I have a dress for the wedding!

I got my dress for the wedding today and it was permanent marked down AND on sale for 30% off too! Not only that, but I managed to get shoes that go with it and have tiny heels so I can maybe wear them the whole night. Here are pics of the dress with the "mother of the groom" jacket and without it and the tops of the shoes and the sides of the shoes. It is indeed my "Ultimate-Mother-of-the-Groom" dress... sigh... it is done.

I'm so VERY excited to have this done. now to upload pics and call Jen to check them out!

yea all I need is a purse/clutch and even that I can do without... that is what dh's inside pockets of his suit are for, right?

hugs all may you all be this happy this weekend...
denise/deBRAT

The most amazing soaping adventure happened today.....

This is just so cool ... today i brought to work some of my 40 oz of lotion i made last night after my massage therapist was at the house.... and i gave a few away.... i had met this nice lady in the parking lot one day who had made homemade baklava and I was a GOOD girl and did not have any..... i had knocked on her door yesterday (everything is protected by a swipe card in this building so i can't just get into the area she works in) there was no answer and i had so wanted to give her a couple of pieces of soap, the new Thanksgiving Day and the Rosemary's Mint soap.... but alas, when she did not answer it was not long before someone else came along needing a little brightening in their day.... so today i run into her in the hallway and think ahha i have lotion in the cubible still.... I'll give some to Margareda.... and can you believe this woman makes her own lotions, soaps etc!!!!!
just down the hallway from the lab i work in. She wanted info on making her own perfume and i gave her a quick answer but i will refer her to some of these lists... she is working on her dissertation so doubt she can read many but oh my gosh!!! right down the hallway from me is another soaper/bath and body products-maker!!!
Now tell me ladies what can be depressing about this? You would think nothing... but ... BUT... we just had gathering adn I was trying in the worst way to GIVE away the other bed in my room and have someone ride up with me.... see? now THAT is depressing. BUT I will go forward and hope that she is not in the end stages of her dissertation, eh? wink
hugs
denise/deBRAT

Yet another soaping day/night

Tonight I made soap! I made soap in honor of my mom's 69th birthday. It is crockpot soap with 100% carrot juice I got at work today as part of the liquid. They were donated to us at the college by someone who must represent www.bolthouse.com . And I used the Pumpkin Pie Spice I got from Debbie @ Lebermuth.com and Lordy it smells like I baked a pie! Well, more appropriately like someone else who cooks well baked a pie... mine always have that hint of burnt something fragrance about them....

Anyway, I cooked it the way Cheri www.bearablescents.com told me on the phone the other night that she does hers in the crockpot. I let it roll over to the center three times though because it reached the center each time without being completely all around the edges to the center. Cheri says she lets it roll twice. I guess it is soap.

Hubby is away and I had left a message for him to call me about a phone call he got that needed to be returned in a timely manner.... yup... you got it... he called when it was all done and 1/2 of the 12 bar slab mold was filled already! Sure hope that it survives the less than "all-at-once" pour.

I have pictures so here you are you patient people!

soapy hugs

~denise/deBRAT

Final Salt Bar Swap Try

So today yet again, I tried to make salt soap. This time I changed the FO to Royal Aromatics Pink Grapefruit. i also mixed my color, FO and salt in at trace then poured my batch into my mold. Then I set it to bake in the sun for over 2 hours. I brought it in after the color change stretched its way all the way to the sides from the center. I then waited until just before 5pm to cut my soap.... this is what I have for soap...... sigh

What you see in the picture: on the far right is a slightly paler bar. this is one of two individual molds bars made. the difference is i did not attempt to swirl more color into them, just into the slab. In the center you see a small sliver of a pink translucent bit I took off of the bar I tried a small slice from. It lathers lots in very small bubbles. It has a slight hint of grapefruit so not sure if the scent will be come more intense as time passes or not.the bottom center you see the top of the bar. on the left you see one of the "holes" that presented themselves when I cut the soap. Yes, clear odorless liquid came out of there. But it has no bite to it at all. You can also see in that same bar some of the pink translucent area of the bar.

