And (finally) the winner is...

Congratulations!
The winner was drawn randomly (I wish you all could have won!)

Thanks for stopping by. Sulea, when you've seen this, I'll send you an email so you can pick your soap :)

I have had a gutful!

Below is a letter I just sent to Channel 7, Perth. news@7perth.com.au
I'm posting it here as I think it's important to speak up. Some people will say "they'll hear it at school" yes, they will, and we can discuss it with them, but I don't think it's fair that it's pushed upon them as they are enjoying watching a fun kid's show!
If you feel the same, please do something.
I haven't yet written the other Perth channels as I want to write when I hear something, my beef today is with Channel 7.
If you agree with what I'm saying, please do something, and if you don't agree, feel free to leave a comment, I'm open to reading what you have to say (I may or may not agree, and I may or may not reply, but I'll read).
Thanks for letting me air my frustrations :)

Hello

I would like to let you know how horrified I am, day after day, at the news bits you broadcast during children's programming.

Yes, life is life and we can't always shield our young ones from the horrible things which happen in the world, but do you really think it's appropriate to mention, as was mentioned a few minutes ago, during Hannah Montana, the story about the father who threw his daughter off the West Gate bridge in Melbourne???

Do you really honestly think the audience of Hannah Montana need to know about rapes, murders, suicides???

This is not the first time it's happened!

Please take some consideration about that topic, some channels don't even broadcast any type of advertising (be it for their news or other programs, or products/services) during children's programs.

In anticipation of a considered and helpful response.

Regards,

I HAD MY NAME HERE
AND MY TOWN HERE, Western Australia

Gorgeous photography

Mountain peace!
Originally uploaded by suresh_gundappa

Beautiful pictures to be seen!!!

That's it for me for today, I'm having a bunch of minor health things just bugging the heck out of me, the least of which is my sprained thumb! I remember doing something (can't remember what, either pouring from a pot or opening a jar) this last weekend and feeling one of those electric muscle shock type things (like a funny bone on your elbow), and didn't think much of it until it started hurting again..... sprained a thumb without even doing anything very exciting, EVEN!
So rather than bore you with the rest (and it's hard to type when your thumb is bandaged to your hand so you stop using it and aggravating it!) go see some photography. I'm off to bed with a podcast, thanks to Justine who got it from Patti (Sneaky Patti just changed her blog! no wonder my link wasn't working! She also makes beeeeyuuuutiful soap).

Lorri's having a birthday and bananana!

haha, more on bananas! I made my banana bread the other day, which requires 2/3 cup oil, and in my not-paying-attention, I put 2 CUPS of oil in my bananas... lucky the bananas had been on sale and I was planning on freezing some for future banana bread, I was able to puree an extra 4 cups of bananas to make up for the extra oil! Funny as usually I use apple sauce for this pair of breads I make, but this time I was lazy..... I think I would have tweaked at 2 cups of apple sauce!!!
Goodness... I made two huge banana breads, a banana bread cake and some banana muffins!!! And I'm happy to report our new oven seems to be behaving!

Could be too that I'm used to large quantities of oil, given my recent soapmaking venture!


Onto Lorri, who owns Scrappindipity with her daughter Bec, is having a birthday giveaway... so stroll on down to her blog to see the rules, and spread the love!!!
Lorri's Blog
The post in question

go have a look around, she's pretty darn talented :)

And I promise to draw my winner for the coffee soap in the coming few days ;) I'm feeling a bit chicken, but I have given some people at work some soap and they seem happy with it (either that or they are GOOD liars!)... Ah, let's make it Australia Day Draw!!! ... see you then!!

Ice Cream Bars are on Allrecipes.com.au

Filomena at work gave me this recipe, I wanted to check the ingredients as I wasn't sure if I'd missed anything (I scribbled it on my glove at work!) which led to a conversation with Liz at Allrecipes.com.au, which led to this:


Featured recipe for 20th January 2009

A little while ago, the recipe below (which I sort of insisted Liz put up, but being it was taken from the Allrecipes.com, site it had to be copied from there, but it featured my piccie of my little cupcakes ;)


Here's the link to the cupcake recipe.

now I'm going to go test our new (landlord provided) oven with my Banana Bread recipe... WISH ME LUCK!!

