Soaping - it's a DIRTY job!

First of all, I TOLD ya'll I had a TON of stuff to upload LOL :)  Secondly, take a look at the crazy after math of a night spent soaping!  It's all cleaned up and put away like an hour after I finish the video...BUT DANG!  Can I make a mess or what???? Call me pig pen haha!

All I have to say for myself is at least it's a clean mess :P

Excited for the market tomorrow!

Hitting up my old stand by - Olde Security Square Flea Market - this weekend! Haven't been able to do a 2 day market weekend in a while, just been way too busy! So I am excited to be getting out of the house and heading out!

I know some people DREAD all of the work that goes into this kinda thing - I admit, it IS indeed a ton of work!  But, I really do enjoy the majority of my clients that come through and I really get a kick being about and talking about soaps and goats all day!

I know what I need to be doing at this moment is laundry so I have a clean outfit AND packing...but instead I am playing online...hehehe...naughty me right?  Just can't help it! I am TOO excited! Two whole days outta the house! WOOHOO!

Not like I have been here that much really - I made a trip to the middle of Texas this week, have had a TON of errands to run, just been on the go - but this is different.  I get to go and stay put for the day once I get there, it's nice :)

Better go fix the goats their bottles though....or they will come and yell at me shortly :)  I have some more videos loading as I type...sloooooowly :P Trying to get all caught up after a being double busy!

Making "Lullaby" CP Goat Milk Soap

I use Bedtime Bath Type fragrance from Nature's garden when I make this one - LOVE IT!  Super calming scent to my nose, very nice blend of lavender and chamomile!  Changed it up a little to blue and pink swirls and did a "Holly Swirl" with it - which came out nice :)

I really have fun making these little videos - I mean, while I am not Steven Spielberg I still enjoy what I do! Always a drama student deep down at heart!

Can't wait until this one has cured a bit longer - been made for a while now, just waiting on me to post the video of it's "birth" haha!  One of my faves by far!

Making Cherry Almond Goat Milk Soap

Here's the video from making my version of Cherry Almond goat milk soap, cold process style :)

It came out nicely...still a wee tidly bit soft when I went to cut it...but also still very young at that stage LOL:

I get the fragrance from Rustic Escentuals and it's one EVERYBODY loves :)

Cutting a TON of soaps!

Well, here goes I suppose.  There will be more of these for sure haha, but for now, here is the cutting of "Rosemary ROCKS!!!" a rosemary mint fragrance from Nature's Garden that I absolutely LOVE!

AND THEN....since the "making of" videos were crud...here is the one where I cut a bunch of other soaps LOL.  "Berries & Cream" which is Black Raspberry Vanilla fragrance from Nature's Garden, "Kerfluffled" which would be my name for Pink Sugar fragrance from Rustic Escentuals (the "SNC" version since they have several).

There is also a little bitty loaf of "Malibu Heat Type" also from RE - I haven't renamed it yet since it was just a test run on that one...but I am in love again :)

The true special here is "Summer Nights" which would be Moonlight Pomegranate from NG....even though it is so special it will get it's own blog post...for now it is one video and displayed as such.  I LOVE the way it came out!  Looks so neat!  Took a bit...may not be doing that again LOL....but I was amused :)

So...without furher ado yet another cutting video: 

White Noise...

Well, I sat down tonight to TRY to get some of the videos I made last week and the week before uploaded...yeah...no dice...

See, hubby was home and MOST of them were made while he was sleeping.  You would think this would be great right!  Not so much, see the man snores.  And when I say he snores, I mean like off the rictor scale shakes the house, people in nearby towns think there has been an earthquake SNORES!!! 

So...I played one back....you can hear him...played another back and deleted it since he waltzed through the kitchen half awake and BELCHED then looks over and realizes I am making a video and just hangs his head and walks out....third video I went to check the freakin' dog was barking in (armadillo had her riled up).  Yeah...no....the only ones that are any good are the cutting videos the next day when he was GONE TO WORK!!!

Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!  I don't know how other people get such nice quiet houses LOL.  It wasn't happening for me!  Heck, in one you can barely hear me over him!

Suffice it to say, white noise and soap videos do NOT mix!  Tomorrow I am making a road trip, so there will be no uploading of anything until Wednesday or Thursday now...Don't get me wrong, I love him, I really do...but he wonders why I don't sleep at night until I sit down and show him the videos! UGH! I don't know how HE sleeps through his own noise!

So...there shall be minimal video goodness from the most recent batches - but I am okay with it - flustered a bit, but okay with it....someone tell me how to get the house so quiet though....

