Cooking Bacon

Hi every one, today I am going to share with you an easy tip on cooking bacon.  You know that when you cook bacon, it can be a bit messy with all the oil over your stove top and your bacon curling and getting stuck to the other bacon strips.  It does not look presentable on the table when you have guests over, well here is a tip to have your bacon strips look like they came out of a picture on a magazine and still be tasty.

What you will need is:

1. Cookie sheet or flat baking pan
2. Aluminum foil
3. Bacon
4. (Optional) Cookie cooling rack

Line your baking sheet with the foil.
Place cookie rack in the baking pan.
Spread the bacon parallel to each other so that they don't stick to one another as you see here.

You may use this method as well if you do not have a cookie cooling rack.

Place it in the oven at about 400 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes depending on your oven.  Let it bake in there until crisp or however you like it.  Once done, place on paper towel sheet to drain excess oil and voila!

Now that is an easy way to cook your bacon and no mess!  Hope you enjoyed this tip.

How to Make Homemade Sugar Scrub

Many of us are busy parents, grandparents, working, stressed... so sometimes we all deserve a little spa treatment.  With prices climbing and time being so limited, we sometimes don't get that pampering opportunity.  Although there are many commercial sugar scrubs in the market that are absolutely divine, sometimes you may run out of your favorite scrub or may need to cut personal expenses.  There are many homemade spa recipes that you may use to get that little personal luxury, so why not make your own!

I have tried a few recipes and found this to be one of the easiest and most functional for my needs.  I prefer raw brown sugar over white sugar,  because I have sensitive skin and the raw brown sugar has a thicker texture compared to the refined white sugar.  This is a basic recipe, but you may try different variations, adding your own personal fragrance, personal oils etc...Just play with it until you get the perfect scrub that is right for you.

  

The ingredients that you will need are as follows:

-1 jar with lid 

-1 cup Raw Brown Sugar or white

-1 cup  Jajoba oil or Fractionated Coconut Oil  (good for skin)

-1 tsp Vitamin E Oil
-1 tbsp Aloe Vera  (Optional)

- 1/2 teaspoon of your choice of Essential Oil (Optional), I use Young Living and Do Terra oils.

To avoid making a mess, I mix the scrub directly in the jar.

To begin, take the sugar and carefully pour it into the jar;
 next, add the oil and pour slowly until sugar absorbs it.
Add vitamin E, aloe vera, and the rest of the ingredients.
  Take a spoon or small spatula and mix it well.
  Depending on how thick or watery you like your scrub,
adjust the amount of sugar and oil until you get the consistency you want.
I like mine a bit watery.   

 Now you are all done.

Use the scrub in the shower or tub.
Massage the scrub in a gentle circular motion on rough patches,
this removes dead skin, the scrub is also great for ingrown hair.
 Rinse with warm water.
  I love using this scrub on my feet and hands too.

 Enjoy your scrub!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Miscellany Monday

Grab it and Link up your random Musings!

{ONE}  Good Morning  everyone!  I'm not doing well this morning, at all, so I'm going to tag team with my hubbie and he is going to write my Miscellany Monday from his perspective.  Show him love and comment on what he writes.  I am off to have my tea and lay down.  Have a wonderful Monday and a warm welcome to my new readers.  I'm so happy to see you here and will visit you all as soon as I start feeling better. Me!

Now here's Mikey my love & best friend.

  {TWO}  Umm...good morning everyone.  While my beautiful wife takes time to rest and hopefully get back on her feet, I've decided to take a day off from work to help with our 4 year old "tornado" and whatever she needs me to do.  Our little one did not go to school today either due to his asthma/cold  which has been an issue this past weekend.

  {THREE}  If you haven't been told, my wife and I have known each other since the 1st grade.  We were both raised in Brooklyn, NY but took different paths in life in our teenage years until we were, by design from the Lord above, to meet up again in our early 20's to remain together forever...together 14 years now, married 11.  I AM VERY FORTUNATE to have her as my partner in life and VERY HAPPY!

  {FOUR}  I am a helicopter instructor pilot for the army working in Alabama, which makes this very tough because we live in Florida.  I commute 280 miles one-way every weekend to see my lovely family and we are praying that something falls into place whereby we will stop this "being apart thing".  It has to deal with the housing market which, unless you have been secluded in a cave somewhere, understand that I don't have to go into detail.  :)

  {FIVE}  These are trials that has been set forth for a reason but has made us a stronger unit throughout.  I pray that either I can find something here in Jacksonville so we won't have to move or someone buys this home so we can be together in Alabama.  Either way, it doesn't matter to me as long as we are together right?

