Demos at the Farmer's Market

This year at the Taylor Farmer's Market I tried doing a couple of demonstrations to show people some of what I do to make soap and other bath products. One of the demos was making Bath Bombs. They are really fun to make and since there wasn't a huge crowd involved this time, I let some of the kids that were standing around the table participate and take their creations home. It was really lots of fun to get people involved in the process instead of me standing there doing the demonstration and just explaining each step. I think everyone involved had a good time and it looked like the people that participated were really excited about what they made. Bath Bombs are a relatively simple project that really anyone can do once you get the feel for it. The ingredients are very simple and safe, and there are so many things that can be done to make them your own creation. It is all up to your imagination.



If you are interested in trying yourself, here is a simple recipe that can get you started.

Basic Bath Bomb Recipe

1 cup Baking Soda

½ cup Citric Acid

Witch Hazel (or water) in a spray bottle

Color*

Scent (essential oil)*

The most important step is mixing the baking soda and citric acid. Make sure that it is well blended this is what creates your fizz.

       Add your color and scent and mix well. If you are using a food coloring that is water based mix it in quickly because it will make your mixture fizz.

       Now for the difficult step…Begin spraying while mixing with the other hand. Don’t let the mixture get too wet. When you can squeeze the mixture in your palm and it stays together without crumbling it is ready to put into molds.

       Tightly pack the mixture in your molds. You need to work rather quickly so that the mixture doesn’t dry up on you. The harder you pack the molds, the heavier, denser, and more durable your final product will become. Let your molds set for a while and unmold on a sheet pan that is covered with a towel. Let them air dry for a few hours or overnight. When dry place them in an air tight container.

*Note: because of sensitivities in our family, color and scent only comes from natural sources. I try to use only colorants that are a natural material(vegetable, clay, etc.), and scent only comes from essential oils. Fragrance oils and dyes can be used if you like.

Random Thoughts of Spring

This year has been very challenging so far. Winter just seemed to drag on way too long for some reason. It is interesting how hectic life can get, but yet the level of accomplishment just doesn't seem to go along with it. It's not to say that nothing gets done, it just gets done at the level of a scattered-brained snail's pace. How do you handle the fog of Winter and get into the Spirit of Spring?

We are finally starting to see and feel the warm sun again. March is a very exciting time of year; new life comes in many forms this time of year, a time of renewal, rebirth and birth on many levels. For many religions it is the Lenten season; a time to step back, remember, and refocus our priorities in our spiritual lives. It is also the beginning of a new Spring and time to get household priorities together and begin to prepare for all the projects both inside and out. It is garden time, time to start organizing the planting beds, getting seedlings started, preparing garden spaces and landscape areas. Farms and Zoos come alive with all the new baby animals. It is such a wonderful experience for children to see the happy playful new babies.

Some of the projects we have started(some conceptual some actual). In welcoming spring I have begun planting mini-landscapes and and creative plantings to get ready for the coming farmer's market season. The kids are looking forward to being involved in the Farmer's Market this year with activities of their own which could be a great learning experience. Because of warmer weather we are all looking forward to being outside to do more nature studies and hopefully getting nature notebooks together. We will be expanding our chicken coop and run area, we lost too many chickens last year (We should get chicks this week). We are also enlarging our garden space and trying new plants this year. Expanding on the products that we make for the soap company and looking for new stores to carry our products.

These were just random thoughts that have been floating around lately. What are your thoughts on Spring and how are you refocusing and start the renewal process for spring in your families?

