Homemade Valentines Gift for a Guy

I'm working on Jeremy's Lovanzuanukah present.  (The upcoming week long holiday festival of love in which we will celebrate Jeremy and my 11th anniversary of knowing each other, 9th marriage anniversary, St. Valentine's Day, and (last-but-not-least) national half-price chocolate day!)

I'm making him homemade aftershave, and since there's still time to make it before most people will be celebrating the more traditional lovers' holiday of St. Valentine, I thought I'd share what I'm doing. 

Homemade Gentleman's Olde Spice Aftershave Recipe:

Materials needed:
3/4 cup witch hazel
2 tsp glycerine
1 large pinch alum (found in the spices or canning section of the grocery store)
1 small cinnamon stick
10 allspice berries
10 cloves

1 half-pint jar
funnel
coffee filter
small dark glass bottle

Add witch hazel, glycerine, and alum to half-pint jar.  Witch hazel is an astringent.  It helps close the pores after a hot shave, it also has 16% alcohol which disinfects any cuts. The glycerine is a byproduct of soapmaking it's a natural moisturizer and skin protectant to soothe the skin after shaving.  Alum is a blood coagulant used to help stop the bleeding of any cuts (in it's bulk mineral form it is the newfangled deodorant crystals I keep hearing people talk about).  All these ingredients are rated 0 or 1 (a green) from the EWG (follow the links above) meaning, super safe for cosmetic use. 

You can add a teaspoon or two of rum to the recipe as well to add to the scent and the alcohol disinfecting properties.  We don't drink so I don't have any in the home.  I'm not opposed to buying it for this project, but I chose to use what I already had on hand imagining $25 bottles of rum that would break my budget ($0) on this project!  

Finally add the spices.  Break up the cinnamon into small pieces, and crush the allspice berries and cloves just a bit to release their fragrances. 

Pit a lit on the jar and put it in a dark cupboard. 

Store it for 10 days, giving it a shake every day.  You should see it take on color from the spices--it is also taking on the fragrances. 

After 10 days strain through a coffee filter and funnel into a dark glass jar (brown or blue).  This bottle is from vanilla extract.  When It was empty I saved it because I knew it would be useful for this kind of project.  The dark glass helps the aftershave retain it's scent for longer. 

My aftershave isn't complete yet.  I created this recipe from some different ones I found, and I'm not really sure how strong it will end up.  If it's too strong of a scent I will just add some more witch hazel.  However I have heard that many people when using the original old spice could only smell it for a little while and then it went away--not really like wearing cologne. 

I had fun making labels for it as well (even though I did it without my in-house graphic designers' help this time!

Let me know if you try the recipe--you can also use any assortment of essential oils in place of the fresh spices--there are so many possibilities. 

One More Christmas Present

Oops!  I forgot my one more handmade Christmas present of 2012.  This is an idea I saw on Pinterest the year before and never made it, so this year I decided to.  Unfortunately, I couldn't for the life of me find the origin of the pin.  So I had to wing it, but it was simple enough.

I'm happy with how it turned out.  I like the snowflakes I added from my scrapbooking stash, and I like my trunk way better than the original.  The star on top is a place holder--I need something better, but didn't come across it at the craft store this year. 

I made one of these for my sister, and one for myself!  My sister and I have started a Christmas craft exchange.  I don't know that they will always be "Christmas Crafts" but a "fun craft" of course. 

Handmade Christmas

Like I mentioned, we made a lot of handmade gifts for Christmas this year.  A number of the ideas I came across on pinterest, and some were old standbys.

For the boys' cousin gift exchange we made their 2-year-old and 6-month-old cousins these finger puppets.   As you can see Wyatt found them so irresistable that I decided to make him a set as well.  I've made some of these before, but my favorite new design for this time is the sheep.  Shaun the Sheep anyone?

I loved this little pocket mouse I saw on Pinterest.  I decided to make it for Jonas.

 My only improvement on the original idea was adding the little window--but I think it was a great improvement!

We worked on more freezer-paper stenciled t-shirts.  Owen made one for each of his brothers (and Jeremy made one for me as well).  I've found that a really great resource for stencil patterns is to look up pumpkin carvings--it's the same concept of positive and negative spaces in the image.   So particularly for tv/video/etc.characters it's nice to find the designs where someone else has already done all that work for you. 

Owen made the boys Spyro T-shirts.

Jonas made Owen this geoboard. I was happy Owen actually knew what it was already (we didn't have to explain it to him) so he was instantly excited when he opened it.

I also love Jonas' expression in these pictures.

 He is so proud of his gift for Owen.  That is why we believe it is so important for us to encourage handmade gifts in our family.  Like President Uchtdorf talked about--it is such an opportunity to strengthen and grow a relationship between the giver and receiver.

 One of the last homemade gifts we made was little sacks of chocolate LEGO minifigures.  We have this LEGO minifigure ice cube tray and the boys love to make ice cubes and eat the little LEGO guys.  We decided casting them out of chocolate instead was an ingenious idea--If I do say so myself.

 They looked pretty funny all laid out on the table. Like little LEGO clones, or petrified bodies or something--I had to imagine the reaction of a "real" LEGOminifigure walking on to the scene.

The boys loved finding these Christmas morning.