My Blog Personified

I think I have finally found the image that hysterically personifies my blog. An incredibly failed batch of soap I hand-made with my lovely suburban home as a backdrop.

I know, I know - it looks like a near-perfect bar of soap, but what can I say, I like things to be spot-on and the giant wooden spoon in the loaf of soap is just not at all condusive to washing oneself. Though I may try, by golly! It might be the latest greatest thing in 'don't drop your soap' prison efforts! Though I assume, should you drop your soap, you're in a newer world of hurt than if your soap didn't have a butt-maiming instrument of torture glued to it.

In all honesty, I think I might keep it. To serve as a reminder of what happens to soap around here that fails to meet my expectations maybe? Or perhaps to reach that sore spot on my back I can never get by myself. Or I may just sell it to the Museum of France and let them deal with it's glory. All in all, I think it's a perfect example of a young woman, now on her own, going from Gucci to Geese in her Little Farm in the Suburbs.

At least my Gozleme turned out. Filled with goats feta and roasted capsicum. Sided with salad, a hamburger (because that's totally a side) and homemad chips fried in rice bran oil.

Lazy Day

It's a rather overcast hazy lazy day, my favourite. I like the wind, the threat of rain, the way it just feels like a bit slower of a day. Can't drive fast, can't eat fast, want to sleep. So today I thought I'd make soap and I've set that aside to set overnight. Dinner is going to be Gozleme with baked chips and salad.

I've been cleaning up and as I was cleaning I was smiling. I couldn't quite figure it out, but for some reason putting away everything made me happy. I soon realized everything I put away was a memory I got to relive. It was quite theraputic. I put away the chocolate Glynn gave me the night before. I returned the knife from the homebaked bread we ate together. I rearranged the food in the fridge from being overstuffed last night. Little reminders all around the house about the day before. It was almost sweet.

I am excited about my new soaps. Two are pure castile, no other additives except scent and colour. Olive oil only. Should take a good year to harden nicely. I also made 75% coconut and 25% shea butter soap, which should turn in the most lathering creamy thing in the world. I also made some beeswax furniture polish for the wood bits in the house.

All in all, it was a lazy puttering sort of day. I plan on enjoying some peppermint tea with lemon in a moment as I wait for Glynn to return from the shops with the vinegar I need to make my pickled cabbage. Heavens, I sound like my grandmother.

I fed the chickens and started giving them antibiotics, which means I can't eat their eggs for two weeks, which is a bummer. Luckily I was on a bread making kick and finagled the purchase of three dozen and managed to not actually make enough bread to use more than one dozen, so I now have leftover eggs by the truckload.


This post needed a photo so I chose one of my overworked boy eating a caramlized apple tart I made a few weeks back.

Duckling and Gordon Ramsay

I think I forgot to mention that when I went to the farm, I brought the Two Fat Ladies and Nigella Hoverchicken with me. Nigella was always supposed to be Mother's but the Two Fat Ladies were simply causing too much trouble in my roost to keep for long. With 750 acres and a couple old biddies who are barely laying in a much bigger pen, they should fair well and just be on laying age for Mother to start getting some chicken eggs once more.

I have this...habit.. much to Father's faux distress, of bringing up birds with me of various breeds. This time being the three chickens from my flock, nine ducks and three guinea fowl. The chooks weren't a surprise and the guinea fowl were probably only a minor surprise since Mother slyly hinted at wanting them when we called to ask her if she wanted peacocks (answer was yes followed almost immediately by a loud bellowing male "NO!" in the background). I think she secretly knew they'd be bought for her almost immediately and she'd get them if she put the idea in my head. It's what I do.

However when we went to pick up the ducks I fell in LOVE with this one I called 'Lipstick Duck' because it had a red tipped beak compared to it's brothers and sisters. When my husband was collecting them to bring to Mother, this one was wiley and got away and made funny noises and jumped on his hand and acted out in a great way. I declared that duck mine and then spent the next day and a half pestering my husband for the duck. No. No. No. No. No. OKAY FINE YES! Pft. He knew I was gonna keep it anyway, don't know why he bothered with the day of no's. Maybe so he could look like he had a say in it. Ha.

So everyone, meet my new little duckling, who is keeping great company with Gordon Ramsay, the chick of the 'farm'.

They are currently housed in the run I built with the other chickens, so the others can get used to them and not attack them when they're finally big enough to join the flock, which should be in a month or so. Exciting!

So much for this blog having my motorbiking and cleaning recipes and the like in it... oh well. Just to make this blog about something other than chickens, here's a photo of 20g beeswax shells I've been making for quick soap/candle dispersion:

I've been passively making these for two days.. I have about 40 of them now... just melt the wax, wait for it to cool a bit, pour and pop in the freezer. Repeat whenever I remember. All fresh from Mother's farm with a backdrop of the honey the same bees made for me. I love my pretend farm life.

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Farm Girl in the Suburbs.

Soap Making Day - w00t w00t

Remember a couple days ago when I said I'd be making whipped shea butter? Well in my excitement to use melt and pour soap for the first time in years, I thought I'd give that a go first. I failed, miserably. What started out as me trying to make a red soap with seeds in it layered with a pale green soap to acheive a 'watermelon' look, turned into, well, this:




In the end, I did manage my watermelon soap.. but it cost me a bowl, a mould I had been looking forward to, about a dollar in lost soap and the bottom of my microwave. And since I had to use a massage bar mould instead, my soap looks nothing like watermelons!


Well because I'm a moron who can't seem to put together the simplest of soaps, I decided to go back to making cold pressed soap after a few days of recouperation. Apparently even though cold pressed soap involves lye, burning oils, temperature guages and the threat of death - I can do it much much better than putting a bowl of glycerine in the microwave. Score one for my self-esteem there.

And this beautiful girl came out! I'm excited because I finally used my new batch of organic shea butter to make it along with some mango butter - the organic butters making up 20% of this bar. Coconut oil (a very bubbly and luxurious oil for soaps) is 40% of the oils. The other 40% are my secret, but it's also got 3% Vit E. Plus.. it's pretty and swirly. It swirls all the way through except the sides got a bit blurry, but I like it. The colours are not AT ALL what I was going for, because, as it turns out, my colourants aren't CP compatible. Does the website say this? No. Have I learned my lesson? Not really - because I like it!

It was supposed to be fleuro pink and pale green swirls. Oh well. I call this one a success.

Money.. what money?

In a fit of online shopping my husband is still scolding me for (no, not really), I got all these beautiful happy soap making materials today in the mail. Shea butter, mango butter, colours, moulds, containers and some melt and pour glycerin soap, which I rarely use but have an idea for. And yes, I plan on making dog bone soap. What of it?

(Un)Luckily for me, the man was suddenly called to work (after suddenly being called off work) just as this shipment arrived. So I sit here, alone, with a pile of soap making supplies and nothing to do. Well, gee, I wonder what I could possibly do all day.

My first project? Whipped Shea Butter.

Oh yeah.