to be healthier. I always talked about wanted to work out but half the time was to drained from my situation to do it. I wasn't happy with my physical health or mental health. So what did I do? I started doing yoga at least 5 times a week trying to do it every morning to get me going. I started reading a daily devotional.  I started meditating almost daily.  I have had spurts of mediation in the past but never stick with it. In the winter I got my butt on the treadmill.  I started using those workout videos that I kept buying and never used.  I started using FitTV on demand channel.  I started praying more not just when things suck. As the weather gets warmer I plan on adding walks outside and swimming.  

I wanted to break out of my shell.  Over time and becoming a mother and working and trying to be responsible and being married to the life of the party.  Sometimes I will feel like a recluse.  Some self imposed and some imposed upon me. I will say I am a person who is very comfortable with being alone.  I enjoy alone time to reflex, meditate, read, just be.  But sometimes you just need to break out.  So what do I do? Say YES.  You know that movie The Yes Man? Kind of like that but not so extreme.  In the past when ask to do stuff I would say "I don't know" "maybe" we'll see" and a lot of the time blow it off either from self inflicted guilt or guilt inflicted upon me. Now even if I'm tired and have unimportatn things to do like....clean.  I don't blow other stuff off.  I'll say yes.  Not to the point of being irresponsible.  But for example my sisters just showed up at my house one random Tuesday and said "we're going to watch a tap dancer/jazz musician." In the past I would have been like "I got to get up for work" "nah maybe another time", etc, etc.  But I said......"yes." I have never regretted saying yes the way I regreted blowing people off or saying no.

I wanted to explore more into my photography.  This is one that is still plans in motion and not a lot of doing except taking more pictures and putting myself in postions to take more creative pictures. So what did I do/am I going to do? Take more pictures. Go to more places, new places, explore different place to take more pictures.  Look for creative places to take pictures. All of these will result in more pictures that could be framed and sold.  I have put into plan a craft booth to set up in September to sell my photography.  I have also started working on a plan to work on putting together a photography book with stories of seniors who have touched my life in my job. That is something I have talked about doing before I ever got into the senior care career. 

I wanted to pull out more of my creative side. What did I do?  This one is still more sporatic.  I wanted to blog more, read more, journal more, do more crafts, get back into a creative job, paint, draw, write, go to thrift stores.  This one I just let my mood guide me AND I don't feel guilty #1 if I leave a craft mess all over the place and don't get it cleaned up right away & #2 I don't feel self imposed guilty if I'm not doing something crafty constantly.  I just go with the flow. If I want to sew I sew.  If I want to read I read.  If I want to paint I paint. Get it. As far as the job market it took me 6 months to get back into my creative job after moving back to MO.  For those 6 months I was sitting at a desk pushing paper....snore, but I knew it would come around.....and with less creative at work there is more creative at home. Now it's a little more balanced out with creative at home and at work.  So if I don't have time to be creative at home it's ok cause I probably have at work. :)

These are just a basic few changes. There are other changes I am making on a daily basis.  You always keep growing I think. And sometimes I do take 2 steps back and 1 step forward, but I try not to let it get me down, cause the next day I may do 4 steps forward and 1 step back.

My boys have struggled some too and prospored some too.  They are ever growing also.  I think the biggest thing is letting them know they are loved.  None of these changes are their fault or their doing. And if they see their mother living her life and happy and loving them they will grow up to search for their own happiness...whatever it may be. 

I just feel like I am more myself and happier and feel like I can be myself and not apologise or feel embarrased about the pretty damn cool person I am. :)

My biggest thing was just getting off my butt and just doing all the things I said I wanted to do, I really wanted to do, I dreamt about doing..........................

And I know I still have more exploring of myself to do. And more changes. And more growing. And more life to live. The difference is I'm excited about doing it.

JOPLIN TORNADO

Devastated, heart broken, disbelief.......



Donate at Red Cross

“Our thoughts and sympathies are with those who lost loved ones or have suffered through these deadly storms,” said Charley Shimanski, senior vice president, Red Cross Disaster Services. “The Red Cross already has people on the ground to help in these communities, and we have more on the way today.”
The American Red Cross opened a shelter in hard-hit Joplin, Missouri, shortly after the tornado struck on Sunday. That shelter, located at Missouri Southern State University, had approximately 110 people on Sunday night and can hold up to 1,000 people. The Red Cross is working with local officials in Joplin to arrange transportation to help get people to shelters and if necessary, identify additional shelter locations.

ECHO PARK, CA - OBSESSION

I have long time been OBSESSED with L.A. The homes, the history, the people......I am in LOVE. I'm always trying to decide where I am going to live in the L.A. area once my kiddos are grown. HEY I AM A DREAMER. My newest obsession is ECHO PARK. I love LOVE love LOVE!!!!!!!!!!
Check out these and tell me you are not IN LOVE too...................

*heart*