Nature's Garden Haul and Testing

 My family was thoroughly blessed this Christmas Season. Our church was very generous, to my children and to Cowboy Preacher and I. So as part of my Christmas gift with some of our Christmas money, I got myself some lovely fragrances. It was a lovely little splurge I don't get all that often. So here is my Nature's Garden haul:

1. Burgundy Rose 4 oz (This is a restock for me, love this scent)
2. Creamy Coconut 4 oz (Another restock)
3. Bergamot 1oz
4. Champagne Pomegranate 1oz
5. Christmas Cabernet 1oz
6. Lemon Meringue Pie 1oz
7. Mojito 1oz
8. Misbehavin 1oz
9. NB Baby Bee Buttermilk type 1oz
10. Yuzu 1oz
11. Basil Sage Mint 1oz
12. Lime Cilantro 1oz
13. Dragon's Blood 1oz
14. Oatmeal, Milk and Honey 1oz
15. Sweetgrass 1oz
16. Tomato Leaf Coriander 1oz
17. Peppermint 1oz
18. Sangria Punch 1oz
19. Bay Rum 1oz
20. Ocean Mist 1oz

Most of these I will be using in soap. Some will make it to lotions and bath bombs and such. Cowboy Preacher has never been more delighted smelling fragrances from Nature's Garden compared to the other companies fragrances. He has a great nose, so I usually drag him into smelling everything with me. In fact, he already told me which ones he wanted in his soaps and lotions. O happy day! The whole family gets into the sniff-a-thon. I'm a little sensitive to scents, so most of the 1 oz samples will make it into my usually 4lb batch of soap. Unless, I also make a matching lotion, the it will be 2lbs and some lotion. So this will be a lot of soap. *Happy Dance*

 I signed up for the free 1 oz fragrance tester sample as well hoping there'd be an available sample left for me. I was happy to see that did get one. Papaya Guava Mango.

It was kind of a mystery. There was no information on it. Nature's Garden is good about listing what you need to know about a fragrance oil. I thought it was terribly exciting to be testing a new fragrance. It smelled so fruity and very juicy. I had already started to plan what I wanted to do with this.

Now the soap I had planned for this tester was going to have four colors. Natural soap base to see if the fragrance discolored the soap. Pink kaolin clay for the guava, French green clay for the papaya and tumeric yellow for the mango.

I used my Trinity soap base (40% Olive oil, 30% Coconut, 30% Palm Oil) as I knew how it would behave. I decided that instead of a 4 lb batch, I'd go with a 2 lb batch (I mean 2 lbs of oils, so with the addition to the water and NaOH, the finished soap will weigh more than 2 lbs).

The problems start.

I usually soap cool, barely letting the oils melt before adding the hot lye solution. I get antsy and don't want to wait for the solution to cool down. I like to freeze the distilled water and make a cooler solution, but I forgot to freeze the water. Let me tell ya, if you soap cool, it isn't a good idea to do that in a cold room. The  soap was starting to accelerate to trace when I only wanted emulsification. Oh well, that's ok, I'll just plop the soap into the mold. So I separated out the soap batter so I could mix in the colorants. Then I remembered I hadn't even added the fragrance. So it was a dollop in each of the colorants and the rest into the main uncolored soap.

I stick blend the fragrance into the soap. It loosened up immediatly. Some fragrances have done that to me in the past so I was kinda happy. More room to be creative. It loosened up the colored soap batter as well. Then I look in the main bowl. SEPARATION!

At first I thought it was only ricing on me, but no, I could see the oils coming right out. Working as fast as I could, I tried to stick blend it all into submission. No dice, it would blend together great, then start to separate as soon as I stopped the hand blender. So frustrating, I could almost cry for the lost of the beautiful soap I had envisioned. I molded it anyway and put it into the oven to force gel; hoping for the best, expecting to rebatch it anyway.


I worked on some other soaps and then went to bed. The next morning this is what the soap looked like.  I noticed that the soap left in my soap bowl was bright yellow, interesting.

Floating oil on top. Grains of lye heavy soap. *Sigh* Rebatch time.






One thing you should know about me. I can't stand wasting anything. Most especially the ingredients making up a soap. I know I can salvage this, it is just going to look ugly and most likely flash off the scent. Now, I've never had a situation like this before, but I was hoping that despite the separation, I could save this soap.

Into the crockpot it goes. I was surprised to see how hard the soap under the oils was. Cutting through the lye heavy soap, I could see how it was crumbly like all the research I had done said that lye heavy soap would be.

