For today is your birthday that's what I've been told

Happy Birthday Braxie! Thank you for bein' a friend (do do do do)!

Love,
Bruce

Thanksgiving!

You might not hear from me and the Brax for a few days...we're going to be very busy Giving Thanks and driving and stuff.

Have a good holiday, dudes! Potatoes are where it's at.

-Bruce

p.s. the secret ingredient is butter.

Bruce,

I decided to take my day off on Thursday this week, because I had a lot to accomplish. I had to go to the gym, buy groceries, pick up some holiday presents, etc. Also, one of my co-workers will be leaving the company after about 6 years. She is awesome, and we will totally miss her! Don't tell anyone, but one of the other directors is making a gift basket for her, and I decided to try my hand at some bath bombs to go in the basket. (Just in case any straight guys read our blog, a bath bomb is a thing you drop in the tub, and it gets all fizzy until it dissolves. It also makes your bath all moisturizing and smells good and stuff)

I got the basic recipe here. The ingredients are as follows:
Baking soda, citric acid, fragrance oils, and witch hazel. Yes, I bought the witch hazel at the family dollar. You also need a squirt bottle for the witch hazel (I just used the "cat discipline" squirt bottle) and some kind of a mold. I used a soap mold for this batch. I bought it at the hobby lobby for $1.50.

An aside: isn't the hobby lobby creepy? There were all these other soap molds in the shape of crosses. Once I bought some breath mints there in the shape of jesus fish. They were cinnamin.

Okay, the first thing you do is combine one part citric acid to two parts baking soda. Where do you buy powdered citric acid, you ask? You can usually find it at a health food store, or I found some at the Anderson's (It's a down-home kind of grocery store combined with a hardware store...it's supposed to be like a general store but corporate) in the canning supplies aisle.

The recipe says to mix 'em real good. Hey, will your mom pay me if I feature a Guenther Trucking mug in every blog post?

Next, you can add your fragrances, and also your coloring if you care to. I decided to opt out of adding coloring. First, I didn't have any powdered color like they used in the recipe. Second, I don't really want to ruin my coworker's life by staining her tub purple or something. She rents.

I decided to use lavender and rosemary oils for the smell. I did about 2 tablespoons of olive oil (because it's moisturizing), and just splash-splash-splashed away with the smelly ones. My whole kitchen smelled awesome! For once, it didn't smell like my downstairs neighbor's crazy meat smell. In the recipe, she uses almond and grapeseed oils instead of olive. I'm imagining other smell combinations for future bombs, like almond vanilla. Oh look out!

Okay, after you combine your colors and your smells, you add your witch hazel. But don't just dump it in your bowl....you have to spray the witch hazel from your squirt bottle into the bowl a little at a time while you stir. This is to make the mix sort of stick together a little bit, but NOT TOO MUCH! If you add too much witch hazel (like I did on the second batch, not pictured), your mix will start to fizz and it will be bad news. I was using both hands and probably my teeth for this step, so there are no pictures.

Finally, when your batch starts to kind of stick together when you moosh it in your hand, it's time to put it in the mold.

Be sure to pack them real tight. That way, you get a rock-hard, sturdy bomb.

For the second, too-fizzy batch, I used a metal muffin tin. Also a bad idea, because it wasn't flexible enough for me to get the bombs out. I had to pry them out with a knife, which made for fizzed-out, misshapen muffin bombs with knife gouges in them. I will not be giving those out as gifts.

After your bombs sit in the molds for about 5 minutes, tap them out so they can air dry.

See that little guy on the right? He'll be my test bomb. I call him "junior."

Place your bombs somewhere the cats can't get 'em, and let them air dry for 4 or 5 hours.

Your kitchen will smell awesome!

It's a scent that will calm even the most savage of beasts:

So there you go: my day-off adventure.

See you next Friday!
Brax

Yuletide clambake

Braxie,

Hey man! It looks like you had crazy times at Halloween. That makes 3 I've missed, and I don't intend to miss another. My Halloween was pretty quiet.