So... what did I do? Or is it just ugly and still functional? Dang, this is my 4th batch of soap for the salt bar swap. I have hardly made any soap at all so I guess I'm lucky I have some luck at it but I can't wait for it to be pretty AND smell nice AND lather. I only want three things from it. Well, four... I'd like to sell some too. Maybe I'll go make some unscented lotion... the scented kind came out well last week and now I have bottles!... have a grand and glorious day filled with the blessings of family and friends ~denise/deBRAT

Soaping: It is always an Adventure

So last night on the way home from work I remembered to stop at our local Ace Hardware store and see if I could get a soap cutter. Now "remembered" is an important word in the first statement because my memory is not what it used to be and even worse if you ask my husband. So I walk up to the cleark (very nice at least 10-15 years older than me deBrat=48 currently) and try to describe to her that I wish to purchase a tool that has a metal blade about this long or longer and is strong enough to cut through soap... and it is what a soapmaker uses to cut their soap .... but I don't remember what they were calling the ones they were buying in "hardware" stores for lots less than those marketed for "actual" soap cutting use. Nice clerk has no clue what I'm describing but kindly walkie talkies someone else and asks. I felt like I could hear the guy chuckling silently in his head as to how will he answer this question tactfully fully knowing that I am standing right there able to hear his answer.

He has no clue either... so I say okay i'll walk up and down the aisles but I have another question. Do you carry lye? Grandma's lye soap? yes, its right over there.... in the meantime the man on the other end of the walkie talkie has walked up and now I follow him down the aisle with the Lye for soap. My words.... turns out they had some soap there... nope I'm going to get lye to MAKE my own soap. Oh that would be in the plumbing aisle... okay. So I walk over there and as he has nothing more interesting to do so he follows/escorts me to the plumbing section. Needless to say they did not have Roebic's and nothing else qualified as 100% sodium hydroxide........ to be continued

Salt Bar Soap Again

Okay so I made salt soap again last night.... The results from my slab mold are to the left there. Crockpot hot process attempted pink swirl.

Peppermint EO 1 ounce(equaling 3 TBSP) into about 2#s of the 3# batch of soap. about 30 drops of get this.... Life of the Party liquid coloring red... finally something of Life of the Party that works in hot process soap and not just Melt n Pour.... into the reserve portion for color. Salt went mainly into the non colored portion of the soap with just a bit of salt into the pink section......anyway.... I had a hard time convincing it to be flat on the top. I remembered someone recently saying they had used a spatula dipped in hot water to smooth out their top on a hot process soap. So I tried it......So I used the hand with the playtex glove on it and dipped my hand in the really hot water and attempted to flatten it out. All that did was create white foam across the top. Well my doubts about quick trace (once again) were dispelled by the appearance of the foam. Surely, if it is foaming "it is soap"! The salt is in the white part (about 1# of Mediteranean Fine Sea Salts) The pink portion has the tiniest bit of salt.

Two observations as the strength of the peppermint EO was already noticed in the rebatch on Sunday: firts, the top of the soap (what you see in the picture) had tiny areas of pink wet liquid. When blotted the pink liquid had no odor to it at all, nor did it appear to be oil. You can easily see the difference between oil and water type substances on a papertowel.

Second when I cut on the cutting lines (showing up better this time then the rebatch did on Sunday in my new UPLAND silicone slab mold) when I cross cut it some of the pink fell away from the rest of the pink/white part. I took a picture of this but after I had already downloaded from the camera and uploaded to here this AM and I was out of time for leaving for work.

So now I am at a loss of what to do. I guess I need to find a plain white soap producing recipe that I can just make and make and make and have on hand to rebatch everytime I need to "fix" another batch I've made...... sigh and not of relief. More like sigh of acceptance of flopping soap.

Tried a chunk of the mostly all mixed together pink part that was put into the separate mini mold bar(I cut the soap bar to the left in quarters) this morning and it feels nice and it smells exquisite and it lathers okay, certainly not profusely... but how do you send off partially fell apart soap bars to be swapped.

I want my soap to look like Anhoki's! I want my soap to look like ANYone else's but what I have been getting. Silly me, I sure bit off more than I can chew this time signing up for the swap.

Well that is my story and I'm sticking to it

have a soapy successful day,
denise/deBrat

Salt soap.. but Where's the Salt?

