Tag: olive oil

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Making Soap and Crashing Computers

(Cross posted on our WordPress.com site also.  Please be sure to sign up as a follower here so you won’t miss out on the fun!)

It’s been pretty busy around here for us these past few weeks.  We’re making sure everything is ready for Donna’s Market this Saturday so that means I have soap, packaging materials, and scratch paper with my soapy brainstorm ideas all over the kitchen!   If you are in our area, please stop by and say hi this Saturday. The address for the market is 18315 Kenmark Lane, Cypress, TX, and we’ll be there from 8-2. Looks to be a beautiful weekend so we hope to see you there and share a joke or two!  We will be bringing a variety of stock with us so you should be able find to everything from unscented, castile, sand soap, teakwood, chocolate, oatmeal, and even vanilla with shea butter.  We will also be taking preorders for the beer, honeysuckle, peppermint, cinnamon, and pumpkin soaps while we are there.  Another scent on your mind?  Want to create the perfect holiday gift?  Just let us know!

I can’t wait to cook up some more this weekend after Donna’s.  There’s a brand new mold and cutter sitting on my table just begging to be tried out.  The cooler weather and the fall scents we have lined up have me playing with pumpkins, dreaming of walks in the woods, hot cider to sip afterwards, and the aroma of fresh baked holiday treats.  Cross your fingers- I might even have gotten the trick of swirling finally!

As you may have caught, we’ve migrated our blog from WordPress.com to our site at texaspioneercreations.com over the past few weeks.  It has been quite an adventure for me as I learn more of the nuts and bolts of how a website really works- and how well I can crash it!  Thank heavens I’ve got a computer geek hubby and decent tech support when I break the computer.  One of the things I’ve learned in this migration- I’m sooo much better at soap math and design than websites!  To those who are the computer geeks out there, thanks a million times for creating these wonderful machines and beautiful websites.  And thanks for not pointing as you laugh when I do something stupid with them.

Our email based followers were successfully moved over but we are still working with tech support to bring over our WordPress.com followers.  If you are currently one of our .com followers, please take a moment to resubscribe to our blog at texaspioneercreations.com so you won’t miss out on our new posts, updates, and the ongoing insanity that is my soapy life!  The online ordering section of the site should be live soon also so that those not in our local area can enjoy some of our soaps in a more streamlined process.  Sign up so you won’t miss out!

I must now sign off so that I can get back to wrapping and brainstorming.  Hope your day is a good one, your tech support friendly, and you find the time for a little fun in it all.  I will see you again soon!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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Zombies in the soap

I had planned a regular posting about some of the soaps that are curing right now but, as is normal around here, something came along that cracked me up.

This week I’m writing about the straight Olive Oil Castile soap that was made about three weeks ago. We used a blend of regular and pomace olive oils and avoided any scents or colorings this time to create a clean, gentle soap. (This was part of my inspiration from our brand new nephew Lex and my cute-baby-obsessed brain.) It is very mild, moisturizing, and is as well-loved by sensitive and mature skins as it is by the wee ones in our lives.

I had made a large batch this time in hopes that I might be able to stash some away for the holidays but was really, really unhappy with the texturing of the top when I unmolded it. Now, if you are a new reader, you may not know that I am one of those soapers who owns a block grater and is not afraid to use it. Luckily, this soap was still very young and I was able to chop it up quickly with my favorite big knife. Lots of little olive oil bits went back into the soaping pot for another round until they melted into submission. I remolded the entire batch and was very pleased once it came out the next morning. These were cut into large bars with a few sample scraps so I made them a home on the curing racks. Sure that I was once again the queen of my soapy domain, I lined up all my beautiful soap bars to cure. I admired their greenish gold tint and made myself swear I wouldn’t start putting any of them to use until they were fully cured, or maybe three weeks, or maybe just one for now…… I mentioned I can be impatient about waiting to quality control each batch, right?

I promise I behaved and left them alone until hubby came home that night. He was checking out everything I had cooked up that day and was intently staring at the olive oil soaps. Confidant I had totally rocked that batch, I waited to hear any questions, comments, or praise he might have. No worries, right? He floored me completely with his reply: “You know, this looks like zombie soap.” Huh?!?! It still makes me laugh but I had to agree once I heard him out.

Soapers can tell you how colors will morph some as they cure and certain oils will give you certain colors in your soap. This olive oil blend has a light green gold hue but as it was curing it made some slightly darker spots that had a brownish tinge too. Dunno how much your family is into zombies but this batch provided us a few giggles for about a week as it settled itself down. I am sad to say that I no longer see the zombie resemblance but now I have some inspiration for another batch of soap. If I can get it to work, we will add “Zombie Soap” to the silly soap line along with the “Cow Pattie” and “Mud Balls.” I’ll make a blog post about those another time; let me find some good pictures of them so I can put it in there, ok?

This batch of no-longer-zombie-looking soaps will be ready to go to new homes around September 25th. I hope to have some good pictures up soon of everything on the rack for all of us who enjoy staring at soap pics. If you are in the Houston area, you can catch us at Donna’s Market on October 13th. Please stop by and say hello, tell a good joke, or just have a chat! I shall sign off here for the week as the sky’s just opened up and the rain is pouring down. Time to go get dirty for an excuse to try out the new experiments!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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January’s Racks

I’ve had a ton of fun lately in the kitchen playing with some new recipes and scents. Santa brought me some new smellies to play with so I’ve been more than happy to experiment 🙂 It has kept me busy and now almost everything is ready to come off the drying racks. If all comes out as well as it has tested so far, there will be plenty of new fun scents for the spring! I might even finally have gotten the hang of colors- hooray!  We’ve had great progress on a men’s scent and honeysuckle and we hope to have both of those out by spring so keep fingers crossed.

Well, that also means the regular racks are almost all cleared too and everything smells great!  I’m happy to report that some requested scents, like chocolate, are back.  I’m working on getting everything wrapped up but will continue to answer emails so just drop me a line.  If you were one of those hoping to get some of the chocolate soap, please contact me soon as there is only a limited supply.  This batch is so true smelling that the kids and neighbor came in looking for brownies again!  In all, we have these varieties available both as individual bars and gift sets:  plain, vanilla, olive oil, chocolate, cedar, and a few ginger peach tea.  Most bars are bath soap sized but there a few hand soaps available.

Promise to post pictures before week ends but now I have to run- it’s the princess’ birthday and I’ve got to get busy!!  Happy Birthday Princess!!

And Happy Washing to All!

Dorothy