Thursday, January 22, 2009

Seaside Milk Soap--->is ok!


Well, Thank the Lord, I don't have to rebatch yet again. I cut the soap today and didn't find any oozings or caverns or anything. It still needs to cure a bit, but all in all I am happy with this soap. I couldn't find my soap cutter and so used a knife. As you may tell, I didn't cut very straight and the very end the soap crumbled. I decided to experiment with my rubber stamps. Just need to remember that fresh soap is not like hard oak. IE don't use a lot of force. lol

So here are my pics. I didn't want to get out my setup for my backdrop to take the pics so I just used my very messy kitchen island. If you can't tell, then my camera is doing its job. he he.

This is my 100% coconut soap. I used milk, allantoin, and a bit of honey. I knew it wasn't going to be a nice white soap, but I had hoped that it would be this nice golden color. I know it will eventually fade a bit, but I am happy with the color. I scented it with some ocean fragrance oil but I can also smell the honey. Side note: when your husband is a super sniffer, don't put a fresh batch of milk soap under his nose. Lol, he smelled the ammonia smell real good and no you don't what to know what else he thought it smelled like. I had to refresh his sniffer with the bottle of FO to get the awful smell out of his nose. Poor thing, glad he loves me so.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Here is what happens to hot soap


You know, I really don't think cp soaping really agrees with me too much. My friend Cydnie and I live in the same type of climate and she is able to make milk soaps rather well. In fact, in the summer, her home is way hotter than mine since I have a jet engine of a Air Cooler. I've had to rebatch all of my milk soaps. Not too bad really, they turned out fine rebatched but that was not the point. I wanted some nice cream colored milk soap. What I got was the nice tan milk soap and had to rescent the soap. Which if you know, the FO's and such can be the most expensive thing. *Sigh*

Today I made two soaps with the same oil; Coconut. The first will be a solid Dish Soap. Gonna try this out since when I do dishes by hand I usually end up putting the soap on the sponge and go from there instead of into a sink of water. The Second was destined as a Shower Bar for my dear Hubby. He likes my salt spa bar, but the salt can burn his skin so he doesn't use it very often. (I didn't even put in the recommended lb per lb amount of salt either) This was my Seaside Milk soap. 100% coconut oil with milk, allantoin and a tiny bit of honey.

I was worried about the milk soap overheating, because as I said before, that has been my problem. It was a lovely happenstance that my freezer was a bit on the bare side, so I put the Milk soap in there since the outside temp wasn't as cold as I hoped. Here is a pic of the mold with a plume of the "Soap Volcano:
Kinda cute, really. But I will look at it carefully when I unmold it. If I have those stalagtites and caverns I will have to rebatch. Again. I think that after this, I will probably stick to my fav Hot Process. I haven't had any problems with that as yet.

What is unexpected was the "Soap Volcano" from my solid Dish Soap. It too was 100% coconut oil. This wasn't superfatted at all and I did take a water discount on it. I soaped both of the soaps at room temp which is 68 degrees. I just melted the oil enough to melt, then added the rest of the oil solid and used my sb on it to break it up a bit. Here is some pics so you can enjoy the "Volcano" effect. Pretty neat looking. I do plan on using even the soap that fell into the cardboard box.

If you can't laugh at yourself ...

Monday, January 19, 2009

Giving Thanks

My friend Cydnie sent me this cute email. I wanted to share it because sometimes we just don't take the time to thank the proper entity for what we have.

What Happens in Heaven

I dreamt that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around. We walked side-by-side inside a large workroom filled with angels. My angel guide stopped in front of the first section and said, 'This is the Receiving Section. Here, all petitions to God said in prayer are received.'

I looked around in this area, and it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on
voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world.

Then we moved on down a long corridor until we reached the second section..

The angel then said to me, 'This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings the
people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them.. 'I noticed again how busy it was there. There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.

Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small station. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. 'This is the Acknowledgment Section,' my angel friend quietly admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed 'How is it that there is no work going on here?' I asked.


'So sad,' the angel sighed. 'After people receive the blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments .'

'How does one acknowledge God's blessings?' I asked.

'Simple,' the angel answered. Just say, 'Thank you, Lord.'

