Concert time!

Last week my daughter and I went to see Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, Three Days Grace, Dorothy and Diamante. Loren bought the tickets as my birthday gift!

Chevelle is one of my favorite bands and she and I have seen them together twice before...back in the day...a lifetime ago.

I admit I wasn't very familiar with anyone else's music but I've listened to Breaking Benjamin since Loren got the tickets in February. 

The concert was at the Ak Chin Pavilion in Phoenix. We've never been there before and to be honest, I rarely go to Phoenix...it's big...and not being familiar with it, slightly confusing. 

We decided to leave with plenty of time to get some t-shirts and a beverage before we found our seats and since we were mainly there to see Chevelle and Breaking Benjamin we didn't feel the need to be there when the gates opened so we hoped to avoid that rush.

So not being in a rush was a good thing because they had I-10 West closed for construction. It turns out, I-10 West is the highway we needed to get to the concert. Luckily we have map apps that can feed us that info before we get in the car. Not so lucky, sometimes the map apps seem to find weird ways to get you where you're going, but it did get us there.

We decided to splurge a bit and paid for reserved parking. Not being familiar with Ak Chin Pavilion, we had no idea what the parking was like or how far away we'd be or how long it would take to get to the gate. It was a good choice, we parked right outside the gate!

Ak Chin Pavilion is definitely set up well for big concerts and on top of that they do it well. Plenty of security and police officers, the vendors were efficient and speedy so even the long merch line moved quickly. And the bathrooms were clean, yeah, that's a thing.

While we were in the merch line getting our shirts we caught the last bit of Dorothy, she sounded pretty cool, though I'm not very familiar with her music.

Setting up for Chevelle

We got to our seats just before Three Days Grace started so we made ourselves comfy and waited.

Not going into a detail but the show was pretty amazing!

Chevelle

Big screen pics!

I love those guys!

Breaking Benjamin

Loren enjoying the show.

One of my favorite music moments is when Breaking Benjamin did a medley of covers, Pantera, Nirvana, Metallica and Rage Against the Machine. Metallica is one of my all-time favorite bands and I told my daughter that's probably as close as I'll ever get to seeing them live.

I will try to see Breaking Benjamin and Chevelle anytime I get a chance. And to be able to have that time with my daughter was priceless!

Sweet Erica's Honey, Oats and Goat Soap

I absolutely love this soap. Milk soaps have pretty amazing qualities and have been used for centuries as a luxurious soap. Goats milk soap has a distinctive scent, its a lovely rustic scent that reminds you there's milk in the soap. It's quite lovely and I don't know if it's my imagination but I smell the oatmeal as well!

Milk soaps contain lactic acid which is a gentle exfoliant, it helps remove dead skin cells (who knew!) and goat's milk (and other milks) contains vitamin A which is helpful in moisturizing and maintaining healthy skin.

I love the orange bars of the Sweet Erica's Honey, Oats and Goat Soap but I wanted them to be more representative of the oatmeal color of the very first oatmeal soap I made. Its such a lovely, creamy color and the oatmeal has been blended to a powder so it's not too scratchy. I love seeing the speckles of oatmeal in the bars.

So I went old school with this batch and used the cold process method (it seems to be a bit nicer to do in the summer). I was very fortunate to have my son, Tyler, here to help I definitely needed the extra pair of hands! 

Mixing lye into milk sometimes takes an extra step, it's not always necessary, it's more of an aesthetics thing. To keep the milk from turning a dark orange when adding the lye you can freeze the milk first. Freezing keeps it from overheating (and possibly scorching) when you start adding the lye. Then you add the lye to the milk ice cubes a tablespoon or so at a time and stir...a lot. The frozen milk starts to melt pretty quick and you just keep slowly adding the lye and stirring...a lot...until all the lye has been added and the milk cubes melted. Then you stir...a lot. 

It's interesting to note that the lye and the fats in the goat's milk are already starting to saponify in tiny amounts during this process and tiny beads of soap start forming. The goal with all of the stirring is to make sure all of the lye has been dissolved. I always pour my lye solution through a strainer and the little tiny beads of forming soap made that a bit more difficult than usual but it eventually happened.

Fresh in the mold...love that color!

The soap smells as good as it looks! 

Oatmeal speckles!

When I mixed the lye/milk solution into the oils the lye solution was at 78 and the oils at 85. Nice cool temps for making milk soap. The soap did gel slightly and heat up to 118, surprisingly cool. But when I cut into them...

