It's a Beautiful World!

It's a Beautiful World Soap

I can't believe it's been so long since I blogged! Between a house renovation that occupied so much of my time and just plain getting older and slowing down, I feel like a hermit or maybe a turtle!

For the past 2 1/2 years, I've been making soap. Nothing fancy, just good, all natural body and hand soap. After using all natural soap for so long, if I use store bought soap, I can smell the chemicals in it!  

I'm starting to get regular customers and decided to give my little business a name. Since I love globes and maps, I integrated them into my business by wrapping the soap in old maps. It seemed natural to call the soap business, "It's a Beautiful World".

 There are numerous soap recipes out there. My suggestion, if you're interested in trying it, watch tutorials on YouTube and invest in a book with simple recipes calling for cheap oils.  My first soap was a very simple, 3 ingredient soap from a tutorial on YouTube. 

After that, I bought a book with 4 basic recipes that you can change with additives.
I've tried many different combinations including, Nettle Soap, Buttermilk Soap, Lavender Soap.....you get the idea. 

Along the way, there have been a few flops......I burned goat's milk when adding it to the lye, I added Poppy seeds to a Lemon Poppy-seed batch too late and they bunched together and I added too much essential oil to a batch and it didn't harden completely.  But, that's part of soap-making.

Soap-making is science.  It's very precise and about ingredients reacting in a certain way to others when mixed together in the correct way.  When it's ready to mold, it's the consistency of thick pudding. I spoon it into silicon molds. After being molded, it has to be wrapped up so it'll cool down very slowly. After about 24 hours, the soap is hard enough to un-mold and cure. Curing or hardening the soap takes a month to a year depending on the oils used. It's done by leaving the bars in the open to dry out. Then they're ready to go!

It's been fun sharing about it! 

Happy Soaping!

Sally

June 2018 Garden

"Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June."

Al Bernstein

June is always the most wonderful time of the year. In the perennial flowerbeds, almost everything has broken ground. The heat and bugs haven't had a chance to do their black magic and the plants and flowers are pristine.

This discount store Clematis has finally taken off. 

Japanese Iris is an amazing color blue.

Lupine! I'm so thrilled to be growing it.

This Peony plant was so full of blooms that they were drooping to the ground before I staked them.

                             

Old faithful Coreopsis blooms for a good 6 weeks and will get a 2nd flush if I cut them back.

Sweet William was one of the first perennials I was introduced to as a child and I still love it.

Very pale blue Columbine.

There are only a few Painted Daisies in the garden. I love them and need more.

Foxglove is another favorite.

I'm finally growing Baptisia...

This dark pink Peony blooms a little later than the others.

I love this Lowe's markdown rescue plant. It's a new cultivar of Veronica.

Tiny blooms of the Heuchera are garden energizer bunnies. They bloom almost all summer.

There's not much more beautiful than a rose!

Evening Primrose grows low and is a great filler plant.

Veronica in the background and Catchfly or Silene in the front.

Annuals aren't my favorite but they do have their place filling in nicely.

Woodland Phlox blooms really early.

This culitvar Yarrow is the only one that's survived my casual gardening.

Feverfew that I originally got many, many years ago from a neighbor of my sister when she lived in Maine. My 40 something year old kids really were kids then!

Siberian Iris

  

Rose Campion and Wild Geranium.

Spiderwort in back and Rose and White Campion in forefront.

Black-eyed Susan's are starting to bloom and will bloom through fall.

White and Rose Campion blowing my mind with the beauty.

Gaillardia begins blooming in June, as well.

Butterfly Weed

 

A beautiful red Rose. The plant was a gift from my daughter, Allison.

A lovely mix of perennails with Lupine in the front,

Irish Eyes! One of my favorite daisies.

Lots of blooms all around the old garden chair

Beautiful pale Pink Astillbe.

Last and certainly not least, Idgie or tabby cat cleaning her paws. 

Wow! I posted a lot of pictures here. How could I not? June was such a wonderful month in the garden.

Raising Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterflies

May the wings of a butterfly kiss the sun

And find your shoulder to light on,

To bring you luck, happiness and riches

Today, tomorrow and beyond.

Irish Blessing

In late July, I went out to the garden to get some parsley and got quite a delightful surprise.There were 10 Eastern Black Swallowtail (EBS) Butterfly cats on the parsley. A while before, I'd joined a butterfly page on Facebook and was planning to raise Monarchs if I could find any. 

Because butterfly caterpillars are so yummy, by the time I got a container and managed to bring them in the house, there were 7 left and it was the same day. 

 
Why bring butterfly eggs and cats inside and raise them(on your dining room table)? The reason is because it increases their chance of survival a lot. Most of them are eaten by predators and the continued use of poisons on lawns and gardens is killing them, as well. It's important to be sure the host plants are free of pesticides and herbicides. I know a couple of people who lost cats because of poisoned plants.

When ready to lay eggs, the female butterfly looks for a host plant to lay eggs on. In the case of EBS, there are several hosts, parsley, Queen Anne's Lace and fennel to name a few. Because EBS and any other caterpillars are voracious little eaters, it wasn't long before we were running out of parsley. So late in the season, I was lucky to find 6 plants at a local nursery. When they found out what I was getting it for, they gave me a good discount.

The little buggers eat and poop, eat and poop and just when you think they can't get any bigger, they get sluggish and the next thing you know, they start to hang in a "J" formation and become a chrysalis.I thought, for sure, I had a picture of them in chrysalis but, no....sorry.
EBS cats are unpredictable. They can emerge in 2 weeks or 6 weeks! The ones I had emerged in a little over two weeks.

They emerge so fast I didn't get pics but, this guy is drying out.

After around 2 hours they can be released. You'll know because they start moving around.

I can't think of anything more perfect and beautiful on God's green earth than a newly emerged butterfly. The colors are so vibrant.

That's it, I'm hooked! 

A fairly new hobby. Soap making.

For the past couple of years I've been making my own soap. It's something I've wanted to do for years but was always talked out of it by people who are afraid of lye. Grant it, you have to have respect for it. It's nasty stuff. But, if you take the precautions needed when handling it, you'll be fine.

                                  

The above three pictures are of soap I'm going to be selling. I love maps and have many of them so I'm using them to wrap some of the soaps.

Here is the soap from the first recipe I ever tried. It's 100% Olive Oil soap which is also called Castile soap. It's very gentle and great for babies or people with dry irritated skin. This soap takes a year to cure.

Lavender soap, some with Lavender buds others without. This batch was made last week and will take another month to cure or be hard enough to sell.

I used Safflower Oil with this recipe for oatmeal soap and love the results. It's still curing but I made some smaller bars that are usable and it's silky and bubbly.....can't wait to get feedback on it.

Last but not least, here's my mess! I store the soap supplies in the laundry room. I'm hoping to have wall cabinets by the first of next year to put the supplies in.
At some point, I'll go through the whole process of soap making.

God bless you and keep keeping on!
Sally