Oven-Dried Orange Slices

Did you know winter is typically considered citrus season? Whether you're drying citrus at home for crafts or cocktails (or mocktails!), I highly recommend taking the time to preserve oranges, lemons and more. It's super simple — just make sure you're at home for a few hours because you'll have to leave 'em in the oven for a bit.



Supplies
- Citrus (I dried oranges, but you could use lemons, lime or even grapefruit)
- Baking sheet
- Parchment paper or baking rack
- Sharp knife

Oven-Dried Citrus
1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Slice your citrus into thin rounds, about a quarter inch wide. You can use any sort of sharp knife, but I used a serrated knife to ensure the citrus didn't squish as I was cutting it.
3. You can either line your baking sheet with parchment paper or place a baking rack on top of the sheet to make sure the citrus doesn't stick to the sheet.
4. Cook in the oven for about 3 hours, or until dry to the touch.

That's it! Easy as pie — err.. easy as an orange?

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Snapchat Deer Halloween Makeup

If you're looking for a last-minute, easy-breezy Halloween costume, may I recommend my favorite Snapchat filter??

Katie's going to show us how to do it! And I promise, it's way easier than the mermaid look. (p.s. and the recipe for those deer ears is in my last post, so you're all set to be the cutest Halloweener around.)

Step 1: Apply orange face paint on the lower portion of your forehead and the top bridge of your nose. If you don't have the orange paint, you could use a matte bronzer as well. Below the orange portion, apply white face paint all over your nose and on the sides of your cheeks in the shape of a snout.

Step 2: Color in the tip of the nose, making a "V" shape on the front. You can use a liquid eyeliner to outline the area you will fill in with black face paint — this will make the tip of the nose more likely to stay on and less likely to smudge. Both good things!

Step 3: Using the end of any eyeshadow brush, dip it in white face paint and apply to the forehead above the orange. This will help you get even dots that are the same shape.

Step 4: Apply the orange face paint in round circles on cheeks. If you think about the first time you ever applied blush when you were about 13, that's the shape you're going for here.

Step 5: Apply white eyeliner to your waterline and below the eye to mimic the larger-than-life eyes on the Snapchat filter.

Steps 6-7: Apply eyeliner directly above lashes, and create two wings going up toward the brow with a liquid liner. This is the trickiest part, so we'll share a close-up below.

Step 8: Apply false lashes, and you're good to go! This part can be left off if you choose, but it makes the eyes look even bigger!

This eyeliner look is to mimic the Snapchat filter, but you could just create one large wing if you wanted, and people would still get the i-dear.

Don't forget to snap all your friends when you're wearing your cute costume! What are you going to be for Halloween?!

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Easy DIY Deer Ears

Like I said in my last post, I am all about the easy (but still fun!) Halloween costumes. So I figured I'd show you a quick way to make DIY ears for a deer costume!

This is a really inexpensive DIY, which makes it even better in my opinion. 

And here are the steps!

Step 1: Cut out an orange piece of felt in your desired shape and size. Cut a smaller, off-white piece to be the inside of the ear.

Steps 2-3: Apply hot glue to the back of the smaller felt piece, and glue it to the larger piece.

Step 4: Cut a 1 inch slit up the middle of the felt pieces.

Step 5: Apply a line of hot glue to the left side of the slit you've cut in the felt.

Step 6: Overlap the right side over the left side and glue together. You've got an ear!

Step 7: Cut a small tab the width of the bottom of the ear. 

Step 8: Glue to the front of the ear.

Steps 9-10: Apply hot glue to the back of the tab, fold around and glue to the back of the ear.
Steps 11-12: Use a black marker to outline the top of the ear and give dimension. (Or you can use a liquid eyeliner if you don't have a black marker on hand... No judging!)

Ta-da! Easy as pie, dears.

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Hippie Halloween: DIY Floral Crown

I don't know about you, but I am a little lazy when it comes to Halloween. Okay, really lazy. As a child, I was a ladybug for 3-4 years until I grew out of the costume my grandma made for me, and then I was a "sleepy person" for several years. A "sleepy person" costume consisted of me wearing my pajamas to go Trick-or-Treating. Somehow, people still gave me candy.

This year wasn't any different, and when it came time for me to choose a costume, I wanted to find a way to accessorize my normal clothes into something Halloween-appropriate. Enter the floral crown.

There are lots of different ways to make floral crowns, and I learned to make mine from this post. They're super easy to make, which is good if you're in a rush to get a costume together quickly! First, you need some pretty faux flowers.

Supplies Needed: Wire flowers, Scissors, Floral wire.
Time It'll Take: About half an episode of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.

Cut the wire flowers off of their stems.

Bend the floral stems into a crown shape, sizing it to fit your head. Attach each stem to the next by coiling the wire around where the two pieces meet. The wire is pretty unnoticeable, but it helps if you can hide the it behind a flower or leaf. And there you have it! Easy as pie. I wore a vintage maxi skirt, a lace top, and a denim shirt, but lots of clothes would work well to give off the hippie vibe. 

 Hippie Halloween! Peace, y'all. 

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