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The Week in Soap: 21st May ’17

Did you have a good weekend?  I’ve no idea where this last week has gone – seemed to fly by!  My husband was away for a couple of nights at the beginning of the week, so although I managed to make a couple of batches on Tuesday night, once the kids were in bed, I didn’t manage to get as much done this week as I usually would… He’s away again next week, for three nights I think, and as it’s half term and both kids are off school, it could well be a rather unproductive week soapwise…

Anyhow, back to the good stuff. These were Tuesday’s batches – Clarity and Luscious Lavender:

Clarity & Lavender in the Mould
Clarity & Lavender in the Mould

And, for once, I managed to photograph the freshly cut bars – forgive the rough edges, these were taken just minutes after cutting:

Clarity - brand new and freshly cut
Clarity – brand new & freshly cut
Luscious Lavender - brand new and freshly cut
Luscious Lavender – brand new & freshly cut

I’m still on the hunt for soap boxes – I knew there was a reason I put it off for so long, it’s not an easy search!  I’ll update when I have something to share.

This week saw the arrival of the last parcel (all the way from the US) in the 2017 International Soap Swap. I don’t want to spoil any surprises so I can’t really give anything away until all participants have received their return packages, but oooohhhhh I’m so excited to share.  There should have been 15 of us in total, but 6 had to pull out for one reason or another, and the final count is 9.  The contents of these boxes are stunning, and will be posted out to their rightful owners by the end of the week.  Stay tuned as I can’t wait to share their contents with you….

Soap Swap boxes - woop!
Soap Swap boxes – woop!

My soapmaking routine is taking a bit of a shuffle this week.  I’ve always been in the habit of making soap on a Tuesday night, so that I have a batch to cut at my soapmaking presentation on a Thursday night (48 hours later).  However, the venue has asked me to move my talk to Wednesday nights (after my kickboxing training – eek!) for the foreseeable future, and therefore I  need to make soap on a Monday night from now on.  It does however free Thursday night up for soapmaking too, so my schedule from now on will mean soapmaking on a Monday and a Thursday as a general rule.

There you go, that was my soapy week in a nutshell. In other news, we spent most of yesterday working in the garden.  Have I mentioned our back garden yet?  It was a complete jungle when we moved into the house, and it’s slowly being tamed into submission.  This was it last year – just look at those overgrown boundaries :-O (But on a positive note they hid pounds and pounds of juicy blackberries)

A couple of months ago...
Last Autumn…

Then, after lots and lots of hacking, digging etc etc etc we got to this point a couple of weeks ago:

Before yesterday's efforts...
Before yesterday’s efforts…

And by the end of yesterday:

After Sunday's efforts...
After yesterday’s efforts…

I’m starting to see potential, and am getting excited about what we could do with it.  It slopes upwards, so it’s foreshortened in this picture, and is actually longer than it looks.  I have dreams of a greenhouse, a seating area, raised beds for veg and salad, and plenty of flower beds.  I absolutely adore gardening, and can’t wait to get to it properly! And obviously I’ll be sure to share the progress 🙂

Thanks for reading – back soon!

 

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Happy Easter!

Hope you’re all having a happy and peaceful holiday weekend.  This week has been fairly quiet on the soapy front – not an awful lot going on other than restocks, blah blah… Don’t get me wrong, I adore making and cutting soap, restocks or otherwise, but it’s not so exciting for you dear readers to be seeing the same thing over and over again 😀

I took the children to visit friends over night on Tuesday, which is generally soaping night, so I brought it forward and made two double batches on Monday instead. These are First Kiss & Luscious Lavender:

First Kiss & Luscious Lavender Handmade Soap
First Kiss & Luscious Lavender Handmade Soap

I’m in the process of trying to rename ‘First Kiss’. It was so called because it’s so sweet (groan!!) but I’m pretty sure that some people are put off buying it as a gift because of the name.  If you have any thoughts pleeeaaase share –  it’s a dupe of Aquolina’s Pink Sugar, and is a a rather delicious sweet, vanilla-y / caramely fragrance.

My second soapy session was today – two double batches of Scrubby Peppermint and Botanica.

Scrubby Peppermint & Botanica in the Mould
Scrubby Peppermint & Botanica in the Mould

 

I’ve said before that Botanica’s blend of Lavender, Lemon & Lime is my current favourite, and today the fragrance of the essential oils together was literally making my mouth water, they blend stunningly well together.

This week we finally got to make a start on the EPIC project that is our back garden.  It’s pretty big, but as we’ve been focussing on doing up the house since we moved in, the garden’s not had a look-in. It’s been totally neglected for the last 20 (30?) years and making it beautiful is going to be a real labour of love, but we’ll get there.

Here are a few ‘before’ photos to give you an idea of the hard work we have ahead of us!!

The Garden - Before
The Garden – Before
The Garden - Before
The Garden – Before

I’ve called these ‘Before’ photos, but believe it or not these photos were taken after  we’d done a fair bit of clearing already.  We did take some photos when we first moved in, maybe I’ll try to hunt some out for a future post – I’m sure there will be regular updates as and when we make progress 😉

That’s it for now. It’s Easter Sunday evening and I really must go and spend some time with my (mostly) ever-patient other half!  Thanks for reading, back soon!