There isn’t enough kleenex in the world…

Ok, so yes, my nose is runny today, and yes, I’m making soap, but I PROMISE that I didn’t drop anything in it. That you know of. Bwahahaha!!

If at any time you think that I am being entirely unprofessional, I apologize. It’s just the cold talking. Really.

Pop soap by Flacons & Petits Pots

I love her color choices! From what I was able to translate, she is very happy with the way the green turned out, but is most proud of the red. It is scented with verbena.

The second one is also very beautiful; made just a few weeks ago:

Vintage-style Pop soap by Flacons & Petits Pots

This time she experienced a very quick trace and after pouring it in the mold, put it in a warm oven – the CPOP method (cold process, oven process). The fragrance is brown sugar & fig. Great job, Elle!

So now I wonder if anyone else has photos of their soap made with the faux funnel method. For example, Celine of iamhandmade just posted photos of her first faux funnel soap here. Please provide a link in the comments below so we can all see!

My girls ready to go trick-or-treating last night

I don’t know about your kids, but my kids seem to have a hard time deciding what they want to be for Halloween. Especially my older daughter, because she wants to be something that no one else will be. She likes to talk about next year’s costume right around the day after Halloween. So, around November 1st last year, my older daughter drew me a picture of Nancy Drew and told me that’s what she wanted to be for Halloween this year. Well, not really.

About two months ago, she and I took a walk to Walgreen’s and discussed possible Halloween costumes again. At that point, she was pretty settled on being a bag lady. We talked about getting clothes from the Goodwill, and how she wasn’t going to wash her hair for several days before Halloween…

Then a couple weeks ago, she decided she wanted to be some sort of animal instead. A panda, she said. “And I won’t change my mind, Mom. I promise.”

Now, if you are looking at the photo of my girls, you can see that she did, in fact, change her mind again. Last week. She decided on the jaguar. Since she is in 5th grade, and this is the last year she could dress up at school, I decided to go ahead and make the costume.

Last Thursday and Friday, the girls didn’t have school due to conferences, so Hubby invited us to come with him to a job site – at a private lake house about an hour from here, where he is building a storage shed/boat house. Perfect. I packed up my sewing machine and everything else I thought I needed to make the costume, and made some good progress while we were there. I did forget to buy a zipper, bring safety pins to thread the elastic, fabric for the hood lining, and stuffing for the tail, so there were a few things to finish up over the weekend.

Here’s the full view:

Jaguar costume

In comparison, my younger daughter’s costume was easy. She requested a new pair of pajamas so that she could be a baby. So simple and cute! Her pacifier was the plastic part of a ring pop, and she carried her teddy and blanket.

My baby in her costume

This was the first year my older daughter asked to go trick-or-treating with a friend instead of the neighbors across the street, so I walked around the neighborhood with the jaguar and her little bee friend for a couple of hours before calling the bee’s mom to come pick us up in her car!

The jaguar and her bee friend

They’ve already started sorting out their candy on the living room rug. Don’t worry, I don’t let them keep all of it – which is why they have to sort it out so they can keep their favorites!

The Halloween Candy

How was your Halloween?

My parents, our family, and my brother's family

Last weekend we celebrated my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary! My brother and I have been working with my mom to get everything together for the big reception at their church which was Sunday afternoon. My mom finished up the heritage quilt she had been planning since before my older daughter was born (she’s now 10), and along with the quilt, she also had her wedding dress and her sister’s bridesmaid dress on display. My brother put together a slide show from a variety of photos, both new and old, which is now on youtube – thank you very much. Its exact whereabouts will remain a mystery to you all. My cousin’s wife made sheet cakes with her grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe – yum! Aunts, uncles, and cousins, and of course my grandma, and lots of friends all came for the big event. Unbeknownst to the other, my mom’s sister gifted my parents with three huge mum plants, and so did my dad’s sister!

I asked my mom to invited my friend Penny and family since I hadn’t seen them in ages (we decided it had been three years!):

Penny & me

All in all, it was a very fun weekend! The one exception would be my 4-year-old nephew who ended up with the stomach flu right before the reception started. My poor sister-in-law had to miss the entire event.

Now I am just working on re-stocking products in preparation for the holiday rush. Yesterday I made more large jars of unscented Whipped Shea Butter. Today I’ll be making more Skin Glow facial moisturizer. Fall weather is finally here!

Fall Planter - all done!

Here’s a closer view:

Now you can sort of see the mums and pansies I planted!

This is what I love about fall! Cooler temps make it so much more enjoyable to do outdoor projects! What do you love about fall?

Has anyone else received a good surprise lately? I’d love to hear about it!

Penny, Lynette, and me - circa 1978

At Lynette's house - the junior high years!! Hello poofy bangs and perms!

At our national church youth conference - high school. The hair has tamed down, but the XL t-shirts with rolled sleeves are in!

Lynette was a year older than Penny and me, so she took off for college after that summer. Penny and I ended up going to college together in Chicago.

Penny's family took Lynette & me on their family vacation to Colorado the summer after we graduated from college.

After college, Lynette and I rented this house together in Clay Center, Kansas. Um, those are Christmas peanut M&M's in our noses.

Penny got married on August 8, 1998. Lynette and I were bridesmaids.

My wedding was on August 22, 1998 - just two weeks later!

