Lily of the Valley Soap

This soap turned out great!

Too bad I can't say the same about the first batch...  My soap mold clamps together on the sides, but is a little bit loose.  I've never had a problem with it, until now...  I had just poured the soap (could tell the swirl was going to be AWESOME) and picked up the mold to carry it into the laundry room to sit over night.

And then the side fell off.

And then there was 4 pounds of liquid sloppy soap all over the side of the fridge and the kitchen floor. 

Oh, and let's not forget that it's not fully saponified at this point, so I have some awesome lye burns all over my hands now from cleaning it up.  Granted, I could have waited until it became a bit more soap-like and way easier to clean up, but I was terrified Willow would come in and try to eat it.  Yes, she can definitely be that dumb.

Well let's look on the bright side - My kitchen floor is SO clean right now.

Minty Fresh

I kind of feel like I'm living in a giant tube of toothpaste right about now.

I cut all of my peppermint in the front yard, and now it's hanging in my living room to dry before the big move.  I've never really timed how look it took to dry the peppermint, but I imagine 3 weeks should be more than sufficient.

It is wonderfully fragrant and still so bright and green.  Tastes good, too!  I tried to get Willow to eat some in hopes of freshening her breath, but I guess it seemed a little too much like lettuce for her discriminating palate.

What will I do with all of this dried peppermint?  Definitely keep it for another batch of minty soap, and maybe make up some new sachets in the future.

Spearmint Soap

I had some leftover dried spearmint and peppermint leaves from my garden last summer, and I knew that I should use them up before we moved.  I decided to go with spearmint soap, since everyone seemed to like the peppermint soap I made at Christmas so much.

Well, I totally hit it out of the park on this one!  This may possibly be the most refreshing bar of soap in the history of the world.  I kind of want to keep the entire batch for myself!  It also turned out such a lovely shade of green due to the french green clay in the recipe. 

My peppermint bush is back stronger than ever in the front yard.  You can see how large the leaves are in the picture above.  Seriously, it's starting to look more like an oak tree than a peppermint plant.  I think I'm going to let it grow for the next couple weeks, then cut it all down, dry it, and bring it with me with the rest of my botanicals.

New Products!

I've made the decision to focus my soaping efforts strictly on bar soap, liquid soap, felted soaps, body butters, and lip balms.  These have become my best sellers, and are my favorite things to make.  So much of starting a business is trying out what things work and what things don't.  It's been such a lesson in patience and stress management to learn to brush off the things that aren't as successful as I had hoped.  Deciding to make only these items felt like such a relief - I am one step closer to being fully established, and I'll be able to have huge fragrance variety within those product lines!

So, in honor of my new focus, I've ordered a bunch of fun new stuff!

New lip balm flavors:
Honey
Grape
Coconut
Chocolate Cream
Strawberry
Coffee
Root Beer
Cinnamon
Spearmint

I think I'm going to try combining root beer with vanilla and go for a Root Beer Float kinda feel.  Do I see a Cinnamint on the horizon?  Just like baking, minus the calories!

New soap fragrances:
Jasmine (just for you Charlene!)
Lilac
Cherry Blossom
Hibiscus Passion (okay those two aren't new, but were huge sellers!  Expect more Cherry Blossom bar soap, and Hibiscus Passion in everything!)

Don't ask me about my logic in ordering all of this stuff when I'm desperately trying to pack things up!  My wonderful friend Linda will be handling the East Coast distribution of Sarah's Soak Shoppe and will need me to have things ready for her.  (Don't you just love how you can come up with a title and all of a sudden it sounds important?)  In any case, let me know what you think of those new lip balm flavors.  I'm pretty excited myself!

Spring Sale!

In honor of the arrival of spring (and the horrible rainy weather in Pittsburgh), I'm offering 20% off in my Etsy shoppe!  Enter coupon code SpringSale2011 anytime in May to get your discount!

I also felted 7 soaps tonight, so you can look forward to seeing a few more listed in the coming week!

Ooooo, pretty!

I cut my Hibiscus Passion bar soap, and it looks awesome!