The King's Road

Over the years I have experienced many kinds of music, I enjoy listening to many different kinds, each has their own appeal. It was a big part of our lives growing up in South Louisiana. There is a festival to be found in every part of Louisiana celebrating every part of our culture and heritage. A couple of my favorite festivals are music centered, Festival International, and Festival Acadian (this one is this weekend). Festival Acadian is the celebration of the Cajun culture good food, good music, and lots of dancing...always a great time to spend the day with family and friends hanging out at Girard Park in Lafayette Louisiana. Festival International is a week long festival in Lafayette also. It happens in April every year and brings together bands from all over the world. It is a great way to sample many, many cultures and traditions, and it is a week long party. I guess I am feeling quite nostalgic right now, this weather always does that to me now that I am away from home. When fall and spring come around it has always meant it was time for outdoor activities and gatherings. I guess this is a big part of why I have become so fond of the Taylor Farmers Market. Through the growing season local people set up to sell their harvest, but they also gather for the great bands and musicians, both local and visiting. Anyway, to get to the point of my story, the music has all been wonderful over the past couple of years, but this year we were introduced to a band the I am particularly fond of. It was a group called The King"s Road. They are a trio from Scotland and Ireland. The music they played was traditional folk from Scotland, Ireland, and America, but it was done in a more contemporary style...and what a style it was. They played several different instruments including guitar, mandola, banjo, mandolin, cello, and harmonica. The music was wonderful, and beyond that Alister, Rab, and John added their own bit of history, humor, and life to the music that gave it more depth and richness. We were able to see them play twice while they were here. Once at a house concert which was wonderful because we actually got to meet and talk to the musicians and one of their wives who is an author of Celtic historic fiction, which I am looking forward to reading sometime in the future. The next day was spent out at Taylor Farmers Market. It was a lovely day to just sit out in the grass and listen to the music while the kids played. The boys really enjoyed the music, to quote my five year old..."That was awesome! The baby likes Floddens Field and Ms. Hamilton, it has worked well as a lullaby several times, they are very soothing. So a little tribute to The King's Road, the music highlight of my summer for 2010. Thank you for a lovely memory, and I hope to be able to see you, and enjoy your music again in the next few years. We can't wait for you to return for another concert in the future. Blessings and best wishes to you and your families.

If you are interested in hearing some of the music they played you can go to their MySpace page at:

http://www.myspace.com/thekingsroadmusic

We really enjoyed all the music, but I think my

favorites are Pilgrims in the mist, Doon the Brae, Floddens Field, and Ms. Hamilton.

Newest Soap Curing

Today I will be cutting and setting these two batches of soap to cure. One is Lavender Ylang Ylang(pink), and the other is a new scent that I think will be rather successful. It has, among other essential oils Grapefruit and Jasmine(light yellow). It is lightly citrus and has an exotic feel to it; it is a sweeter floral than I have made previously I did not use the essential oils that have a spicy tone to them so this bar is a bit more feminine than the other florals. The scent of Jasmine is not overwhelming, but it helps to round out the citrus in the bar. In future batches I will probably add a little more scent to make it stronger, but for a first try I am rather happy with it.

One Week Left

Well we are down to the last week of pregnancy...It went by faster than I expected. There is so much to be done until Monday. I am pretty sure that I have planted my last plant until the fall...maybe. Everything seems to be growing really well now and we actually have vegetables on the plants. Yesterday we picked our first cucumber and yellow squash. Matt made a trellis with some of the sticks from the trees that were in the yard for the cucumbers to start climbing on. All of the tomatoes have now been staked and yesterday we noticed that many of the plants now have marble sized tomatoes on them. There are also several small zucchini and yellow squash and what looks like a pumpkin, and a melon of some sort growing also. The watermelon seedlings seem to be doing pretty well so far. The eggplants are doing okay, but seem to be growing a little slow. I am not too sure of the bell peppers that were planted, something seems to be eating them and they don't seem to be growing very well yet, they may need a supplement of some sort to get started. Yesterday I planted my hot peppers and pimento peppers. It doesn't look like the onions are going to survive this year, we will have to try again next season with those and maybe some garlic.

