My own piece of cupcake heaven

Pardon my bad (out of focus) photography, but check out the amazing looking cupcake soap I got from Heather at Twin Birch. Is that cool or what? And it didn't add a single inch to my waist. ;) Plus, Heather was so accommodating about packaging them up in a different way (I want to give the 3 as individual gifts) without charging me extra. Like I said before, LOVE those indie bizzes!





"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

I won...again!!

(that's my dog's happy leap...then 10 weeks old and exuberant)

My Spring really is turning out wonderfully; I'm glad I decided to re-start the year with Chinese New Year. ;)

This time, I was one of two winners for Joanna's "reviews giveaway contest" at her Product Body Blog!! The prizes are a Crush On You scrubby wash, and a Whipped Shea Butter cream...two of my utter favorite products!

The other winner in Joanna's contest is Heidi of the Soapaholics Anonymous blog...a big congrats to her! What a great blog name, eh?

And I almost forgot that I had won something else: a calendar from The Artist's Magazine Blog back in February 29th! Life is good. :)

I have more stuff to write about, including showing off the cutest cupcake soap I bought from Heather at Twin Birch, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Get ready for Earth Day with Cafe Press

While I am not advocating that people buy things for Earth Day (there's irony in buying to save the planet, after all), if you're already looking for t-shirts, canvas bags, etc., there are some really cute and funny Earth Day designs at CafePress. One that cracked me up, for instance, says "My Mom recycles more than your Mom".

To alleviate some guilt in buying, some items are offered in organic cotton. :)

Also to prepare for Earth Day, we joined the National Arbor Day Foundation this year. Dh will have plenty of trees to plant with free trees from this and also the order that he'd put in at the DNR nursery.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

FOSs

Many folks have been reporting First of the Season sightings on our local birding e-list, so I'll post our own little list here:

American woodcocks - we've heard their "peenting", and now we've also watched their mating rituals
Eastern phoebes - tail-pumping maniacs are back

Hmm, short list so far. The Eastern bluebirds stay here all winter, as have the rufous sided towhees. Dh swore he heard a catbird though.

Other interesting birds of note would be the great horned owl I heard the previous night, as well as the Cooper's hawk (possibly 2) we saw today.

Since I don't have a good bird photo on hand, I thought I'd share a pic of our pet birds (with our dog when she was just 8 weeks old):


"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

I won!!

I was selected as the winner of the latest blog give-away at The Soap Queen Blog!! Thank you so much, Anne-Marie! The news made an auspicious start to my Spring season. :)

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Spring is...springing!

I completely missed wishing everyone a Happy Pi Day (March 14th...haha), as well as a Happy Vernal Equinox, but the crocuses didn't. They magically popped up yesterday to commemorate the Equinox, smart flowers.

The snowdrops have been blooming for a couple of weeks now, deterred not by the ice and snow. Determined little buggers. And cute too, although the cold and blooming for so long had taken their toll and these are no longer as nice looking as they were in their prime (join the club).

Things are greening up in general, though. Today is warm and very windy...March comes in like a lion, after all (so it's a tad late coming this year). This is looking down from the house toward the shed, greenhouse, and garden.


"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Soaps, soaps, soaps!

Got another package from Savonara yesterday...the sweet woman gave me a bar of the Tropical Punch soap that I was in search of but that she had sold out already on Etsy! She is such a dear, and makes the most artistic soaps. Check out her blog.

The boys made their first ever melt-and-pour soaps this week: honeyed lemon verbena soaps (that are available for sale at their website). We got the Milky Way molds and the soap base from Bramble Berry. As well, before we got started, I had the boys watch the Bramble Berry MP soap making video, featuring the lovely Anne-Marie. It was the most wonderful tutorial, and made things so, so easy when it came time for us to make them.

Here the kids are, just after pouring the soaps:

And here they are again, right after popping the soaps out of the molds:

Here are the soaps, up-close...they look like gorgeous amber. Care to extract some dinosaur DNA, anyone? ;)





The larger images are posted at TwoTadpoles.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Moisturizing soaps for your dry, coming-off-winter skin!

The boys finally made them: honeyed lemon verbena soaps! Tadpole #1 cut and melted the soap base (as well as stirred in the lemon verbena, and poured the soap into the molds...pretty much everything), and Tadpole #2 crushed our homegrown, dried lemon verbena so that it could be incorporated well. 

This is a thoroughly yummy soap that looks like amber with plants embedded in it. Please click on thumbnails above to see the full-sized photos.

A large bar with dragonfly motif costs $3.00

A smaller frog shaped bar costs $2.00

This soap, due to its being glycerine and containing honey, is very gentle on your skin, yet also lathers up beautifully.

