Author Archives: Katie

Wedding Crafts : Tags

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This June I’m sharing some of the crafts that made their way into my wedding, which was four years ago this month! A couple of weeks ago I showed you the bunting that decorated our reception tents and ceremony. Last week I shared the homemade purses that I embroidered for each of the bridesmaids (you also got a sneak peak at the sash that my mom made and hand-beaded to go with my wedding dress!). Today, I want to show you the tags that we made for both our place cards and as the labels on our favors. As you’ll see below, in each case, the cards were the icing on the cake of even bigger DIY projects!

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We used rubber stamps that were custom ordered  for these projects, yet while we were planning, we knew that these stamps would have a use well beyond the wedding. It was important to me that we didn’t purchase too many items that would only have a one-time use for the wedding, and four years out, I’m happy to see how often we’ve reused some items (and how well-loved others are). On another note ~ I know that the thought of using rubber stamps can drive people nuts when you think about having to line things up and make your stamping straight. As you’ll see, we tried to eliminate that problem. We didn’t worry about making our words perfectly straight, and we let some stamps, like the honeycombs, have a design that would fall off the edge of the tags. This strategy helped to minimize the stress and time that would go into projects like these.

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Blueberry Lemon Buckle

by Katie | 2 Comments

Lemons are our ingredient of the season. We’re exciting to fill our summer with all things lemony, and until then you can click through our archive of lemon posts, from body scrubs and shower cleaners to lemonade and vodka waters.

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This past weekend we pulled together a last minute brunch at our place, and one of the things we served was this blueberry lemon buckle. Now that we’re fully settled in the new house, we want to do a lot of entertaining, especially during the summer months when we can have everyone out on the deck and the kids playing in the kiddie pool. To make entertaining actually happen, and to keep it stress-free, it’s nice to have a few reliable recipes, like this buckle, that you can make ahead. Don’t know what a buckle is? Read on to find out!

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In my vocabulary, buckles are fruit-filled coffee cakes. You’ll commonly see buckles that call for blueberries as the fruit, but I was introduced to the buckle in Rustic Fruit Desserts, where my mind was blown by the variety of buckle options (rhubarb, apple, blueberry, and cranberry!). You really can have a buckle for each season. So far I’ve made the apple, cranberry, and blueberry varieties, but we recently discovered a rhubarb plant growing in our yard (no joke), so that will be next!

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Summer Face Oil

by Katie | 1 Comment

We’re exploring the many uses for essential oils for both our home and body. You can see our archive of essential oil posts here. liveseasoned_summer2015_faceoil8-1024x768 copy

Oh my skincare routine has changed throughout the years, and I only wish that I was as gentle on my skin in high school as I am now. Back then I thought my skin was too oily and would never have dreamed of actually applying oil to my face to moisturize and nourish it, instead, I would be drawn to any cleanser that promised to dry out my face. In reality, I’m guessing that all of those harsh, drying products likely irritated my skin, stripped it of its natural oils, and caused it to over produce oil in order to try to hydrate my face and reverse the damage I was doing. Jump ahead ten years, and I slowly came around to the amazingly beneficial characteristics of plant oils for the skin. Jump ahead another couple of years, and I’m now adding some essential oils to my basic routine.

I like to shy away from the camera when it comes to our posts, but if any post calls for a headshot, it’s this one! So I’m putting my face in focus for this post, and hopefully it will stand as a record that I can refer back to when looking at how my skin responds to a few years of essential oil use. I should also mention that I really believe that healthy skin starts from the inside. So while I’ve found these skin oil potions to be effective, I also make it a point to drink plenty of water and eat a well-balanced diet full of fruits and vegetables.

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Wedding Crafts : Purses

by Katie | 4 Comments

This June I’m sharing some of the crafts that we made for my wedding, which was four year ago this month! Last week I showed you the bunting that decorated everything from our reception tent to our ceremony backdrop. Today I’m giving you a glimpse at the clasp purses that I made as gifts for the bridesmaids!