I had a slight moment of panic. I thought the soap had the...dun dun duuuunnnnn...dreaded orange spots (DOS, and yes...as silly as it sounds, it's a thing). I've heard of it but I've never had a soap with DOS...that I can remember. I did some searching, the pictures of DOS look nothing like this and the reasons behind DOS don't apply to my soaps. So if it's not dreaded orange spots, what is it?

Okay, so here's the story. When I warmed up the oils, honey and shea butter enough to melt the shea the temps were higher than my lye/goats milk solution. I was hoping to get the soap in the mold so I stuck the pot of warm oils in an ice water bath in the sink to bring the temperatures down. If you remember the name of this soap "Sweet Erica's Honey, Oats and Goat Soap...yup, that's honey. When I placed the pot of oils and honey in the ice water bath the honey solidified from the cold. I noticed it towards the end of the pour but forgot about it until I saw the spots. I think in my head (it's crazy in there sometimes) I thought the soap would superheat (milk soaps often do) and the honey would melt/blend with the soap batter as it heated.

So now you'll get the lovely properties of honey directly on your skin and since it's in soap it washes right off. Win-win, right? Well, we'll see. The soap will be perfectly safe to use and unless something crazy happens before it's finished curing, should just be soap with a few bits of honey here and there. It should be listed in my shop in mid-October.

Moral of the story? Wait until the oils and lye solution are emulsified before adding the honey.

Autumn Pumpkin Soap

I've been debating on making some sort of soap for the upcoming autumn season for several months. I had to stop debating and make a decision this week because I knew I'd be making a cold process soap if I was making an autumn soap and adding food stuffs (like pureed pumpkin) and it will take at least four weeks for cold process to cure before I can list it in my shop.

Once that was decided I started looking into the benefits of adding pumpkin puree to soap. Pumpkin has a lot of healthful benefits like vitamin C which is great for the skin. Vitamin C helps protect skin from free radicals that cause wrinkles and other skin issues. Pumpkin also has carotenoids that are antioxidants which can help improve skin texture. It contains potassium, copper, zinc, manganese and other minerals.

Now, mind you, these are only a few of the great benefits of pumpkin, and that's when it's eaten. How much of this transfers to topical use, and after going through saponification when making soap? Honestly? No idea. However, pumpkin is used for facial masks and creams for a healthy, bright complexion so maybe it will be a beneficial addition to soap.

To me, the coolest thing about using the pumpkin is...well, it's pumpkin. It's a natural ingredient and the tiny bits of pumpkin will gently exfoliate. It's also a sign of autumn, my favorite time of year!

When I started blending everything together the oils were at 88 degrees F and the lye solution was at 93. I wanted them cooler but I was getting impatient. Between the sugars in the pumpkin and heavy cream and lye reacting to each other and the palm oil (RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) Mass Balance) the batter came to a thick trace pretty quickly. It was quite pudding-like when I poured it into the mold.

Fresh in the mold Autumn Pumpkin Soap. Smells so good!

It was my goal to add autumnal scented essential oils, like cinnamon. Cinnamon is such a strong scent but once I started researching I decided I didn't want to add it to this soap. Cinnamon can be a major irritant for people that can cause skin issues and possibly breathing issues.

The clove oil, which can be a slight irritant, has been added in an amount that is below the suggested safe amount by IFRA (International Fragrance Association). I've also added ginger, vanilla and orange essential oils. Warm and spicy, it smells pretty autumn-ee! In hopes of there being a bit of orange color to the soap I also added a few ounces of annatto seed oil. (Keep in mind that essential oil scents are pretty fragile so you shouldn't have to worry about smelling pumpkin pie-ish after using it.)

Superheated up to 145 degrees F pretty fast, a few minor cracks on the surface.

Once I poured the soap batter into the mold it went into gel stage and heated up very quickly. It doesn't matter how many times I make soap, I still find the whole process so fascinating!

Freshly cut and going on to the curing rack for at least 4 weeks.

I'm really hoping that as the soap cures it turns the color that you see on top and the side edges of the bars. Time will tell...

Before I list any new soaps in the shop I test them myself and give some out to family members, I feel like they're pretty honest with their feedback! The soaps will be listed in the shop in mid-October if the cure is done curing. 