To be honest, by the time we give some away to relatives and friends, there may not be any left. But, we're eager to try some different "styles" of MP soaps, as well as cold-process soaps, so we may have more to sell in the future...unless the boys decide they want to take up carpentry instead and go off in another creative direction. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Dedicated to my late MIL (nee B. Donovan, 1929-2002), the sweetest tempered Irish lass we'd ever met.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Fun birding day

(image from http://www.audubon.org/news/pressroom/CBID/Hi_Rez_images/Horned_Lark_George_Jameson.jpg)

Dh wanted to go away somewhere for Spring Break - he's feeling a bit burned out - but we decided it was best to just plan a day trip. As it turned out, that was a good decision. Dh's dad ended up having to go to the hospital after some minor tests and dh had to spend a lot of time dealing with that.

But luckily, it still worked out for a really lovely day trip to go birding yesterday. We went to the Goose Pond area, with a quick lunch at Sarge's Smokehouse.

It was sunny, and fairly warm, although the morning was still chilly, especially with the breeze. Overall, a lovely day for birding.

We saw about 35 species in total, with highlights of horned larks (see photo above), a golden eagle, field sparrows, savannah sparrows (both were lifers for us, I think), blue-winged teals, green-winged teals, thousands upon thousands of pintail ducks, and a bald eagle. Wish we got to see more sandhill cranes than we did, and a shrike would have made our day, but I can't complain about the birds we did see.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Inspirations, part 2

I finally got the scanner sort of working (I will never understand the gremlins who run my electronics), which allowed me to scan the images below, so I'm revisiting the idea of inspiration, started by Annie.

These 2 pages of images had captured my imagination since 1970. The children's magazine it came from was what instilled in me the love of language and art, and of the language-art pairing, and this particular story with these particular illustrations were what cemented the love for me.



I have the top illustration larger so you can see the gorgeous details. (Yeah, it looks a little violent, but that's how that fable went and is no more violent than any Western fairy tales.)

On a somewhat unrelated note, I may take a break from the computer for a bit; I think I feel some carpel tunnel going on in my right wrist.

"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

They did it!

All eight of our chickens laid an egg yesterday! This was the first time ever that we got 8 eggs in one day. I barely had enough pocket space to bring them all back to the house. Hope they keep it up. :)

“To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.” ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)

Is it spring yet?

In our neck of the woods, Spring hasn't quite decided to move in yet. Despite the weather being decidedly spring-like on our hike yesterday - high 60s, partly sunny, warm breeze - we will still get chances of snow showers during this week. When I checked today, our snowdrops have several blossoms (I should take a photo). The one above is of the crocus that we're forcing indoors. Ds#1 received it from the woman who is running the Waldorf-style ancient history homeschool co-op that he's attending. And, as you can see, we have a dragon guarding it in case Old Man Winter decides to come and sabotage our journey to spring.

The one nice thing about it still being on the cool side is that it's not unbearable to bake, especially pizzas that require temperatures of 450 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. Or, "NASA hot" as Alton Brown calls it. We all love anchovy pizzas, so I make them a lot.

One of the things I cannot imagine living without now for making pizza is my peel (Alton calls his "Emma"...hahaha!). Makes me feel like a professional pizza maker!

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." ~ William James (1842 - 1910)

Love those indie bizes!

I received an order from The Laundress a few days ago. They were featured in a recent issue of Domino magazine, and since I'm always in need of laundry detergent, I thought I'd give them a try. While I am happy with my purchase (I'll be using it for the first time today), I can't help but reflect on the difference between smaller/indie/Etsy businesses versus the big name companies, or even companies that have gotten too big to be personal.

Hardly any communication goes on with the "big" companies, whereas the smaller/indie (that I'll just call indie for the remainder of the post) businesses all have a nice little thank-you message, even if it's a canned one.

Nearly all big companies don't go out of their way to see to your satisfaction, whereas the indies are pretty good about customer service and try to make sure you're purchase is as you expected and that you are happy with your experience.

The big companies send you their products, with maybe some propaganda about their own companies, and that's it. Indies send you the products, plus a little something extra - like an art-heart magnet, a sweet wooden soap dish, and samples of soaps, scents, hand-cream. It's almost like a mini-birthday surprise when I get packages from indies.

Here's to all the wonderful smaller/indie bizes I've recently purchased from: Suzanne Buchanan, Bramble Berry, Product Body, Savonara, The Soap Smith, Under the Willow Gifts, and Birch Bark Soap.

I have to note that Bramble Berry is not so small, but they have terrific customer service and are so approachable.

The ladies who run/own these businesses (and their employees) are the best!

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." ~ William James (1842 - 1910)