Alright it is just not fair to have thing after thing go wrong with my soap. don't get me wrong, I have lovely, useable soap from today's rebatch but now there is like NO salt feel to my soap. I suspect that the clear melt and pour melted my salt in the white rebatch and then i think the dead sea salts melted away in the M/P too. So I wonder if I technically have salt soap for a salt swap?

I hate to rebatch this again, but I can't make another batch in time to mail out. If I rebatch it, yet again, and add more salt to it, how do I prevent it from dissolving again?

on an UP note.... it smells divinely. It lathers nicely. It feels good on my skin while I use it. So it IS soap.... but is it salt soap?

Sigh..... I can't do anything easy

Oh and here are the pics!!!

the soap fresh out of my silicone line mold from upland. I'm going to love this mold... now to buy a cutter that will cut it..g. I had to use our big knife to cut it. the wavy cutter would not have gone through this without making a knobby mess every 6" or 7 ". Anyway here it is turned upside down from the mold.











Here are the cut bars. Not one bar is the same size or weight as another bar. they range from 3 1/4 oz all the way to 5 1/2 oz I guess the salt is in there somewhere, eh?

So they are interesting and I can't wait to decide what to do with them. Perhaps I should make a little baggie of peppermint bath salts to send with the soap for the swap? Would that be a good peace offering?

Let me know what you think! That is what the comments box is for.... lots and loads of hugs
denise/deBrat

My outdoor soaping station and the pool progress

More Pics, because we know it is all about the pics :)
Here is my table set up with the crockpot, new Upland mold. see the orange electric plug?












Here is my new Upland 12 bar mold. It has a silicone insert and I chose to get it with the cutting lines on it as I do not have anything to cut my soap with yet exept my wavy Pampered Chef cutter.








And here is the edge of the pool. Hubby took all of these metal parts off when he changed the liner. These are what he was painting with primer in my soaping spot yesterday!!! The grey part is dh's idea of making the pool not look dirty because he painted on the grey so the dirt would not show too much? You got me.... he lost me at making it look dirty all the time so dirt would not show....



and now i have just finished eating a cheap Publix brand dill pickle. It smelled like a pickle but tasted like the peppermint EO smelled.... hmmmmm not a good idea to eat something that smells like that peppermint stuff? I checked my hands and they don't smell of peppermint....

okay until the next set of pics comes my way this is it.... going to go check on my rebatched soap....
Brat

More pictures from Gathering!

Thanks to Judi in Jax I have a pic of the "bar" facial people.

I have now uploaded the bar pic four times. I am just going to take where it lands because every time i try to move it I delete it and have to re upload it. geeesh
Left to right front: judi in jax,Millie, Amber, Wayne
Back oh shoot Dan/daniel I think and I forget oh-miss-quiet-ones name... help me fill in the blanks pretty please?


and a pic of Sindy and her swirled cold process (then she put it in the car so we could see it done) soap demo

Left to right front of pic but back of heads: Ocala Kelly, deBrat
Back with full bodies LOL: Sindy, ??? , Joanne
see the neon powered colors on the table next to Kelly's head? See that pitcher of bright pink? She will pour that from a very high height! oh brave one.... I want to make soap like yours!

And that has to be Trish and her camera off to the left there..... I'm knitting that is why I am not looking up at that time.

more pics coming
~Brat

Ooops missed these pics from NFC Gathering 2006

Oops I missed these pics in the camera and I took the soap and lotion ones today just to post for your look-see.

This is what shea butter looks like after riding in the back window of the car for 5 hours and then being in the a/c of the house for a couple of hours. It is just starting to get smooshie again instead of a pure liquid. That butter has been whipped up by hand with a fragrance, rosemary perhaps? and it sits in the bathroom waiting for me to check it out and see what if anything, i wish to do to it next.


My foot after the Dead Sea Salts bath soaking story. It is hard to see how red my foot actually is because the flash reflected off of my foot. dang flash it won't behave on this camera. i am always holding it down while taking a picture.... i need to take a class in photography but truly just want to learn how to use my Nikon 8700.







The soap that Sindy made in her Cold Process swirls demo. Talk about going forth fearlessly! That woman is nuts. The color is not quite as bright as in the bags but it stayed much brighter than I was thinking from the description she was giving about "fade". it too smell wonderful. the colors are Neon: orange for the base, pink and green for the swirl. Paige sold out of her neon colors before that demo. Gum package for size reference.




