This is some coconut crusted tofu.  It is a very healthy dish.  I am going to freeze-dry it and see how it comes out.  I am hopeful that it will turn out crunchy so that I can make a savory dip for it.  Good nutrition does not have to be boring!

I am not one to make new year's resolutions that I won't keep, so I just try to do the best I can with what I am given in life.  But I have not been eating very well for the past few months and it has showed.  I did an inner scolding - "you know better than this!  You know how to eat to live!"  So I decided to take the bull by the horns and eat healthy again. 

I am already feeling better and I started to eat better a week ago.  I have lost 9 pounds so far and while that is extremely fast, I know that it will now slow down a great deal, as I always lose fast at first.  But now that my body has had a chance to get used to this new routine, it will come off slowly.  I put the weight on slowly.  It has to come off slowly to be reasonable and a more healthy way. 

I don't eat sweets or processed foods.  I am back to my green smoothies and mostly salads, but I find that I feel so much better eating a healthy diet.  I eat very little meat, usually chicken or fish but perhaps some lean beef once in a while.  

I want 2019 to be the year that I have become the person that I want to be.  I may not always be successful, but as along as the path is doing well overall, it will be a great year.  

Merry Christmas to everyone and I hope that the reason for the season will permeate your whole body and you can embrace the joy of living and giving.  

We have had so many requests for this!  It is finally back in stock.  This little tin sports a silly name, but what is inside is a wonderful balm that can be used for lips, scrapes, cuts, bug bites or any number of minor skin conditions.   We love to keep a tin with us at all times as you never know when it might come in handy.  And if you want to present this as a gift to someone with attitude,  then it's so much fun as well.  

This is one of my favorite types of soap.  It is Lavender Anise.  Surprisingly, the men really enjoy this as well.  It is scented with Lavender and Anise Essential oils and has micas for color.  It has a decorated mica top with a thin pencil line of mica separating the black and purple colors.  This is a great bar of soap for the skin.

This was a technique that I have never tried.  It is using a sink strainer to pour the soap batter through.  I learned some things during this method; use a shallow mold and use colors that go well together and don't morph in the soap.  It is still pretty, but now I am ready to try the 2nd attempt.  This is Holiday Spice Soap.  It smells like spiced scents of cinnamon, spice and nutmeg with a hint of the aromas around the end of Thanksgiving.  

This is our Orange Clove Soap.  It is made with Olive Oil, Lard, Coconut and Avocado Oils.  It has Orange Peel Powder in it and a freeze-dried slice of orange in the top.  A very lovely bar and it smells wonderful!

This is the raw cut of the soap.  It has a nice plain base and holiday colors swirled for the upper part.  It has a thin pencil line of Gold mica between the two layers.  This bar smells divine and it will cure to be a very nice bar!

This is one of our holiday soaps.  We call it Ginger & Spice.  It smells of cinnamon, spice and all sorts of warm and wonderful holiday scents.  Colored with Gold, Red, Green & White.  It' always fun to see how the cut turns out. 

This is a mini teardrop challenge that I entered.  This was such a fun technique to learn.   This turned out beautifully and I can't wait to try it.

Wow, this soap is so chocolaty smelling!  When even my husband asks me when the brownies will be done, you know it is going to be an awesome soap!  It is so smooth and creamy that I can't wait to try it in the shower. 

Halloween soap scented with Star Anise and Bay Rum.  Smells great and I'll see after the cut what to call it. 

Some of our clients have problems with fragrances or essential oils in their soap.  So this pretty bar is totally unscented.  This one is called Dreaming of Candy Canes.

The colors of this soap while they were in the bottles were shades of brown and gold.  Obviously they morphed into something more fall-like.  Still not a bad bar though.

It's time to start preparing for the holidays.  This is peppermint twist.  It is created using the in the pot swirl method.  This smells like a peppermint stick and it is a nice smooth bar.

This is a small order for a customer.   She got a great deal on these- half off due to a special we were running.  They turned out wonderful!  Love making these.

