Holiday gift certificates!!

I know it may seem 1. A bit early to be excited about the holidays coming up and 2. Not worth getting excited about in the first place, but I plan to debunk both these misguided thoughts. With my Etsy store (shameless self promotion!!) I wanted a way for people to let their friends and family members choose their own presents for themselves, or shock, horror, you either have no clue what they want, or no time to go out and spend three hours trekking around a hot, overcrowded shopping mall filled with coughing sneezing people, whinging kids and annoying shop assistants only to find out that Star Trek figurine you needed for Uncle Barry just got sold to the pushy lady with the frumpy hat in front of you.
So with that fantastic mental picture, if you don't pop off and get yourself a gift certificate right now then you have my sympathies. But not too much, cause really, I want you to get a gift voucher!! That's all the rant I have left in me, I shall post photos of said amazing gift cards once their all made up! Woo!

Ahhhh crap.

I did it again, I let my life come between me and my blogging. Shame! I will subsequently attempt to recap the last month and a bit of goings on here in a single non ranting post.

August
Started my nursing course and also got a puppy. Her name is Sally and she is now the love of Dave and our lives now. Nursing is going well, although full on, which hasn't left me huge amounts of spare time for blogging or soap creating sadly. Hopefully I'll strike the right balance somewhere in the near future. So no life and lack of sleep pretty much sums up the rest of that month. Dave and I also celebrated our anniversary, but sadly no giant metal chickens.

Wow, ok when I write it like that I see why I haven't been blogging, I haven't done an interesting goddamn thing since I've started back at uni. That's ok though, I quite enjoy the relaxing pace of doing as little as possible whenever allowable.

I'll do my best to post all my non goings on more regularly from here on in! :) (which should hopefully include some soaping at some point down the line)

Frustrating times call for creative intervention!!

So work and school have both been getting me down lately, with work cutting my shifts and school saying that one of my core units I need to do is already full one day after I get my offer of acceptance letter! What the hell is up with that? It's not like I sat around for a few weeks twiddling my thumbs, we're talking one day here people! So I'm doing some running around trying to get into it anyways, we'll see how we go. Updates once I hear back on that. But here are some pretty marigolds I planted out back to start making my backyard a bit more livable and less 'jungle like' as some of my friends described it.

But onto the fun parts! The creative intervention side of my life lately. I saw this blog post on Today's Nest, and it inspired me to do a project something similar for myself! I decided to use candles instead of bulbs as I have no clue about how to connect wires and bits, and Dave was a bit concerned I might electrocute myself in the process. I started out by finding and keeping any wide mouth glass jars I could find, and a good clean of the fridge came up with some winners that we were never going to be using again. I stumbled across some little glass tea light holders at IKEA which worked perfectly to glue into the bottom of the jars so that the candles would sit flat and not flop around in the bottom of the jar as the bottoms aren't flat. Then I wound wire around the top and attached it onto the thick twine I strung up in the back yard. Spray painting all the jar lids white makes them all have a similar look even though they are all different shapes and sizes. I keep the lids on when its raining (like it is right now) so the jars dont fill up with water and dirt, and just take them off when I'm actually burning the candles. 1 string of 3 is all finished, just waiting on more jars to work on the next two!

Salty salty goodness: Part II

So after much enthusiasm and man soaps mailed off, I've still got a few last bars awaiting their new homes! But after coming away from Australia Post, and finding out they've now raised their prices for overseas parcels so that each bar of soap costing nearly $10 to send to Canada and the US! Highway robbery I tell you!! So these last few bars I'm going to only send to others in Australia to try and save on postage. Sorry to any of you northies if you missed out, write strongly worded letters of complaint I say!! But not to fret, if you had already sent me through asking for one, it's on its way! :)
On a different note entirely, I got my marks back for Uni today, and got 1 distinction and 3 high distinctions! Yay! Onto nursing full steam I say.

