Tag: texas

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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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Nominated!

Some of you might have spotted in the comments last week when Alia told me she had nominated me for the Beautiful Blogger Award.  I was stunned, humbled, and speechless (hubby liked that part best of all) at the idea of someone wanting to nominate me for my writing.  I am still kind of dazed at the thought to the point it has taken all week to try and write this simple post.  Please accept my sincere thanks to all of you for occasionally stepping into my little soapy corner of Texas to hear my thoughts and follow my adventures with soapmaking.  Now, please follow me thru this as I try to obey the award rules.  I’m sure Mom will be amazed if I follow all of them…

First, I am supposed to thank the person who nominated me.  Alia, are you reading this?  I’m still thanking you again and again!  I am then supposed to reveal seven things about me that most of you would not know before nominating my favorites.  This should be entertaining, right?  Here we go:

1.  I absolutely love food.  I don’t have one favorite thing that I love most of all because there are too many great things to eat.

2.  I have a lot of books at home (more filled bookshelves than I really want to admit) but still max out my library card almost constantly.  Our library has a limit of 75 books checked out at once on one card and that actually became a major problem in my house.  We opened a card for my son and still regularly max out both but somehow don’t incur a lot of late fines at all.  Knock on wood.

3.  I would rather scrub all the floors in the house with a toothbrush than to dust.  I avoid ironing if there is any way I can.  Seriously.  I iron quarterly if I’m forced, twice a year if I can get away with it.

4.  I’ve had gray in my hair since I was in my teens but do not dye it.  It’s still spreading all over my head but that’s life.

5.  I was not a well-behaved teen.  I spent most of high school grounded for one reason or another but mostly because I was hard-headed.

6.  I prefer barefoot or flip-flops.  Drives hubby nuts.

7.  You know that censor in your head that keeps you from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time?  Keeps the inappropriately timed comments from leaping out of your mouth or reminds you to act your age?  Yeah, mine went on vacation years ago and never came back.  Didn’t even send me a postcard or one of those t-shirts.

Now the other hard part.  I enjoy many blogs and tend to wander around them.  I am including AuNaturalEssence in this list even though she nominated me because her blog rocks.  I thought it before she ever did this and I will still send people her way.  In no particular order, I would like to nominate these great blogs and I will hop to notifying them.  Please make some time to stop by their sites as I think you’ll enjoy them too.  I enjoy them for their style, artwork, ideas, outlook on life, and/or hope to be like them one day if I ever finish growing up.

ahardyperspective-

Jennifer’s Handmade Soap-

Sirona Springs Blog-

Neecy’s Necessities–

Au Natural Essence–

Positive Energies-

Damsels in Regress-

Thanks again both to Alia for nominating me and everyone who stops by to visit us here on the blog, on Facebook, or real face to face.  We enjoy having real conversations with everyone and making people laugh a little along the way.  I am still amazed at this honor although I did recover my ability to talk.  (Sorry, honey.)  I will return next week to continue the posts of what treasures are on our drying racks.  Have a great weekend all!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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Mad Scientist’s Stock Update

Well, the racks are all overflowing again with new soaps and the stick blender has begged for mercy.  All possible soaping pots came out for work this week and I was caught cackling and dancing more than once over a bubbling stock pot.  Love my job!  Most of this week’s soaps were heavily olive oil based so expect them to be very mild, smooth, and creamy when you get your hands on them!  Thanks again to cute Baby Lex for inspiring some new soaps.

As promised, here is the in-stock update.  The website is still in progress (one of the hazards of being a chronic do-it-yourself-er who has a habit of researching things almost to death) so I apologize that we haven’t gotten a shopping cart set up yet or launched the site.  If required, I’ll go stand in the corner once I finish this post 🙂  All bar soaps are currently priced at $4.25 each, plus any shipping costs or sales tax if you are in Texas.  If you are local to the Cypress, TX area, we can be caught at Donna’s Market in October or arrange a pickup to save you shipping costs.  All others can order by emailing us directly at txpioneercreations@yahoo.com or contacting us thru this blog and Facebook.  And yes, we can always create a gift set for you- just drop us a line and let’s brainstorm!

Ready to ship/pick up:  Chocolate (both Vegan and Old Fashioned), Sage & Citrus with Shea Butter, Rain, and our regular Sage & Citrus.

Ready by Sept 30th (currently preorder only):  Moroccan Mint, Indonesian Teakwood, Unscented Olive Oil, a vegan Sage and Citrus , and a vegan Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey Scrub Bar.  The Green Tea Sand Scrub will also be ready by then but was made in oversized bars so they have a separate price of $5.25 each.

Samples:  Ginger Peach Tea, Texas Suds (the beer soap), Vanilla, Chocolate (both kinds), Olive Oil, and Moroccan Mint are currently ready to go home with someone.  We will have a few of the Moroccan Mint, Unscented Olive Oil, Indonesian Teakwood, and the Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey Scrub at the end of September also.

I do get the question about letting people have soaps before they are done “curing”, also known around here as “their month on the rack.”  The short answer is no, we can not let you have any cold processed soaps until they are done.  They need that time to mellow out and we need some time to make sure they pass our quality control testing.  Yes, we check our soaps by the batch, even if it’s a recipe I’ve made so often I can make it in my sleep.  Never know when a scale will be off in measuring or the mad scientist soaper will get so into the song playing that she forgets to add the fragrance so we make it a policy to double check each batch.  Please help me practice being patient and I will gladly keep you updated on your soaps.

Also asked is about our samples since we don’t always have samples on hand for every soap on display.  There are a few reasons for that.  First, there are only a limited amount of samples so when they’re gone, they’re gone.  I don’t make soap specifically for samples; they come from any extras leftover from the larger batch.  It is one way I have found to help keep our costs down which allows us to keep our prices lower for you.  Secondly, Texas considers samples to be sales taxable which means we have to decide between charging customers for them or we pay it.  Currently, we do not charge anything for samples and we try to include a few samples with shipments whenever possible.  If you are interested in having only samples mailed directly to you, please contact me directly so we can find a cost-effective way for both of us.  I realize that not everyone is interested in the motives behind why a company charges for things, but I believe some are and I try to be completely honest about how we calculate the prices as we do.

Over the next few weeks, I will post some of the pictures of the new soaps along with information about each so everyone can see.  Hope all of you have a great weekend in your neck of the woods and I will now step out to clean out my cauldron for the last time this week.  Oh yeah, then I guess I might be off to stand in the corner for not finishing our website……

Happy Washing!

Dorothy