Kay Lodahl Glass Art and Watercolor Painting

Okay, here is some soaps I made in the last couple of days. The round ones are the hand soap. Made with cracked wheat and calendula. Um, um, they smell so good. The others are lavender and I sprinkled real lavender herbs on top only to realize how I forgot that they just turn black in the fresh soap. Oh well. Good usuable soaps but not the prettiest I have ever made. Made a castile soap of pure olive oil for my daughter but it is such a soft soap, though, gentle, that I added one ounce of fresh, pure, beeswax to harden it it some. It looks pretty good, thus far. In fact, it is gorgeous. Just hope it has a nice texture and suds. Time will tell... This is fun. I am making smaller batches which enables a lot of variations in recipes so I plan to make more soon. Speaking of daughter, my granddaughter received a camera for Christmas and she took some shots for me of her and her mother.. and her new little sister... The expression on the baby's face is priceless!! I managed to...

Woke up this morning to minus 20 degrees below. Yup! Never thought that would be possible here. We live near a lake and I suppose the water doesn't help.. I don't know, but when I found out we had NO water in the house, I didn't even want Mike to wake up!. He can be such a bear about things like no running water. After spending two hours trying to thaw out what we thought was frozen (ya we did all the right things, opened cabinets, ran the water..we knew it would be cold), we found out all we had to do was reset the computer on the pump to the well. Something about not enough amps, it shuts down. But you shoulda seen the look on Mike's face when he heard the water running... Like a kid in a candy store. I have to admit, it was a good feeling. The thought of hauling water out to the barn for four horses was not something either of us was looking forward to... It's been awhile now, but I dragged out all my soapmaking supplies and tackled a recipe I dreamed up. A hand ...