My last Farmer's Market for a while will be this Saturday. Either Matt will be out there, or Katherine at Broken Magnolia Farm will have a table at her stand for me until I am able to return. I think that this weekend will be the last 'ice pop' weekend until I can get up and around again, hopefully that will only be a couple of weeks.

Soap has to be prepared and Ice Pops have to be made for the weekend. One of the local papers will be doing an article on me and the soap, so today I will be making a couple more batches of soap so that pictures of the process can be taken. It is so exciting to have an article in the paper.

My Sister-in-Law will be here this weekend with her children, to visit and help out and we just can't wait until she arrives. They live in Texas so we don't get to see them nearly enough of them.

This will probably be the last post for a while too, If I get a chance at the end of the week I will post pictures of the new soap, one of them will be a new floral scent and I am leaning toward a combination of jasmine and grapefruit.

Just an Update

I have really been trying to keep current on the Blog Front, and realized that it has been a while since my last post. The Taylor Farmers Market was excellent for the opening day. I really hope that it keeps up this momentum through the year. It was great fun to see old faces as well as new faces. We had a great time and a successful day with both the Soap and the Handmade "Ice Pops". It is a weird combination to have with soap and we did get odd looks and lots of questions, but they were well liked and I am hoping that as the summer continues to warm up they will be a big hit at the Market.

Juggling Life, Kids, School, Market, Chickens, Garden, and House will become increasingly difficult in the next couple of weeks. Time has just flown by and we have a just over a week before we will be welcoming baby Zerangue into the family. June 21st is the date scheduled for my c-section. So there will probably be another unintended gap in posts on the blog, not to mention everything else coming to a screaming halt for the next month, but we will adjust and work through it just like everything else.

On the Garden, everything seems to be growing well. It has gotten rather hot in the last couple of weeks, so watering has been more essential lately. We are continuing to put in new plants when we get a chance. There are a few that really need to be planted this week. The herbs are growing well, and the watermelon although slow are starting to get true leaves. The squash, zucchini and my mystery vine now have small fruits. Tomatoes have grown to about 3 feet, were tied to stakes last week and are beginning to flower. The cucumbers are starting to climb and produce flowers. The blueberry bushes that we bought are full of berries, but won't be planted until the fall, mostly for ease of taking care and making sure they get the proper water over the hottest part of the summer.

The chickens are really doing great. They are enjoying all the garden weeds and vegetable/table scraps that they get daily. As much as I would like to let them forage it just isn't possible without building a portable pen(which will just have to wait now). They are really fun to watch especially when you put a favorite food in the pen, not only is it usually a race to see which of the chickens get to their favorite, there is also usually a few that get chased around because the others want that same treat.

So for tomorrow at the market we will have the following soap choices:

Oat and Grain
Mojito
Lemon Basil
Rosemary Mint
Spicy Citrus Shaving Soap
Patchouli Lavender

Orange Eucalyptus

Sportsman

The Ice Pop Choices will be:

Sweet Tea with Lemon

Strawberry Lemonade

Blackberry Limeade

Pear Blueberry Polka Dot

Berries 'n Cream

Also, CypressLakeSoap Etsy site has been updated today. I would really like to have a stand alone website for my soap and products, but for now I think it best to just keep things the way they are and not make it more complicated.

