Our love for our pet and dealing with grief over his death.

This month, our beloved rabbit of almost ten years JR passed away. It was sudden and we miss him so much. We found him in the street of our old house, about 9 years ago. When he and my daughter met, JR was just a baby of about 6 months old and Ashley was barely 3 years old. We were pretty sure that he was someone's pet and they dumped him because they did not want to take care of him. It was instant love at first sight and we kept him as our bun bun and family member and we have loved him dearly for 10 years. The day of his passing, he was eating good and was happy to get his kisses and love from Ashley. She fed him in the morning and later that day he was gone. Even though he was old and it was expected, his death was rather sudden and came out of nowhere. :( It has been a difficult road for both of my kids because they both have been grieving and the mood has been really somber around the house. My heart has ached and has been broken from him passing "The Rainbow Bridge." When he passed away both of our kids were hysterical and it was all that I could do to keep my strength together. Ryan, my husband was out doing some Christmas shopping so I was in charge of what needed to be done until Ryan could meet us at the clinic. I wrapped JR in Roman's, (our 6 year old son's) old robot blanket and me and the kids drove his little body to The Pet Care clinic down the street from our home. Ashley was so brave and held him in her lap on the way to the clinic. This passing away of one of our pet's was new to our kid's so we followed Ashley's lead in what she wanted to do with losing our JR. Ash spent lots of time with JR in the room before giving him over to the Pet Care Clinic for him to get cremated. We picked a pretty box for him and they made an impression of his paw prints for our kids to cherish. It has been a difficult road for both of our kids and their grief over the loss of our sweet JR. Our son Roman has had a lot of days crying and Ashley was sleeping religiously with JR's blanket. This was the first pet that they both lost and we were dreading the day that this would happen. We have been trying to find ways to help their grief by memorials and talking about JR and the funny bunny things he used to do. We have also encouraged the kids to talk about him, cry about him, and snuggle his blanket when needed. It has really seemed to help a lot with both of the kids.

JR, RIP our sweet boy.


JR as a baby.

JR balancing a tiny book on his head.


JR with me while on the computer on our bed.


JR hanging on our bed. One of his favorite things to do was hang out on the bed and snuggle with me or Ashley. I love this picture of JR.



To help with our daughter's grief (she is our eldest and fed him/took care of him daily), we also decided to call The Humane Society to see if we could donate JR's new bag of treats and bag of hay to them. It was a new bag of treats that we had purchased for JR for Christmas. Sadly he passed before Christmas which made Ashley really sad. JR loved dried Banana Chips. They were his favorite. :) When we called The Humane Society to donate his treats, they said that they had one lonely bunny there. I asked a few questions about the rabbit and they told me that she was a Lop. I kind of knew that we were not going to just donate treats and had a feeling that we would be bringing home a bunny to add to our family. When we got there, we saw her and fell in love. She was under a year of age and surrendered because the previous couple was getting divorced and they had "Lily" and her brother. The bunny's brother was just adopted the week before and it was just her left all by her lonesome. She seemed so sad being there and was there for 20 days and had spent the last week all by her lonesome. Long story short, we all fell in love and now our new addition. Her name is Lily, and she is living in our home, being extremely loved and spoiled. She is not quite sure what to make of her new situation though. She has 4 people snuggling her, feeding her goodies and a crazy dog that likes to give her love and kisses. Please meet our Lily. She will never replace JR, but we welcome her into our family with open arms. We have lots of love to give her and look forward to many new memories with her! Oh and she loves that bag of Banana Chips...:) Not only the bag of chips came home. It is funny that we went to donate food and instead we get this awesome bunny that we named Lily and were able to rescue her and give her a new home. I would say that is a very good thing.


One more of Lily. My daughter named her Lily Ann. Isn't she the prettiest little thing? She is less than a year old. She is not so sure what to make of all the love we have all been giving her. We told her to get used to it though!



We will always miss JR, but we are slowly becoming happy again as a family from the loss of our beloved JR. JR is always in our hearts and our memories. He gave us almost 10 wonderful loving years with him! I think he would be happy to know that we are loving another bunny and gave Lily a wonderful new home. She is no longer stuck in at The Humane Society, waiting to get adopted. She is now with us! We are very lucky to have silly Lily around. :)


Pin It

Body Butter Bars, kind of like Lush.

I really love a challenge and I really love making Home-made bath items for my business, family or for my friends. This season I have made some Candy Cane Body Scrubs, Peppmerint Milk Baths and now some Body Butter Bars. My girlfriend recently gave me the rest of her Cocoa Butter and Beeswax from Brambleberry.Com. I decided to make some goodies from it. I also had some Carrier Oils on hand from my business. So here is how I made these body butter bars. Making and molding (solidifying time) took about an hour to make. This amount of oils and wax made 24, 2oz sized bars.

What you will need:
Double Boiler
Kitchen Scale if you have one.
Spatula or Bamboo Stir Sticks
Silicone Soap, Muffin or Candy Molds. Silicone works best because they are easy to pop the bars out of them.
12ozs of Cocoa Butter
6ozs of Calendula Infused Olive Oil (you can just use Olive or Apricot Kernel Oil)
6ozs of Palm Oil
12ozs of Beeswax
Essential Oil or Fragrance Oil. I chose BananaRoma fragrance Oil. It used to be a Lush scent that has since been discontinued. I ordered the Fragrance oil from Ponte Vedra Soap. I also get lots of my soap supplies from there.

Here is everything out on my Butcher Block.


