A Face Like a 13 Year Old Boy

You know what I love about being 32? My skin, which has always been so smooth and pretty, has suddenly decided that it missed out on pimples and blackheads back in middle and high school. Today alone, I've had two pimples show up on my nose and one blackhead on my cheek. This is simply not acceptable. And I am going to do something about it.

In my ongoing quest to be kind to my body, I'm trying to approach things from a natural perspective, before I resort to better living through chemistry. Searching on Pinterest, I found a recipe for homemade Biore pore strips. Rock on! There are few things more satisfying than ripping one of those white cotton strips off my nose and seeing the little porcupine quills stuck to it.

According to the pin that took me to Petit Elefant, mixing milk and unflavored gelatin together and slathering it all over your face results in a full-face Biore strip-like effect. I did a little more digging and found a hilarious Pinbusters entry over at Pardon Our Sawdust where the truth of the homemade pore strip was told - it might work, but it hurts like hell.

I'm not really down with full face pain, so I've looked to other sources. The Arm and Hammer website recommends mixing 3 parts baking soda to 1 part water and using that as a face scrub. Can you get much simpler than that? I decided to give it a go.

3 Tablespoons of Baking Soda + 1 Tablespoon of Filtered Water + Mini Whisk (because it's cute)

So, here we go:

I wiped my face with a cucumber face wipe before I started the scrub. Figured it wasn't a great idea to be scrubbing smoodge all over the place. I spread the paste all over my face and let it sit for about 30 seconds. Then, I scrubbed. Well, "scrubbed" isn't really the right word - more like worked it around in small circles. I didn't want to be too tough on my skin.

I will tell you, I had to rinse my face 4 times to get all of the baking soda off. Once it was off, though - damn, that is some smooth skin.

So, the verdict: I think I'll be adding this to my Sunday "beauty" routine. I don't think it would be good to do this more than once a week.

Now to try out the new night cream I bought today. Aveeno Positively Radiant Intensive Night Cream. Maybe I can get this stupid 13-year-old-boy-like skin under control.

Pinterest Win: Cupcake Stand, Re-Purposed

Just like practically every other 30-something year old woman in America, I am an avid Pinterester. Yes, I have a wedding board, but in my defense, I created it for my brother's wedding, to keep track of photobooth props and ideas. I mainly like to pin recipes and crafty things and decorating ideas.

One of the crafts I kept seeing pop up was a cupcake stand made from terracotta pots and saucers. You've probably seen this, but in case you haven't, here's one example:

This is from www.youngandcrafty.com. She used them for a baby shower.

As much as I love cupcakes, I don't really have a need for a cupcake stand right now. But I have been wanting to clean up my kitchen and declutter a bit. Having soap bottles and scrubbies all over the back of the sink drives me crazy. I decided to adapt the idea above into a shelf for kitchen supplies. Here's how mine turned out:

Not too shabby, in my opinion. I used silver and dark blue because those were the colors of paint I had available. And since our kitchen has all stainless appliances and dark counters, I thought it would blend right in. This took a few hours to put together, but most of that time was waiting for the paint to dry.

I already feel better about my kitchen sink AND I can cross another Pinterest project off my list.

If you want to make this yourself, here's what you need:

• 1 terracotta pot and 1 terracotta saucer. (You want the saucer to be bigger than the pot, obviously.)
• Acrylic paints and paintbrushes.
• A hot glue gun and glue.

Basically, you're just going to paint the pot and the saucer and then glue them together. Ta-da! This is a fun little project for a rainy afternoon. I watched an episode or two of The West Wing while I worked on this, but that part is optional. :-)