Sunday, August 24, 2008

Cupcake anyone?

I was bored this afternoon so I decided to try something creative with soap. I made these cute calorie-free treats. The 'cake' part is scented with buttercream & snickerdoodle fragrance and the 'frosting' is scented pearberry. They smell delish and I kind of wish I could bite into one ...

Apparently I have way too much time on my hands ...

What the ?!?!

We had a bizarre mishap in the kitchen yesterday. Josh had just heated up some leftover risotto in the microwave and was stirring it to make sure it was evenly heated. I had my back to him when I heard a crash and I whipped around to this scene:

Apparently the bottom had fallen out of the bowl! The bowl was in one piece and then all of a sudden it cracked in a perfect circle and the bottom just fell out - I've never seen anything like it. Pure madness! Josh was really disappointed that his snack was all over the floor and contemplated scooping it up and eating it before common sense set in.


Now we're nervous to use the rest of those bowls which is a pity because I really like them.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Wedding Planning again!!!

One of my co-workers is planning her sister-in-law's wedding and asked me if I would help her and of course I could barely get the words "yes of course" out of my mouth fast enough! I really, REALLY loved planning my wedding so I am super excited to help out on this one. The wedding is in January and the couple wants to have an engagement party next month so we went out to the marina on Sunday and I took some engagement pictures of them. It was my first attempt at taking portraits of people and it was a lot more difficult that I thought it would be - the professionals make it look so easy! Here are some of my favorites ...









Saturday, August 9, 2008

Soap Progress

For my first attempts at making soap I used Melt and Pour where you melt down the soap base, add fragrance and color, pour into molds, and once its set up you can use it. Well I got bored of that pretty quickly and decided to try Cold Process soap making. Cold Process involves using oils, sodium hydroxide and water to make soap from scratch. Each oil contributes different qualities to the soap and you can make up your own soap recipes to create the perfect bar. If you're kind of a nerd its awesome!!! The only downside is that the soap has to cure for 4 weeks before you can use it - its really hard to wait that long! Here are some pics of my first batches:

This is my very first batch - the creamy color is the natural color of the soap mix. In case you're wondering why I chose to make black swirls, its because I wanted to test out my black pigment.

I read about making soap with goats milk so I tried it out with this batch - supposedly it makes the soap really creamy. I also added some ground oatmeal for exfoliation. I am really excited about this bar!

As you can probably tell from the color this batch is scented with mint fragrance. I am still an amateur at making swirls, which is why the green doesn't go all the way to the bottom.

I have some ideas for some new soaps so stay tuned for more pictures. Josh is going to PA next week to visit his family so I'll probably work on some projects while he's gone.