New Candle Melt Scents!

We added 6 new candle melt fragrances. Five are pictured above. The scents include:

• California Orange
• Fresh Linen
• Grass Patch
• Juniper Aloe
• Pink Plumeria
• Yellow Rose
  

For descriptions check out our website!

New "Limited Edition" Soaps!

Just for fun I've created two new "limited edition" soaps. Okay, actually I was making one of my regular batches of soaps and screwed up by forgetting to add the white coloring to the raw soap base. Once I realized my mistake it was too late and I had 16lbs of cooked soap I needed to quickly figure out what to do with. With some quick scent blending and creative coloring these two delicious soaps are the results.

Introducing;

Tickled Pink
A blend of sugared raspberries and bubbly champagne. Fun and berry bubbly!

And

Orange You Happy?

With notes of juicy orange, golden honey, candied fruits, lemon peel and patchouli, this sunny, orange fragrance is the perfect remedy for the chilly, wet and dreary days of spring we are currently experiencing here in the Northwest. And a special note to you patchouli haters, and I know you are out there. I only used a smidgen of patchouli ( I swear.) So don't let the name patchouli sway you from trying this yummy blend.

And as a special treat for our online customers, during the month of April, these soaps which are regularly priced $6.95 will be available at $5.00 each!

Woodland Tulip Festival

I hope we didn't disappoint anyone with our no show at yesterday's (Sat. April 3rd) Woodland Tulip Festival. Vehicle troubles (couldn't get the van to start) kept us grounded for the day. Curt was able to get her up and running for today's outing at the festival. And hopefully the weather was better in Woodland, Washingtion than it was this afternoon here in Molalla, Oregon. Probably not, but it looks like next weekend is shaping up to be a little better weather than this weekend was. We'll see.

Removing Candle Melts from Packaging

I want my blog to be a place where you can get the nitty-gritty information on our products, so with that in mind let me show you how I remove our candle melts from the clamshells packaging.

Some of our candle melts are easily removed by gently pressing on the bottom of the packaging as shown in the two pictures below.

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However, some of our fragrances make the wax a little stickier, but using my method, pictured below, even those are easily to removed from the clam shell.

First I open the lid.

Next I bend the package back along the crevices of the clamshell like pictured below.

Bend 1

Bend 2

Bend 3

Now the candle melt has cracks in the wax that look like this


And now, by pressing gently on the back of the package, I easily remove the wax 1 square at a time.

Good News! You asked for it and we listened, finally;) We've taken several of our custom fragrances and added them to our regular line of fragrances. So now, most all our fragrances are available in all three of our wonderfully moisturizing body products without the extra custom fragrance charge. Our new fragrance line-up looks like this:

Goat Milk Hand & Body Cream:

• Almond Delight
• Cedar & Saffron
• Fresh Grapefruit (New)
  
• Hidden Orchid
• Japanese Plum Blossom
• Lavender Vanilla
• Lavender Amber (New)
  
• Lilac & Lilies (New)
  
• Passionfruit & Papaya
• Pineapple Cream
• Sugared Lemon
• White Gardenia
• English Lavender & Mint (New)
  
• Unscented

Goat Milk Hand Body Lotion

• Almond Delight (New) This almond replaces Almond Biscotti which has been discontinued due to low sales but it's still available as a custom fragrance.
  
• Cedar & Saffron
• Fresh Grapefruit
  
• Hidden Orchid (New)
  
• Japanese Plum Blossom (New)
  
• Lavender Vanilla (New)
  
• Lavender Amber
  
• Lilac & Lilies
  
• Passionfruit & Papaya (New)
  
• Pineapple Cream (New)
  
• Sugared Lemon
• White Gardenia (New)
  
• English Lavender & Mint
  
• Unscented

Body Silk Conditioning Skin Spray

• Almond Delight (New)
  
• Cedar & Saffron (New)
  
• Fresh Grapefruit
  
• Hidden Orchid
• Japanese Plum Blossom (New)
  
• Lavender Vanilla (New)
  
• Lavender Amber
  
• Lilac & Lilies (New)
  
• Passionfruit & Papaya (New)
  
• Pineapple Cream (New)
  
• Sugared Lemon (New)
  
• White Gardenia (New)
  
• English Lavender & Mint (New)
  
• Unscented

Sadly, Honey Patch, Baby Powder & Orange and Yellow Rose have been retired due to low sales but are still available in our custom fragrances.

New Addition to the Herd!

Meet Abraham

Last Sunday found us near Grants Pass, Oregon, at Fir Meadows Farm, picking up my daughter's long awaited new herd sire, "Abraham." Abraham is a pure bred Lamancha from excellent dairy lines. He's only two weeks old in this picture. Yep, he's a big one.


Since we have no goats yet born on our farm we also picked up a companion to keep Abraham company. Meet "Boomer," an active, cuddly, pure bred Toggenburg wether aka neutered male.





Here's Cat, the owner of Fir Meadow's Farm surrounded by some of her beautiful and friendly dairy does.



Back home in our barn, here's Abraham getting snuggled after his morning bottle



Not be left out, Boomer soon crawled up onto Justine's lap too. Fortunately there's still room, for now.



Abraham and Boomer getting use to our rowdy German Shepherds.

Making Lotion

We made lotion today and here are some pictures of the process.

Here is the "water phase" containing the distilled water, goat milk, aloe vera, and silk being heated to a minimum of 176 degrees and held for a minimum of 20 minutes. The heating process is used to kill potential bacteria and mold spores.

We use a canning kettle as our makeshift double broiler when heating the water phase.

Here's the "Oil Phase" and it contains the Abyssinian oil, Fractionated Coconut oil, Rice Bran oil and the emulsifying waxes. The oil phase is heated so that the wax melts. In this picture the mixture has not yet been heated and so you can still see the wax.

The oil and wax blend has been heated, the emulsifying wax is melted and is now added to the water/milk phase.

Using an emulsion blender we mix the oil and water phase together.

We chill the mixture in a sink of cold water, blending periodically.

While the water and oil mixture chills in the sink we measure out the silicones.

The water and oils are now cool enough to add the silicones.

Using a a hand drill and mixer attachment we mix the silicones in.



The mixture is thickened and once cooled to room temp it's ready to be fragranced and bottled.