As you can see, the natural soap base has turned very bright yellow. I used too much of the pink kaolin clay, so that looks more red than pink. The green didn't even show up and the yellow was muted by the non colored clay. Since it was still fresh, I didn't add any additional water. But I was concerned as to how much oil was lost, so I added the rest of my avocado oil to the pot, around 2 or 3 ounces, so this soap will be really superfatted.

After it cooked a nice long time, it looked very much like my hot process soap looked. I molded it in my round silicone mold and let it sit. Even though it is very humid and rainy here, once it cooled completely, it was hard enough to unmold. I like how pieces of the "red" came through. I usually would add more fragrance oil at the end, but I guess cooking it on low helped a bunch. This soap still smells wonderful. I was really surprised. Now it will most likely be too light for some people, but in the end, this is the concentration I like my soaps to smell. It even leaves a light scent on my hands that disapates in time. The soap turned out lovely lather and feels very nice in the end. So I guess I don't mind too much that it looks a little brownish with red flecks. I love this scent.

Nature's Garden, my recommendation is that this is not suitable for cold process at all. It seems to discolor the soap yellow. The fragrance cause separation in cold process. It works great in Hot Process though. I really love how fruity this scent is and I would definitely buy it for my Hot Process soaps.

A Slight Pet Peeve of Mine

 

"Oh what a beautiful baby! How old is he?"

Happy New Year! 2013

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that everyone had a safe and fun holidays. Our Christmas was fairly quiet, peaceful even. I got to sit back and enjoy the joy on all the kiddos faces. Several people blessed our children greatly this Christmas and they enjoyed the blessings full well. It was Princess' first Christmas, but we didn't do any special photoshoot or anything. I wanted a stress free Christmas and I got it.

My New Year's goal is to get to blogging a bit more. I have loads of ideas and crafts I'd like to share. Princess is getting more independent and I am getting my energy back. My schedule has been sadly lacking so it is off to reorganize my Home book a little. Actually, it is a total mess since I haven't cracked it since Princess was born. My sanity has suffered for it I think. I have be making inroads into being more organized and that has made me feel loads better. I have also lost 10 pounds this Christmas season, crazy. I am looking forward to losing more baby fat as well.

I have been watching some new videos and people on YouTube and they have inspired me to start experimenting. Cowboy Preacher is also looking forward to some special formulations I am planning to hopefully help with some skin problems he has been dealing with. I look forward to all that I will be learning from these trials and experiments.

New Year's Eve we usually have a Game Night at the church, but really I didn't feel well enough to put something on. So we stayed at home. What was to be a early night for me, turned into diluting a liquid soap I had made a couple years back. I had found it in my soaping supplies with no note as to the ingredients. (Another goal is to take better notes.) I knew it was olive oil based and so decided to play with it. Since I had sealed the soap paste in a vacuum bag, I knew it was still alright to use. It turned out great. I scented it with a little Sangria Punch from Nature's Garden. It smells divine, I am so buying more of the fragrance. Later on I will be doing a post on my haul from them.

2012 has been an excellent year and went by so fast. I am looking forward to seeing what God has in store for 2013.

My Little Gift from MMS!

Just look what I got in the mail today from Majestic Mountain Sage! Such a wonderful little box of goodies! This was my little "Thank You" from MMS for helping them in the "Fix Our Errors" blog project. I really love this company, I always order a little something from them every year. They are always very friendly with me and seem to send out my packages in a reasonable time frame.

In my little box, I received a one ounce bottle of Lemon Sugar fragrance oil, a little bit of Allantoin, Blueberry Seeds, Lavendar Buds and Calendula Petals.

Be on the lookout for some posts of what I will make with my little box of goodies. It is like Christmas come early for me.

CJH

CITR Holiday Swap Gift

One of the blogs I try to keep up on is Chickens in the Road. I love reading about Suzanne's farm, trying her recipes and looking at all her wonderful pictures. The forum is a really great place to connect, although I haven't been too active. I have been trying to limit my life online. I do homeschool three of my boys and work on Sunday School and Children's Church, so I am quite busy. Mostly though, it takes me nearly a year after having a baby to get back into a groove. Princess is such an easy baby most of the time, so I feel I can spread my wings a little sooner.

Back to the CITR forum, I'm not sure how many years they have sponsored a Gift Exchange, but I was part of it last year and I knew that I wanted to be a part of this year's. I want to share what I received. My gift was totally AWESOME! I love everything my swap partner chose to put in. Thanks to kellyb! I received a cute reversible apron, a quilted Christmas table topper, handmade vanilla sugar and vanilla extract and homemade simmering potpourri.

Isn't that some great stuff?! I'm taking some of the dried apples and orange to dangle from my Christmas tree. I'm gonna try the extract in my Christmas cookies and I've got a large mug of hot tea with some of that yummy sugar to sweeten it. I love, love, love it all.