I did a thing today that I am positive some of our readers are going to disapprove of. I decorated for Christmas!

Yes, yes, I know. It's before Thanksgiving. I don't care. Who makes these rules anyway? I'm starting Christmas a by-god week early.

I love Christmas. I don't really keep the Christ in it, though, although if that is your thing, I dig.

Lots of different cultures and religions have big giant holidays in winter, and this is because winter blows. In winter, everyone needs to be around their friends and family, and take a week off work, and do some feasting. It's almost like everyone in the northern hemisphere gets together to say, "Winter blows, let's have a party" every year.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. In fact, I need the winter holidays quite desperately. I loathe winter. So, we put up the tree!

Look at our little tree! When we're older and richer we'll fondly remember this little apartment where we could barely fit a 3 foot tall tree, and we had to put it on top of a file cabinet, and everything came from Family Dollar (except these really nice ornaments which were gifts from my aunts, and which are far too large for the 3 foot tree and are therefore in a box under the table). We will probably remember that really fondly. Actually, I'm looking at my little tree fondly right now, because I like my little apartment, and my tree.

Sister also likes the tree.



This is all old news to Sister, but it is Lucky Lucille's first Christmas, so I'm pretty sure I'll find my nice little tree on the floor tomorrow morning. Oh well, at least the fancy ornaments are under the table in a box.

Happy Holidays!
Bruce

Halloweeeeeeeenn!!

Bruce,

Oh my god, I haven't blogged in like 2 weeks! What is wrong with me? Totally.

I've been keeping pretty busy. The most important thing that happened during the blogging hiatus would be Emily's annual Halloween Extravagnanza! That girl knows how to throw a party...she goes all out! This year's theme was a casino that had burned down. Like from the 20's. It was a lot cooler than I'm making it sound.
L-R: Mother of the year (Jess), Tank Girl (Katie), and burned cigarrette girl (Emily). This is the "before" shot, when everyone's makeup is still fresh. We all kind of stood around eating until people really started showing up. I commented that if it had been 4 years ago, we would have drunk half the keg by now.

My costume was one of those "fortune teller" machines. With the lady inside. I was the lady inside.

I built it out of PVC piping and cardboard, and I stayed up the night before painting it all. I really did write a bunch of fortunes and sell them for quarters. You can see the fortunes tucked into the corset. At the end of it all, I only held on to $.50 though. This picture is from kind of late in the night, and I don't know what I"m trying to do there. But you get the idea. There are no other good, decent, or even ok pictures of me from this night (even though I seriously looked hot), so this is all you get.

KT's brother Jason was Dwight from the Office. His costume was hilarious, yet eerie.

I believe his cell phone ring was even the theme from the office. By sheer coincidence.

Ok, moving on, here's Juan. As a backstory, Juan called me as I was rolling into town for a ride to the party. Since he was already walking towards the house, I told him to just stop into Aladdin's (a crappy restaurant we've all worked for) on the way, and I'd pick him up there. Juan hesitated, and said, "Well, the thing is...I feel so stupid...I'm dressed as the solar system."

He looked so good! Other than Jess and KT, I don't know the other people in this picture too well.

This is my favorite costume for the evening, worn by a girl who works with Emily. She went as a "Casino Lady," and I think the costume speaks for itself. She took Polaroids of everyone all night and gave them away.

The winners of "Funniest and yet most disturbing costume of the year" go to Jessica and Josh.

Our other friend Josh showed up when I was half in the bag....okay, maybe 7/8 in the bag...I am going to publicly state here that i don't get his costume. But he looks spooooooky in this picture!

FInally, here's the shot you've been waiting for. We all had such high, grown up hopes for this party, but it still ended the same way our parties always do:

Chug! Chug! I'm pretty sure we're all dancing to Jolene, too. You can't see me, but I'm pretty sure I'm dancing in the box. Also, that is not Tank Girl's hat, Katie!

So there you have it! Other than Halloween partying, I've been doing a lot of sitting still and knitting. I'm SO excited for Thanksgiving. It will be a super mega blast!

LYLAS,

Brax