Art Challenge Day 3: Soapmaking

For the past 2 years, I've made our own soap and it has become one of my favorite things to do.  it's a real labor of love, involving prime ingredients and 4-6 weeks of curing, just to get about 14 bars or so a batch.  But, it's worth it.

I just cut a new batch of soap (pink grapefruit and peppermint) into bars today after making it on Monday.  I use a basic recipe that contains some amazing ingredients (palm oil, cocoa butter, coconut oil, and olive oil) with various essential oils (and sometimes dried herbs like lavender or lemongrass, as well).  

I don't usually take photographs while I make soap because becoming distracted while using lye is NOT something one wants to do.  However, I took a few photos this time (although even then, not while I was working with the lye).  

Indeed, the greater challenge is putting my soap up on our Etsy site for sale!  It's on the list of things to do.  Meanwhile, if you are interested, just let me know.  I currently have lemon sage ginger soap, lavendin rosemary soap (with dried lavender), lemon rosemary soap, and a few bars of goat milk & honey (with oatmeal) available.  The American Horticultural Society's gift shop also sells my soap, and they have a different selection.

My Soap is at the AHS Gift Shop

I'm very happy to announce that the American Horticultural Society's Gift Shop at River Farm is now carrying my soap!  At present, they have peppermint/lavender and lemongrass/peppermint bars.   Please visit River Farm, tour the house and grounds, and check out their lovely selection of items in the gift shop.  It's one of our favorite places.

Making Soap: A Year Later

I was just looking through various photos and noticed the date of a photo from my initial soap-making class.   it was just one year ago that I took a class in cold process soap, and I am hooked!  I really enjoy making soap -- peppermint lavender is our favorite.   I've started selling my products and need to get everything up on our site for others to enjoy.  You never know where these classes will lead....Here are a few photos from a recent batch I made -- the ingredients are amazing (olive oil, palm oil, cocoa butter, and coconut oil),  -- no wonder we love this soap!:

How We Spent Our Shut-Down Weekend

We were supposed to demo this past weekend but the government shutdown closed the location of our demo.  Suddenly, we had a free weekend, something we hadn’t had since the start of September.  There was plenty we wanted to do!  We are a family of list-makers, so out came the white-board and we started to write down our thoughts.  Some people ask us how we get as much done — this is one of our secrets. We might not get all the things done, nor do we try to…but by having a list, we accomplish a lot! :-)  

I was determined to make cold-process soap for the first time; we tried a lavender mint soap: 

Our kids really wanted to get pumpkins:  

We wanted to spend a lot of time outdoors, despite the rain at the beginning of the weekend and then especially when the sun came out.  These photos are from Mason Neck State Park and Huntley Meadows.

But, who would have expected that we’d save a baby squirrel that fell out of its nest and needed some help?  By the way, the last report from the wildlife rehabilitator says that the baby squirrel is mending well.  

And, we rested a fair amount….all of us…. 

We are looking forward to getting back to work this weekend at Claude Moore’s Market Fair in McLean.  Please come out.  We’d love to see you!