Saturday, March 6, 2010

Facebook Fan Page

Okay, my day started early as usual. Binka, which is the nickname for my darling baby girl Wynter, woke up around 5 am to eat. Feed her, gave her to daddy, and I went to do my work out. Did Walk Away the Pounds one mile walk this morning. Nothing to strenuous, but enough to get me pumped. After that I made my grocery list, then an avocado shake. I got this recipe from the Dr. Oz show. It is one ripe avocado, 2 cups of low fat milk (I use skim) and 2 tablespoons of honey. Mix in the blender and enjoy. It was right tasty too and had a beautiful pale green color. As I was peeling the avocado I couldn’t help but say to myself, boy I bet this would be nice in soap. We do use avocado oil in some of our soaps but we have never soaped real avocado. So of course it is now on my to-do list. After the shake I hit the Internet in search of how to change my landing page on my facebook fan page. Of course it was a very simple task, just needed to take the time to sit down and do it. For those who would like to know you go to your fanpage, click edit, then wall settings and there is a drop down box to change your landing page. Anyway take a look at our fan page and become a fan.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Back to work....

Well my maternity leave time is just about over. I return back to work on Monday, March 8th. I am having mixed feelings about it. One part of me is ready to go back since I had what I considered too much time on my hands. Not sure how other people operate, but I am at my best when my plate is running over with things to do. I know…I am just weird. Another part of me was getting use to being home and I am going to miss the opportunity to make soap on a whim through out the day. The last thing that I have mixed feelings about is taking my precious daughter to day care. My goodness Monday is going to be a hard day for both me and dad, which is why dad is the one dropping her off…go figure. So have us in prayer. Anyway on with my day….

Today was more of a tidy the house up day. Since I am returning back to work it was time to get some things in order since I had been overlooking a few home chores while I relished in soap making. I did take the time to make up more sample bags. My hubby and I (mainly hubby) give out sample bags while we are out and about. He generally give out about 10 or so a day. Since we have to hit the mall tomorrow for a few things, I thought it would be a good idea to have plenty available. Each flat style Kraft bag comes with our information printed on it along with a discount code to use for future purchases. We fill each of these little guys with a sample of soap, moisturizer and lip balm. Every now and then we will include a sugar scrub. Here is how they look.


Thursday, March 4, 2010

Citrus Blossom Soap in the Making








Today is PRODUCTION day again. We are running low on a few soaps so of course we had to get more in the molds. We make some of our soaps 3#s at a time and really need to up the number of pounds to at least 9#s. This way we will not make some of our soaps as frequently. Now we will say that we do have quite a few soap fragrances that we make 9#s at a time and those are the ones we sell the most of. Anyway, here are a few pictures along with the process.
  1. Decide what ingredients you want to use and then use soapcalc.com to calculate the lye and water amount as well as the possible finished quality of the bar. Soapcalc.com has a wealth of information about oil qualities.


  2. Gather everything you will need, stick blenders, mixing spoons, colorants, fragrance, etc.

  3. Weigh liquid (water, milk, aloe, etc.) add lye to it and mix thoroughly. For this batch we used ½ coconut milk and ½ water, we mix the lye with the water and added the coconut milk at trace

  4. Weigh oils, butters and fragrance

  5. We do the RTCP method, which means we don’t wait for the lye to cool to a certain temperature. Once we have weighed our oils and butters, we then add the lye water. The lye water melts the solid oils/butters (palm, coconut, shea, mango, etc.) Please note when we add cocoa butter to a batch, we melt it in our chocolate melter and then add to the oils/butters.

  6. Mix until trace, which is a thick pudding type consistency
    Add colorant and fragrance. We did a two color swirl so we had our bowls ready with the colorants and just added traced soap to each color and swirled in the bowl. We are a bit swirl challenged.

  7. Pour in mold

  8. Unmold after 24 hours

  9. Cut and Cure for a minimum of 4 weeks