This week in photos

The rest of our time in Jena as well as our trip to Dresden yesterday!

Back in Jena

First couple days....

...My heart is happy!

Craft Fair this Saturday!

I'm setting up shop this weekend at this craft fair! Hope to see you there!!!!!

My Homemade Dish Soap!

Step 1: Start with 1 cup of castile soap (mine is Dr. Bronners unscented)

Step 2: After you add your 1 cup of castile soap into your air tight container- add about 1/2 cup of water to the mix.

Step 3: Get your distilled white vinegar and add about 1/4 cup to the mix. The vinegar acts as a grease cutter and odor eliminator.

Step 4: To make your soap smell all kinds of yummy pick out your favorite essential oil and add just a few drops to your soap. I chose peppermint, yummmmm!

How easy was that!?! Let me know how it goes! It's earth friendly and money saving! How can you go wrong, really? By the way, all your need is just a few substantial drops of this in a few inches of dish water to do most of your dishes! This stuff is pretty hardcore and honestly, suds are not at all needed in the cleaning process.  Let me know how it works out for you or if you have any other dish soap recipes!

xoxo elyse

My yummy (non fat) granola!

Step 1: Start with 6 cups of rolled oats in a big mixing bowl. I just went over to Aldi and got a big thing of Quaker oats and used that :)

Step 2: add a pinch of this and that to the oats. I used about 2 tsp of cinnamon, 1 tsp of ginger and 1 tsp of allspice. I probably added a bit more of those through out the mixing process. It all depends on your taste preference!

Step 3: mix up 3 egg whites and pour em' in! (no pic for this...)

Step 4: Add about 1/4 cup of agave nectar (or whatever all natural sweetener you prefer)  And mix it all up!!!

Step 5: After it is all mixed up well, pour the oats onto a larger cookie sheet. Spread them all out evenly and throw into the oven set at 300 degrees F.

Bake them for 30-40 minutes. Half way into the baking process, take them out and stir them up a bit.

Step 6: Once they are all nice and dark, yummy smelling and done take them out and let sit until they are all cooled off. Once they are cool you can start adding your dried fruit!!! I used a combo of dried blueberries, strawberries, cranberries and red cherries. (sounds amazing doesn't it...?!?!)  Again, Aldi has a lot of great dried fruit at wonderful prices.

At the end of the granola making adventure this is what you should end up with!!!

 ... absolutely delicious low fat, low sugar granola!!! It's amazing with yogurt or with milk!   

I keep it up on my fridge along with my yummy nuts and dried berries <3  healthy snack heaven!

PLEASE let me know if you have any questions! Have you tried making it? Let me know! What are your favorite granola recipes??


xoxo elyse

With Love, From Illinois

I was featured in another treasury this week! I love getting to be featured in treasuries and seeing how my creation fits in with a theme that I didn't know existed :) I also find it interesting when the creator picks an item of mine just for the color palette of the background of the photo or something like that and not necessarily for any reason having to do with my item. That spring time treasury that I blogged about below was kinda like that.


Well anyway, enjoy!

In the midst....

...of the craziest stressed out time of my whole life thus far- I have still been able to, somehow, find joy in the little things :-) One of my dearest loveliest friends is getting married in a couple of months and her shower was on Saturday! So much fun- It was a very needed time away from homework and unpacking to be giggly and crazy with girlfriends <3

Also, on the same day as the shower was my 6 month dreadiversary! (dreadie post coming soooonnnn!) I'm still totally loving my dread head and can't believe it's been 6 months already! I can honestly say that I DO NOT miss my "normal" hair at all! Even after 6 months of the craziness on top of my head :-)

My wonderful Huz took this last night- notice my beautiful green wall... <3   

It's been HOTTTTT around here lately! At least it seems hot, after the bone chilling cold winter we got through this year. In my world, any day is a good day for a smoothie, but especially when it's super warm outside- it's smoothie making time for sure. For dinner last night I made up a huge blueberry smoothie for us and then we hung out outside on our picnic table in our new yard and enjoyed having a home and a yard to sit out in :-) I especially enjoyed my awesome mug that a friend gave me for a house warming gift!- She found it at a thrift store- my fave!

Hope everyone is having a good start to the week!