Reusable produce bags

My daughter and I often do our grocery shopping together and an issue that we face, like millions of other people, is what to do with the plethora of plastic bags we've collected over time. I remember about 20 years ago when older women started crocheting hats from strips of plastic grocery bags. I made the suggestion to Loren but she wasn't too excited about reliving that fashion statement.

The bags we've collected so far will probably go to the closest recycling bin but we've both decided it's best for us to avoid bringing it into our homes in the first place. Our goal, reusable bags of all sorts.

Yesterday I spent the evening making 18 reusable produce bags for both of us, they ended up costing about 25 cents each.

Fairly straightforward technique. Netting sewn into squares or rectangles with a drawstring. Yes the netting is made out of some sort of plastic but I hope they last for a while. I also plan on recycling them into dish scrubbies once they start falling apart. They should be fairly easy to keep clean, hand wash in hot soapy water and hang outside to dry.

Similar bags can be found on Amazon and/or ebay and they seem fairly inexpensive.

I am looking for a different, more eco-friendly, fabric for next time but these bags are weighed with the produce/bulk items so it needs to be a lightweight fabric. One of the larger bags I made from the netting weighs just over a quarter of an ounce, very light indeed. It will most likely be used for celery, kale, leafy greens and they're not usually sold by weight so it shouldn't be a factor in the cost.

Next week I'm hoping to make reusable grocery bags from these cotton fabrics...

I'm going to line the bags with muslin to add strength. I'm hoping to get at least 6 nice sized bags, possibly with enough bits of fabric to add pockets either on the inside or outside of the bags.

Almost Old Fashioned Lard Soap

I am a bit of a wanna be homesteader. I dream of living in the middle of nowhere living a self-sustainable life. Making everything from scratch, living off of the food I grow and raising chickens for eggs, a cow for milk, butter, yogurt and cheese, dogs for protection and sheep with gorgeous wool to spin and knit into socks, sweaters, scarves and gloves.

I would want my homestead in a place where I could forage for foods that grow locally to add to my supplies and where it snowed in the winter and stayed nice in the summers...not that I don't appreciate the 113 degree days that we have in Arizona...

Anyway, one of the things that led me to making soap in the first place is that homesteading-make-it-from-scratch dream and I have wanted to do that as old school as I could. People back in the day rendered their own fats to make soap. Some even made their own lye with wood ash. I didn't go that old school, the process is very interesting but it may not be as consistent as the store bought lye.

I also didn't render my own fats, though that is something I may try in the future. I like the idea of not wasting anything, so saving fat from foods to turn into soap seems like a good thing. It's not something I would list in the shop but I wouldn't have a problem using it or giving it to family members.

The "Almost Old Fashioned Lard Soap" I put together is from Armour Premium Natural Lard I purchased off of Amazon, I couldn't find any locally that didn't have BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) added for preservatives. At least it wasn't anywhere on the label, not sure what the regulations are on those ingredients. I do hope to find a more reasonably priced natural lard for future batches.

When opening the lard I wasn't sure what to expect, I've only used it once before, for baking pie crusts. And of course, being human one of the first things we do with such things is we smell it. It's really hard to describe the scent of "raw" lard but it was closest to that time when you decide to deep fry foods and the oil smells like oil. Mhmm. That's the scent of a container of lard.

Not a bad smell but was it something that would carry over in the finished soap? Lard makes very hard, white bars of soap, and it's moisturizing. From what I've read, it is also a very fast moving soap so it comes to trace fairly quickly. I superfatted the recipe at a higher percentage because hard bars can handle extra fats that aren't being saponified by the lye. The extra fats makes the bars more moisturizing.

Soaping at around 80 degrees F, I get my ingredients together and start blending with my stick blender (that's why this is Almost Old Fashioned Lard Soap, they didn't use stick blenders back in the day). The only ingredients in this soap is lard, water and lye...and I'm expecting a white bar of soap...

I lined the mold with cotton fabric, I found that hint when researching Depression Era soaps.

The batter did come to trace very quickly but the soap was a very lovely orange when poured into the mold. Not quite as white as I was expecting. But over time it mellowed out a bit.

The soap did go into a gel stage, it didn't heat up past 110 degrees F, though.

And the finished bar. It isn't pure white, I'm okay with that, it's soap. After letting it cure for four weeks I gave it a try. First let me start by saying that it does NOT have the deep fried oil smell any longer. It just smells like an unscented bar of soap. It's quite nice, really. And it did make a hard bar of soap. When using, it's very silky feeling and it has a creamy, but not bubbly, lather. It just feels pretty amazing!