I set the temperature on the stove top always to medium when melting. I combined all oils and stirred mixture on occasion.


Once everything is completely melted, I added in about 3-5 small capfuls of Fragrance Oil.


Once everything was melted, I transferred all the melted waxes and oils into a container with a spout. This made it easier for pouring. I did pour all of the mixture into the molds. Yep, I did make a little bit of a mess.


Here is what they look like all made up. They are very easy to pop out of the molds once hardened up. I let them sit for about 20 minutes before popping them out of molds.


Close up of the bars. Now you can wrap them in tissue paper and give them to friends and family as a little gift.


Here is a few links with variations on the recipe of Lotion Bars.
Smockity Frocks
Our Green Experiments
Soap Deli News
Little House in the Suburbs


Pin It

Home-made Gift Giving. Watermelon Candy Cane Sugar Scrub

I love to make home-made bath stuff for me and my family. I was inspired to do a variation of this recipe over on the blog, A Pumpkin to Myself. I saw this recipe and knew that I could make this into a Whipped Sugar Scrub. So here is what I did with the recipe and here is what you will need.

INGREDIENTS:
2 Packs 12 count Candy Canes. You can choose any flavor, but I chose to do Watermelon.
Matching Fragrance Oil or Essential Oil (optional) The Candy Canes are fragrant enough once pulverized.
1/3 Cup of Avocado Butter
1/2 Coconut Oil (I used Fractionated Coconut Oil)
1/2 Cup of Palm Oil
3-5 Teaspoons of Olive Oil (you can use any oil but Olive oil is best in my world)
2 Cups of Cornstarch (you can add more if you want to make it fluffier and less greasy).


What you will need
Double Boiler
An amazing blender
Medium sized mixing bowl
Kitchen Aid or Stand Mixer (recommended over hand mixer)
2, 4 or 8oz Jars to store your Sugar Scrub
Address Labels to label your jars.
Spatula

Unwrap all of your Watermelon Candy Canes and place them in your blender. I used all 24 of them and had some Candy Cane Sugar left over to make future batches.


Move the pulverized Candy Canes to a bowl and set aside until they need to be folded into the whipped oils.


Combine all oils above in a double boiler. Low to Heat on Medium heat. I used my Grandpa's old trusty double boiler.


Fill your sink up with Ice and Cold Water. Once all of your oils are melted, pour them into your bowl or Kitchen Aid bowl mixer and place in the sink of ice. Let the mixture set for about 10-15 minutes.


Once your mixture looks like it starts sitting up, add in the Corn Starch. I would slowly add in the corn starch throughout the whole cooling and hardening process. This is what it looked like with 1 cup of Corn Starch and mixed for about 20-25 minutes. If you have a stand mixture, you can just place it on Speed 2-4 and leave it to whip up and walk away to do laundry or other chores that need to be done. Oils will have a yellowish tint to them but will eventually look like white frosting. Here is what they look like while whipping up in the beginning.


After it has whipped for 20 minutes, place the mixture back in the sink of ice and let it sit for another 20 minutes. Take it out when it looks like this.


See, it is getting there. :)
Whip it for another 10-15 minutes with the other cup of Corn Starch. Keep whipping until it looks like the picture below. It will whiten up and look a lot like frosting. You are now ready for your Sugar Canes. Also, if you want your oils to feel less greasy, add in more Corn Starch to your recipe.


Take your bowl of Pulverized Candy, and slowly spoon them in, keeping your mixer on the lowest setting. I actually changed my Kitchen Aid attachment and used the dough hook so that it would fold the candy in. I also would stop the Kitchen Aid Mixer and using a Spatula I would gently fold in the candy. Once I was finished with it, I scooped all of the Scrub into 6, 4oz Jars. I will be making the labels tomorrow, and some more of this in Peppermint Candy Canes. Her is the Scrub in jars.


I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Also, be aware that this is a slippery scrub for use in the shower, so remind anyone you make this for to be careful while using it in the shower! :) I will be back with a picture of the labels that I made.

Oh and an FYI, this stuff is amazing on the hands and elbows.


Pin It

New additions to the NMBC Tree

I went to the Tai Pan Trading Company the other day and found lots of awesome Christmas decor. I found these cute Star Shaped sprigs in a Lime Green color and I had to get them for our NMBC tree.

New Lime Green Star shaped Sprigs added to the tree. For a little extra flair.


The Full Tree with Sprigs.


I hope you all like it!


Pin It

Oh Christmas Tree, I present "The Nightmare Before Christmas Tree."

Today the rest of my Nightmare Before Christmas Ornaments came in. I am so excited! Here is the final tree. I want to get some better pictures with actual daylight and I want to play with my camera settings to get some more pics of out tree. I am going to order a few more NMBC ornaments here and there and add them to the tree as well.

1st shot of the tree.


The Little Charms that I found on EBay. They are phone charms but the look great on the Christmas tree and worked well.


The top of the tree with my Jack Skellington Doll.


Zero on the Tree.


Doctor Finkelstein Ornament.


Oogie Boogie and Jack Ornaments.



Silver and Lime Green Ornaments. I used Hot Pink, Purples, Black and Lime Green Colors for the tree.


Zero Ornament. (Pics coming soon of the rest when Photobucket stops acting up on me. It is not resizing the photos for some odd reason).


My favorite, Scary Teddy!



Zero and my favorite green and hot pink ornament. Also there is a cute Barrel ornament on the tree.



Our new Jack Ball with faces. I purchased two of these.




Sally the doll and Sally and Jack Ornaments.



Pin It