CJH

Getting Ready for Baby--PUL Diaper Covers

Well this is the last of my diaper cover reviews. It has been quite some time since I posted. I've been avoiding my blog due to life. I love all my children. Learning to live with 5 has been an adjustment. A new schedule always pops out, it is just this time, it has taken a little bit more time. Also, I haven't been around because I'm a bit lazy. Putting my brain to work so my words sound somewhat reasonable, shooting and editing pictures (because I love pics) and using naptime to the fullest are just too taxing at time. Yup, I'm lazy. But that is beside the point.

PUL stands for polyurethane laminate. Basically it is a polyester laminated onto a knit fabric. I love this stuff because I feel more comfortable about leakage than I had with the fleece covers. One side is shiny; the polyester side and the other side is a knit. They can come in many different print depending on which company you choose.

My first experience with PUL was when I had some extra money and bought some Thirsties covers on Amazon.com. I loved the fact that I could just fold a prefold newspaper style and lay it in. Number 1 were easy, just dump out the wet prefold, pat dry and add another. Number 2 was easy as well, but Rockbiter was a bit messy with that, so I just got another cover for him at that time. I loved the leg gussets, since even with the wool covers Rockbiter had horrible leakage around the legs. These were really cost efficient for me. Unfortunately, I only got two at the time.

They were very easy to wash. Drying was a snap. I didn't even have to put them in the dryer, just hang them on a hanger. There was some staining, but that could be sunned out if necessary. I didn't mind the stains, no one could really see them.

I had also bought a Bum Genius 3.0 at the same time as the covers. This is a one sized pocket diaper with a microfiber insert. Rockbiter didn't do too well with this as he got too hot. Princess uses this diaper quite often. My only complaint is that it didn't fit Rockbiter after 9 months. He has a longer rise than that diaper. I love the stay dry suedecloth (I think it is suedecloth, I may be wrong) inside. It really does shake off the Number 2 away quite easily. I don't even take the insert out anymore when I wash it, it usually just shakes out in the wash for me.

For Princess, I wanted to get away from the bulk and uncertainty of fleece covers and I knew that I wouldn't really have the time or energy to work with wool again (also price came into play here). So I sewed my own PUL Covers incorporating what I liked about the ones I had with the ones I've seen online. That may become a tutorial one day, we'll see.

I absolutely love my PUL Covers. They are very breathable. They are easy to clean and a snap to dry. My little girl doesn't have a skin problem with them. I love that PUL has become more available to home hobbyists as well. If your baby doesn't have a polyester allergy, then I highly recommend this type of diaper cover.

Some of My Recent Soaps

 This first soap is Strawberry Facial Soap. It is made with strawberry puree, coconut milk, rose kaolin clay, rice bran oil, coconut oil, palm oil, castor oil, cocoa butter & sweet almond oil. I strained it so it shouldn't have any seeds in it. I'm hoping it will make a really nice gentle soap for my face. It was supposed to cream and pink, but I think the fragrance oil is discoloring it a bit. I used Citrus Strawberry fragrance from Nature's Garden. It is a lovely scent and I will be ordering it again. I've heard that strawberry fragrances fade out in CP soap, so I'll be watching this to see what happens. I made this nearly three weeks ago and it was still a little sticky when I cut the rest of it today. I will have to learn more about water discounts for this one. It did ash on me, but that isn't a problem, just looks funny.

This next one is one I formulated to be coconut-free for a friend. I haven't figured out what to call it so far. I used the crockpot hot process method on this one. I love how the rhassoul clay looks marbled in this soap. It is made with rice bran oil, sweet almond oil, palm kernal flakes, palm oil, castor oil, mowrah Butter, distilled water rhassoul clay. It is scented with Nature's Garden Apple Mango Tango. It seems to be a very good formula for hot process being very loose for marbling, I will be making this again. 

I'll be testing both soaps for lather and skin feel this next week. Nature's Garden is a new supplier for me. So far, I am very happy with them. I love all the fragrance oils I ordered. I did have a problem with the sample they sent me, it gave me a migraine. It was a wonderful scent, but I'm glad they sent a sample because now I know that I can't really handle it, so I won't order it. One reason I got into making my own soaps is because I am sensitive to certain scents and strong scents. I am blessed that I don't get migraines that often. When I make soap, I tend to make them less scented than other soapmakers. NG is a great company altogether with lots of stuff I'd love to order. Ah, one day, one day....

It is nice to get back on my feet after this pregnancy and Princess is settling into a routine. I've still have a lot on my plate, but it is workable. The Lord has been very good to my family, and I thank Him for that. Now, time to work on my Autumn Swap soap.