Citrus salt scrub

Waaaaay back in December, my roommate and I made this wonderful face and body scrub for our housemates' Christmas presents. It's quite simple to make, smells delicious, and feels wonderful on your face.

(And apparently, I'm on a citrus kick for the blog!)

Since we were making this scrub as a present, we mixed it up in our bathroom to keep it a surprise. (We felt a little like we were cooking drugs, so I made this logo as a play on AMC's "Breaking Bad.")

We started out by zesting a lemon and an orange — except we didn't have a zester at the time, so we peeled the fruit and diced the peel into the smallest pieces we could manage.

Fear not: Cold medicine and hair gel are not part of this recipe.

We put the zest in a bowl, then added the coarsest salt we could find without going as coarse as rock salt.

Then we added light olive oil...

We used light olive oil for two reasons: 1. We couldn't find a lot of almond oil for a reasonable price and 2. normal olive oil is more likely to cling to your skin and cause acne. On this note, remember that light olive oil is different from extra virgin olive oil!

We mixed everything together (though it did separate quickly), and poured it into a jar for each of our housemates.

I made up a little label for them, we wrapped them, and gave them away. Afterwards we realized that it wasn't exactly tactful to give the people we live with soap... but this smells so darn good that none of our housemates minded!

Citrus salt scrub
Ingredients:
0.5 cup light olive oil, or almond oil
0.5 cup coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon orange zest

To make:
Mix ingredients. Store in an air-tight container.

Christmas, please!

This is the fourth straight year in a row that "more college" is at the top of my Christmas wish list. Now that my brother's in college, he's asking for the same thing. But education isn't the only thing on our lists, because you're simply un-American if you don't want some material goods!

My brother sent my parents a hilarious list, along with reasons why he wants them. Here are a few selections (and yes, I have his permission, no matter how weird he thinks I am):

• Rain pants. In the old days, when it was raining I could go riding, go back home, and change.  This dynamic changed dramatically with my entry into college.  Now my bike rides frequently end at my place of employment, where there is both a lack of clothes to change into and a negative opinion of employee wearing wet clothing.  Quality is of little importance, as more than likely any pants will have a short life and replacement is likely.
• Backpack. I have a multitude of containers for the purpose of carrying items from one place to another.  However, as is the case with most things, I don't have the one I want.  I'm not too terribly sure which one I want anyways but I can present two that seem sufficient.
• Chrome Midway Shoe. I tend to prefer the color green when I choose clothing and this doesn't change when it comes to footwear.  I enjoy a green shoe and would like to continue the habit of wearing them. These shoes are incredibly durable, comfortable, and awesome.  Also, they're green.

My list? I already know I'm getting an iPod Touch — I'm splitting the cost with my parents because I need one for my internship. (Also, the new ones have a camera on them, and the quality is much better than my cell phone camera — look forward to decent-quality pictures on the blog soon!) After all that expensive stuff, all I really want is a new large liquid measure for baking, and a multitude of socks. I love warm, tall socks that keep my entire leg warm, not just my feet.

I need these in my life.

Even if we know we're not getting a lot (other than college, which is a helluva gift), the most important thing is that we all try so hard to come up with something. Some people think it's a copout to say "it's the thought that counts," but I really think it is — even if you're giving socks or a backpack, a gift becomes a tangible way of showing you're thinking of someone.

One last note: Does anyone have any suggestions on what to get a dad for Christmas? Every year I wrack my brain trying to come up with something for my dad and every year I'm stumped. Last year he got truffles (which went over extremely well. Pro-tip: Use cayenne pepper instead of salt). This year he might just get a hug and some beer unless I'm struck by brilliance.

Oh snap, it's scherenschnitte

(I know, I know, I really need to get better at naming my blog posts. Have mercy.)

A family friend introduced the idea of scherenschnitte to my mom, and now I'm in love with these lacy, delicate patterns. We've had a scherenschnitte-style ornament hanging from our Christmas tree for years, and the design always led me to believe they were Scandanavian in origin, but according to our friend and Wikipedia, it's German.

In any case, I thought they would make a brilliant (and cheap) present for my boyfriend's parents, so I worked some Google magic and found templates from an old magazine on a blog, identical to the patterns our friend has used. I redrew some to fit them onto a 4.4 by 5.8 inch card.

To start, I folded a piece of computer paper in half. Schereschnitte designs are half the full pattern — each side is the mirror image of the other — so I aligned the crease with the edge of the pattern and traced it. I have a clear clipboard that I could hold up to the light to make tracing easier, but you can kick it old school and use carbon copying or a window. I cut out the patterns using embroidery scissors and used an Xacto knife for the tiny details.

I put a dark red background on the cards using construction paper, then glued the designs to the background. I used a Q-tip to very, very carefully apply glue to the back of the design, then pressed it down — the design is so delicate I was afraid it would rip. Here's how they turned out:

I'm incredibly pleased with myself. So incredibly pleased with myself, in fact, that I went ahead and made 3D versions for ornaments. I started out the same way I did with the cards, tracing the pattern then cutting it out. I did this twice, then, with a very thin line of glue, glued the two together along the crease with a loop of thread.

I could've done a better job cutting out the little fiddly garland bits, but it turned out fairly well:

If you want to be fancy too, check out the link up above, or you can use the Christmas tree template I drew up for the ornament.

I'm pretty in love with the whole idea of scherenschnitte, so I'll probably try and design more. In the meantime, I'll be getting inspiration from this beautiful papercutting blog and this design I found in the Googles, a great design to riff on.

Christmas tree for college kids

We're on the quarter system at UC Davis, so there are only 10 weeks of classes followed by a week of finals. It's actually a pretty great system (for me, at least — I burn out right as finals are ending), but the downside is that there's only a week between Thanksgiving break and finals week, and then everyone goes home as quickly as they can to start enjoying their break. This gives very little time to celebrate Christmas, and Christmas is my favorite holiday.

Since the roommates and I have so little time in Davis in December, it doesn't make sense to spend a bunch of money and buy a real Christmas tree. I found a great idea online to make a "tree" from a tomato cage, so I grabbed a nasty one from my parents while I was home over break. I wiped as much of the dirt and rust off as I could, then spray-painted it.

I let it dry for a few hours. You have to look up-close to see the shininess, but it does cover up a lot of the rust and dirt I wasn't able to scrub away.

Once the paint was dry, I took it inside and wired together the top spires to create a cone. Starting at the top, I wrapped a strand of Christmas lights around, securing it to the tomato cage at intervals with twist ties. Then I added some ornaments, et voilà, a tree!

One of my housemates and I went to the store to get food and picked up an angel ornament as well, which I wired to the top of the "tree" in a not-so-elegant fashion.

It hasn't fallen down yet, though, so I suppose my haphazard job worked well. Hooray!

The bottom looked a little empty, so I took some silk brocade we weren't using in our apartment and wrapped it around the bottom. With some presents around it, our "tree" looked quite festive!

Even if it doesn't have that enchanting smell of a pine tree, it does add a little bit of Christmas magic to our apartment. I spent $5 on the spray paint and $2.50 on the lights — much better than $40 for a real tree! My roommates and I swapped presents after finals, and it was really fun to pull the presents out from under/next to the tree.

Plus, come April one lucky tomato plant is going to have the prettiest cage in my parents' garden.