So just be aware, this page has no set plans!
May 16th, 2013
Went out and picked some jasmine flowers to save for my soaps and infused oils. I hope I have enough for the year now, cause I won't have another chance till next May.
This is just one of the containers. My husband helped and we put some into paper bags already for drying. So when I say my stuff is natural - I really mean it. This is hand picked from my very own yard. No spraying has been done on these bushes. Even came across some love bugs mating. Sorry for the interruption bugs. =)
May 17th, 2013
Never enough time!
Let's see..
- went to town - needed to get some bananas, the two left are very brown, stopped at the bank for cash to get Gracie spayed next week & renew my driver's license, put some gas in the truck, and picked up a prescription.
- did a little house work - so much more could be done. lol
- made 4 quarts of "Set it and forget it" yogurt - this time I'm trying out adding powdered milk to thicken it some. That works so well in the other yogurt.
- went and grabbed the weekly amounts of compost from the other house holds (and the cat carrier from Lorrie for Gracie) - there are 4 houses here all filled with family, and 3 of us save our coffee and other kitchen scraps for composting. Chad and I fixed up a couple large plastic totes that have worms in them.
- checked the worms in the compost bins - every week after gathering the compost I check and see how the worms are doing and if they need feeding. Turned the dirt some, and they look fine for this week.
- grated up some basic soap I made for some laundry soap - Laundry soap recipe is: 1 basic soap bar (one of my handmade bars, but you could use fels naptha soap), 1 cup borax, 1 cup arm & hammer washing powder, and 1 cup arm & hammer baking soda.
- and still need to make some banana bread. Forget it... I"m gonna play runescape for now. lol
May 22nd, 2013
Pine Tar x 2 - coffee w/grounds, coffee without/ground
May 23rd, 2013
Green Tea & Cinnamon (Pus)
May 26th, 2013
Pine Tar & Coconut Milk Swirl
May 28th, 2013
Oatmeal & Honey (came out crumbly,suspect lye heavy - but not 100% sure - one of those times when you say, ok, if I actually knew what I did wrong I never would have done it in the first place lol)
May 29th, 2013
Goat's Milk
May 30th, 2013
Coconut Milk
May 31st, 2013
Coffee & Cream
June 1st, 2013
Rebatch Oatmeal & Honey
June 2nd, 2013
New batch Oatmeal & Honey
June 18th, 2013
Coconut Milk x 2
June 22nd, 2013
Put 2 baskets of soap at the flea market.
June 23rd, 2013
Wow, what a day - mostly depressing, but had some good news too.
First off, I made 2 batches of Goat Milk soap and they both failed! I think the reason was from stirring it with a stick - just some stick we had found and taken the bark off a long time back. It looked like there was some sort of reaction and it bubbled all up. Second... I broke my stick blender. That really upset me. I just bought the thing a month ago, and I've burned up the motor. I'd heard I needed to be careful to not do this, but I didn't think it would happen that easy. Granted the motor was hot, but it wasn't stinking or smoking. Sounds dumb, but I didn't think I was in that much danger of breaking it.
Now for the good news. It doesn't outweigh the bad, but it helped pull me out of the "omg I fail" mood. I found out that I had several sales of soap down at the flea market, and one of the buyers came back this morning to tell the owner of the market how awesome the soap is. I'll have to go down tomorrow and see how many sold, maybe put more in the baskets, and see if they need straightening out.
The "failed" soap can be salvaged... most likely. I'll just have to shave it down and melt it in the crock pot, then put it back in a mold. The hard part is that it will be more difficult to get it to pour into my round mold.
So today is one of those days I had to remind myself.... don't beat yourself up for failures, just take stock of what happened, learn from it if you can, and move forward.
June 24th, 2013
Ok, turns out my Goat Milk soap is not ruined... yah! It had this terrible bubble come out the top that looked like the whole soap had done some strange chemical reaction. But I got it out of the mold today and it's fine, other than just the top.
Need to decide what soaps to make today. I'm thinking Coffee & Cream.... that's a nice one.
July 6th, 2013
I've been busy the last two weeks since I posted.
- made 2 batches of Coffee & Cream on the 24th
- made 2 batches of Oatmeal & Honey on the 27th
- did house sitting/ pet babysitting for a friend from the 28th-July 1st
- made 2 batches of Green Tea & Cinnamon on the 1st
- fixed up a new work area in the garage for soap making
- then made 2 batches of Coconut Milk, and 2 batches of Pine Tar soap today
I love my new work area. It's in the garage, which doesn't have heating or cooling, but I didn't mind the heat. There must have been enough of a breeze coming through. This is my current craft room, before pulling anything out:
The space is barely workable. Seems I'm constantly shifting things around to find a clear space to do a project.
This is (was) my soap area.
Only reason I had the ironing board out was for extra table space. lol
Then here is my sewing area.
I obviously can't sew anything there without moving things out of the way. Then the worst area of all - we'll call it "storage space" - I almost didn't want to take a picture of it. It's such an embarrassment. It makes me look like a hoarder, but in reality, that's the rest of my crafting things - fabric, beads, pillow stuffing, embroidery threads, ribbon, and more. In the house we moved from a little over a year ago I had a much larger crafting space and all this stuff wasn't a problem. Now it's a big time problem.
But now that we've cleaned up the garage I have lots of room!
Garage once we cleaned it.
And garage once I set it up for soap making (and after making 4 batches).
I'm really gonna love this! But I told my husband I've got jobs for him now..... more outlets & more soap drying trays. I'm ready to start full production on my soap making!!
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