Soapy day

I'll admit it right off the bat--I never made it to the sewing room yesterday!  Yes, yes, I know I'd promised myself to spend the day in there, but I got a bit distracted (Squirrel!) and stayed upstairs instead.

For a couple of weeks, (she ashamedly admits) I've had bars of homemade soap sitting in the corner of my kitchen counter, waiting for me to do something with them.  Yesterday I got them all packaged up and ready to go into the country store sale.

This is the Foaming Lavender Milk Bath, in the cute little milk bottles that I found at Hobby Lobby. I had to try this out when I made the first batch and, while I normally prefer the speed of a shower, I did like soaking in this fragrant bath and felt quite rejuvenated when I was finished.

These are "Pomander" scented glycerin bars--orange and clove fragrance with crushed cinnamon sticks stirred in.  They smell divine!  I used a Pringles can for the mold for these bars. I've washed my hands with the scraps from this soap and it feels pretty darn good!

This is the soap I made in my crock pot and I've been using the scraps in my shower. It's made with olive and coconut oils and it lathers like a dream.  And my skin isn't nearly as dry as it is when I use commercial soaps.  These I call "Luscious Lather" because they have such a faint fragrance that I can't even smell it or give it a name as I did the other soaps.

I used an old muffin tin as the mold for this batch, and filled them about half full. Don't know what I was thinking--did I expect them to rise as muffins do when they bake?  Anyway, I bundled 2 of these smaller bars together for the sale.  If I use the muffin tin again, I'll fill them to the top and then smooth off with my offset spatula for a more attractive top.

I couldn't believe it took me all afternoon to get these done and off my counter top.  I found a tutorial on how to make decorative labels on Microsoft Word and, since I'm known around my family as the computer Dinosaur, it took awhile for me to figure out how to do it.  But I got the job done, and then to find the ribbons and cord I'd bought for wrapping the individual bars took another bit of time--I never did find the green ribbon I'd planned on using but the pink worked out well, I think.

I'm really glad this job is finished and I can move on to something else that needs to be done.  One thing at a time and all will get done.