Christmas presents

This year I have decided to go handmade! Either purchasing things made 100% by local crafts people (mostly through Etsy), or making it by hand myself! Since everyone in my family (bar my nephew) is all grown up, the excitement for highly commercial yet highly forgettable presents I think has dwindled some. I decided fewer, yet more meaningful gifts would be more worthwhile in the long run, plus it shows you've put much more thought, effort and time into them than just running around on December 24th, tired, annoyed and over jingled. That feeling of dull panic knowing you haven't gotten anything for your impossible to buy for father and end up buying the last calender on the shelf that just happens to be featuring puppies or something else just as traumatic.
This year will be different! so I have already started on and completed a few of my handmade creations! I would love to post little pictures, but seeing as my family also read this occasionally, I'll just say that I'm super stoked about how they're all coming along, and I'm off to the local craft store today to go buy more supplies as I'm quickly going through it!

Salty salty goodness!!

So I tried out my newest creation yesterday in the shower, my new Black Cherry Salt Soap Scrub and while attempting to be both modest and unbiased, it rocks! I have to admit that I suffer from S.L.S, or slack and lazy syndrome to you common folk, and can sometimes not be bothered going and exfoliating with my normal scrubs most of the time. So this is the perfect combo, a moisturizing soap bar by upping the superfatting level to 8%, and added ground walnut shell and natural sea salt to the bar. Along with a generous amount of my black cherry and raspberry cream fragrances that I hadn't used in a range yet, and I'm super happy with the result. I've decided to give away the first batch I've made to anyone who wants to try it our 'risk free' as it were as I'm so stoked you'll want more after trying these! :)

Sales, Soapings and ...something else starting with S!

So today I finally felt productive! I got all soaping ingredients ordered, picked up, organized and even got to make my first batch of soap in the new place! This is my new creation...
More photos tomorrow of the finished product once it comes out of the oven. (I CPOP'd it, which I never tried before, so we're all learning new things today!) Dave and I just got back from seeing the movie Bridesmaids, which was truely hilarious! Even Dave said he thought it was better than The Hangover, so it must be pretty damn funny.

Blogged!

Thanks to Mel Stringer and her plastic camera for her blog on my products in Oatmeal, Milk & Honey that she tried out and posted about it on her blog! I just love seeing people use and enjoy my handmade goodies, so that made my day! Go check it out and post a comment, or even better, add a link to your facebook and start some grass roots promotion, that would be super cool of you!

Today I'm off to go to my storage shed and see if my oils got somehow put in there by mistake during the move. Hopefully fingers crossed I'll find them and be able to start work on a new wedding favours range and a new salt bar that I can't wait to try. So lets hope we are able to get out soap on! More later once I get some new soaps to photograph! :D

Anyone seen a 20lb barrel of olive oil?

How on earth can I have lost a BARREL of olive oil!? Not a little bottle, or a bucket, but a giant barrel!? So big I had to keep it out on my balcony when I lived in my apartment because it simply would not fit anywhere else! This is why I hate moving. Just when I'm about to get into some serious soaping, my first in ages and I was super excited, I loose one of my major ingredients? Bah!! This requires a serious scavenge. More posts later once I hopefully find my olive oil. Grr!
And on the plus side the 'R' key on my laptop is starting to die on me now too. This is after the enter key, up and down arrows and my right hand shift key have all died. Never put your laptop on top of the microwave while soaping cause it makes it easier to read the recipe and then turn the damn thing on. Its never been the same since. Yay me!

Business meeting

So yesterday I caught up with my homegirl and fellow Etsy shop owner Emma from Eclare designs to have a bit of a catch up and to talk about new different ways to get our fabulous products out to our wonderful to be customers! That's where things seem to get a bit difficult. We have the products, we have the shop, we're ready to sell sell sell! ...but then what? How do we get the word out to people? I've tried Google Adwords and Facebook advertising, it seems to cost a fair bit, and so far doesn't seem to get much traffic that actually leads to sales. Mail drops are time consuming and if other people are anything like me, just throw out the bulk of junk mail if its not addressed to them. Markets are a good start, but sadly here in Perth, WA markets are far and few between, and the ones we do have seem to have ridiculous stall prices. $120 - $150 dollars for 1 stall for a one day market seems pretty high to me. I would have to sell around 20 bars of soap just to cover the cost of the stall! Gah. Hopefully others out there in our soapy little universe know a bit about what I'm saying, and maybe even have some out of the box suggestions. I like things outside the box. Boxes schmoxes I say! That's about it really. If I have the chance today I'm going to try and make a cp salt bar in some random scent which I haven't quite figured out yet... :P

On non soapy dealings Dave and I went to the bank today and got pre-approval for a loan for the house we've been looking at, so double yay!! Hopefully we'll go round this weekend for a second look and to chat to the real estate agent and suss out all of the details. Fingers crossed! :D

The good, the bad and the pretty...

