Best Wishes for the New Year

Christmas 2011 is officially behind us and now we look forward to the new year!  Wishing you and yours the best 2012 possible.

Simple Summer Pleasures

     Summer has crawled near to it’s end with the activities of Fall waiting to sprint ahead with the beginning of school as it’s signal.  Before the passing of the baton it’s nice to reflect on the simple pleasures summer brought this year.

      First there was the garden.  It did well at the beginning of the year until even daily watering could not stop the tomatoes from cooking on the vine.  The record high heat soon made skelatons of the vegetable plants and along with them hopes for enough produce for canning.   The very few tomatoes that did survive were treasured and eating them was spread out to make their enjoyment last.

     Time spent on the porch was cut back until evenings as the daily heat made leaving the air-conditioning inside seem out of the question.   Watering restrictions as the summer wore on cut back on the beauty around us as most lawns are a winter-brown.

     Even summer projects took a backseat as the heat had it’s way this year.  But one task survived and that was the revitalizing of a wooden bench.  The boards were removed, sanded and stained.  Finally they were sealed to with stand the weather.  All iron parts were given a fresh new coat of black paint and now it sits proudly awaiting use. 

     So this summer was about finding pleasures indoors.  There’s always good coffee served in an antique milk-glass mug to greet me.  The tea-towels were decorated with fabric pens and later were over-dyed in various colors to perk up the kitchen.  As an old-fashioned baker, I use lots of tea-towels in the kitchen as they are lint-free and light-weight.

     And then there is this little companion who makes being inside so enjoyable.  A beautiful cat who “talks” when she wants a drink fresh from the sink and who is keeping constant vigilance around meal-time. 

      Over all it’s been a good summer.   Hopefully Fall will be even better and bring cooler weather and bring much needed rain to our part of the country.  What simple pleasures did summer bring you?

Rocky Mountain Memories

     This summer we were blessed to travel to the Rocky Mountains where the weather was cooler and we “lived” more in one week than the rest of the whole year.  Here are just a few of the pictures we captured, some of total strangers, that caught our attention. 

     Our time spent with family and in nature was energizing and a good investment as our lives were greatly enriched.  Hope your summer has brought you many wonderful sights this year!

Winter’s Chill

     Last night we were reminded of winter’s chill as we lit a fire in the fireplace to help keep the furnace from running non-stop.  This morning we were greeted by a dusting of snow underneath which there was a coating of ice.  At first light I was up and outside taking pictures and found out my daughter had already beat me to seeing the snow as she left her mark at the front door.

     The animals are sleeping by the hearth to get warm but occasionally take to a window sill to get that added dose of sunshine.

     Even the rain buckets froze preventing the neighborhood cats that stop by from time to time from getting a drink.  Luckily a thaw will be coming soon and everything will get back to normal.

     Spring isn’t that far away with thoughts of seed starting for a garden so this little winter chill is certainly more tolerable with that in mind.  Keep warm where ever you are and remember this: winter will pass!

Fall turns the corner of the year.

     Fall is here and with it is the cooler weather, a welcome relief to the long, hot summer.  This time of year makes me think of gathering in  . . . food, friends, every last bit of daylight . . . and taking stock of what I’ve been blessed with in life.

Autumn, like life, brings many changes.

     Most of all I am thankful for the renewed friendships and re-aquaintances I made while in the town of my childhood.   It was reassuring to see that others, too, have learned to rely on God’s grace to get them through life’s rough patches.  Also it was such a blessing to make new friends and to be encouraged by their wisdom and gentle reassurances.  God is good and it’s just a matter of taking the time to recognize the beauty that He inserts in my life daily and thanking Him for it.  Keeping my focus on the goal as I seek to live a life pleasing to Him is what helps to keep me from getting distracted.   Remember Him who brought the blessings in the first place, even when times are tough. 

     “Thank you, God, for those You have brought into my life who have brought me encouragement, kindness, gentleness, and insight.  Your timing is always right on time.  Amen.” 

     I hope you have a wonderful Autumn and many blessings during this time of the year!

Goat Milk Batches for Spring

I really enjoy goat milk soaps so thought I would make some for spring.   I made these five batches this past week.

Goat Milk batches, some with soap shreds added, gave me a chance to practice swirling.

 This batch of men’s soap is scented with a custom blend of fragrances from Meadow Mountain Sage.  Knowing these fragrance oils tend to darken the soap, I decided to add a black onyx swirl to keep a masculine theme going.

Celebration soap for men with a black onyx swirl.

The batch below has soap shreds added, but thought I would still practice my swirling. 

These are the last 3 batches of Goat Milk soaps:  on the left is a yellow-swirled soap scented with Fresh Lemon (type) fragrance oil; in the middle is a red burgundy swirled soap scented with Attar of Roses fragrance oil; and on the right is a custom blend of 3 fragrance oils using purple, blue and pink to swirl. 

3 Goat Milk soap batches ready for spring.

Thank you for looking and hope you have a chance to try a goat milk soap one day if  you haven’t already!

Finally! Swirls all the way through the Soap!

I’ve been trying to work on making the swirls in my soap go all the way through the bar.  I came across a wonderful blog entry that showed making swirls in soap and I studied it and went from there.  Here’s the link: http://blog.thesage.com/2009/06/29/making-soap-with-becky/#more-3013.  I didn’t have a rubber spatula with a curved tip so I tried to find something that might have a similar affect of lifting the soap from the bottom while swirling.  So I ventured to the local Dollar Tree store and found a topping scoop that I thought might work.

Topping Scoop

 Here is a picture of the bottom of the swirled slab of soap once it set up enough to be unmolded.

Bottom of swirled soap slab.

After cutting: Success!  Swirls all the way through the bar. 

Cut bars of soap with swirls going through the bar. Scented with Green Irish Tweed fragrance oil.

Thank you to TheSage.com for posting such a wonderful example to learn from!

Shedding the “fur” for Spring Soap

Happy Spring!  I was busy making soap yet again and had some difficulty with one batch in particular.  I was trying out a new mold and didn’t have a top for the mold so I didn’t wrap it as I usually do to force it into gel stage.  So I thought I’d be bright and turn on the oven to warm, then turn it off and put the mold in there so it would be nice and warm, right?  Well, my intentions were good anyway.  Once it finally started to gel it went on “super-gel” mode and ended up with an ashey-type top when all was said in done.  I had previously only seen ash resulting in a white-ish top but this retained it’s color, only a lighter version of the color.  So here are some pictures of what I learned from this little experiment.  Won’t be trying that again anytime soon!

These are the same two bars having been planed to remove the "fur".

The batch was salvagable after all. The two on the left were cleaned with rubbing alcohol due to the textured tops. The others were planed.

 Thank you all for looking at my “furry” soap.  Hopefully it won’t happen again!

Soapin’ for Spring

This past weekend was busy.  Made 7 batches of soap trying new recipes.  A few weren’t as successful as I’d hoped as I had too much water in my recipes and it took a lot longer to get to the point of cutting and trimming.  I’ll have to reformulate and try again another time.  Now that I’m finally to this weekend and am not at work I had the sun to help me out with taking some photos.  Here are some of last weekend’s soaps:

Thank you for looking!  Hope you liked them.

New Soap

Decided to try a layered soap made with brewed Tea.  Made 3 different batches, using different oils in each batch, and a different kind of brewed tea in each batch.  And this was the result:

Three Batch Tea Soap Layered