Creativity!

Between pregnancy, new motherhood, pregnancy, work, and being sick, it feels like it's been forever since I've had time for many personal creative pursuits.  Not to say motherhood doesn't open up a whole new world of creative thinking!

But over the last few weeks, I've taken on a few new creative projects.  First, a friend of mine was having a shower for her second baby who is due in a few weeks.  Since we met when we were both learning to feed our firstborn, I thought breastfeeding survival kits would be a great gift!

I was really happy with how the project came out.  Very rarely does my execution match my creative vision.  Also, I was happy to take on a project I knew I could successfully complete in my limited time.

Although I rarely wrap particularly pretty gifts, I did my best to match my little bag bows:

Inspired, when Alyssa called to tackle a new project, I signed on for that one too!  So we picked a night to set about destroying our kitchen being creative as we have done so many times before.

This time, we tackled a recipe for solid perfume that Alyssa had found.

It was a relatively simple project.  Alyssa grated the beeswax.

My biggest contribution was the creation of an effective and easy to use double boiler.  This was slightly more complicated than it seems at first.  Because the finished concoction cools rather quickly, we needed something shallow and easy to pour from.  A bowl was too deep, many of the other options had ledges, but I was happy with how it worked out and it wasn't too tedious to clean between scents.

Another challenging aspect was finding appropriate containers.  We didn't find exactly what we were after, but these worked okay.

In the end, I'm very hapy with the results.  We only used a few ingredients, didn't make too much of a mess and compared to our attempt at cutting wine bottles using string and fire, it was very very successful!

Not nearly so violent as this picture would make you believe.