Runaway October

Some­times when you aim to hand make all of your gifts, the final goal can get away from you. Sure, that super cute scarf would be fun to make, but in Ari­zona who’s going to use it?

So the boys (with lots of help from Mama) are mak­ing soap to give as gifts this year. Who can’t use soap, right?

Don’t worry, the stove was not on yet.

My fancy dou­ble boiler.

Adding flax meal for exfo­liants and kelp pow­der which is a great detox­i­cant. (Is that a word?)

Soap on a Rope, poured and set­ting up.

In the molds, with a fin­ger­print… for authenticity.

We did two dif­fer­ent batches so far–one for the gals, one for the guys.

The Guy Recipe

• 1 lb sus­pen­sion Shea But­ter soap base
• 2 table­spoons Kelp Powder
• 2 table­spoons Flax Seed Meal
• 15–20 drops Tea Tree Essen­tial Oil

The Gal Recipe

• 1 lb Honey melt & pour soap
• 4 Tb Beeswax
• 4 Tb Honey
• 15 — 20 Sweet Orange Essen­tial Oil
• 1 tsp shim­mery Mica for sparkle

(P.S. — If the boys give you a gift of soap, pre­tend to be sur­prised! They are very proud of their efforts! )

These lit­tle guys were will­ing to brave the Ari­zona rain to get at the pinecone bird feed­ers the boys and I made the other day. The first batch sat for a week or two before the birds found them, but now it’s like Tem­ple­ton at the Fair.

And this lit­tle boy was will­ing to brave the rain too!

Good thing Fable was keep­ing this spot warm for him.

Fin­ished this scarf today. Can’t decide if I like it nor not? It’s at least 8 foot long, and I’m not even going to men­tion what my brother said about it. Well, maybe. He com­pared it to parts of the female anatomy. What a butthead.

Made my first batch of Sour­dough Bread ever today. It’s so yummy. One of the least finnicky breads I’ve worked with, surprisingly.

I went to check my email and one of the loaves was hoovered down in sec­onds flat. Mostly by afore­men­tioned brother. Butthead.

There is NO Typo. :/

And last, but not least, I finally got around to pack­ag­ing up a Valentine’s Day Sur­prise for a cer­tain spe­cial some­one. Do you know who you are?

And this con­cludes our semi-rainy Wednes­day  stuck at home. Tell me about yours!

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Please don’t for­get to vote for me daily, if you would be so kind. Thank you!

Finally.

I have a ten­dency to get in trou­ble with swaps. The fear of my part­ner not lik­ing what I make liter­rally freezes me up until the last minute. Then it’s a mad rush.

This time it was dif­fer­ent. I knew what I wanted to do, but my pay­check was late, so I com­pletely missed the dead­line. But it’s been wrapped, boxed and shipped as of last night! Go me! Only what… 8 days late?

Back Tack 4 was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the ope­ness of the cen­tral theme: Gold Frank­in­cense and Myrrh

This time there are no colour, size, or mate­r­ial restric­tions, all we ask is that you take the theme and run with it, and make 3 items accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual out­lines below.

The first item is some­thing that sparkles [the Gold part]- cards, dec­o­ra­tions, calenders.….see where your imag­i­na­tion will take you. [It doesn’t need to be gold]

The sec­ond item is some­thing which has some sort of sen­sory aspect to it [the Frank­in­cense part] — either smell or taste. Baked goods? Short­bread? Choco­late, soaps, the mind can run free here, but be mind­ful of cus­toms reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Sealed food stuffs are gen­er­ally ok, but check with your part­ner before send­ing anything.

The third item is a small gift for your part­ner for Christ­mas [the Myrrh part] Per­haps a small item for the tree, or mantle­piece. Quiz your part­ner to see what their them­ing is for this Christ­mas, and tie in your gift! or make them some­thing they might like to use through the year — a cal­en­der, a purse, a scarf.

Here’s a sneak peak. When my part­ner gets her pack­age I’ll post more photos.

 In the  mean­time, check out the Back Tack Flickr pool. Lots of gor­geous good­ies! And my part­ner, Kristin’s, beau­ti­ful blog: Kleas.