Some new fragrances :)

Made a short little video the other day, got some supplies from WSP, and a few fragrances from Rustic Escentuals. 

I decided on the Pink Sugar "SNC" version after checking with my lab rats...I mean test subjects...I mean friends LOL.  More Coffee House because that one just ROCKS! And Cherry Almond as I was getting low....AND...I got a small bottle each of "Malibu Heat Type" and "Sweet Grass and Cedar"...

The Malibu Heat type I really like - very summery - and the sweet grass and cedar...hmmm...not too sure WHAT I think at the moment LOL.  But it's just a small sample and I will make a small batch of soap and see what others think.

I find the longer I soap, the less my nose can pick stuff apart. Probably because the whole house is filled with the multiple aromas of multiple soaps curing in there :)

Anyways...one down...MANY more videos to go LOL

Youtube...you are a slow one....

Actually...it's not really youtubes fault...it's the slow internet here in the sticks...

First...the armadillo who comes to visit nightly, a brief video, and notice it is NOT running away, but merely sauntering under the porch to go out the BACK of the house! Bold little critter....

I have videos a plenty to upload, babbling and such to share...and until I get that done, here's some random baby goat cuteness from earlier in the week. The spots on their head are from being disbudded.  Yes, it hurts, but they always seem to get over it VERY quickly! No hard feelings there AND they will be "horn free" adults, which, trust me, is HEAPS better!  That's another blog though....so, until I get more videos uploaded...please enjoy the bouncy little interlude!

Revenge of the Goat Milk Lotion!!!

Okay - so not really revenge - perhaps "Goat Milk Lotion strikes again" lol :)  It's not a bad thing though, just tedious with a LOT of dishes when I am done!

First of all, since I DO put milk in my lotion, I don't like to make a ton all at once and leave it sitting around.  Unlike soap which gets harder and better with time, lotion DOES have a shelf life.  So I try to only make about 50 bottles of it at a time.  I may be bumping that up a bit since it moves pretty fast at the market though...we will see....Anyways, like I was saying...

Yes, I also put a preservative in there (phenonip if you were wondering).  But still, nothing lasts forever you know?  So I don't make more than what will last me a few weeks when I make lotions. However...this leads to TONS of dishes on a lotion day!

I have a lotion for almost every soap scent I make - not every single one, but pretty close.  I have found people like having a lotion to match the soap they use....and this means 5 - 10 bottles of each fragrance every time I make more lotions.  Of course I'm not TOTALLY daft...I make a LARGE batch, then portion it out into smaller parts to scent and bottle....not a million little batches.  At least it saves me time on weighing and measuring and melting everything ya know?

So...today is a "Lotion Strikes Again" day.  It's raining anyways, so at least if the power goes out I can stop what I am doing and come back later...lotion is pretty forgiving like that :) But...I DO have about 50 bottles to get crack-a-lacking at.....

Mother's Day has come and gone...

And a healthy little stack of boxes went with it full of soap orders LOL :)  That's just a portion of what went out last week - it was nice, but tiring!  See....MOST people can get the post office to come right to THEM to pick stuff up - um, no, not here :(  All delivery personnel avoid our dirt road like the plague.  This is probably for the best as they would otherwise most likely end up stuck in my driveway (got a GIANT sink hole happening of sorts, we refer to it as "the quick sand").

So I had to treck into town with all that, unload it with no assistance, and THEN get a lecture from the guy at the post office about someone else picking it up at my door...hahaha...LOL...ROFL!!!!!  I had to tell him they won't come to my door - he looked a little crushed on my behalf.  It was nice of him though to try to let me know about it.  I have to admit, out of all of the major delivery services available, the United States Postal Service is by far the most cost effective for me and at one of the local post offices they are pretty nice (the other one is 'eh soso').

I must admit, I am kinda glad to see one more holiday behind us for the year - it means moving on and ahead to other things, other soapy themes and ideas if you will.  I am TOTALLY ready to start making Christmas soap - but I am trying to hold out until August to start all that :P Perhaps I should focus on summery stuff and Father's Day for the time being don't you think?  Lordy me, I AM a soap mess aren't I?  All ready for Christmas and it isn't even JUNE!

Oh well, guess I should go out and give those baby goats their bed time bottles and then head off to sweet dreams myself eh?

Bath "stuffs" 1 - Me 0!

Yup....you see the score....bleh :(  Last weekend my niece was over, and we decided since I had the fixin's on hand and it's an easy project for a young teen to try that we would experiment with "bath melts'.  Yeah, I know, it's getting too hot almost for all that and yeah, I know it REALLY shouldn't be that hard...yeah...BLEH I said!

