Plain and Not So Plain – Page 888 – Free Homeschool Books & Resources for Every Family

fun, inexpensive teenage girl gift idea

amy / 06/05/2014

Teenage girls seem to be the easiest to make gifts for. Especially if the girl is into makeup and spa items. Then this gift is perfect gift to make.

We bought a muffin tin and put a cupcake liner inside. We then hot glued nail polish into the liners and stuffed foil confetti strips around the polish

We saved one of the holes for a homemade nail polish remover jar. We cut a sponge into a strip as high as the jar and wrapped it around in a circular snake pattern and put into the jar. We then poured nail polish remover into the jar. You can stick your finger into the hole to remove polish.

We made a raw sugar hand and foot scrub to go along with the polish. Take 1 cup of raw sugar and add 2 T coconut oil. Mix around and place into a container .

To have the smoothest hands or feet apply this with wet hands and rub . I usually purchase a peppermint foot scrub during the summer months to remove all that yucky heel hardness and that still doesn’t seem to work 100%. This my friend is amazing. Try it, you won’t believe at how much better your feet and hands feel. I absolutely love it and recommend it to everyone.

We put the sugar scrub in a jar and placed it into this cup. Topped it with a bath pouf and a straw.

This was a hard item to package without spilling things, so we took a cardboard box lid and covered it with wrapping paper on the bottom. We lay tissue paper inside the lid and put the gifts on top.
Simple and easy.

homemade fruit roll ups

amy / 06/04/2014

Growing up, I remember one of my favorite lunchbox treats were apple fruit roll ups. I don’t even think they make them anymore. But I remember the yummy chewy goodness of apple tasting fruit on a roll. Now that I am a Mom, I try and find foods that are in line with a natural diet. Fruit roll ups would probably not fall into that category. But wait could there be a way….

Well this past fall we were blessed to be able to make hundreds of quarts of applesauce. I had so much that I decided to make some apple butter to go with our oatmeal. Now that it is nearing the fruit season, I wanted to help use some of that extra apple butter up. I decided to make homemade apple fruit roll ups.

It was very simple, I took my jelly roll pan and lined it with parchment paper. I then poured on my homemade apple butter. In my apple butter recipe I used applesauce and raw sugar and baked it down. If you were making your own you can puree any kind of fruit….strawberry and raspberry…..mango and blueberries…….then add some sweetener. You can use honey, raw sugar, or regular sugar whichever you have.

Pour into your parchment lined baking pan. I spread it out to about 1/8 thick. You want it as uniform as you can as it will help in the drying process.

The put in your oven at 180 degrees for about 12-15 hours. I start it at night and let it run through , by morning time it is usually done.

How do you know it is done? It has beads of moisture on top if it, you can peel it off the paper, and when poked in the middle it is hard not sticky.

Let it cool completely. I then cut mine into strips with a pair of cooking shears. I then cut those strips in half.

I roll them up and put them into a container.

I store mine in the refrigerator—because I am freaky and don’t want to worry about not drying it completely and getting some illness to my children:)

I even made a big container and put it in the freezer. When we are ready to eat it, I just take it out and it tastes fine. Here my daughter demonstrates how to eat them—by licking:)