You just never know what you're going to get when you make a swirled soap.  It is absolutely devastating to cut a log of soap and realize that the colored part is less like a swirl and more like a blob.  Totally worth it though when you get some really great details!  This fragrance also has a lot more depth than I realized initially - maybe a hint of cinnamon in with the floral?  It has also been quite a hit with the gentlemen folk, which really surprised me.

This is also the first bar soap to get the new labels - looking good!  Love Photoshop.  Give it a few weeks to cure, and 8 bars will be available for sale on Etsy!  The other half will be going to my good ol' dad.

I've also been going through all of my craft supplies so I can figure out what is coming with me and what needs to get used/sold/given away in the next two months.  If anyone has any empty jars and wants me to pour candles, bring 'em over!  I have about 20 pounds of wax and it is SO not going to Alaska.  I'm hoping to take almost everything, but I need to find a good way to get it organized so it is easy to locate while I'm living out of boxes, and easy to store once we're in our cabin.

I also learned that the board has approved my application for social work licensure in Alaska, pending ASWB ever sending proof of my exam date.  I paid them to transfer the score over a month ago, so hopefully they get on the ball pretty soon.  It would be nice to know that I have the option to apply for a professional job!

Craft Show Review

I've done two craft shows this month, and I haven't mentioned how either have turned out!  The first one, at the South Hills Country Club, was an epic failure.  It was an absolutely GORGEOUS day, so hardly anyone came to the show.  The people that did come were obviously there to window shop only.  At least I wasn't the only one that didn't make any money!  As it was, I barely made my table fee back for 5 hours worth of work...  Kind of the risk that you take going to a craft show, I suppose.

The second one was this past weekend.  Actually, as it was the Mt. Lebanon Earth Day Fair, it wasn't really a craft show.  MUCH more successful!  It was a lot of fun too - I got a free sample of a compostable garbage bag!  I will definitely have to pick some of these up when I re-establish my composting in Alaska. A stinky smelly compost bucket sucks.  Imagine grabbing the whole thing, bag and all, and tossing it in the pile!

I must say, I am absolutely shocked at my success in selling my wares over the last several months.  After hoping and wishing for such a long time that I would somehow be able to support myself through my own creativity, I decided to take the plunge.  My upfront costs weren't that outrageous, and I figured if it failed miserably I could at least say I tried.  Honestly, I think I expected that I would try it for awhile, nobody would buy anything, and I'd get it out of my system.  Instead, I'm becoming increasingly excited and confident that this could actually work!  Not that I'm exactly rolling in cash, but I'm getting closer to recovering every penny put in! Also, a wonderful friend of mine wants to act as a distributor for Sarah's Soak Shoppe in PA once I'm in Alaska - I'll be a coast to coast business!

I really encourage anyone that has dreams of doing something like this to just suck it up and try.  Especially if you can do it without breaking the bank up front.  You just might surprise yourself!

The best thing about it being freezing cold in an Alaskan winter...

Is that it will only take like five minutes for my lye to cool when I'm making soap!!  I just realized this as I when soaping tonight, and waiting and waiting and waiting for my lye to cool to a reasonable temperature, even thought it's only 30 degrees out.

Here's the fruit of my labor:

The left is Earth (smells like fresh dirt, with a touch of mint perhaps?), which I colored with cocoa powder.  I also added black sesame seeds to make it look a bit more dirt-like and give it some exfoliating power.  The one on the right is coconut, which I left uncolored because coconut doesn't really have a color (although I really wanted to make it green for some reason...)

And here they are all snuggled up under a blankie to stay toasty roasty overnight.  I think the old school afghan is very appropriate for soaping, don't you?

Craft Show Prep

So I spent my Friday night getting ready for my craft show coming up April 10th.  Truth be told, that's my favorite way to spend a night off!  I got my four fragrances of cuticle salve ready to go and even got them listed on Etsy!

In the process of doing my listings on Etsy tonight (which I've put off for a week, because it takes forever), I saw this handy little button called "copy."  If only I had seen this precious button weeks ago.  Basically, it completely copies a listing so you can just edit the parts you need to (like the fragrance).  What a concept!  Now I may actually be able to get everything listed in the foreseeable future!

