Pumpkin Spice Sugar Scrub

Make sugar a HEALTHY habit...

... as a body scrub!

Now that winter is upon us and the weather is cold and dry, the chances that I fell upon an at-home sugar scrub recipe was a gold mine! I'm obsessed with exfoliating scrubs (I use them usually no more than once a week) so constantly stocking up on scrubs can get kind of pricey. When I skimmed the recipe, I realized I already housed all of the needed ingredients in my pantry and I got to mixing, and let me tell you, my body felt so good after I used this!

Some tips about this scrub: 

1. The recipe I found online was a little dry. I had to add more oil to keep the mixture from looking like a pile of sugar. 

2. You can use any oil in your recipe, however beware of the scent. It's supposed to be a pumpkin spiced aroma, but if you use stronger smelling oils such as olive oil, it can smell a little funky. I used 1 TBS of olive oil and immediately regretted it, resulting in me dowsing more vanilla and pumpkin spice to the mix. I used canola oil for the remaining TBS. 

3. Caution if you have very sensitive skin. It's a rough scrub due to the small sugar follicles. I have sensitive skin, but I felt okay even using it on my face. I'd recommend starting off small and seeing how it feels before gunking it on all over your body and having an after burn. I don't think that'd be the case because the oils in the scrub neutralize the skin and the ingredients are without added dyes or fragrance.

4. If you have someone around willing to rub this all over your back, DO IT! It did feel like sandpaper, however it felt so good on my back-like a newly manicured hand was scratching me. ahhhhh-maaaaah-zing. 

5. Like any exfoliant, you don't want to over do it. I wouldn't use this more than once (or maybe twice) a week. It may irritate your skin to be consistently taking layers off. 

Okay, and here's the recipe. Make it for your self, or as a gift to friends or family :)

Recipe

Mix together:

3/4 cup white sugar

1 TBS brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

2 TBS pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp nutmeg

4 TBS oil (canola, olive, coconut, sunflower, etc.)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Pour mixture into a jar for easy use. 

Click here for the original source! 

Acts of Kindness

This post has nothing to do with the flow of my other posts, but I get urges to write when I have a lot of emotion. 

Last night I did something so udderly stupid. I still feel like the biggest jerk in the world thinking about the ridiculous of this mistake. I lost my iphone 5 on top of a mountain. My mistake gave me some insight into my life: not only do I have the most incredible husband in the world, but we are blessed to have another couple in our lives who will drop what they're doing to bring flashlights and climb a mountain to look for white phone in the snow on a Sunday night. I still feel bad about this situation, but I'm not mad because I know that this phone can be replaced and I've been given a greater gift of love and friendship that can never be purchased. 

With that being said, let me explain some background info. My iphone was a Christmas gift from my husband last year. It was my first smart phone (I'm a little behind the age of technology, okay?) and the excitement of having internet on my phone was incomparable. However, to me, it was more than a smartphone. My husband knew I'd been wanting an iphone for the past couple years, I just never had the money to buy one and keep up with the monthly payments. When we went home to visit my family in Chi-town, we went shopping along the Magnificent Mile and my husband disappeared. While he was gone, he went out and bought me the phone, went to AT&T and had it activated and surprised me at lunch with it. To me, this is the importance of my iphone-not it's ability to download apps, take pictures, and check FB every hour. It represents the generosity of my husband and always makes me think back to this day.

It hadn't even lasted a year and I lost it. I LOST IT! I'm usually so responsible with all of my goods and electronics. I brought the same purse I always bring when I do this hike, and never before had I had any problems. The worst part was that I usually do continual phone checks throughout my hikes to make sure I haven't lost keys, phone, wallet, etc. and this time, I didn't do a single check until we were nearly at the bottom. Such a sinking feeling when you get to the bottom of the mountain and realize you're missing something of importance up by the top. At least, I think it was by the top because I fell a couple times at the steep parts. I have no frame of reference though because I didn't do a stupid check! UGH. 

What we thought was going to be a calm, Sunday evening hike (with three dogs, mind you) before going home and cooking dinner turned out to be a 4 hour event. The dogs were wiped by the time we got to the bottom of hike #1 and sunlight was already depleting by the minute. I felt terrible that the dogs hadn't eaten dinner (and due to daylight savings, it was already an hour past their regular dinner time) but the good news was that they were so exhausted from their adventure, we were able to let them sleep in the car while we did the hike AGAIN. 

At the top of Mt. Baldy, round 1.

I had already done Zumba right before the hike: I taught my 1 o'clock class to come home and get ready for a hike that I knew was already going to wear me out. I ended my day yesterday with one hour of Zumba and a back-to-back double hike up a very steep mountain. Let's just say I went to bed with muscle contractions every 15-30 seconds. The hike was no joy ride for my husband neither. He has asthma so intensive cardio+high altitude=out of breath husband. Yet with no complaints, he went back up a second time. In fact, he told me he'd go up there alone so I didn't have do the hike again, but I told him there's no way I'd let him do this. He is such a stud.

The sun was setting and we only had 25% charge on his phone so light source was an issue. We called our friends who lived in the area asking if they had any flashlights. They dropped everything that they were doing and drove up, and not only supplied light, but hiked with us up the mountain. Talk about friendship. I wanted to just call it quits so we all could go home and eat pizza, but they stuck with us to the top and back. This hike wasn't just steep; it was dark, icy, and had 60mph winds at the top (according to another climber we talked to earlier). AND they had just returned last week from a Hawaiian vacation-I'm sure hiking through the snow was something they were planning to put off for at least a couple months, so the fact that they were there by our sides was something I am very thankful for.

I am so incredibly appreciative that, even though we didn't find my phone, I have people in my life who are there for me even though my task seems near impossible. I don't feel like I failed by losing my phone because I feel like I gained something more. But I do still feel like an ass for the following reasons:

1. I lost the Christmas gift my husband bought me last year. 

2. I made my little angel pups wait until about 8:00 before eating dinner.

3. I lost a WHITE phone in the snow-worst game of Where's Waldo? ever. 

4. I brought two other people into such a crazy cold conundrum.  

It was an experience that I'll never forget, because I not only learned that my body CAN do 5 hours of cardio in one day, but I know in the future (once my new phone is reloaded with my contacts and music) we will look back and laugh at what a crazy adventure last night was.