Fragrant Cinnamon Ornaments

Cinnamon Ornaments

1 cup cinnamon

3/4 cup apple sauce

Mix well

Roll out to 1/4 inch thickness. Use cookie cutters of your choice to cut out ornaments. 

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.

Use a straw to make a hole for hanging on each ornament.

Place ornaments on ungreased cookie sheet.

Place in oven for 2 to 2.5 hours until hard.

Cool completely before stringing.

Enjoy the pleasant cinnamon fragrance! May be packed away for future use and will keep their scent for a while.

Here are mine coming out of the oven. I made stars for hanging and rolled the leftover into little balls to place in a decorative bowl. I added flour to roll it out and they ended up looking snow dusted. I like them!

Using the recipe above, I got 23 stars and 7 balls.

Made a simple (and yummy smelling) garland to hang above the stockings.

We can't find our stockings either, which is a shame, because they were gorgeous velvet in different shades of blue. We personalized them with silver letters. Ah well. Found some that will do for this year from Dollar Tree. Baby Boy picked his out especially.

Then Baby Boy helped me hang the rest on the tree. 

The pomanders and these stars are so Christmasy smelling! You get a light whiff whenever you walk by. Love it :)

Homemade Holiday Flavored Coffee

Rachel, one of my amazing, frugal mama friends has been making me drool every morning with her Facebook status, talking about different holidayish drinks she's starting her day with. Hot cider....pumpkin spice coffee... egg nog... Pure torture!

This morning, I was determined to try a homemade version using what we have in our cabinets. Why not just buy some gourmet coffee at the store? Um, have you read my blog? I like to find homemade.... hacks, if you will, to my dilemmas. I'm the girl who tried to create homemade allspice substitute just because!

So right now, Hubby and I are loving my latest experiment: Vanilla Pumpkin Spice Coffee. Mmmm! It's delicious and so easy. In case you, frugal diva that you are, wanted to try it for yourself, here's the recipe:

Homemade Vanilla Pumpkin Spice Coffee
-Coffee grounds, enough for a full pot
-1 tsp pumpkin spice
-1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Fill your coffee pot with water. 
Add filter filled with coffee grounds.
Add pumpkin spice and stir into coffee grounds
Drizzle vanilla extract into grounds. You can stir. I didn't and the flavor was still great.
Turn on coffee pot and brew. 
Serve with sugar and/or creamer to taste. Enjoy your cozy cuppa :)

I'm so excited that this worked! Think of all the spices you usually keep in the kitchen. The possibilities are endless, and oh so deliciously budget friendly.

I think Cinnamon Nutmeg Coffee is somewhere in our near future. If you try any fabulous new combos with your own kitchen spices, be sure to share your recipes!

Hope for OCM Ravaged Skin

Just wanted to post a recent photo to let any of you who are dealing with fallout from the Oil Cleansing Method, if you stop now there is hope! Click here to read my post about how bad my skin became after faithfully using OCM in hope of better skin. Warning: The photos are gross and embarrassing, but true. I'd rather post them and save someone else the trouble than care about my being embarrassed.

So here I am now. Yay! I know I look tired. Forget that. Look at my skin.

I am not wearing foundation. My skin is not totally healed, but it's looking much better and I have to say with all my frustrations, there's only one combination that works: Drink lots of water, keep skin clean and pray pray pray! I'm back to using only my herbal soap and water. If I get really oily, I swipe a toner soaked cotton pad over my Tzone. That's it! Hope to be able to wear foundation again soon :)