Gave a few recipes a go before all was said and done and popped them in the freezer - where they were PROMPTLY forgotten about once we discovered the cookies'n'cream ice cream in there!  Can you say "easily sidetracked" oh yes, that would be me :)  Just a trio of small batches mind you, nothing major...experimental stages and all....

I remembered them Friday when it was dark and I had literally NOTHING to do for lack of electricity that day AND the fact it was still way too soggy to go out side...I unmolded them easily enough...I set them on a rack to thaw a bit...and they were forgotten again...

Whilst passing through the kitchen a few hours later, pacing the house in search of SOMETHING to do with myself they were for the second time rediscovered and OH NO! Oh MAN! OH BABY THEY WERE MELTING!  Yes, melting, OOZING through the rack!  A few gloppy gooey drips of bath melt had hit the counter tops...it was a bath melt tragedy!  The worst part - we don't have a TUB!!!! If I had a tub and not just a shower stall in our little place I would gladly use them straight from the freezer - even if they melt too fast it won't bug me...but nope, no tub here...perhaps a little swimming pool in a month or two would work?

My initial thought was: For real, is someone kidding me?  Because it was fairly cool in here - like MAYBE 75 - 80 degrees - MAYBE....IF that warm!  Let's just say I sweat like my ex-racehorse and I was NOT sweating when I caught them melting....I DOUBT it was that warm in here! Then I realized: This will never do, oh no, can't have bath melts that melt in people bathrooms BEFORE they hit the tub! Good thing we only made a few of each right?  That's what test runs are for folks! Now what to do with the gloppy mess? Back in the freezer - what else could I do?  Power or not it was still cold enough in there to firm them back up and stop the dripping at least!

I wanted a picture SO bad!  I stuck them back in the freezer - if I remember I will get one later when I feel like trooping out there...I am hoping I can at least remelt them (not that much effort will be required there right?) and add a bit of stuff (beeswax really since they are pretty close to what I make already here for lotion bars) and make the "lotion bars" my hubby loves so much for his ucky man feet out of them!

So the tally at this point is Bath Stuffs 1 - ME 0!  I fully intend to conquer this prior to Christmas LOL...one failed batch at a time! Perhaps better luck shall be mine when there is no ice cream to distract me and no power outage to frazzle my nerves?  Maybe they sat forgotten too long and too many times and took it personal?  Who knows...all I know is NONE of those recipes are gonna work :P

Soap Class AND Goat Midwifery 101 :)

Let's just say it has been a CRAZY busy week!  Like that song by Adam Sandler - we have had 8 CRAAAAZY nights!  But, it's been good :)

Taught a soap class a week ago Sunday - and it was one of the best groups of people ever I think!  Heck, they are all pretty great :)  Had a ton of fun, nothing too exciting though...just soap class...THEN....

Monday morning I had a class scheduled...turns out her husband had been teasing her about baby goats coming during class.  AND ONE DID!  Yup, with just minutes of class left I heard it - SOMEONE was having a baby!  So they got a "two-fer" LOL!

Look what we got, a 7lb 6oz girl!

Tuesday I was WHOOPED!  It had been a long few days...THEN Wednesday I got up and shortly there after look what else I got! AN 8lb 14 oz girl!  THAT'S BIG!

NadaLottaRanch Diamond Bar and NadaLottaRanch Dixie Chicken have arrived :)  SO THEN....

Thursday I got stuck in the storm of the year here coming home - it was AWFUL! Dorothy's house flew by! The oak threw another limb at me:

And yes, the broken down fridge is STILL in the yard - gotta get that bad boy outta here this week.  The whole world flooded for a bit:

That would be "Lake NadaLotta Drainage" there...actually it's drying up nicely NOW...but it was DEEP as the water came so fast and so hard! It could be worse though, someone (NOT ME I SAY) lost their carport:

It was VERY BAD! So bad in fact we spent over TWO DAYS IN THE DARK!  Yup, you read that right...no power from Thursday afternoon until Saturday morning!  Sure...we had a teaser where the lights came on for an hour Friday night...but then they oh so eerily blinked off and on and off and on for a few minutes before FINALLY going out! CREEPY!  Kinda like they WANTED to stay on but just couldn't :(

It's okay, they came back and SLOWLY we are cleaning back up again...funny how being without power the house goes straight to hell.  Yup, I said it, straight there...

