I made a treasury on Etsy!!

Yeah I get excited pretty easy dont I...if I jump up and down over new flavors of Kool-Aid and Jell-o you can imagine how I feel over the treasury I just made LOL

CLICK ME NOW!!!!!!!

I waited on Etsy and checked it constantly since 6 AM to get this treasury. I was determined and hell bent. I was gonna get one no matter what!

I only wish I had 12 more spaces to put people whos work I love so dearly.

The theme of my treasury is "Hippie Style" I got things that show off our unique style, from the patchwork clothing, to the incredible applique work some mamas do to the cool head gear we wear like the goddess head wraps and dread bands. I think it looks pretty good and I would love to see all of us on the front page...oh I would LOOOVE it! I get tired of seeing the same stuff there. Yeah its nice but its OUR turn now

So go to my treasury, and click on everything there...leave me a comment even if its something lame like "cool." pass the link to your friends, go to the library and use each computer to go to the treasury and click on all the stuff...OK I am going overboard, but please pass the link to all your hippie friends!

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=13741


LOVE YOU GUYS!

Adorable pictures of Maylee

I love my baby. I really really love her. I just cannot take enough pictures of her. In my eyes she is the most beautiful baby in the whole wide universe! I never in my life dreamed I would ever get to have a daughter of my own, and here she is. She is all mine, and she is so beautiful




I took pictures of her this afternoon attempting to de-hair her father while he was trying to sleep on the boys trampoline...this was pretty funny.

You can see her here, she is biting his shoulder with her two new teeth and she is pulling his nose with her hand. I am not sure what she is doing with the other hand, probably punching him in the gut.







Here you can see Maylee's Fist of Fury. Its best to be careful of the "fist" also she carries one mean slobber hand slap. Got to always be on the lookout for the slobber hand slap! Nothing like getting slapped in the glasses by a baby hand covered in warm slobbers.













Here you see Maylee doing her new favorite thing...standing up! She will use ANYTHING she can get her hands on to pull up to something...your ears, your hair, the box with her toys in it...the box full of buttons I used to have.....











You can see her thinking in this picture...plotting his destruction....












Here you can see the pool Maylee was born in. Cool huh? Me and her got in it a couple of days ago. It was a Kodak Moment for sure but I was all wet and had a wet baby so I didn't take no pictures...I wish I would have! She was so cute in her swimsuit!




Here is a picture I took today of me and her. It kinda sucked so I played with it in my photo editing program I love so much. I like the way it looks now. We look pretty cute together.

I'm Kind of a Big Deal....hehehehe

Not really but I am basking in the glory for a moment!

I got featured in a treasury!

In The Garden

Go check it out!

To make the treasury more popular you can click on ALL the pictures and maybe leave sweet Miss Olivia a comment. She was kind enough to include me in her treasury and she was quite excited to actually score a treasury! If you have ever tried you know how hard it is. I been trying to score one for a few days and just cant seem to be there at the right time to get one!

I am hoping this makes front page...oh gosh can you imagine how huge my head would swell up if I was on the front page of Etsy! I am already trying to figure out how to get a full screen shot of the treasury so I can frame it and send it to my mom and my sister and have enough of them printed up for every room in the house...I managed to get a screen capture of just the items in the treasury and I guess that will have to do till I can figure out something else...

So this is my big moment of "fame" so I am going to enjoy it while it lasts...ah the glory of being in a treasury....(sigh)

Thanks Olivia!!

Making soap...lots of pictures!

Hey guys...I finally did it. I took a few pictures while I was making soap. Its not a tutorial or anything just some pictures of the adventures I have in soap making.

Here you see the soap after I have mixed in the lye and oils...its well on its way to being soap now. Its in its "cooking" process where all the lye cooks out of it and makes it instant gratification. I can go shower with it in a couple of hours...I like that!

Here you can see the aftermath of the monster soap's destruction. I turned my back for a minute to get my molds ready and it was shooting out of the pan not unlike a volcano. The stove was clean when I started LOL



Here I am trying to scrape up some of the soap that spilled out while I was furiously beating it back down into the pot. I kinda got scared for a minute cause this batch was taking a beating and kept rising up outta the pan! I couldnt beat it quick enough to keep it down...finally it gave up and just had a nice long rest.






Here you see what the soap looks like after it has pitched a fit and tried to escape from the pan. Here it is just hanging out, chillin' doing its chemical process stuff....just working on being soap instead of being a raging monster.








Here to the right you see an up close shot of the soap. This is one of the many many changes it goes thru while it is cooking. You can see teeny bits of it has become white...thats soap! The brown part is still working thru the process to become the soap that we all love...











And here is the soap almost ready to go! You can see how a lot of it is white, and there is more white than brown...thats how you know its ready, but to be sure I break off a piece and stick it to my tongue...yeah I "zap" test it. If I get zapped, its not done...if no zap is present then we go to the next test...the "wash my hands in it and break my arm patting myself on the back cause the bubbles rock so much" test

Here you can see my hand in a bowl (notice its pink...I like pink) I am here kneading and mixing the soap around with my hands until it is the consistency of play-doh. It is obviously cool enough to touch so this is when I add in shea butter, cocoa butter...both unrefined and in their natural state with all the goodness left intact, and I also add in the essential or fragrance oils at this point. By adding them in now rather than when the soap is burning hot and crawling out of the pan, the oils retain their true scent and dont change. This is a good thing! I know whatever it smells like now is gonna be what it smells like tomorrow and next week and next month!






Here I have already mixed in all the goodies as well as some coloring and packed it in my square mold. This mold holds 2 and 1/2 pounds of soap and makes very nice 4 ounce rectangle shaped bars.



I made some of this soap a light green and the darker blueish color SHOULD turn a nice dark brown in a couple of days...theoretically this is what should happen, although we will see! This is scented with Nag Champa, and it usually turns my soap brown...I am shooting for a nice earth tone soap in dark brown and lighter green here...we will see how it turns out after it cures a bit.



Here is my round PVC pipe el Cheapo molds, but they make a nice good sized round bar of soap. They fit in the hand quite nicely...perfect size!




In the top container I have tangerine basil...with real dried basil in the soap! This one is made with essential oils of Sweet Basil and Tangerine...I LOVE the tangerine!!!

The bottom pipe has Tangerine Vanilla! It smells a lot like a dreamsicle. Creamy tangerine...its nice, and my house smells just like it...If I could only take a picture of how great my house smells right now LOL

The little blue-ish soaps are nag champa scented "Thank you" soaps. I like to throw one in if someone orders some clothing or something...if I think they will like the scent anyways. Nag Champa is my number one seller so I havent got any complaints yet LOL.



Here you see the finished, cut soaps. The orange-ish ones are the tangerine ones, the brown and white rectangle ones are scented with Patchouli and this has moroccan red clay in the reddish part...I love that stuff in soap. It makes the skin so soft!

The blue green ones are nag champa of course...even if they dont cure to the point they have brown in them, I like those colors anyways LOL I love the blue and green...like the ocean, but Nag Champa dont smell like the ocean so the color dont really match the scent but like I said, I am hoping for the brown to come out by tomorrow.


So thats it for my soapmaking adventure today. I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for taking a moment to hang out with me and see how this awesome soap is made...sort of LOL.