me, rachel
Don't you just hate the feeling of rough skin? I do. It's gross, and scratchy, and desert-like. No, I don't like desert skin. But I use this amazing thing on my skin that is much more dessert and much less desert. And I make it myself! It's super easy, and smells good.

All it is, is sugar and oil.

Simple, huh? I use brown sugar and olive oil, but you can use white sugar and vegetable oil, or any combination of the above. I have heard that baby oil clogs pores, so I don't use that. But I have no idea if that's true or not.

Basically, you get a jar and put some brown sugar in it (not too full! you can always add more later, but you can't take it away!). Then you pour some oil on top and mix mix mix! You want it to be sort of a paste, not quite solid and not too runny. If it's too runny, add more sugar. Too dry? Add more oil.

Then you scrub it on in the shower (its an amazing exfoliate!) and be sure to rinse it off, or you'll be all sticky! I use it before I shave, so that I have sweet smooth legs (pun intended)!

Go ahead, give it a try! Your skin likes a sweet treat as much as you do!
me, rachel

For the first two years of our relationship, Dave and I were long-distance sweethearts. He left for college, and came back one month later declaring that he couldn’t get me off his mind, and would I be interested in dating him? Naturally, after crushing on him for two years, I wanted nothing more! But it was still a hard decision. After all, he was going to school five hours away! I was crazy about him, but I was afraid that the distance would be too much for such an attractive young man suddenly surrounded by hundreds of attractive, eligible young ladies.

But, obviously, he stuck with me! We went through two years of separation, during which time he would come home about once a month and take up residence on my parent’s couch, since his parents don’t live in the States most of the time. At first, the longest time we were apart was seven weeks over our first Christmas, when he spent three weeks in Zimbabwe visiting his parents. Then, last summer he was gone for 11 weeks. I thought I was gonna die. He was on a traveling team for school, and they toured the East Coast. Last summer I rarely went to sleep before 2:00 am, because I would wait up for him to call me so we could talk…which could never happen before his host family went to bed.

That summer, I held on to the fact that at the end of the summer, we’d be going to the same school and I could see Dave every day. It was such a blissful feeling to move in that first day. I was sad to leave my parents for the first extended time in my life, but I was so excited to be near my Mister that it didn’t matter. I just knew that we’d be together every day, and then we’d get married, and we’d never have to do long distance again. Halleluiah!

So guess what? Today I got up at 6:45. In the morning. I didn’t realize morning existed before nine. But I got up at 6:45 to say good bye to Dave for yet another summer of long distance. Like all the other times, I’m terribly sad he’s gone, but I’m glad for him because it’s for a good reason. I mean, he has a full time job! Which is amazing in itself in this economy. And this is a great job, he’s gonna love it!

But I miss him.
me, rachel
Did you know that the average wedding in the US costs $27,000? That’s actually more than one year at the very expensive Christian university I attend. And I can’t afford to go there. This whole wedding planning thing will be oh so fun.

So, how do I go about tackling this business? I started by registering for all the best wedding websites out there. They have planning pages, and galleries of gowns, and bunches of bouquets, and all the dresses they have listed are designer. Which means they cost on average this: $$$, and more often this: $$$$. What exactly those dollar signs mean, I don’t know. All I know is that they scare me a little bit. Because I’m pretty sure my entire budget consists of this: $. Oh this will be fun.

So when I realized that these wedding websites are catering either to the wealthy socialite princesses who have billionaire Daddies willing to cater to their every whim, or the normal middle-class ladies who have no apparent problem with taking on loans rivaling that of our national debt, I decided that this may not be the best place for me to get all my ideas.

So I started looking at what their ideas were, and stumbled across this article titled “The $10K Wedding Budget Challenge.” Here, the discussed how they challenged wedding planners in different places across the country to plan beautiful weddings on only ten thousand dollars. While I found some of the things listed here somewhat useful, I found two main problems with this idea. One, the cost of hiring a wedding planner to plan the entire shebang costs upwards of $40,000 (four times as much as the actual budget for these weddings…). Second, $10K is still not small enough to reflect my budget. Now, I am confident that I can plan my wedding on my budget, and that it will still be gorgeous, but I don’t quite know where to begin! It seems to me that any vendor prefers to cater to heiresses. I can’t imagine why no one would be interested in someone like me, hoping for big savings, not looking to shell out millions.

Man, I should go into the wedding planning business. I’d be rich!