  {SIX}  I would like to say thank you to all for making this what I would call "a place of serenity and support" for my wife.  She is constantly saying how wonderful the people who comment and support her are. That makes me happy to know that.  That she is not alone in times where we sometimes feel we are, although we know that we are not because of our Father above. 

{SEVEN}At any rate, I hope I didn't bore you too much.  First time doing this and just wanted to help.  Thank you all again.    Have a great week.

Mr. M

How to Germinate Apple Seeds

People have asked me how I germinated my apple seeds, on today's post I will explain how.  

For me, the following method has worked wonderfully. 

 First, take the seeds of an apple(s) and  place your seeds in a damp paper towel (not soaked), fold the paper towel covering your seeds.  Place your damp paper towel in a plastic zip lock bag.  

Place your plastic bag in the refrigerator; the best place would be the little cubicle on the side of the door of the fridge.  It will take a couple of weeks before you start to see the seed(s) sprout.  After your seeds have sprouted, they will look like this, perhaps smaller, I left them in longer.

When they have sprouted like the above, plant them in soil.  For the first days after planting, water just a little every day (one or two teaspoons).  After that, wait for the soil to dry completely before watering again.  The first leaves to appear are called cotyledons, they are similar to the shape of the seed and will eventually fall off.  

Keep the plant away from heat; temperatures that are too high may hurt the young tree.

This is after a month.

(this picture provided by RBERENGUEL)

This is after five to six months.

There you have it!

If you have questions please contact me.

Enjoy and Happy Planting.  

Linking to:
Live,Laugh, Linky Thursday

Scrapbook Winner!!

We have reached 200 followers and have randomly selected the winner.  Congratulations to Heather (commenter 30) for winning the Scrapbook Album.  I will e-mail a notification.  Thank you all for participating, it was fun and will be doing it again soon!

How to Make Paper Bunting

It's that time again, rain, rain, rain which in my house means "Get your Craft On".  My son  loves to get crafty, especially if scissors and strings are involved.  Don't worry, he has the rounded tip safety scissors and I supervise him at all times.  Since this craft had a lot of cutting, I did the cutting for him and he did everything else.

For this project you will need, 

construction paper or any pretty printed or colored paper you have on hand,  Scissors, Yarn the length you wish, Small hole punch, and Crayons or markers.

1-Create a triangle template to the desired size.

2- Trace a triangle template unto the construction paper.  Bend the top half of each flag and then trim the sides, so they match the triangles edges.   Now you will have triangular shaped paper.

3- Next take the hole puncher and punch holes on each corner on the short flat side of the triangle(you should have only two holes per triangle).  Let your little one draw on the triangles or write words, their names etc...

4-  After all the triangles have their holes and have been decorated by your child/children, thread the string through one hole then the other.  Start inserting each triangle through the string.  In order to keep it in place you may use scotch tape to stick the string to the paper.  Little man loved inserting the triangles and when he saw what the outcome was, he was thrilled.  He is so happy to have done this all on his own. 

We hung it in his room and he loves it.

Try this at home with your kiddos, they will enjoy it.

For other cute ideas you can try printed scrapbook paper, vintage book sheets, and even fabric.

Happy crafting everyone!

Monday Musings

On this Monday morning I am sharing my random post to help make interesting the mundane, here I go;

{1} 

I am so tired this morning, it is the first day of pre-school and last night I returned from a 4.5 hour drive, (9 hours in total) to look at a house that my husband is interested in.  I did manage to get something done though, I finished a few butterfly pendant necklaces and posted them in my shop.  Go check them out!

{2}

I have no words on this random Monday, my brain is on overload, but look at these cute Shabby Chic glass magnets from Etsy.  

{3}

Today is the first day of school for my little one.  We are so excited!  He looks adorable with his cute little back pack.  Today I will also have a meeting with a Property Manager to sign my life away in the hope of finding  good tenant(s).  It is such a frightening  thing, not knowing if your property will be taken care of  after putting so much into it, but what can you do in a market like this?  I am so stressed with this whole thing trying to sell, trying to rent, trying to find a place in our new location, all stress, so...  

