New style of soaps!

I'm calling this new style (drum roll please) SOAP SLICES! Okay, not the most creative name, but I think it fits since the soap looks sort of like a slice of bread (sort of, or like the state of oregon), thus the name.
These goat milk soaps have a similar rustic, marbled look as our Classic round soaps, wonderful lather and are incredably gentle on the skin, but are different in shape, with fun names stamped right on the soap, bright colors (with the fragrances that allow me to color them brightly,) and bright, fun fragrances to match! A few fragrances will be ones you are already familiar with from our Classic round line that we decided to bring over to this new line. However we have many new fragrances we will be introducing over the coming weeks. These soaps are also slightly smaller (by weight) and a little more economical. Something we all could use in these difficult, economic times.

Here's what we have so far....

Peachy Keen: Sweet, juicy, Georgia peach, with a hint of zesty, white grapefruit. Summer year round!

Cedar & Saffron: A woodsy, earthy, cedar coupled with the spicy, grassy, sweet scent of Saffron. This is same popular fragrance used in our cream, lotion and body spray!


Oatmeal Milk & Honey: New look, but same great fragrance! Creamy oatmeal and milk sweetened with golden honey makes this fragrance absolutely edible. This soap also contains whole ground oats, local Clover Honey, and of coarse Creamy, White Goat milk.


Vanilla Bean: New look but the same great, classic, vanilla bean fragrance.


Star Man: New look and and formerly known as Star Anise & Lemon The sweetness of Star Anise and the Zing of bright Lemon. Truly Enticing!


Hunter's Moon: New Look but same great fragrance as found in our classic round Hunter's Moon. This is a rich masculine blend of musk, woods and oak moss, with a touch of lime and whisper of rose and cyclamen.

More coming soon!..................................................

testing

Working on New Soaps!

As I mentioned in a prior post many weeks ago, I've been busy working on a new style of soap I'll soon be introducing. I've been having fun, fun, fun developing these soaps where there is no such thing as too little color;) Here are pictures of some I made yesterday.

Soap hardening in mold

Soap out of the mold and cut




Soap being Stamped

Soap ready for the curing rack

Testing Day

I've been working (ever so slowly) on a new line of soaps that are going to be fun in color, fragrance, and name, and a little more economical than our round classic soaps. So today I spent the day testing new fragrance oil blends and color blends. Here are some of my test soap samples. Each are labeled with the scent or color blend I used.


Now if I could only remember what I scented this white, unlabeled sample with.

More New Candle Melt Scents!

We've added some new candle melt scents! As well as being great as they are, several are great blenders, meaning you can mix them with other fragrances of candle melts we carry for a different or unique blend of your own.

White Vanilla: Strong yet light vanilla with subtle notes of white orchid and white musk. No bakery notes so that even those of you that are not into food type scents would probably enjoy this one. Great on it’s own or try blending it with any of our floral or fruit scents.

Cinnamon Strudel: Flaky pastry made with real butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar warm from the oven. This is great on it’s own or mix with any of our fruit scents for a delicious fruit pie scent.

Peppermint and Eucalyptus: A clean, brisk, energizing blend of two favorites.

Baked Apple Cinnamon: This is a yummy baked apple sprinkled with cinnamon, sugar and butter. And if you aren’t counting carbs blend this with our Cinnamon Strudel for a wonderful Cinnamon Apple Strudel scent.

Testing new pumpkin and spice scents!

I've spent the last couple days testing pumpkin and spice scents for our candle melts and during this time I've learned that 99% of these type of fragrances are predominately cinnamon blends. Now I like cinnamon, but what's happened to clove, allspice, or nutmeg(one of my favorites)? They probably don't sell as well (big sigh.) Oh well, I do have a couple pumpkin scents that smelled yummy when pouring my testers. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will throw well in our melts.... To be continued!

New candle melts scents added!

New candle melts scents added to our web store, and all other scents (except Lily of the Valley) are back in stock. New scents include the following: Bartlette Pear, Clean Cotton, Twilight Woods, Ripe Cantaloupe, Lemongrass & Sage, Black Raspberry Cream, Sliced Pineapple, and Apple Harvest. For descriptions see web store;)

If you notice, many of the scents we carry are single notes fragrances which make for easy blending. For example if you like apples and oranges, blend our new Apple Harvest with our California Orange. Like Lavender blends ? Try blending our Soft Lavender with our new Clean Cotton, or classic White Gardenia or.........you get the idea. The blending combinations are endless.

Fresh Soap!?

I was recently at a local market when I heard a fellow soapmaker promoting their product as being "freshly made." Ahh, fresh soap! Sounds so good doesn't it? And watching how people were responding to this marketing angle it was working! I mean we all love fresh things like fresh baked bread, fresh picked vegetables, or fresh bottled milk. So why not fresh soap? We'll because like a fine wine, soap is best with aging, or what is known in soap maker's lingo as "curing."

Curing is a very important part of the soap making process and should not be overlooked by the serious soapmaker. Curing allows freshly made soap to lose the excess moisture leftover from the soap making process thereby causing it to become harder, longer lasting, and better lathering. Curing also allows time for the soap to become milder (ph lowers naturally with cure time) and thus much gentler on the skin than a piece of freshly made soap. The curing process usually takes about 1 month to six weeks and sometimes even longer depending on the soaping method used and the oils used in the recipe. And there's just no good substitute for the time spent curing soap if one wants to produce a premium soap. So leave fresh for bread, vegetables and milk, but buy soap that has aged some if you truly want a premium product.

Some of our Almond Delight soap on the curing rack. The card notes the date it is ready for sale.

Two Best Sellers Back in Stock!

Our Best Selling Almond Delight (made with freshly ground almonds) and Oatmeal, Milk & Honey (made with whole ground oatmeal, local raspberry honey, and creamy goat milk) are back in stock!
Almond Delight- Oatmeal Milk & Honey

Mango & Cream

Yum! Coming July 17th our Mango & Cream scented soap. Ever have a mango shake? Well this delicious fragrance reminds me of just that. Ripe, succulent mango blended with sweet vanilla cream makes for one dreamy, tropical treat!

Growing like a weed!

I blogged about my daughter's new herd sire, Abraham, last March.
Look how he's grown!

Then
(2 weeks old)

Now
(3 months old)

Then
(2 weeks old)

Now
(3 months old)

Two new soap scents coming in July!

Two new soaps scents coming in July!

Mmmm. My kitchen smelled so good when I made these soaps last week.
I can't wait till these are ready for sale!

Introducing Lemon Verbana a fresh, citrusy, slightly herbal fragrance that's very reminiscent of the actual plant. And, by far, the best Lemon Verbena fragrance I've smelled.

And Simply Clean a refreshing, yet relaxing blend of lemon peel, cotton blossom, English violet, white musk, and Egyptian Corn Mint. Seriously, "clean" never smelled so good!

Kid pics!

It's been busy around here with the Farmer's Markets back in full and swing and the kidding season upon us and I haven't had time to post like I'd like to, but I thought I'd share some of my favorite kid pics from this season.

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.

**************************************************************************************

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.