Custom Gifts

I love it when customers come up with great ways to showcase my soap!

I did two custom orders this week that were lots of fun. One gentleman sent me the awesome artwork that you see here. The expressive line drawing of his dad makes the perfect label for special fishing soaps that can be handed out to friends and family. I hope his dad likes them!

Another order was for a woman needing office gifts for the holidays. She liked the idea of giving a corporate gift with a memorable message. The company logo was used on the tins...along with the tag line at the bottom "Everyone Else Stinks". Perfect! I'm sure all of her co-workers will love them!

Ahhh soap...so much room for humor.

Meylah Intereview

A few weeks ago when I was doing the EtsyRain winter show, I met a lovely couple here in Seattle who have put together a terrific resource for artisans and small business people. Their website is called Meylah, and it contains all sorts of useful information about starting and maintaining an arts and craft business. If you don't already have it on your blogroll, you should. Plus, they thought that my soapmaking company and experience was worthy of an interview. So, now I'm famous...or at least, less un-famous.

Phinney Winter Festival

I will have a booth (with the help of my Mom...thanks Mom!) this weekend at the 29th annual Phinney Winter Festival at the Phinney Neighborhood Center in Seattle. The event runs from 10-5 on Saturday & Sunday (12/5 & 12/6). We will be located in the lower building in the Dragon room. I will also have a selection of awesome razors available from RetroRazor, a great company here in Seattle. Come on down and check it out!

SheGyver Tip #1

I came up with a word to describe a lady who is resourceful and uses a multitude of materials and methods (sometimes off-beat) to accomplish a task...SheGyver. Do you all remember watching McGyver on TV in the 80s? I do. I was always impressed with his ability to come up with a creative way to make things work.

My first SheGyver Tip: If you're away on vacation and staying in a condo or rental house that has a washer and dryer, and you need to do just ONE load of laundry, but can't (or don't want to) buy a whole box of laundry detergent, what can you do? Use a cheese grater to shred one of the little bars of guest soap! Before synthetic detergents, all laundry was done using soap. I use shredded soap all the time for our family's laundry because I have such a plentiful supply of soap pieces. It works great and is also biodegradable!

Do you have a SheGyver tip to share?

How to: Æbleskivers

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. In my family, we make many different sorts of breakfast foods, especially of the cake variety. Of all those foods, my favorite is a Danish dish called æbleskivers. They are basically round (like a golf ball) buttermilk pancakes that are eaten dipped in sugar or jam. They're made in a special pan that makes seven æbleskivers at a time. Supposedly, my great grandfather used to eat four pans in one sitting...that's 28 æbleskivers!

Here's how they're made:

2 cups buttermilk (the higher the fat content, the better)

4 eggs

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups flour

Shortening (Crisco) for pan

Start heating up the æbleskiver pan on a medium heat. Separate the eggs, putting yolks and whites in separate mixing bowls. Beat the white until very stiff. Mix egg yolks and buttermilk until well blended. Sift the baking soda and baking powder into the buttermilk/yolk mixture along with the flour. Once the wet ingredients are thoroughly mixed, and the sides of the bowl have been scraped down, pour it into the egg white bowl and gently fold with a spatula or large spoon until incorporated.

In the heated (medium-high) pan, place a small portion (1/2 teaspoon each) of vegetable shortening in the depressions for each æbleskiver. Butter doesn't really work for this, as it scorches too easily and doesn't make the outside of the æbleskiver crispy. Spoon some of the batter into each depression, so that it barely reaches the top edge. It will expand slightly as it cooks, so you don't want to over fill. After 1-2 minutes, use a wooden skewer or a fork to turn the æbleskivers. This is done by inserting the skewer or fork into the middle and rolling it onto the other side...it just takes a little practice. Let the other side cook for 1-2 minutes and serve hot, with sugar or jam. So good!

Suds to Love

Wedding favors are a bit like bridesmaids dresses. Prospective brides (and grooms) often try to choose something that will actually be used again once their guests walk out the door. But like in the movie 27 Dresses, the couple's good intentions often miss the mark. Food is good: chocolates, petit fours, or candy, but those are gone in one or two bites. Even better is to choose a wedding favor that your guests will use over and over again...reminding them of the lovely time that they had at your event and all the care that went into planning it.

Give soap a chance. Think about it: everybody uses it, it lasts
much longer than a piece of candy or cake, it smells good, it's customizable, and it's symbolically wholesome. Nothing says purity and clean living like soap. Even if it's not your first marriage, soap is the perfect wedding favor because it says 'we're making a fresh start'. Soap can come in so many shapes, sizes, colors and packages...the possibilities are endless. Soap: the suds to love.

Manly Man

My Dad is a manly man. There's very little on the ranch that he can't fix, build or do. I think, even though he's now approaching the age of 70, he's still probably the strongest person I know. When I was growing up I remember him stacking hay bales, one in each hand, like they were grocery bags. He could split wood with one easy swipe and could push a horse across a corral if he needed to.

His poor hands have taken a real beating over the years, as has the rest of his body. He's broken bones many times, has knee problems from horseback riding injuries and heavy lifting, has frequent pulled muscles, bruises and cuts. To help alleviate the discomfort from all of these things, and because he likes the quiet of it, my Dad likes to take baths. He's not a shower guy.

My Dad clearly deserves a nice Manly Man Soap. I have to say though, that when I was trying to decide on the actual scent for this soap, I had to diverge a bit from what my Dad would probably prefer. You see, even with all of his manly toughness, he's really a flower guy.

That's the other side to my childhood memories about him. He would take me on walks frequently to a place we call Flower Mountain. It's really just a hillside on the ranch, but it always had the best collection of spring wildflowers: Queen Anne's Lace, Yellow Bells, Spring Beauties and Dogtooth Violets. We would go and pick flowers for my Mom or my Grandma Evie. I remember my Dad's gnarly working hands holding the scissors to trim the stems before putting the wildflower bouquet in a jelly jar "vase" to be placed on my Grandma's Formica table.

If I had been choosing a scent just for him, it would probably be more of a Girlie Man scent than Manly Man, but that's an idea for a different day. Instead, I decided to use the traditional oils of clary sage, vetiver and lime. All of these essential oils were commonly used in men's fragrances before the age of synthetic smells and Irish Spring. It's a classic manly smell, hearkening back to an earlier time. It makes me think of my Grandpa...now there was another Manly Man...