My newest addition to my soap family are wonderfully scented Herbal Bath Salts, Bath Bombs, Foaming Bath Salts and Lip Balms.
The bath salts are a combination of  The Dead Sea Salts, Dendric Salts, herbs and essential oils. A simple combination to help you relax and enjoy your bath time.
Bath Bombs are a combination of baking soda, citric acid, caolin clay and essential oils. Add one to your bath and watch what happens!
Foaming Bath Salts are a combination of the Bath Salts and whats in the Bath Bombs so you won't get as much action as with a Bath Bomb but you will receive all the benefits of both.
For my Lip Balms I used Olive, Coconut, Sweet Almond oils and Bees Wax, Cocoa Butter, Camelilla Wax. So many good oils and butters packed into a small tube!

My next step is to create great pictures. I'm still either getting too light or too dark snapshots. I'm going to try some natural lighting to see if maybe that helps. I know it's not the camera because it's fairly new. The lights in my workshop aren't the best. If I use the cameras flash it's too dark, the external flash is too bright. Anyway, I think the natural sun will help out alot. As soon as I get some nice pictures, I will post them.

It never lets you rest. It's always there, lurking, in the dark, waiting to come out. Just when you think that's it, it strikes again. We went through 3 of the worst years of our lives after Michaels cancer diagnosis and now this! My brother-in-law was diagnosed with Leukemia.I'm devastated! I feel so helpless, I want to do something yet I can't. All I can do is let my sister-in-law talk to me, listen to her, be there for them, even if it's just by phone. This is the 6th person in that neighborhood that has it. 3 didn't survive it. This is crazy! Why him, why now? He's been through so much. He doesn't deserve this.

Everyone Needs a Little Time Out

Yesterday we went fishing. It was a beautiful summer day. The sun was shining, it was hot but there was a nice breeze that cooled things just a bit. We went to some of our old fishing spots, but like I suspected, there were few fish. The hot weather has heated the water and the fish swim to deeper waters. All in all, it was a nice day though, a change of pace, a time to clear your head, a time out!

Wow, that was some storm this morning! I thought we would loose electric but the lights just flickered some. We've had more rain the pass couple of weeks than all winter and spring.  Maybe it's because I figured out how to program the sprinkler system.
I have decided to make a cream and lotion of my own. I've researched and played around with some oils and such. I have a wonderful young lady thats willing to critique my products. So that will be nice. Maybe I'll do that this weekend.
I'm also trying to get all my internet sites together; website meta tags, linking from one site to another, trying to figure out how to get more people to come to my sites. Very confusing when you are just starting out!

Big Boy Toys

      I can't believe it's been over 6 months that I last posted! Time flies by so fast, it's sad! I've been overly busy, I guess you could say. Summer's here and  with it comes the grass cutting, gardening, weeding and cleaning. It just never stops! Don't get me wrong, I love the nice weather, even the heat and humidity, but there's so much to do outside during the summer months.
      We weren't going to plant a garden upstate this year, but there was a bag of potatoe seed calling out to me and so I took it home. We planted them with the new gadgets we got for the tractor. Very easy! I didn't like the 'big boy toys' but this tractor is really useful. We planted a 50 lb bag of potatoe seed in no time. If I were to to plant them by hand; till the dirt, remove the rocks, cut the potatoes, dig holes and cover them up, it would have taken me half the summer! We attached the gadget and ride through the garden and that's that! One Saturday afternoon is all it took. I highly recommend anyone who has more than an acre or two get a tractor with it's gadgets.
      We didn't put a fence around the garden in thinking that the deer don't like potatoe greens but we were wrong, as soon as they started to sprout the deer started to nibble on them. So we had to put up a fence. And again, with the help of the tractor, we put up the posts, one by one pushing them into the ground with the tractor bucket, easy peasy!
      I planted my tomato, eggplant, pepper, beans, zuccini and cucumber plants down state this year. As an added suprise, I planted pumpkin, melons and luffa. The melons didn't sprout, I don't know why, but the luffa and pumpkins are growing nicely.
      All this has taken time away from making soap and the other bath products I wanted to add to my shops. I would like to make bath fizzies, bath salts, lip balms and possibly get into some creams or lotions. It's all a matter of time though.

It's been a while since I wrote. I was busy getting ready for the holidays. We had holiday lunches and dinners to go to, gifts to give to all our business associates and freinds. Then there was our Christmas gifts, which if you ask me now I have no idea what we got the kids!
We then decided to go to Greece. We haven't been there since 2006, about 6 months before Michael was diagnosed. We don't know how well he'll be next year so it was a 'now or never' trip. Michael spent a lot of time with his brothers and sister, neices, nephews and cousins. We were there for 2 weeks which went by really fast, I wish we had a few more days but then again there's never enough time. It's truely amazing looking at the neices and nephews. My husband and his 2 brothers and sister have 10 children ages 4- 30, 2 are married, 1 has a child and the other is expecting in May. I remember them as children and as I sat watching them either taking care of their children or husbands and wives, I have to wonder where those years went to. We live our lives day after day not really thinking about whats going on around us.
I showed my sisters-in-law how to crochet simple fingerless gloves. By the end of the 2 weeks, each house had either crochet hooks or knitting needles out with something on them. I helped my brother-in-law make castile soap. That was very interesting! I had to change ounces and pounds to kilos and grams then my brother-in-law took it one step further and changed everything to percentages. Of course I made a mistake and miscalculated the lye ending up with much less and the soap ending up not saponifying. Once I realized what the problem was, we added more lye water and mixed it in. It came to trace very quickly and we put it in the molds. We'll see how it turns out in about 4 weeks.
We're home now and I'm going through all the mail and things. I had to make a batch of soap for my best customer so that it cures in time for her. I thought instead of making her a batch of 1 scent I would make a batch and scent it with different scents that she likes. I made  lemongrass, lavender and rose. I hope she likes them.
I've opened my Etsy shop again and had a few sales which was nice. I still have to figure out how to take nice pictures. All my pictures turn out dark or blueish. All I need is some time.
Thats about all for now. TTYS :)

Happy Thanksgiving

We had our first Holiday Craft Fair this past Sunday. I was hoping to do better but I guess everythings a learning experience. I should have made more gift packs and wrapped them with bows. I didn't want to offend anyone so I left everything neutral. In general though I didn't see a lot of customers buying things. Like one vendor said, " They were lookers not buyers."

Well, now I'm looking on to our next craft fair on Dec. 12. That will be the last one for 2011. I haven't lined anything up for 2012 yet. As soon as I know I will post it so all of you know, too.

I have to update my website and my blog here as well. I don't like the way the layout is with the pictures here. Maybe tomorrow while we're waiting for the turkey to cook I'll take some time out to tie up some loose ends.

Wishing everyone has a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.