So...I have some major soapy catchings up to do LOL...videos and pics and stories to post and share...but I admit, it has been a LONG week :)  YAY for babies though!  Got my hands full there for a bit as well - little ones are a handful!  It was so scary dark the nights without power they got to bunk with mama...look close:

I kept everyone safe and close by when it was super dark outside....no lights to keep the coyotes and such away!

So...apologies for being absentee - partly I was busy and partly I was in the dark...more soapy fun to follow ya'll!

Restocking L.O.V.E. (now on video)

Oh yes...I am all video crazy now!  Sure, it seriously takes like 12 hours to get a video uploaded...first from the phone to "google +" (I think that's what it's called...idk....all I know is it's the method I have figured out - I am sure there is a better way).  Then from there to being saved to the computer, THEN on to youtube...T E D I O U S!  But..I LOVE making the videos!

So...we made a restock of L.O.V.E. (the love spell type fragrance) yesterday - I had my niece here to help run the camera and she has never been old enough yet to make soap with me.  FINALLY she is old enough AND available!  All in all it was fun :)  AND it's one of her favorites that I make!

The newest NadaLotta Camera skills on video (LOL) :

The cutting of "Billy Goat Buzz"

I am in LOVE with this fragrance!  The house still smells like yummy delicious coffee! MMMmmm :)

Made a video - used my new "soap cutter" (aka cheese slicer) - and I think even if it wasn't exactly what I was going for, this is one nice soap!  And of course I am overly proud of my cheesy videography skills :)

OH!  Had a moment at the end and cut off the camera before I got the final shots of the cut bars...here's the still photo of that:

 I was shooting for a "Holly swirl" as they call it....I over swooshed a bit...but still a nice looking bar I think :)

So...presenting the cutting of "Billy Goat Buzz":

Billy goat Buzz - the new version!

Yup - finally caved and added fragrance to the coffee soap instead of coffee.  SMELLS WONDERFUL!

Made a video - getting better a bit - though it still takes me literally the entire next day to post it.  Gotta love that super slow country internet we have out here! T E D I O U S as heck waiting on it to do it's thing!

And yes...had a "uhoh" moment there - camera slipped outta position, stick blender is a tad bit wonkey and cannot be trusted to set still and was stuck in soap and I had 2 hands when I needed 3!  Just, don't do that at home folks!  I was all alone and not trying to edit videos and splice them together yet - heck, I'm doing good to get it up as one video....

Slowly, I am getting better at the whole camera thing....really probably just need a real one complete with a tripod for all the stuff I want videos of...it's coming...

It seems like there was something else important to go along with this I wanted to say...hmm...nope, forgot...been having lots of spacy moments when I write these days (my mind is on those baby goats about to be born mostly).

Wasn't too happy with the top at first, but I got a few good pics and it's growing no me.  The flash kind of washed out the "wet look" and since it was actually late at night a while back now when I made it withOUT the flash the colors aren't right...oh well, all the photos are still pretty in their own way I suppose AND the Top came out better than I thought (yes just a sprinkling of real coffee is on there - it's the only real coffee though):

So, here we are - SOAP WITH NO FARM DRAMA FOR A CHANGE :) YAY!

Bath Truffles??? Hmmmm....

I have to admit, I am not a real big fan of chemical type stuff.  Yes, I know lye is a chemical and a chemical reaction creates soap and things like the preservative in my lotion = chemical too! I know....BUT....if I can avoid ingredients like SLS or even SLSA  then I will.  That being said:

I WANT TO MAKE FIZZY THINGS!!!!

Actually...I want to add something simple like bath truffles to the line up.  I considered bath melts, but this is Texas. It gets HOT in the summer and yes folks, summer has basically arrived.  Since I live so far out, and since I ship things as far as California (where the fam is you know), things that melt are no bueno...it's too hot between here and there to trust it would arrive without ice packs and that doesn't go over well with things that dissolve in water either!

Then I thought "Hmmm...perhaps truffles?"  I actually saw this video by the Soap Queen about how to make bath truffles   and the second half of it has a recipe without SLS in it...

I'm torn...I dunno....the OTHER major issue we face here in the "armpit of Texas" is the humidity!  Oh yes, we call it the armpit of Texas because just like an armpit it is sweaty, sticky, and wet here like 75% of the year! Yuck right?  You adjust...sort of...actually not really.  But you get over it at least :)

The final issue: I DO NOT HAVE A TUB!  That's right, remember we are a "shower only" household....I'm gonna have to get a baby pool to test these in LOL or find some nice kind guinea pigs (which I can always find) to do my testing for me....

So I guess I am still in the "I dunno" stage - I really want to add a little something else to the line up, but I dunno if it will survive the climate and such...we shall see.....we shall see....