I only have three one bars in my shop. I hope my ancestors who made their own soap would have approved.

Bloomin' Arizona...

Last year we planted some flower seeds in a flower bed in hopes of bringing some life to the bare strip of dirt. The plan was to plant herbal types of plants that flower to benefit the bees, butterflies and humans in the area. I also wanted plants that dropped seeds in hopes of a perpetual flower garden.

I ended up choosing Borage, Purple Cone Flower, Lavender, Hyssop and Calendula. The Borage was mainly planted for the bees. The Purple Cone Flower, aka echinacea, I will eventually be harvesting roots for boosting the immune system and tea for headaches. Lavender, I was hoping to dry it to add petals to my Amanda Bavender Lavender Soap and making lavender tea. Hyssop was another thing I wanted for the bees but it is supposed to be good for coughs, colds, etc. (I have a Hyssop oxymel in the pantry made with my own flowers!). The Calendula is great for skin, I use calendula oil in several of my soaps. It's also great for a detox beverage, anti-inflammatory, etc.

I'm sure I'm not the only person that feels like gardening is more of an experiment than an accomplishment but ya can't give up. Last year the Borage went crazy and basically took over the garden.

This little bee was okay with the Borage barrage.

Quite a few of the Purple Cone Flower seeds were successful but I found it interesting that they didn't get more than 6-8 inches tall. They did bloom, however, and the flowers were the normal size. A few of the Calendula sprouted and bloomed but the Borage overshadowed them and all but one of the Lavender seeds.

Another kind of interesting...or weird...thing is the Lavender (lavendula augustifolia) ended up with white flowers, which isn't a problem, but there is absolutely no scent other than green (you know that smell of a plant that has no flower or herbal scent...it just smells like a green plant? That.) and the flower buds are kind of strange. I admit I'm not a Lavender expert but from the images I've seen, the flowers grow around the end of the flower stem, mine seem to grow on one side of the stem so that the end of the stem kind of curls. Also, the plant grows like a ground cover rather than the small bush type of plant I was expecting...I call it Lazy Lavender. I've looked it up numerous times to check and recheck to see if it really *is* lavender.

Anyways, the Hyssop struggled through the summer, mainly due to being covered by the Borage. But when I took out the Borage (highly recommend gloves for this...highly) late last year, the Hyssop started to thrive, and it did so over the winter and now it's getting it's revenge on the Borage by taking over the flower bed.

Hyssop going crazy and the Lazy Lavender kind of just hanging out.

I haven't seen any signs of the Borage seeds sprouting (I harvested many but the plants had to have dropped hundreds). But along the fence the Purple Cone Flowers have done really well this year. Pretty much reaching their normal height. You can see one of the flowers in just about the center, top of the picture above.

Purple Cone Flowers, first bloom this spring and so many buds!

I'm pretty excited about the flower bed, it's looking beautiful and the bees seem extremely content.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Cory's Arizona Sunshine Soap

At the end of March my cousin, Cory, visited from Oregon. While I'm sure she visits AZ to catch up with family and friends, I think a big part of her visits here is the Arizona sunshine. She loves the sun and the warmth that Arizona has to offer, especially in March. It is a really beautiful time of year here.

Cory and I at Mangos Mexican Café in downtown Mesa, AZ.

While Cory was here she would come pick me up so we could hang out and every single time she had a Dutch Brother's mocha latte for me and an iced tea for herself. I felt very spoiled! We shopped at antique stores, ate out and spent several hours learning how to play the "Ticket to Ride" board game (thanks for your patience, Will!).

It was great visiting with her and I was especially excited because she wanted a soap specially made for her and she agreed to help me with it. I love showing people how to make soap, especially when they show an interest in the process.

We used the cold process method to make Cory's soap because I wanted two shades of orange. I wanted her to do the hanger swirl and also swirl the top. Unfortunately, both shades of orange are so similar you can't see a difference. Soaping seems to be a perpetual learning experience but I will know better for the next batch.

Cory's Arizona Sunshine Soap

The soap will be listed in my shop at the end of April. I've been using a sample and it's safe enough to list now but I want to give it one more week just to be safe.

The soap has a lovely, creamy lather from the oils and butters (castor, coconut, grapeseed, avocado, olive, sweet almond oils, cocoa and mango butters) and it has a lovely citrusy scent from the orange and tangerine essential oils.

I can't wait for Cory to try it, I hope she loves it!