I also got my bags ready to go, in 3 different sizes.  I have a few really big bags too, for anyone that buys a gift basket.

Once I got the chance to sit down and do my inventory, I realized that I'm in better shape than I realized. Of course I'll feel better once everything is done, which will likely be as I'm walking out the door to go to the show!  I'm really excited, and I hope this show is a success!

In moving news, my hitch came in the mail yesterday.  It weighs about a thousand pounds, and I'm very glad Karl is the one that has to deal with putting it on!  What a huge step and really reminds me that this is for real!

Stressed!

Hello, my name is Sarah, and I am stressed out! 

I admit, I am typically pretty stressed out on any given day.  I have managed to adapt to my natural state of being very high strung, which is why I typically have 32 projects going on and I have been go to bed way too late.  However, planning this move has dumped WAY more anxiety causing problems on me than I had anticipated.  We just found out that I may not be able to have a hitch installed on my car (because Ford wants to punish me for not getting the towing package for $2378523 when I purchased it).  No hitch = no trailer = not taking the vast majority of our stuff.

Now I don't have some serious emotional connection to most of my furniture or anything like that.  In fact, most of it is junk anyhow.  And I realize that we can ship almost any of our personal belongings beyond what we can fit in our vehicles.  But, the minimal amount of money we'd get for selling this stuff won't come anywhere near the cost of replacing it.

Karl's answer is to just sell everything and buy new things as we can afford it.  This seriously freaks me out, because moving will be hard enough without feeling like I'm a 19 year old kid with a sleeping bag in a frat house. 

We also don't know if his Dad will be around this summer, as he's thinking of going gold mining.  We can make it work either way, I just feel like I need to know so I can plan accordingly.

Basically, it just seems like there's a million questions that I don't have answers to, and I can't make any decisions until I get get this information. 

So, to make myself feel better (and to own even more stuff), I had to purchase some new fragrance oils.  The coconut fragrance oil that I got last week went kinda of funky - the lid had cracked and I think the exposure to air made it turn.  In addition to more coconut, I got Cedarwood Virginia, Autumn Afternoon, Dreamsicle, Earth (which is supposed to smell like dirt - what fun!), Gardenia, Honey Harvest, Mango Sorbet, Plumeria, and Snow Drops.  I think this will take me to over 50 fragrances!  I am probably lucky that I don't have a place nearby where I could go sniff all of their fragrances and essential oils.  I would probably leave with $500 worth of stuff and STILL want more!

This and That

"Sarah," you might ask, "what is the most expensive part about moving to across the country?"

"Is it the trailer rental?"
             Nope.

"The increasingly high cost of gas for a 4000 mile trip?"
             No, although that's nothing to sneeze at either.

"What about the cost of replacing the things you can't take with you?"
             Close, but no cigar.

Give up?  The most expensive part so far is having a boyfriend that owns one of these:

Karl's 1964 1/2 Mustang

$2300 to have this car hauled across the country to Seattle, then stuck on a ferry to Anchorage.

Sigh... I accept that Karl loves this car and really wants to take it with him.  It's also a bargaining chip if he ever opens his mouth about the amount of space my craft supplies will take up in the trailer.

I also spent the day today going through my boxes of miscellaneous mementos.  I've avoided ever making a decision about whether something qualifies as a keepsake by stuffing it all in photo boxes.  In the spirit of having a fresh start, I was brutal in going through photos, ticket stubs, and cards.  In the process, I found these gems:

Me on my first day of kindergarten!

My little brother's first bike when he "gradutated" preschool

Little Karl (on the right)

And finally, I cut my brick of freshly made Grapefruit Shampoo Bars and it turned out perfect!  I've decided to gauge the quality of my bath and body products by how much I want to eat them.  The soap looked just like pudding when I poured it, and the bars are so super creamy now I can't wait to use it after it's cured.  I haven't used traditional shampoo or conditioner in over a year, and my hair has never looked better.  Less crap = more nice, in my opinion.

Grapefruit Shampoo Bars