'What blessings should they acknowledge?' I asked.

'If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy .'

'And if you get this on your own computer, you are part of the 1% in the world who has that opportunity.'

'If you woke up this morning with more health than illness
... You are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day .'

'If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation ... You are ahead of 700 million people in the world.'

'If you can attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world.
'

'If your parents are still alive and still married
...you are very rare .'

'If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you're unique to all those in doubt and despair.'

Ok, what now? How can I start? If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you as very special and you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.

Have a good day, count your blessings, and if you want, pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are.


ATTN:
Acknowledge Dept.:
'Thank you Lord, for giving me the ability to share this message and for giving me so many wonderful people to share it with.'

Thank you, Lord God for all you have given me!

CJH

Thursday, January 15, 2009

What does the Winslow Wal-Mart have against Boys?

I am beginning to think that Wal-Mart has a prejudice against little boys. It is the most difficult thing to find little boy clothes at Wally World, really it is. Day before yesterday I was there shopping for much needed food and was browsing the Baby section to see what they had. Winter coats, 11 different styles for girls, 3 for boys (My hubby tells me that as of yesterday, they only had 2 for boys). Pants a plenty for little girls; overalls, shortalls, jumpsuits etc. Take for instant the clearance rack. If you have been in the retail business, that tells you a lot on how your product sells. Constantly little girls outfits, dresses, shirts and on and on. The small amount of little boy things are fought over. Really, if you see it on the clearance rack and think to come back even in an hour it is already gone. Grab it while you can. Wal-Mart Buyers (those who supposed know what they are doing by reading what sells, checking the trends and buying what is supposed to sell in the stores for good citizens like me to buy at Wally) take note; if you have 2 racks of little girl clothes on the clearance racks and 5 items of boys; you are buying too much girl clothes and not enough boy clothes.

Holidays are the worse too. Take Christmas, months before the Blessed Event there are cute little holiday outfits for girls. Cute little girly sweatshirts, jumpsuits and of course the really cute and nice dressy dresses for the holiday. You know, the type you go to church in. Nothing much for the boys, which is really sad, because I have 3 of them. Can I splurge a little and buy them little dress clothes at Wal-Mart? No. Once I asked the manager of that section, She said "yes, they had the little boy outfits, but they sold out fast." Really? No. I had been there everyday for 2 weeks looking for dressy outfits for my boys so I can take Christmas pictures. Boy I sure hate being lied to; especially by a manger. Besides the fact, if they really did sell that quick, then obviously then Wal-mart needed to have more on hand.

Really, when I worked at Alco you were expected to check the sheet that told you what sold the best and make a display of those and order a lot. That was at the store level, what do you think they were doing at the executive level. I did talk to one or two of the Alco buyers. One was really nice and knew what she was doing. The other was too knew and didn't know too much about our area for correct distribution. So really, I am not talking out of my ear here.

When I had my middle son in the baby/toddler swim class years ago; I found out I was not the only one with boys that had that problem with Wal-mart. Of course they didn't complain to Wal-Mart like I did. No, they simply got in their car and went to Flagstaff where there are a great variety to choose from and stores who actually look at what sells. I wish I could do that. I know that Target has a much better selection of cute boy outfits. Heck, even the Wal-mart in Showlow has a better boy clothes than we do. I guess it comes down to that Wal-mart isn't proud of this little store in Winslow. They think they have a monopoly here so don't put much of an effort into the store. Excuses like, we are next to a Reservation, we have a loss prevention problem, we don't get to order stuff for our store, it just comes in, etc doesn't really fly with me. Just excuses. It comes down to I can't expect the store here to listen to me, so I will shop elsewhere for little boy clothes like everyone else.

Customer Service. It comes down to customer service. For 6 years I have been trying to get some more little boy clothes to come in. I've been complaining, trying suggestions; it just falls on deaf ears. So I guess I will have to follow the other mothers of boys in this little town and buy out of town. Don't worry, I'll still probably browse the boy clothes looking for something and still probably frown as the little girl stuff overwhelms the baby/toddler/preschool section. But come the times when I need something for pictures or holiday parties, I will go to Flagstaff to their stores.