My first lotion! those are lovely 2 oz bottles judi in jax so kindly sold me at the Gathering so i could make my lotion AND bottle it LOL. The black lids are NOT on them. the coconut is on the left and that is the 5th bottle that did not quite fill all the way. My tester bottles both of these. The raspberry is on the right. Gum package for size reference.
It is too bad you cannot feel or smell these lotions they are WONDERFUL!

I am so happy to have something go so right my first time of making it. Of course, some of my happiness could be from the fact that I planned to make soap yesterday and my outdoor area was "taken" up by the pool project my dh is working on for 5 days so, I made lotion and bath bombs and bath salts instead. I had not soaked in the tub before I started buying Dead Sea Salts and making bath bombs and bath salts.

Now to work on a name and labeling. Oh so much to do and the weekend runneth out already :(

lator gators,
deBrat

North Florida Crafters 2nd Annual Gathering

I did not take many pictures but here are a few I managed to take. If others took pictures and have shared them online I'll post a link here if you'd like. Also, some of the names I do not know please feel free to tell me so i can identify everyone here.


Tammy mixing up the hair mud for the demo. This is after the 1 hour powerpoint show of information on the Dead Sea and the products she makes from the imported minerals. It is hard to make out but she is wearing a leopard or cheetah patterned material apron. It is a fancy as her outfit LOL







Judi in Jax, Lori (pawdette@yahoo.com)and OcalaKelly

Vendor: Alabaster products/table in the background.






I literally ran into this woman several times before taking her picture. She is opening her swap goody box. I was so busy apologizing for cutting in front of her and her friend I never got her name. My only defense is I get so focused some times I just blunder forth and miss everything around me. I'm so sorry, again. Would you please provide your name? [according to Ocala Kelly this is Sylvia. She had a wonderful olive oil and jasmine soap in the swap. :-)]

Hmmm I should know who the guy in the background is but I don't recall his name. Anyone?


Ocala Kelly with her tart warmer/burner from Cheri in the swap goody box. She is wearing her new shirt from the mall visit the day before.[I stand corrected that is not kelly's new shirt she wore the new shirt after the hair mud treatment.] Kelly's dh and two sons were there. They had all gone to the museum and the mall on Friday and the boys wanted to go back again on Saturday. To both the mall and the museum.

I am sorry I did not take more pictures. But the camera is a heavy one and I tend to get so "focused" on taking pictures I miss out on what is actually happening. Sometimes you have to choose in life and of course while I was there choosing to watch, listen and LEARN seemed good but now that I'm home I'm so sorry I did not take pictures. I think Trish took tons of pics perhaps she'll share some for me to post here?

Saturday Night Facial Party

I thought we had a picture of some of the "in the bar" facial people but it must not have been with my camera? Anyway here is a facial picture or two or three. Probably more than you would like to see...
I am convinced that "criminals" are forced to take pictures of themselves in mirrors in order to get the proper "mug shot" for the record. Awful pic BUT both my eyes are open?

Oh, this is the microdermabrasion type product we used after we washed our face with a liquid mud soap. Something about mud and soap... what is the word? oxymoron?







PLEASE, remind me NOT to take pictures of myself to market MY products. This looks like caption should be "died with mask on" The only thing missing is the satin interior and the lily.











Okay so she/me is so happy because I've been resurrected? Still a frightening sight in my opinion. Oh and the white spot you keep seeing on my cheek is really white. I have others too. It is some chemical thing going on. Tammy of www.deadseabulkmaterials.com can tell you better what it is.

Hope you enjoyed visiting the facial pics,

Soapy muddy hugs
denise/deBrat

The Packed Miata Pictures

Here are the pictures of the Miata packed for returning from the NFC 2nd Annual Gathering in Tallahassee on July 8th, 2006. I won't tell you how many dollars it takes to fill a Miata but I might mention how much of some things are in there.

You may have read that Cherie and Frank could not go to the Gathering and so they met me at the outlet for Russell Stover in Wildwood so I could on the way "up" to the Gathering pick up their swap items.... and on the way back to give them their swapped out goodies, their purchase from Rainee and their goodie bags and door prizes.