This was going to be a different technique than I ended up with.  But the fragrance that I used caused some acceleration in the soap, so when you get lemons, turn them into lemonade.   A multi-colored soap that reminds me of the ocean with the various colors.  It is scented with Baby Powder and it smells really nice!

We are working on adding our store to our web site.  This is taking a great deal of time and we are still knee deep in adding everything and trying to make shopping a good experience so please be patient with us.  You don't realize just how much you do until you begin to create your inventory!  But we do love our products.  

This is the first rough cut of our coffee soap.  It has coffee beans on top, and an impression mat on the bottom.  It has a fine mica line with coffee grounds dispersed throughout and it smells divine.  Coffee makes a great kitchen or mechanics soap for cleansing hard working hands.  This bar even has coffee butter in it and it is enriched with skin loving oils to cleanse your skin from any hard work.  

​Yes, coffee is not just for drinking; it makes a wonderful bar of soap!

With spring comes the cleanup of winter and the planing of new flowers, cleaning up the dead leaves, and basically beginning a new season of beauty.  Today, I purchased a couple of rose bushes for the front flower bed.  I love roses and I have none, so I purchased this pink one a yellow one with pink veins running through it.  Hopefully the thorns on the rose bushes will deter the deer that love to come calling.

I just re-vamped my best selling Lavender Goats Milk soap.  The recipe still has the same skin loving ingredients, I just changed the way it is created.  Instead of adding the milk at trace, I dissolved it at the beginning with the Sodium Hydroxide.  It stayed a nice white color, and when I mixed it in, it stayed nice and white.  I swirled it with purples and I think it turned out very nice.  It smells divine!  this will be ready in 6-8 weeks for selling.  This is the most awesome bar!

This is the last challenge for this group that I have been a member of.  It is called a straight lines challenge.  While it is my first attempt, it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, and it didn't help that I was sick when I did it.  But I had some soap leftover for samples and other fun things.  It is scented with spiced Plum & Fig.  I can't complain about it.  For a first attempt, I think it did ok.  I did the bottom with an impression mat dusted with plum mica.  It turned out nice.

I have entered a few Soap Challenges the latter part of this year.  There is only one left, but this is my entry for the Dirty Pour technique.  It is taken from the dirty pour acrylic paint fluid method which turns out spectacular images, but when working with soap, it is entirely different.  This is scented with Alpine Frost Fragrance Oil, Red, Green, Gold and white colorants.  It smells a bit minty and the bars look quite festive. 

These make great holiday gifts for anyone.  On my list of those who I gift a handcrafted bar of soap to are:  my delivery people (UPS, USPS, FedEx), co-workers, neighbors, and anyone who looks like they could use a  little something to perk up their spirits.

I love the holidays.  I feel that overall, this time of year, I concentrate on being more thankful and less selfish and I try to look for the best in those that I associate with.  

It always makes me a little sad to say good-by to the warmth of summer, the enjoying of the mountains and being able to drive to beautiful places.  But the fall is one of my favorite times of year.  The foliage is beginning to turn and the colors are stunning, plus the crisp mornings where the fog hangs over the valley just makes me enjoy this time of year.  And then the fact that mowing the grass is over adds to that even more.  The fall means that winter is just around the corner and nature is putting plants to sleep for a season.  Life is beautiful, no matter what time of year it is.  Sometimes it can be difficult to find it, but beauty is all around us!

We recently went on a vacation for a few days - something that we have not had for nearly 3 years.  It was such a wonderful experience to get away and to enjoy the majesty of Yellowstone Park - my favorite place on earth.

Though we deliberately did not have an agenda, we found much to do and went several places just to enjoy nature and wildlife.

There is something therapeutic about spending time away from work and the normal day in out life that we become accustomed to.

Now, I believe I can get back to the tasks at hand now that my soul has been filled.

My we all enjoy the little things in life and realize that there is beauty all around.  You just have to realize it.