This and that

Good Friday afternoon everyone ~ Hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.

I’ll be heading to work tomorrow, my one day this week.  I’m not sure what is happening next week yet.  Should know tomorrow.

We had rain this morning, then DH and I both were outside working on projects, wanting to get going before it got too miserable, but it ended up being miserable anyway.  We were soaking when we came in.  He worked on putting flashing on our outdoor project.  He had had some rolled up tin in his stash, and since we’re doing our best to keep this project ‘cheap’ he cut the sizes he needed for flashing, bent them to shape, and got a blister in the process the other day. After our nap this afternoon, he tarred the edge of the flashing.  He’s now ready to paint the three roof panels.  They are in his workshop where he has primed them after cleaning them. Remember we are trying to use up ‘curbside’ finds that have been stored around here and it sure feels good using them.  These panels will be painted with ‘curbside’ shopped terra cotta colored thick deck paint.

It will be neat when this project is completed, to put all the pictures together in order.  It feels great to be in the mood again to work outside.  This summer’s heat and humidity really blasted our interest and energy levels. We can tell that autumn is coming, eventually.

Monday I ordered 10 lbs. of melt and pour goat’s milk soap from Soapcrafters.com I was just going to buy 5 lbs. but when we found out that shipping was just $4.95 no matter how much you order up to $100, DH suggested buying 10bs. (Above $100 it’s free shipping.) Anyway I wanted to try this because goat’s milk soap is supposed to be very good. I did a google search about benefits of goat’s milk soap and found the following great info here. I already have a collection of essential oils (not fragrance oils, there is a huge difference). So this morning I made up three different batches of bars of soap.  Some with tea tree oil and lavender, some with sandalwood, vetiver and another oil, I forgot to write down, for DH, then I made some with ylang-ylang, petigrain, and rosewood, for me. I’ve already tried the tea tree/lavender soap on my face and it is so luxurious.  It makes your skin feel soft and clean. To buy goat’s milk soap already made up by someone else, would be from $3 and up.  Buying it this way it will be about $1 a bar. There are some things I wish I had learned in my youth, making soap from scratch is one of them and also canning. But I didn’t.  

Here is my box of soap, minus what I used up today.

I don’t have a double boiler so I just used a smaller pan inside of a larger one and it worked fine.  I grated the soap first then put it in the pan. It melted faster being grated.  It hardly took any time at all. This is the soap dried on the pan.

The white mold is a soap mold, the beige pan is a microwave pan for muffins, and the third pan is a Wilton cake mold.

Here is my stash of essential oils.

I do hope some of you might be inspired to try this yourself, to use yourself or give as gifts.

Now here are some bloomers from Plum Cottage today.

A spray of Kathleen

Miss Muffett caladiums and begonias

A cute tiny mushroom, about 1” high at the most.

Here we have a Zebra longwing butterfly sipping nectar from Hamela paten blooms.  Last week I saw my first hummer of the season zipping around sipping nectar too.  There are other butterflies that visit these blooms daily plus bees.

I’ll give you a break on ‘needlework’ projects today.  I am working on another heart sachet. I worked on my patio garden area today and made the soap so didn’t do much embroidering/beading. Maybe I’ll do some after dinner, which will be left overs tonight.

I checked the weather for our area for the next few weeks and into October, our ‘low’ temps for a couple of nights will be 80.  Good grief! 

Enjoy your autumn weather, all those glorious changing colors and share it all in your blogs so that I can enjoy it all through you.