Travelin' On

If you're reading this, just let me take a moment to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to do so.  For a month, your email inboxes haven't been popping up that little notification that I've created a new post to this blog, and I'm so sorry for leaving you hanging.  It became time in the life of my business to place my blog under my own possession instead of that of Blogger or WordPress.  While both are fabulous blog sites, they are still third-party sites, and my content is dependent on their being up and functioning with pretty much nothing in my control.

I spent a couple of hours one day moving my blog over from here to a subdomain on my website.  It was a great learning experience, I tell you what!  The fact that I did it with very little help - though, THANK GOODNESS for live chat tech support from the great folks over at Hostmonster, my host!!! - just thrilled me.  Mastering anything tech without a lot of assistance is a boon to me.  Be sure to read all about that cool learning experience here.

That being said, I invite you to just truck your mouse on over to my blog's new home and catch up on your reading.  I've been posting just as regularly there as I did here, plus all of the posts from this blog moved over there as well.  My best friend said he couldn't find a way to click for email notifications; I'm still working out a few kinks while trying to stay caught up with posts.  If we're connected on social media at all, I always post links to my blog at Twitter, FB, G+ and LinkedIn.  I also Pin whichever post has the most eeen-ter-esting pictures; those typically happen on Mondays.

Real quickly, be sure to check out some new products on the website.  I just added a scrumptious Coconut & Avocado Body Creme and coordinating, all natural Moisturizing Body Wash.  These two products are divine!  And a friend of mine convinced me over the weekend that I simply must start selling my laundry soap and include some more DIY recipes and tips for y'all, so be looking for that to go up later this week.

If you don't receive my periodic email updates or follow me on the social networks, please be sure to take a moment to read the latest update, which has some valuable information in it about some upcoming price changes.  Those go into effect the end of this month.  I know there's a lot of information here and a lot of links to click and get lost in.  Thank you for following my blog, and I look forward to seeing you at my new location!

New Soaps

I made my first batch of cold process soaps on Friday. For those who aren't so familiar with soap jargon, cold process soaps are the old-fashioned lye soaps. The idea of working with the lye was intimidating at first, but I just used all the safety precautions and had no problems whatsoever. This first batch is completely all natural - colored a pretty pumpkin orange with paprika and scented with a ginger bergamot essential oil blend. I'll probably scent some batches in the future with fragrance oils just to get rid of them to make room for more essential oils. (My storage space is getting a bit crowded.) Today I ordered a couple of ultramarine pigments, beautiful, rich, natural colorants. Tomorrow I'll likely buy some spices to use for other natural colorants.

The soaps came out of the mould today - rather ungracefully. That's the last time I use a plastic mould for CP! I was able to hand-mould them into something approximating rectangles and can trim them when they're cured in a few weeks. I'm excited about this new adventure in soapmaking and look forward to expanding this product line as part of my business. Start looking for these on my site around late May and early June.