The only way this would work is if A) my suitcase would fit between the front seat and the glovebox AND B) the three 35# boxes of oils would fit in the trunk.


As you can see I did pack the right suitcase and it fits neatly between the seat and the glovebox. In the front passenger seat you see Cherie's order box (square, which containes their door prizes and some of their goody bag items as there was room in it and so little room in my car) her swap box(short end of the rectangel)my suitcase, 1 gal of castor oil and out of view are the two heavy goody bags with some from the other bag stuck in them too for Frank and Cherie. On top of that list is my cooler, my bag with my knitting supplies in it, the camera case and then on top of that is the very old very light weight folding luggage rolling thingy. The luggage thing went behind my seat for driving.


This is looking into my back window. This has the chocolate from Russell Stover that I did not sell while at Gathering, 10#s of Shea butter in that purple bag from Gin (www.saltysshelf.com) and my goody bags (we each got so many goodies they were in two bags!) with some of the paperwork i picked up in them too. One should never travel with 10#s of unrefined shea butter in their back window in a two seater car in Florida in July. Just really really bad combination... Oh and one should not have consumed too much alcohol the night before either.


This is of my trunk. I put the three, 35# oils boxes in first with plastic garbage bags around them incase they leaked in any form. They are also turned so the spout is toward the trunk lid and not down... again, just in case of leaks. My car is not paid for yet, there is no need to ask for anything bad to happen to it, eh? around it you can see the 2# fragrance containers ( i only actually got 2# of two sale Oils from Debbie Woodruff www.lebermuth.com the others are that size container but only 1# FO before you think I got totally carried away in purchasing LOL. My goody bag umbrella is over on the right side. There are also my Dead Sea products; salts, mud etc. On the left side almost not seen at all are all my extracts. There is a small deeper well area there and so there are three FO 1# containers in the well with the other things around them.

So it all fit in, including me and it took 14 trips from my room with the luggage cart to load the car Sunday morning. The maid kept asking if I was leaving LOL Kept telling her a few more trips!

The beginning of the Bath & Body Adventure

Well this is really only the beginning of the blog portion of the Bath & Body. So let's go through today's B & B adventure..... I was to make soap. I long to make soap. It has been been 10 days since I last made soap. As much as it did not turn out in the manner I would have liked, I still got to make soap. Soaping is an addiction beyond any other crafting/selling/teaching I have done.

So back to the actual soaping. t he Soaping that did not happen. I asked dh (dear hubby) to please take my folding table outside so I could make soap today at his convenience. Well, when I went like an hour later to see if it had been convenient yet what do my horrified eyes do i see? But a ladder and pool pieces reeking of nasty primer paint where my table should be. eeeek!

DH is working on rebuilding most of our above ground pool since thursday and today was the priming with nasty smelling stuff day... sigh... no soaping going on in this yard today. So on to plan B!

Plan B turned out to be making lotion! I was waiting to make this recipe from an online class in one of my soaping groups until I got back from the North Florida Crafters 2nd Annual Gathering last Saturday (07/08/06) http://www.northfloridacrafters.com/ where I got the specific to make lotion ingredients, along with TONS of other supplies. So I mix up this 20oz batch of LOVELY white lotion and split it out and scent it with a Raspberry Scent and a cool Coconut smell in the other half. I wiped the emptied bowls out with my fingers and put it on me. I smell like a coconut covered raspberry right now. I'd be a great frozen beverage with ice and rum or vodka.

So after the Ten 2 0z lotion bottles are full and the clean up is done I realise that the ladder and pool parts have not made any progress out of my outdoor soaping area so I start on Plan C.

Plan C is to make bath bombs and I just so happened to stop by my local grocery market to get one of the ingredients I still needed last night. So I was soooo ready to create some more Bath de-LIGHTS. I made a bodacious bath round to go with the Raspberry Lotion and then I made some Coconut Bath Salts to... you guessed it... match up with the Coconut Lotion. The Raspberry one is just so light and playful in scent and the Coconut makes me think I'm at the beach without the gritty sand to wash off later, eh?

So now I better get to work on labels for these products because I know they are not going to last for Christmas gifts!

May each of you be surrounded by those you love today and every day!

Blessings,
denise/de-BRAT