The site name is http://www.etsy.com/shop/cypresslakesoap

Ice Pop Experiment Summer 2010

Since the weather has warmed up quite a bit, the boys have been going through boxes of Popsicles like crazy. I don't buy the dyed water version for them though because of the dyes, High Fructose Corn Syrup, huge amounts of sugar, and the fact that they don't have much in nutritional value either. One of our boys has a sensitivity to red dye so it can be difficult sometimes to give some things to the others and exclude him even though we find suitable alternatives, they know it isn't quite the same thing and even if it is better it somehow doesn't seem fair in their eyes. On a positive side, he seems less and less effected by it as he gets older. Anyway, I grew tired of buying the high-priced boxes of "ice pops"* and decided last week to begin making them instead. The boys and Matt have really enjoyed them so far, and I have found lots of resources and recipes to try out over the next few weeks...not to mention a few of my own design. The Market is starting on Saturday, and I figured if the boys are enjoying them it might be a good treat to sell at the Market so we will give it a try if I can work out the traveling and storing aspects of it. I am starting out with rather basic fruit pops, and a couple of creamy ones, if I get the chance I will also add a tea or coffee one. In time if it all works out I would like to try and focus on fresh and local produce. So far I have come up with Watermelon, Pineapple-Coconut, Pear-Blueberry, and fruit punch. Tomorrow I would like to make Lemon-Berry or Lemon-Mint, Lime, and maybe a fudge pop with chocolate cookie chunks.

If you are interested in trying the pear-blueberry yourself, it was fairly simple, I had a can of pears in juice no sugar added on hand and frozen blueberries. I pureed the pears, you can add a little honey or sugar(I didn't and it came out fine) poured it into molds and added frozen blueberries and the sticks. I would like to use fresh fruit in the future, but this was a trial so I used what was handy. The hardest part was waiting. This basically made enough for four "ice pops"*.

*As a side note I just wanted to explain the phrase ice pop instead of using Popsicle. Apparently, Popsicle is now a registered trade mark and can not be used as a general description any longer, that is why you find "popsicles" listed under Novelties in the freezer section.

Getting Ready For The Farmer's Market

June is approaching fast. What a quick spring we have had, It seems like winter would never end and then in the blink of an eye summer has quickly descended upon us.

This week and most of next week will be rather busy preparing for a new season of soap at the local Farmer's Market and local stores that carry our soap.
New batches are now curing in anticipation of the June 5th opening of the market. Many of the batches have been updated in some way to make them more unique and to add more interest. Late last year I began experimenting with sugar and salt body scrubs and got good feedback on it. I am thinking of adding these if time allows. I am also still trying to find a lip balm recipe that I am happy with so that I can have those ready this year too. Later this summer I am hoping to begin making a line of liquid soap. Then in the Fall I would like to also add lotion bars, and body butter. Another change we are working on for this year is adjusting the labels a bit and eventually changing the packaging.

This is the new label for the soaps. Anyone have any comments on it, they would be appreciated.

Getting A Late Start on the 2010 Year For Soap

On top of all the other projects we have going on this year with the new baby coming, homeschool, chickens, garden, landscaping, house projects and keeping up with the ever growing list of house chores, I have also decided to "re-start" our soap business. I am not really considering anything drastic right now, but there are a few things that I would like to change and add this year. Because I have misplaced my diary of formulas during the move, I will be working on editing the soap scents and colorings that have been done in the past, and figured that it is time for some new editions for the year.

Scents That Have Been Created In Past Years:

Lavender

Lavender - Ylang Ylang

Lavender Oatmeal Goatmilk

Rosemary - Mint

Rosemary - Lemongrass

Orange - Eucalyptus

Lemon - Basil

Mojito

Spicy Citrus Shaving

Serendipity

Sportsman

Patchouli - Lavender

Patchouli - Rose

Oat and Grain

Unscented

Beer and Bay Rum

Mulled Red Wine

Peppermint

Christmas Pine

Almond Oatmeal

Chocolate Almond Oatmeal

Some Possible Future Soaps:

Ginger and something

Vanilla

Some kind of Floral

Grapefruit

Pine Tar

Garden Herb

Pumice(or other) Scrubby soap

Calendula

Sassafras(Root Beer)

Soap with sea salt and sea weed

Ocean Scent(just don't know if it is possible with just essential oils, researching now)

Future Products:

Lip Balms(Still working on formula)

Laundry Soap

Sugar(Salt) Scrubs for bath/Shower friendly cubes(less oily)

