Happy Friday! Today I'm sharing an easy, last minute gift for mom. Body scrubs are some of my favorite homemade beauty products to make. They're fast and inexpensive but super effective, and they can take on all sorts of scents and looks. I prefer sugar scrubs over salt scrubs because I find the sugar to be a lot more gentle on my skin.
Meiling, sitting in the family room, pretending to fly a plane.
Announcements before takeoff: …and your driver [pilot] is new, so, if we crash, we’ll…give you something.
Ya, not a good idea.
I pulled a container of (what I THOUGHT was) chicken broth out of the freezer this morning. I especially needed some nice, healing chicken broth this morning. While it defrosted, I pulled out the various veggies out of the fridge and chopped them up for my soup. Ah, some lovely scallion-ginger broth!
I had though that the broth looked a little funny, but hadn’t paid it much mind. But when I sat down to eat it, I could tell it DEFINITELY wasn’t chicken broth that I had used.
It was chicken drippings.
Mom saves them to add to dishes that need a little added flavor. And I had mistaken the whole container for broth.
Given, it LOOKS very similar, and they were frozen in the same type of container that we use for broth.
Oh, well.
It isn’t terrible – it is just rather tasteless.
Off to eat my soup –
Allison
We just arrived home this past Saturday from a long, three-week trip on the East Coast. We spent a week in Plymouth, MA, 5 days in Washington, D.C., and 9 days near Charlottesville, VA. It was a lovely trip, and I will hopefully be posting more extensive photo-posts soon. But, just for fun, I took a bunch of self-portraits at different places we went. Here they are!
You can’t let a Midwesterner near the ocean, without them making it to the ocean. 
Smithsonian Museum of American History
George Mason Monument
Thomas Jefferson Memorial
At the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space…
…with my bro
World War II Monument
At the Bureau of Engraving and Printing…
…again with my brother.
Mount Vernon
The Library of Congress
The Capitol
Monticello
Blue Ridge Mountains
Montpelier
(If I look like I am only giving a partial-smile in some of the photos, it’s just because I am focusing on taking the picture and not enough on smiling.)
9. A cappella music makes me happy.
26. I love fermented butter. [Editor's note: It's really cultured butter. Just forgot the name for a moment when I posted.]
5. Owl City’s music can be SO random, but you have to love it anyway.
1. I need to focus.
57. When are they going to come out with windshield wipers for eyeglasses? Just asking.
18. Buttered quinoa = amazing.
3. [I just lost a whole chicken thigh down the disposal, and I had to go in after it!]
80. [Or at least my hand did.]
2. For dinner, I’m mincing up garlic and ginger, and chopping some green onions. It’s Asian-inspired!
95. My brother’s mowing the grass for the first time this season. Yay Spring!
77. I pinched my tongue with a broken apple juice box straw. Yup.
6. This Friday night, my little sister and I will [hopefully] be having a slumber party – the whole nine yards. Fun food, makeup, a movie, and music. Should be great!
39. Why doesn’t your computer automatically switch to capital letters after the end of the sentence, and then switch back (like phones do)?
14. My room is a mess, but isn’t it always.
Speaking of that, that’s what I should be doing!
Love,
Allison
Spring is coming – actually, it’s starting to feel like it’s here. Flowers are blooming, birds are singing, and trees are leafing.
(Is that how you would say it? Trees are leafing out? I don’t know. But, whatever. )
Anyways, here are some flower photos that I have taken recently.
As I mentioned in this post, I've been cutting back on carbs (mostly the bread type) in an effort to shed some winter weight and get back into shape for summer, and just to be more healthy in general. There is far too much bread and pastries in my daily life, a little detox does me good every so often. Pizza is one of my (many) carby vices.
