My Week Without TV - Adventures (or Lent and How the Adventures Began)

When I first met my wonderful, loving, brilliant, handsome, goofy, amazing boyfriend (almost 4 years ago) I was stuck in a pretty serious rut...a TV rut. It was back in college and I was in a place in my life where it seemed like all I ever did was go to class, study, sleep, study, eat, study, and watch TV. TV had become what I did in my very limited free time and a crutch. 

Around the time I met The Boy (note the capital letters...they are important here in differentiating this boy, my cute, crazy adventure buddy of a boyfriend, from say...any other boy on the face of the planet), I came to the very important realization that I wasn't satisfied anymore with spending my free time watching other people (most of them fictional) living their lives instead of going out and living my own. I resolved that I was going to be the kind of person that had a life and had adventures of my own.

Climbing Trees at The Farm

My best college memories revolve around those adventures that we went on together: getting library cards, trips to the pumpkin patch, hiking, going to The Farm, cooking...but those are stories for another time.

The whole point of this long winded back story was that I had firmly resolved at that time in my life that I was going to be the kind of person that did thing,s and at one point I was...fast forward 4 years and I'm coming home from work to collapse on the couch with whatever food I can find in the house and watch reruns of shows I'm not that interested in or have already seen a hundred times before dragging myself to bed even more exhausted than when I came home.

 I was stuck again in the same rut with a slight variation...I had gotten myself stuck in a weekday rut. On the weekends, sure I watch TV, but I also spend time with The Boy going on the kinds of small adventures that make life so much fun. On weekdays though I turn into The Frump...a terrifying creature that lives in a bog of baggy sweatpants and would rather watch TV and pin a hundred crafts on Pinterest than actually go out and make the crafts (not, of course, that there's anything wrong with Pinterest because I actually love it very very much).

This year was a case of Lent to the rescue. I've resolved this year for Lent that I'm going to give up watching TV on weekdays and use that time instead to have small adventures. So far I've decided that I'm going to work to stick with a weekly schedule so that I can do all of the things I want to do and I don't have an excuse to be lazy...although I might need to rework it a little bit now that I need to incorporate blogging!

Here's my schedule that I've been working towards so far:

Monday:

- Mani/Pedi (part of the ongoing effort to suppress The Frump)

- Reading (part of the also ongoing effort to avoid library fines)

- Blogging? (looks like it might fit here best)

Tuesday:

- Crafting (time to unleash my creative side and try out some of those Pinterest ideas)

Wednesday:

- Socializing (this one's pretty flexible depending on other people's schedules but I thought it needed to be on the calendar to quell my natural tendency towards becoming a hermit)

- Exercising (this one is also not confined just to Wednesdays...it really should be an everyday, but on Wednesdays I have to have to have to!...unless I have something better to do...kinda kidding)

Thursday: (Responsible Adult days)

- running errands (totally counts as an adventure)

- managing my finances! (aka one of these days I'm actually going to sit down and start tracking my receipts again like I used to so that I can figure out how much money I shouldn't be spending)

- laundry (another task designed to help avoid The Frump...extra important on weekends with The Boy...nobody should be subjected to The Frump)

- Facials (yes. Facials and Finances...I think its meant to be)

As you've probably noticed, my weekdays only actually include 4 days...this is for a very important reason...Fridays are spend with The Boy and as such count as the weekend...I don't make the rules...oh wait...no judgement please.  

I already have my craft lined up for tomorrow. Check back later in the week to see how it turned out!

P.S. If you have any comments or helpful suggestions, or just want to say hi, leave a comment below!

P.P.S. Let me know what you think about the page formatting. I'm still deciding what I think about font sizes, colors, etc. 

The Baking Soda Adventures...Part 1

So I've recently seen a lot of different DIYs on Pinterest that involve baking soda...I'm intrigued!
I've seen beauty products, cleaning products, and air fresheners among other things, which gave me the idea to do a series of blog posts about the many (potential) uses for baking soda.

I got together this weekend with my favorite blogger (and my favorite older sister) Sarah@MarriedToMedSchool (www.marriedtomed.blogspot.com) and we had some craft time...here's what happened!

Baking Soda Adventure #1: Shower Disks
With the frigid winter weather comes the enemy of all...stuffy noses.
The idea behind these shower disks is to imitate those Vick's shower disks you used to (?) be able to find at the supermarket (I have heard that they don't sell them anymore but I haven't actually looked so I don't really know).
You put them on the floor of the shower and the steam and hot water dissolves them releasing the soothing scent of eucalyptus and clearing up your congestion.
 I've seen these shower disks done on a couple of different blogs and all of the comments have been pretty positive so Sarah and I decided it was time to give it a try.

Ingredients:
1 cup Baking Soda
1/3 cup Water
5-10 drops Eucalyptus Essential Oil
5-10 drops Lavender Essential Oil
Muffin Tin
Muffin/Cupcake Liners





Steps:
(1) Mix the baking soda and water in a mixing bowl...with a spoon. Pretty easy. You want it to form a thick paste. It will end up having almost the same consistency as oobleck. (If you don't know what I'm talking about google it...super cool science experiment for understanding non-newtonian fluids! Oobleck is actually cornstarch and water, but similar...)

 (2) Add your essential oil and stir. I've seen varying numbers of drops of essential oil but it's really a personal preference thing. We just kinda winged it. I think we ended up using 8 drops of each.
Some recipes I've seen call for eucalyptus, lavender, and rosemary, but when we started adding the rosemary it smelled like a roast chicken...delicious in the right context but not necessarily what you want to smell like when you step out of the shower.

 (3) Line the muffin tin with muffin/cupcake liners and spoon the mixture into the liners. We weren't sure exactly how many disks this recipe should make so we just made it up. We ended up making 8 which is about a heaping tablespoon in each.

(4) Bake for 20 minutes on 350. We put these in the oven and you could really smell the essential oils. I feel less congested already just from baking them! And here's the final product. Store them in an airtight/watertight container. 

I haven't had the chance to try these yet but I can't wait! I'll update with a review once I've tried them out!

Welcome and Hello!

Welcome to my blog!

A little bit about me...I got the nickname Butter Ball as a baby when my parents took me to a restaurant and I sneakily snatched balls of butter from the fancy butter dish and ate them whole. I've grown up a little bit since my days as a toddler with fists full of butter...but not much.

I'm an engineer, a crafter, a wanna be artist, a friend, sister, daughter, girlfriend, and a butter ball...

In short, I'm an everyday adventurer looking for the best things in life. These are my stories...