The Good - I have totally finished moving and handed back my keys to the rental agency today. Five hours of solid cleaning, vacuuming, mopping, packing and scrubbing and I'm rental free. Now if only we get on the bounce and get this house we've been looking at I will be one happy camper!

The Bad - I might or might not have broken into a friends house on Saturday when I needed to drop off a mattress at her house and she forgot to leave her keys out for me... and she's a tad bit unimpressed with my criminal activities towards my moving. To my credit I did used to live there with her and knew one of the windows that never locks or has any screen on it, and I didn't do any damage, just hopped through it and opened the door... but I guess that doesn't really make up for it. Whoops. Sorry bout that. My bad.

The Pretty - Moving on from my entire lack of ethics to these really cool soaps I found at Milk & Cookeez these lollipop soaps made my day when I was feeling pretty damn sorry for myself. How cool are these?? I love the colours and just the fact that they even have little matching bows! These really are so awesome I feel like I want to make something similar in my line only using a cold process method if I can suss one out.... experimentation's to come!

Yeah, lets all hope tomorrow is a better day, and I think wine and grovelling is soon the be blogged about in the near future. Stay tuned for more shameless embarrassments from me.

Moving...still.

So exams finished Friday. Yesterday was Saturday. I worked a ten hour shift at Little Creatures which is a cool place to work but after ten hours on my feet I'm wiped. Got up extra early today to finish moving the very last of my belongings from my apartment into Dave's place until we find a house of our own (exciting!!). Working again today after moving my stuff. ...And the keys have to be back by Tuesday. So much for a relaxing creative weekend. I think it might be a few weeks before this place is in any shape to allow me the space needed for soaping. Its starting to look more and more like a sardine tin crammed full of housewares. :P Can't wait til we find a house of our own with SPACE glorious glorious space. Ahhhh... *deep breath* we'll get there.

Exams are done!!

Just finished my last exam for this semester! Thank god! :) Next semester I start my nursing degree at ECU and really looking forward to it! Only bummer is that I've met a made lots of friends with awesome people this semester, and its sad to see us all going our separate ways and into our chosen courses. But we'll have to have regular uni people catch ups to keep each other up to date with whats happening.

But now that uni is over for this semester, it leaves me more time to work and play around on my soap! I've been needing some serious creative time as I have been flat out with uni, work, moving, and just general everyday life lately I haven't had any time for my creative side!
I saw this tutorial on a new soaping technique first on The Soap Queen blog and it looks super duper cool! I can't wait to try it, and I might just try with a new fragrance to add to my line, or rework one of my already standing soaps with this technique.... what do you think? Any thoughts? But no matter what I try I can't wait to get started!!

Welcome!

I've been sitting here for awhile wondering what I should start this thing off with, so instead I'll just jump right into my day with some explanations with what's been going on recently for me.

Right at this moment in time I'm a bit pissed off actually as our landlord just decided to come cut down our huge beautiful jasmine bush that covered our whole carport and sheltered our cars without even bothering to call and ask us, and there's now bits of shit all over my car from the chainsaws they used to cut it down. Not happy!!! Grrr. As far as I was aware you actually had to call and let the tenant know you were going on their property and cutting down stuff there. GRRR!! Ok, I will try and suppress my rage and carry on...


Yesterday I made my first chicken stock from scratch for dinner tonight. I made a roast chicken on the weekend which Dave really enjoyed, and I wanted to turn the scraps into another yummy meal, and this was a good way to reuse and recycle perfectly good food that most of us just throw out. I've been on a big cooking kick lately now that its winter and cool enough to turn on the stove, so I have been cooking my little heart out much to Dave's satisfaction!

<--- Stock after 4 hours of glorious cooking. Yummy!!!
Tonight = some sort of soup using my fantastic homemade stock