Gratuitous Kitteh Monday

Ugh. This is the quiet before the storm.

Chaz is taking a moment of solitude in an afternoon sunbeam…

Meditating Kitteh

We loaded and unloaded 2, 15 ft. U-Haul truckloads of “stuff” this weekend into the new place and we are both incredibly SORE today. We are positively out-of-shape. There is certainly a huge yard-sale on the horizon once we are back in a real neighborhood.

Our “big move” isn’t until May 12^th, but I’m in L.A. next week, so there’s a week lost out of that time. Our goal is to only have the movers move the big stuff and packed boxes, so we are taking care of all the loose odds-n-ends, most of the basement, and the garage, plus all the packing.

This is certainly better than the 4-day packing blitz we did in Florida for sure, but it still sucks.

“I LOVE MOVING”…said no one ever!

New digs

Beautiful, big kitchen...a must have!

The house we are moving too is really nice and it’s practically brand new (3 yrs. old), but we have found upon closer inspection and from talking with the neighbors, the owners had 3 dogs (golden retrievers) and a cat. There is HAIR EVERYWHERE! They did not do a post, move-out clean and the floors are disgusting, not to mention a suspicious odor is coming from one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. So, a total house clean, with professional carpet cleaning is being done this week. There are other things that need to be addressed as well, but I’m too tired to go into it.

I’ve never understood why people buy homes and then not take care of them. Why spend so much money and then watch your property values go down the drain?

Anyway, as usual, we will leave this house in better condition than we found it.

Soapy Friday: I'm Gelling (Sort of), Are You?

Happy Friday everyone. Posts for Ye' Olde Blog will most likely be a once-a-week thing for the next couple of months due to all the chaos of moving. We start packing this weekend.

Miss Thang is being chill, though. I know they know something is going on.

Chillin' Thang

It's Cherry Blossom time here up in D.C.! The trees are at their "peak" over today and the next day or two. It's fun to go see this amazing display of beauty....once. In order to make the most of it and the crowds, you really need to get there before sunrise. We did this the first year we moved up here.

Cherry Blossoms in D.C.

Getting excited about prospects for our new "home". It's a rental, but has very high potential for us to buy if we decide we like it and the neighborhood down the road. I mean, look at this basement! It's finished and it's ALL MINE! No carpets = a perfect soaping studio.

So many possibilities!

Speaking of soap...

I remade some of my 100% olive oil soap (aka Castille soap) and used tumeric to color it. I try to keep my olive oil soaps all natural using only essential oils (EOs) and natural colorants.

The EO blend I mixed as called "Sunset" and was a beautiful blend of grapefruit, tangerine, ylang ylang, litsea cubeba, and rose geranium. I wanted to color the soap a sort of orange/rust to compliment the citrus notes in the EO blend and look what happened:

I'm gelling...sort of

This is called a gel ring. When a soap "gels" after it is made, it heats-up either naturally or is forced to heat-up using a heating pad, insulation, or even an oven. "Gelling" a soap contributes to more saturated colors and less chance for soda ash. Soap crafters either prefer to gel all the way or not at all, as a partial gel (like in my soap) can be distracting and take away from a beautiful soap design.

Neither a good mother, nor from Marseille

In my case, I think it contributes and makes it more interesting. I tried to gel this soap by putting it on a pre-heated heating pad and then turned it off, as I was afraid it would overheat. I guess I should have left it on.

BTW, "Savon de la Bonne Mere Marseille" means "Soap from the Good Mother of Marseille" which I am neither. I need to make my own stamp.

Soapy Friday: Soaping to Relieve Stress

Happy Good Friday everyone! Easter is the farthest thing from my mind right now as I have bigger fish to fry:

Bye bye big country house

Yup. We had a contract in less than 4 days! And between all the inspections, repairs, more inspections, more repairs, work and travel for work, all I've wanted to do to relieve the stress is make soap. It really calms me down and helps channel my nervous/anxious energy.

But a couple of these help too. This is the only pic I grabbed from Fort Worth, TX...an awesome margarita. In a few weeks, I'm off to L.A.

Fort Worth Margarita

We DO have a place picked out to rent that is exactly 2.7 miles from hubby's office and it's practically perfect. So much so, we may even consider buying it if we like renting there and the community it's in. I'm not going to jinx anything though, as we are still waiting for our appraisal to come back.