Reports on birthday gifts

I never told you, the day Olivia had her birthday, there was an incident with a watermelon, the dad hadn't put the watermelon in a safe place in the boot (the trunk) of the car, and it fell and cracked, and the mum was rather annoyed, and kept cursing the watermelon during the party (turned out it was quite edible and quite nice) but as I knew her daughter would only open the present at home, I told her "When Olivia opens her present, know that I hope you will find it amusing - this probably makes absolutely no sense to you now, but it will later"! Well, being the funny lady that she is, she got the joke, she sms'd me saying that she now understood, and the cutest thing "Olivia loves her bag so much she wants us to take her to the beach so she can use it"!
And yesterday Sophie's reaction was priceless, she saw the card (an electronically generated card, a bit of a step aside for ex-stamper-papercrafter-and-maybe-soon-to-be-again-but-who-knows-when me) and her first reaction "Mum, look, they made this" turning to me she asks "did you make this?" she was so excited, so it was faring well! She then opens the present and said "I'm sorry if this was expensive wrapping paper, but I'm about to rip it"! I said to her to go for it, that it was HER wrapping paper now. She is such a cutie. She sees the bag and one of the flowers (somehow my wrapping paper turned otu to be not so easy to wrap, and it was cheap paper too!) and again she exclaimed "Mum! look! They made this!!!!" then she noticed something was in the bag, so she carefully unfolded the bag, and opened it and said "oooh! It smells like BATH STUFF!!!", and pulled out the soaps and the lip balm (all in bubble wrap) and without even looking again "Mum! mum, look, they made this!"... it was so nice to get such an enthusiastic response to a handmade present!!!

Here's a close up of the items:


Fun!

Another birthday party

We're off to another birthday party in a little over an hour, here's the present:

Sophie likes blue. We made her a watermelon lip balm, watermelon soap with embedded cutout flowers, and a nice goaty milk soap with a loofah embedded (that one is fruity scented) and a felted bag!

I am so happy (once again) to put my whim-purchased felting kit to good use!!!

Have a good one!

One Banana, Two Banana, Three...

go see Pauline's Banana!!!
Anyone else?

Yes, I should think of a better title than SOAP!

My soap buddy Gabbie has been putting me to shame, she started soaping a week before me and has already made over 30 batches!!!

Ok, since my last lot of pictures, this is what I've been up to...
I did make my tooth soap, and I've even been using it, that soon after making it, and it's just simply wonderful. You have to try to not put your tongue on it too much as it does taste soapy, but I like it so much better than my favourite toothpaste!!!

Then after that I made a great Coconut Oil soap... 100% coconut oil, with a twist... Thanks to my new friend Justine who inspired someone by the name of Irish Lass, who has been singing the praise of Justine's idea!
This is my rendition of it. Yes, I'm still trying that elusive swirl! Oh, and I used a rubber stamp to decorate this bar!!!




I then revisited my first batch, making it a bit different, with no oatmeal (though I do love some oats in my soap!!) - I attempted a 2 colour ultramarine swirl in that one, but something didn't go quite right! Though it looks like it'll be a nice soap if not a pretty one!


And then came the disaster!!!!!!!
It all started with my coconut soap (which I now call Extra Cocolicious)... all went fairly well though I didn't really manage a swirl this time either (the elusive swirl!)... and I thought I'd gotten a really nice gel:

When I unmoulded it, it looked not quite completely cooled down, but still nice enough (and definitely NOT displaying a very nice swirl, but I can live with that)

but when I cut my first slice, oil came oozing out!!! You can see the pool of oil (upper right) above the soap

So I turned to the savvy soapers at The Dish and it turns out I soaped way too hot (it was HOT indeed on Sunday!!!) I forgot to cool my water, my oils were too hot... just one silly little mistake after another which yielded a mistake larger than the sum of its part!!!
So I thought, nothing to lose, let's try a rebatch!!!
That's when you take your botched soap (though some people choose to do this with good soap!) and you cut it in slivers:

and you put it in a crock pot (which ended up in the oven as the crock pot temperature wasn't high enough on LOW and I was too scared to put it on HIGH!

and you melt it in the oven until it ressembles goop!!!
You then slop it in a mould, and well, to my surprise, the resulting soap is not bad! A bit grainy, a bit ugly at the top, but I adore the scent I used (Ancient Sedonia and Vanilla Select, from Bramble Berry, which I get via AussieSoapSupplies!)....

But tonight, I think the Soap Goddess is with me as I made a Goat Milk soap -- they are notoriously difficult, from what I read, as milk makes soap overheat but I figured, after the disaster of Sunday, let's jump in with both feet... and so far, so good!!! The soap even looks really nice!!! I scented it mildly with some lavender oil, took my time, and so far, so good, but it's in the fridge to prevent gel!
Photos will have to be shown tomorrow...

and on a completely different note...

now, why is my banana sad?


can you see the face ?

OH!! GIVEAWAY UPDATE!!! well, I tried my coffee soap, and it's slightly exfoliant, and I am waiting for a couple more soaps to come to maturity so the winner (when I draw the name) will have a bit of a choice, as I'm not sure everyone will like soap with scratchy coffee in it :) it's not scratchy really but you can definitely feel it... so if you haven't entered, please do here.