Baby Products

Body Butters

Solid Lotions

Roll-on/solid perfume

Face Masks

So with all that being said I would like input from people around me, especially if you have used my soap and products in the past. Let me know what your favorites are, if there is anything you would like changed about them, and anything that you would like to see me add in the future. Please pass this along to anyone you think would like to participate in this study. If anyone has ideas that I choose to use I will send gift products to them and also give them credit for their ideas. So be creative, but keep in mind that I will only use real essential oils so many of the "flavors" that are out there may not be able to be made by me. You can leave comments here, or send it to my email mzerangue 'at' gmail.com. All comments are welcome, anything about scent, amount of scent, packaging, etc...I look forward to your comments and ideas on making the 2010 year a special year.

Gardening Fun At the Market

Saturday's market was lots of fun. Along with the usual things going on, Felder Rushing came to market to display his "Truck Garden", to do an informal demonstration on gardening, to talk about what plants are best for the South, and also to answer questions and give tips on the fall planting season that is fast approaching. It was really exciting to meet him, especially because I enjoy listening to his radio show and it is great to put a face with a voice. We were also able to get an autographed copy of "Can't Miss Container Gardening", and can't wait to try out some of the many ideas and projects contained within the pages. The first project we will have to try is to grow lettuce from a hanging pot. It is a beautiful display that creates texture in the garden, is great for limited space, and it makes great alternative use for a hanging pot. My favorite book, which we will have to order later, is geared for children called "dig, plant, grow", all the projects were created and constructed by children and gives countless projects to do with your children in the garden.

Rushing is the host of Mississippi Public Broadcasting's "The Gestalt Gardener. Felder is a 10th generation Southern gardener and the author of many gardening books and magazine articles. He has also worked at the Extension Service as an urban horticultural specialist. Rushing believes that with proper plant selection and the right "tools" anyone can have a successful garden. To demonstrate this he has a truck that he makes appearances with all over the country, in order to pass along his ideas of people-friendly gardening with his good humor and practical advice.

Time To Catch Up

Summer has come to an end and school has officially begun for us. It has been a while since our last post. Time seems to get away from us these days. Over the summer we had a great time out exploring the Memphis Zoo, National Forest and State Parks in our area, Summer camps, including cub scout and bible school camps. Playing with friends both old and new. Enjoying time out at a friend's farm. Spending time with family in Louisiana.

Spending Saturdays at Taylor's Farmers Market has also been a very enjoyable part of our summer this year. Not only has it given me a great outlet for marketing the soap that I make, it has given the boys the opportunity to meet many people who have enriched our life and become good friends; great music and musicians that have inspired, especially Nathan who is determined to start guitar lessons this fall; good food from local farmers; and several great artistisans, who have also been inspiring by developing an interest in crafting and creating.

Our experimental garden from pots has just about come to its end; although it did not produce very much, the boys enjoyed watching everything grow and change and watch nature through the bugs and animals that visited our garden. Mostly, we enjoyed watching the visiting chicken who often came to rest in our pots and pecked at our tomatoes. The most bizarre happening was when the squirrel came and stole one of the last remaining tomatoes from the plants. In the spring we will be able to try again hopefully in the ground at our new home.

Taylor Farmer's Market

Recently we have been attending the Taylor Farmers Market in Taylor, Mississippi. We have been going for several weeks now and make it a family outing. It is on Saturday mornings and lasts from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm. We wake up very early get packed up and set off for a fun day of selling soap, enjoying local bands and Mr. John Daigle singing and playing the banjo in the morning, and enjoying the bounty that is brought in front of us weekly in the form of baked, preserved, and fresh fruits, vegetables, breads and goodies. Also within walking distance, of the market is a beautiful new neighborhood called Plein Air, and Antique shop, and a great restaurant called Emileigh's that serves a wonderful breakfast and lunch daily. A friend of mine and her children who makes great lemonade, fresh juice, and teas take pictures while we are out there. Here is the link: http://taylorfarmersmarket.site.shutterfly.com/