If our appraisal comes back low and we have to go back to the table and renegotiate, then things could get sticky.

So, I make soap.

I've made more soap than I've taken pictures of, but I did feel confident enough about my current luxury bar recipe to remake a large, 7 lb. batch of "My BFF Rosie". It's one of my most popular bars and it's a keeper.

Big BFF Rosie

My 7 lb loaf gives me just shy of 20 bars at a time. In the future, I will be making this at 100 bars at a time or more...mark my words.

In SUPER exciting news, I've received the first logo and branding concepts from the graphic designer I hired to help me with design. I am in love. I'm not going to give anything away, but it's going to be pretty awesome; I have a gut feeling about this.

So, now I need to reorder almost ALL my supplies as I've run out. Keep soaping!

Beautiful BFF Rosies

Bath Bombs and Bubble Bar Adventures

Happy New Year everyone! I am still happily, yet at times frustratingly, on my quest to find a good bath bomb recipe. I'm close, but not at 100%.

The closer I come to finding my "perfect" recipe, the further away I feel. I've had to ask myself, "What do I want the people who use these bath bombs to experience?"

• Do I want to give them fizz, colored water, and skin-loving oils? (Yes) Do I want to give them foam and bubbles with cool colors? (Yes again). What else?

• Do I want to make sure the oils used are immersed in the water and not slicked on the surface? Do I want to make sure there is no messy ring of color left in the tub? How do I want the water to "feel"?

• Do I want them to look nice and smell yummy? Do I want them to be reliable and endurable? Most importantly, do I want them to be safe for both me to make them and others to use them?

All of these considerations (and more) play into a final product(s) that I make. So, even just a tweak of one ingredient to another to give me a different result for product appearance and use, makes something else happen. It all goes back to my "cause-and-effect" thinking and problem solving.

I made this beautiful, mondo-bath bomb, but I HATED the way the exterior texture felt...it was too powdery/chalky. It did everything I wanted it to do in the bathtub, but it didn't check all my boxes:

Miss Thang bombing my bomb!

So, back to the drawing board. BUT, I am enjoying the process and that's the fun part! If there was any advice I would give to newbie body product crafters, I would tell them to experiment, experiment, experiment! Understand what your ingredients ARE, what they do on their own, and what happens when combined with other things. Don't just take a recipe you find as the final word...work to get what you want. That way, when something doesn't work or if you want a different result, you'll understand what you need to do to get there. 

For the record, bath bombs are notoriously the MOST DIFFICULT thing to master. I figure, everything else from here is down-hill. :-)

On the other hand, I gave my first go at Bubble Bars and it was pretty spot on! The only tweak I would give this recipe is to make the dough wetter. You can tell the bubble bars were pretty dry from the cracks, and the next day they almost shattered when I gave them a squeeze test. So, I know what I need to tweak to give me a wetter dough.

Bath Bomb Breakthrough

Since we've been back, I've resumed my bath bomb research. You know the old saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting a different result?" Well, that about sums up my life every day.

Every day I make a batch of sample bombs. I get 1 large, 1 med, and 1 small bath bomb from my experiment batch, I let them dry overnight, then I test them the next day or day after. I have LEARNED SO MUCH, but mostly it's theory.

Anyway, I have discovered that although many home bomb makers and even small businesses use cornstarch as a binder in their recipes, it is a huge FAIL for me. You see, bomb making is as elusive as it is scientific. What works for one person in California, will not work for someone else in Florida, or even Canada. Climate, altitude, hell...the alignment of Jupiter and Mars and whether the woolly caterpillars have fur in the fall...all play into whether bath bomb making with be successful or a fail.

I've moved over to potassium bitartrate (aka Cream of Tartar) as a filler and made a breakthrough. As a side note, did you know that potassium bitartrate (Cream of Tartar) is a by-product of wine making? Fitting, no?

Anyway, my bombs are now hardening up nicely and keeping their shape; however, I want them to float and I've tried packing light, packing heavy, packing while standing on one foot. Sigh. The medium-sized ones float, but the bigger ones are sinking...hmmm.

Back down the hole I go.