{4}

My little guy and I went to our favorite place.  Oh yes and what fun we always have!

Thank you for stopping by and leaving your comments, they make me feel so much better!

Eye Poetry

Happy Friday everyone!  For today's post I wanted to share with you these incredible photographs.  I was browsing through Etsy, (one of my favorite things to do), and  I spotted the most beautiful, soothing, creative, want to jump into the picture, photographs!  All I could think of was, Wow!  They are so beautiful!  The creator of these lovely photos is Irene Suchocki.  She enjoys experimenting with different styles and techniques, both in camera and in her digital darkroom.

If you have a free second,  I encourage you to visit her shop "Is Photography Poetry for the Eyes"...it's really poetry for the eyes.

Have a wonderful weekend!

New Comments System on Blogger

Blogger is simply on a role right now.  I showed you on my last post about viewing your stats, today I came across another new feature and when I write new, I mean it just came up a few hours ago.  Let me introduce you to Comment Spam Filtering.  

 Blogger has integrated Google's spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. 

Like myself, some of you will notice the new "Comments" tab, if you haven't, give it a bit of time, it takes a while to roll out to all bloggers.  In the Comments tab there is a Spam sub tab that shows all the comments that are likely spam.

You can help improve blogger's ability to automatically detect spam comments by checking your Spam Inbox and deleting spam comments and marking "real comments" that may have been flagged as spam, as "Not Spam".  To read more about this new feature go here.

Blogger Stats on your Dashboard!

Was anyone aware of this new feature on blogger?  I just came across it recently and I have to say that it is a wonderful thing to have.  Many of you may have been using Google Analytics or some third party tracking scripts for monitoring your blog statistics.  Now blogger has made it easier for you.  You can get stats of your blog right on your dashboard, isn't that brilliant!   Did I mention that there is no need for widgets or codes?  Even more brilliant!  Unfortunately it is still not available on your main dashboard, but you may view your stats on the Blogger Draft Dashboard.  For the scoop on how to view and more click here.  I personally think it is better than the third party trackers out there, it has so much information, I just love this new feature.  Thank you Blogger Plug Ins for providing this information.  

Was this information helpful?

Moment of Reflection

Deuteronomy 6:4

"Hear, Oh Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!"

Through Moses, God gave the people a choice whether or not they wanted to continue to live in relationship with him.  They enthusiastically said yes.  The one condition that God gave them was that God must be first in their lives.  Nothing or no one can be given greater priority.  God has given us that same condition.  We are tempted everyday to let other people and things take God's place in our life.  At those times we can remember Moses' instruction to the Hebrew people and join in an enthusiastic yes! to God.

What is it that most distracts you from putting God first in your life?

K & Company Scrapbook Giveaway! (Ended)

My last post " Get Inspired" disappeared, I cannot retrieve it and I am so sorry about that!  But I do have some good news,  I am finally going to host my first Giveaway!!

I am giving away to one lucky winner this K & Company Scrapbook photo album.  The photo album and the scrapbook collide in this fantastic hybrid product! You can scrap special photos fast with pre-made layouts or slide photos into coordinating display slots. Plus, these designer pages feature beautiful spots for journaling the details, too. 

I love this Scrapbook,  it is ready to showcase 82 standard 4x6 photographs, each album includes 18 designed, dimensional scrapbook pages and 32 photo album pages. Just add photos!

Want to win?  Here's How to Enter!

-Click this link and Subscribe to Inspirations by D by Email and let me know about it by leaving a comment below, otherwise you cannot be counted.  Non subscribers will not qualify.   (The winner will be selected by a random number generator)

Extra Entries (Optional):

*Please leave a separate comment for each thing you do for it to be counted!

- Follow this Blog (Inspirations by D)

- Tweet this giveaway by tweeting "Scrapbook Album GIVEAWAY from @inspirationsbyd at         http://inspirationsbyd.blogspot.com" 

- Post this giveaway on your Blog

- Facebook this giveaway

- Follow me on Twitter @inspirationsbyd

*Please leave a separate comment for each thing you do for it to be counted!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Heather (30) Commenter is the Winner.

Decorative Push Pins

Inspirations by D Etsy

Spice up your cork boards or bulletin boards with decorative glass push pins!
Go to the Inspirations by D shop to view more items.