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Natural Bug Sprays

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This is part of our ongoing series on using essential oils for home and body care. You can see our archive of essential oil posts here.

We’re celebrating Pollinator Week around here with a series of pollinator-related posts. When you grab a bottle of bug spray, I’m guessing that “pollinator” is not the first word that you think of, instead, it’s likely “mosquito” “f-ing mosquitos”. Am I right? But guess, what?! Mosquitos are pollinators!

Pollination aside, we will never grow to love the pesky mosquitos, ticks, and fleas. Today we’re sharing a natural, non-toxic bug spray. I find that this works well when the mosquito populations aren’t too high, but I admit, there are still times, particularly in the swampy waters at the shore, that I have to use something containing DEET. What this spray lacks in DEET, it makes up for in its beautiful scent, and in the ability to personalize (there are so many mixing options below!).

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Pollinator Week!

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Today is the start of pollinator week, and we’re always excited for any reason to talk about the role of different organisms in nature, especially when it comes to the variety of species that we are intimately linked to through our food supply. Did you know that 75% of the food we eat is the direct result of pollination. In the US alone, the value of insect-pollinated crops is over $20 billion. But the benefit of pollinators goes well beyond food crops, as they are essential for preserving the biodiversity of native habitats. When talking pollinators, bees often come to mind, but did you know that butterflies, flies, birds, moths, bats, and other mammals are also pollinators? In fact, around the world there are over 200,000 species of pollinators!

In this post we’ll answer some of the big questions about pollinators, why they’re important, why they’re at risk, and what we can do to help them. Throughout the rest of the week, our posts will be tied to pollinators in one way or another. Check back to see what we’re up to!

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Two Bits

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We want to break down these internet barriers and invite you into our lives and we’re hoping you’ll do the same.  You are welcome to share a bit of your week or day in the comments, or if they’re better represented by a photo, tag us on instagram @liveseasoned.

 

Katie here :

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If you’ve glanced at the weather report recently, you may have noticed that Colorado is covered in one big cloud that’s sticking around through tomorrow. It’s wet and grey, and if we don’t look out, we could be carried off by a flash flood. This is a complete 180 from earlier in the week when our days were warm and sunny. On one of those nice days, we went for a hike in Chautauqua. Starting up the the trail and watching the line of hikers both in front of and behind you always makes me laugh. Going for a hike, at least close to the city, is not the peaceful, solitary activity it was when we lived in PA, but once you get up into the trees and the trails branch off, the crowds thin out. They never completely disappear, but you can begin to hear yourself think. I’m not complaining about the crowds, because it’s nice to be surrounded by so many like-minded people, but I still haven’t gotten used to it. That said, after about a year of living here, it was nice to get up to Chautauqua again (we didn’t do much hiking here throughout the winter), and this time have it feel so familiar and like home, as opposed to feeling like I was on vacation in CO, which is what I felt like for so long after having moved here. Has that happened to you? You move to a place that’s so different from where you grew up, that you can’t quite shake the feeling that you’re just on vacation? It’s also slightly strange to me that Alex and Luc are going to grow up in a landscape that’s wildly different form the one I grew up in.

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Mold & Mildew Shower Spray

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This is the first of a multi-part series on using essential oils in the home and on your body. Excited to make some potions? We already have some essential oil uses in our archives, and you can see our introduction to essential oils here. Also, lemons are our ingredient of the season. You can find more lemony-fresh posts here.

Moving into our new house, I had one thing on my mind when it came to the showers : keeping them clean! Let’s be honest, they are never really squeaky clean, but I wanted to be sure that they stayed free of mold and mildew. We have three showers in the house, and they are all tiled and have glass doors, so there are a lot of grout cracks and door crevices to keep my eye on.

With the limited time I have, I knew I wouldn’t be in there scrubbing them each week, so I was on the hunt for a mold and mildew prevention spray that I could use between deep cleans. I found just what I was looking for in my new favorite cleaning resource, The Naturally Clean Home. That is a great book for anyone looking to rid their cleaning routine of chemicals, and it’s particularly helpful if you’re new to many of the natural alternatives as she provides a great overview of what the common ingredients used throughout the book.

