Sea Glass Washes up in the Midwest

Yep, that's right, sea glass.  Here?  In the Midwest?  Can you believe it?!

I can.

Well...sort of.  I made a new batch of my sea glass soaps!  I came up with this design about 20 years ago, quite by accident.  I was re-batching some of my leftover M&P soap scraps and the end results came out pretty.  I liked the way the colors worked together, and the softness of the whole effect, but it didn't dawn on me that it looked like sea glass until I had been using one of my bars for a few days.  I was washing my hands and the sun happened to shine through my window just right onto the bar.  I immediately thought of sea glass.  I love sea glass and whenever I can manage to get to the ocean, I'm always on the lookout for some.  It's so pretty.  I'm a loooong way from any coastline, but these bars always take me back to the ocean.  I think they add a nice touch to my powder room.

Here are a few of the bars that I've been making to cut up for embeds.  Ever since my accidental Sea Glass Soap Invention, I've been making the embeds instead of using scraps.  It may not look much like sea glass at this stage, but it looks much different once it's built into the soap.

I make all sorts of different M&P (as well as CP) soaps.  Since I've got my M&P stuff out, I thought I'd share a few of my other ingredients.  The only ingredient I'll be using from this group is the Shea butter.   (clockwise from top left: 100% Cocoa Butter, Unrefined 100% pure Shea butter, Unrefined beeswax).  The beeswax is from a local beekeeper who sells all sorts of honey-related products.  We try to support as many of the local "mom & pop shops" as we can.  They are such an important part of what defines our country.  The Shea butter I use is from Ghana (couldn't find that product made locally!!), and it was hand milled.  Can you imagine what a loooong day it would be hand-milling Shea butter!!!  It'll add just enough milkiness to the looks of my soap, and the real bonus is that it adds super moisturizing qualities.

And here are a few of the products I use to color and fragrance my soaps.  I didn't pull them all out for this picture, so what you see are a very small representation.  One of my favorite fragrances for soap is Satsuma.  I pick it up at The Body Shop.  Whatever you use, just make sure to only use essential oil when fragrancing your soaps.  Fragrance oil is not the same as essential oil, and it will provide unexpected results once it's added to soap.

This is what my carved-up sea glass embeds look like before i mold the bars.

Here are my results.  The bars look darker in my pictures than they do in hand, but I think they are reminiscent of sea glass.

 

The bottoms..

 

4 Generations of Aprons

I've been really, really bad and haven't posted for a while.  A long while.  I started a new job a couple of weeks ago, and have been trying to settle into a new routine of leaving home while it's still dark, and getting home after it's once again dark. Even though I haven't actually posted anything (for weeks now!), I have been keeping up with everything you've been writing about.  I really enjoy reading all of your blogs!  I can hardly wait to get home so I can catch up on everything.  I don't know what I'll ever do if I end up without electricity for an extended period of time!


Annnnyway...


I just looove vintage aprons!  I've got a few that were my grandmother's, and I even have one that belonged to my great-grandmother who was born in 1852!  Talk about vintage.  They were both excellent seamstresses.  These aprons were sewn by them, and are very special to me.  Please forgive the fold lines from being stored.  I just don't feel comfortable putting an iron on the fabric.  My grandmother was a quilting goddess who learned to sew from her mother. Grandma had won many, many blue and purple ribbons in fairs for her work.  She was an outstanding seamstress and continued to quilt well into her 90's.  She did have a Singer treadle sewing machine, but all of her quilting was done by hand on her huge quilting frames.  Her aprons were a combination of treadle sewing machine, and hand stitching.


Here is some of her apron work...

 And another whimsical one...

And one more with her beautiful embroidery

 

And this one was made by my great-grandmother.  It's over one hundred years old.  It's not flashy, but it was an effective way for her to keep her skirt clean.  It's hard to tell, but there's a patch pocket near the top.  Notice how short the ties are...she was a tiny petite little thing and stood right about 5' tall.  Gathered up, her apron was a basket she used to gather eggs, and harvest fruit and veggies from her garden.  I imagine it came in handy when she removed down-feathers from her ducks to stuff pillows with too!

Finally, I'm hoping to find some time really soon to begin working on my own apron.  I recently bought a vintage apron pattern and have already carefully traced all the pieces.  I looked for a long time before I found the fabric I wanted.  Well, I actually ended up buying "Plan B" fabric, because I couldn't find any really cute vintage-looking cabbage rose prints in any of the stores in my area.  It even took me a long time to find the Plan B fabric!  But I think this fabric is really cute and it should have a nice look once it's finished.

Post Christmas Snowfall

In spite of all of the rain (yes, rain!) we had for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we still managed to keep our blanket of snow so we could have our white Christmas.  Albeit a sort of shiny, glazed-over-looking snow, it was still snow!  I woke up yesterday to find it looking like a snow-globe outside!  Giant new fluffy snowflakes.  And lots of them!  My son took off to go skiing in all of that new-fallen powder.  That's the best!!  It's been a long time since I've gone skiing.  Maybe one of these days, I'll surprise him and go too!  If it's like riding a bike, I'll be ok.  Otherwise, I'm sure I'll provide plenty of antics that'll certainly keep him amused for hours!


Here's the view from one of the bedrooms yesterday at mid-day.  Sorry about the slight "checkerboard effect," I shot this from the window and the screen is a little noticeable when the picture is expanded.  The weatherman called for us to get 4" and I'd say that we received more like 7.  Nonetheless, it is so pretty!  I always love the peaceful quiet of a snowfall.  Everything seems so hushed.

It didn't stop snowing till mid-day today.  Today I took a look around to see how much we finally ended up with, and here's how my gazebo looked at mid-day today.  Of special note:  there is B-L-U-E sky overhead!  Something we haven't seen in eleven days.  Whew, was it ever good to feel the sun on my face again!

And, as the sun was finally setting, another unusual sight appeared....

Do you see it there?  It's just through the branches of the spruce.  We haven't seen Mr. Man in the Moon for eleven days now either, and I gotta say, it's nice to see him again, too.

~~Diana