4 Homemade Sugar Scrubs that Go from Your Pantry to the Bath

As much as I am all over power tools and DIY projects I really am a girly girl at heart. I like pamper myself now and again and using a sugar body scrub is an excellent way to do it. Sugar is as a natural exfoliate but is still gentle enough to be used on skin. The oil in the sugar scrub can protect your skin against moisture loss. Add a few natural essential oils and you have a wonderful way to make an expensive professional spa treatment from ingredients you may already have in your kitchen!

 Pin these sugar scrub recipes to your Pinterest boards for later! Share them with your friends!

Here are four of my favorite natural sugar scrub recipes. They make great gifts too!

1.Basic Sugar Scrub Recipe

What Can You Make From Broken Copper Pipes?

My cell phone rings. “We’re going to be at the farm this weekend. Would Blitzkrieg like to come over for dinner? We’d love to see our granddog.”

It’s my mother in law. And yes, she just invited the dog to her house with the implied invitation that Husband and I would chauffeur the dog to his dinner date. That’s what happens when your dog is more popular with your friends and family than you are I suppose. (Although it is heartwarming that the in-laws have realized that Blitzkrieg is as close as they are going to get to an actual grandchild from us for awhile. Don’t feel too bad for them. They have five grandkids from Husband’s other sibs, so the in-laws aren’t exactly hurting in the grandchildren department.)

We drive to the little farmhouse. Surprisingly we find it in disarray. Big chunks of drywall are missing from most of the walls. “Hey! You’re just in time! Mom says. “We’re celebrating a bit tonight. We just got the water back on.”

What?!

Turns out that when the renters moved out of the house in January, instead of turning the heat down to 55 degrees like you should in a soon-to-be unoccupied house during a snowy winter, they turned the heat OFF COMPLETELY. They didn’t bleed the water lines dry so let’s do the math, shall we?

Below zero temperatures + standing water in copper pipes =

One might think that the previous tenants did this out of ignorance. Chances are no. The renters were asked to leave after not paying rent for oh, say, the last 6 months of their stay. Hmmmmm...vindictive much? Consider yourselves formally crossed off our Christmas card list.

Once the big pool of standing water was removed from the floor, the burst pipes needed to be found from behind drywall all over the lower level of the house and replaced. Even though my father-in -law has much more experience in a whole lot more DIY areas than me, this job was much more than evn our DIY skills combined could handle. It was time to call in a pro.

Fortunately the man who lives next to the little gray farmhouse is a plumber. The job kept him quite busy for several months. At $22.00 an hour, the plumber’s family isn’t going to have to worry about being able to pay their rent anytime soon.

As the dinner party progressed and Mom and Dad entertained us with the trials and tribulations of fixing up the house yet again and I think - blog fodder! I started snapping photos of the broken pipes. Suddenly Husband appeared over my shoulder.

Husband: What are you going to make out of those?

Me: Money? Scrap copper prices are pretty good right now.

Husband: Yeah, but knowing you, you’re going to do something cool with the remains, right?

Me: No. I’m going to blog about the broken pipes.

Husband: Oh. That’s disappointing. I expected something cool.

Looks like I’ve trained him a little too well in creative reuse department.

What do you think? Is there anything I can make from burst water pipes?

How to Save Electricity While Heating Your Hot Tub

One of my very best friends is now the proud and happy owner of a hot tub thanks to Craigslist. His partner on the other hand, isn’t as happy because he said that he was concerned about how much more electricity this little extravagance was going to cost them.

I get questions about saving electricity a lot because I now have quite the reputation among by friends and family as an Energy Savings Maven (hey, there could be worse things, right?) I wondered if there really was such a thing as an energy efficient hot tub. I asked J Williams of Hot Tub Works that same question and one of his staffers offered to write a guest post on the topic for me.

Here you go my friends, this post’s especially for you!

Sink Yourself into an Energy-Efficient Hot Tub

By Jayne Hawkins


With the cost of electricity skyrocketing, it’s no wonder that we are constantly looking for ways to cut our utility budget. Saving money does not have to be difficult, and often requires just a few small changes within our homes. Even if you are new to the latest techniques, it’s never too late to make changes to keep your hard-earned wages in your wallet. Unfortunately, cutbacks and downsizing are causing many of us to reconsider our dreams and goals for the future. For many, this means saying no to a remodelled kitchen, summer patio, or relaxing hot tub.

Can't Compost? Use Coffee and Eggs Instead!

In Central Ohio Mother’s Day is the unofficial frost date. Plant anything before Mother’s Day and an April frost or two or three will most surely kill it. Plant after Mother’s Day and your plants should live.

Mother’s Day is several weeks away and after looking at this dirt patch for the last 6 months or so, I’ve been jonesing for some flowers.

“This is pathetic.”

I don’t want to spend a lot of time or cash on spring flowers because I’m going to turn the dirt patch into a raised garden bed. Any spring flowers I plant now will soon be sacrificed when we rent the jackhammer (yes, I said jackhammer -yahoo!) and start chipping away at the cement in the garden bed. What’s a gal to do?