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Today’s recipe uses two essential oils and a citrus extract. All three ingredients are powerful antimicrobials, helping to kill mold, mildew, bacteria, and fungus. All of the nasty stuff that you don’t want growing in your shower. Water is used as the diluting agent, because at full strength, the oils and extracts would cause damage to your skin and possibly to some of the surfaces in your shower.

Ingredients & Materials :

  • spray bottle, 16 oz or larger
  • 2 cups water
  • 8-10 drops citrus seed extract (commonly sold in health food stores as grapefruit seed extract)
  • 2 tsp tea tree oil
  • 4-6 drops lemon essential oil

Mix all ingredients together in the bottle and spray on a wet shower surface (a great time is immediately after you shower), paying special attention to cracks and crevices, especially those that are in the darker corners of your shower. I like to give the bottle a good shake before each use, just to be sure that the ingredients are well-mixed.

While this spray does an amazing job of deterring mold and mildew, and even killing the little colonies that start to grow, I’ve found that there are time when I have to add a bit of scrubbing to completely eliminate some spots. When I have them, I love to use magic erasers for this job. I find that at times they are even better than a traditional scrub brush at getting into small crevices and completely removing all signs of mold and mildew.

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When it comes to this potion, I always use the grapefruit extract and tea tree oil, but will vary which other essential oil I’m using depending upon the season. I’ve used peppermint, eucalyptus, and lavender in the past. If you do experiment, I would recommend sticking with an essential oil that has some antimicrobial properties, but off course, you could always add a few drops of other essential oils if you like their aroma.

Now, do yourself and the planet some good : ditch the bleach cleaners and start crafting your own shower spray with essential oils!

Using Essential Oils

by Katie | Leave a comment

This is the first of a multi-part series on using essential oils in the home and on your body. Excited to make some potions? We already have some essential oil uses in our archives.

Wherever I can, I’ve been trying to eliminate chemicals from our home, and introduce more natural alternatives, whether we’re talking cleaning products for the bathroom, cosmetics, or even pharmaceuticals. What I’ve found again and again is that essential oils are often recommended as a natural source for ingredients in many of my replacement recipes. The world of essential oils is vast, and I’m just starting to really explore all that these oils have to offer, but I thought it would be fun to start a little series this summer where I share with you what I’m learning and the useful resources I’ve found both online and off. As I’m just starting this series, I think it’s important to note that even if you’re buying high quality essential oils, while these are natural products, if used incorrectly they can be just as dangerous as manufactured chemicals.

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In this post I wanted to cover some basics about essential oils, focusing on what they are and a few examples of how they can be used. At the bottom of this post I share some of the resources that I’ve found particularly helpful. And we couldn’t end the day without a recipe, so in a second post this afternoon I’ll share one of my favorite potions for keeping our shower clean and smelling fresh.

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Wedding Crafts : Bunting!

by Katie | 2 Comments

Hey there! We can’t believe it, but four years ago in June, Calder and I got married! It was such a fun day, and whenever the topic of our wedding comes up, we always look back on it with fond memories. Just the other day we were telling new friends about our “meat and greet” line, where Calder grilled the steak and salmon and got to say hello to every guest as he served them their main course. While we can’t offer you a fillet of salmon, we thought it would be fun to look back at our wedding and share some of the other homemade elements that we incorporated into the big day.

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{I had to include the photo above, because when do you ever get to use the wedding outtakes?!… and sometimes they’re so cute.}

We had the wedding at my parents’ farm in central PA, and being the hands-on, crafters that we are, everyone in my family was excited to help personalize the wedding. My brother designed and printed our invitations, my mom made the cakes and hand-beaded the sash for my wedding dress, my sisters helped with homemade signage, and styling the dancing barn that our dad had just finished rebuilding, and the list goes on.

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