Not long after that, I started giving Penny & Lynette something handmade for Christmas each year. One year it was a lighted “Christmas tree” made out of seed pods from a sweet gum tree that I had painted gold and attached to chicken wire in the shape of a cone. Another year I made some quilted wall hangings. In the fall of 2002, I started searching the internet for ideas of what to make for Christmas that year. I came across Kathy Miller’s website on how to make soap, and the idea really appealed to me. So after gathering up all the equipment and ingredients, I made my first batch. When I went to unmold it the next day, it was completely crumbly! I went back to the internet to research what had gone wrong…and decided that maybe it hadn’t reached trace after all (I had stirred it with a spoon). So I put it all back in my soap pot and put it in the oven for a few hours. Once it got warmed up and held together, I mashed it back in the mold, and the next day it came out perfectly!

I have a photo from the Christmas of 2002, but sadly, there are no pictures of my soap. In fact, we almost didn’t get this picture taken because my older daughter had just puked all over the floor after a nice Christmas dinner at Penny’s house. We left the party early that night…

Christmas 2002 - Penny's son is almost exactly one month younger than my oldest daughter!

So that’s the story of how I got started making soap. Penny lives close to my home town, so I see her once in awhile when I go home to see my parents. I hadn’t seen Lynette for over two years, but she just came through town and spent about 24 hours at our house. It was so good to see her again!!

Lynette and Me - just yesterday.

And so the quest began. First stop, Walmart. I shop at Walmart at least six times a day, so why not cruise by the kitchen gadget aisle and see what they have. Plenty of short-handled silicone spatulas – even really cheap ones! I almost picked one of those up…then decided I should stick to my plan.

Last Sunday night I was out with Hubby for his birthday, and the restaurant where we ate was right across the street from Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond. (Yes, this is how desperate I am for a silicone spatula.) So I say to him, “Since you aren’t interested in paying $10 a ticket to go see a movie, do you suppose we could go look for a spatula at Bed, Bath & Beyond?” You know, on your birthday? While we are out on a date? He’s such a great guy – we were actually headed into the store when the manager came out and said, “We’re actually closed.” Ok, fine. Next stop: Target. Yes, we really did go to Target and look for a silicone spatula on my hubby’s birthday while we were out on a date. However, same story as Walmart. They really had nothing close to a silicone spatula with a long handle.

So yesterday, I was getting ready to make my Creamy Castile soap without a silicone spatula, when I opened up my utensil drawer to get something out. I don’t even remember what it was now, because I was so astonished by what I saw in the drawer! Feast your eyes on this:

My utensil drawer - ok, so it's one of two.

Oh wait. You didn’t see it? Here, let me help you:

Yes, that is exactly what you think it is!

The perfect long-handled silicone spatula has been in my utensil drawer all along! In fact, I have TWO of these, because they came in a 2-pack – from Sam’s!! Of course, Sam’s! Everything is enormous at Sam’s! Why didn’t I think of this before??? Oh yeah, because I bought them a couple years ago, and they’re really too big to be of much use for cooking, so they’ve been stuffed in the bottom of the utensil drawer. See why I need one with a long handle?

Long-handled spatula in the pot I use to mix my goat's milk lye solution.

Don’t you just love it when the thing you need is right under your nose? The Creamy Castile soap I made with the spatula turned out great, by the way.

Creamy Castile Soap on the curing rack

The concept behind the Versatile Blogger Award is to follow a few rules and then pass it on to whatever blog you think deserves it. The rules are:

1 – Make a post and link it back to the person who gave you the award (and include their website address)
2 – Share 7 random things about yourself
3 – Award 7 recently discovered bloggers with this award and contact them to let them know they have won

So, I guess it’s time to fill you in on some little known facts about me.

1. I first met my husband in my home church during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. He was already out of school and working, and I thought he was too old for me!

He's all mine now!

2. My favorite movie is Pride & Prejudice (the newest version).

Yes, I like it better than the original!

3. I can play the piano, the flute, and the guitar tolerably well. Love to sing too. (no photo necessary!)

4. My older daughter will be 10 years old on Thursday! Aaaaaaaah! Her goldfish has been having babies this week, and we finally figured out why they kept disappearing. Apparently goldfish eat their young. Isn’t that just disgusting? We finally saved two of them and put them in a jar next to the tank.

Here you can see one of them!

5. My younger daughter is so flexible, she can put both her feet behind her head. Ouch.

Here's the proof!

6. My parents will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in October!

My parents' wedding photo. Aren't they just adorable?

7. Yesterday, I started the process of making some pickled watermelon rinds for the first time. I grew up eating them, but haven’t had them in ages! The recipe my mom sent me is a 3-day process. I hope they turn out, because I have 9 and a half pounds of rinds pickling!

Soap pots work great for canning too!

Now to pass on the Versatile Blogger Award. I would like to nominate the following blogs:

Sirona Springs
Sparklebrook
Soap & Restless
The Soap Bar
The Soap Seduction
The Soap Sister
Tierre Verde Soaps

And like Celine, it was difficult to stop at 7! I could go on and on…suffice it to say all of the above are great reads!

Hubby power-sanding a drawer

Priming with the power sprayer

Notice all the “power” tools? It really does pay to be married to a general contractor!

The tables came with some really cute pewter drawer pulls – three butterflies, three frogs, and three dragonflies. Here are they are in their final destinations:

The green room is my older daughter's room

My younger daughter’s room has also been transformed since the last time I showed it to you. She no longer wanted pink – her latest desire is for everything to be blue. So we went from this:

My younger daughter's room "before"

To this:

My younger daughter's room "after"

Project (FINALLY) complete! And now, I need a shower before we go out to watch the fireworks… Hope you all have a safe and happy 4th!