Why God made Coffee

I have figured out why God created the coffee plant. It is for those of us who wake up at ten am on Wednesday and don't get to sleep till nine-thirty pm on Thursday. I don't know why I couldn't get to sleep Wednesday night/Thursday morning but all I could achieve was a very light dose. I woke up around quarter to ten this morning and now I have that shaky-airy-floaty-I slept way too much feeling.

The lye came today, now I'm just waiting for my order from Mountain Rose Herbs and I can make my soap!! Yay *happy dance*! I helped Daddy finish our new fence yesterday, now he's pulling out the old metal fence that the ground and plants have claimed. I actually woke myself up by going for a run yesterday, I got about half a mile of actual running and a little more of walking, but my body seemed to wake up, my brain shut down more. After we did the fence, I had a read in the pool, the only form if multi tasking I was capable of: sunbathing, reading and resting. I might actually do that some more today, just to see if it helps as much for too much sleep as it did for not enough sleep. I'll let you know. Until next time, happy reading.

Soap

Daddy and I just made a, rather crude but it's mine, soap mold. We used cut offs of 1x6 planks from making one of our sheds, the inside dimensions are approximately 3.5" wide x 7" long x 2.5" deep. I'm not sure how much it'll hold, but I'm going to try it with 1.5lbs using the Green Tea Mint recipe I posted, just scaling it up. I'm waiting for the lye and other ingredients I ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs which is good because I want to take a piece of sandpaper to the mold to clean it up a bit, the wood has been sitting outside for at least a year.

A book I ordered came today, 'Elixir's Tonics and Teas' by Jeff Stein and Edgar Veytia. I flipped through it and I am now in love. It has some simple but useful recipes for just about everything and a lot of history and reference. There are two drinks I want to try, Study Hall Fizz and Sweet Memory Tea, they both sound yummy and useful.

Study Hall Fizz
2 floz pineapple juice
2 floz mango nectar
2 floz papaya nectar
1 dropper lycium
2 droppers red ginseng
4 oz seltzer or sparkling mineral water
small chunks of fresh pineapple

In a tall glass stir the juices and herbs together, add the seltzer and stir again. garnish with pineapple chunks.

Sweet Memory Tea
1 tsnp green tea leaves
1/4 tspn dried stevia
1 dropper ginkgo extract

Make a tea with the dried ingredient and hot ,but not quite boiling water. Let steep for three minutes then add the ginkgo extract.

I posted pictures on my Pictures Page if you want to see the mold we made.

First Recipe

Title- Green Tea Mint Soap								Creator- Margaret
Base= Green Tea		Fl oz- 4
Oil	Oz wt		Specific Gravity	Fl oz		% in recipe		Lye Table Excess Fat oz wt Lye
Aloe Extract	3					20		0		2.17
Coconut Oil	6			------		40		1		2.15
Neem Oil	.75		.908	.681		5		2		2.13
Olive Oil	3		.92	2.76		20		3		2.11
Bees Wax	2.25			------		15		4		2.09
								5		2.06
								6		2.04
								7		2.02
								8		2.00
								9		1.98
total	16					100		10		1.96
Additive	Oz wt		Fragrance/ Essential Oil		Oz wt		Specific gravity		Fl oz	Tspns
			Peppermint		0.30		.8993		.25	2

This is the first recipe I came up with and it'll be the first I try when everything gets here and we make the mold. I'm really excited to try soap making.

Sandalwood Shaving Soap

Title- Sandalwood Shaving Soap								Creator- Margaret
Base= Water		Fl oz- 5
Oil	Oz wt		Specific Gravity	Fl oz		% in recipe		Lye Table Excess Fat oz wt Lye
Aloe Extract	1					6.41		0		2.42
Coconut Oil	6			-------		38.46		1		2.39
Olive Oil	4.6		.92	4.232		29.49		2		2.37
Palm Oil	3		.92	2.76		19.23		3		2.34
Shea Butter	1			-------		6.41		4		2.32
								5		2.30
								6		2.27
								7		2.25
								8		2.22
								9		2.20
Total	15.6					100		10		2.17
Additive	Oz wt		Fragrance/ Essential Oil		Oz wt		Specific gravity		Fl oz	Tspns
Fuller's Earth Clay	1		Sandalwood		0.35		.992		.35	2.13
			Tea Tree		0.2		.889		.16	1.32

 

If I ever get around to trying this I thought it might be a good summery gift for Daddy when we go to Croatia, this batch would make enough for Uncle Jeremy too. I don't think that either of them use shaving soap, but it's the thought that counts right?

Soap

I've decided to try my hand at cold process soap making. Daddy and I are going to make a 1lb mold I drew up out of scrap 1 x 6 pieces of wood. I just bought the oils that I need for the actual soap, I have a recipe in my head that I worked out on the lye calculator on MMS and I think it'll work. The last thing I need to get is the lye, but I don't want to do that yet as I don't want that sitting around. My recipe is a blend of green tea and peppermint, I hope it turns out well. If it does I'll have four bars of home made soap and I'll bring a couple out to Croatia, I'll post the reciep if it works, if it doesn't I'll try rebatching it with some tweeking.

I've been editing Granny's manuscript and I'm more that half way through. As I re-format it gets shorter and shorter, it started out as over twohundred pages and it's now around onhundred and fifteen. I hope it isn't too short, but I should have the rough draft done by the end of the month, then I need to actually read through it and have someone else read it, I might e-mail it to one or two of my teachers from hs to see what they think. I hope I can get it published, I'm sure someone would be interested in publishing, I just don't know if I can afford to have it published, I'm sure my parents would help. Until next time, happy reading.

Ice Queen

For my Contemporary Fiction class the first semester of my senior year we had to write a review of an Alice Hoffman book. Originally I had planned on reading Local Girls, it was short and about Long Island, easy peasy what's not to like? Not so easy; I couldn't read it. I would read a few pages and promptly forget all of it. So I dug through the back of the school library and polished off Ice Queen in about a week of lunch periods. And now I'm going to see if the cut you can use on LJ works here. For those who want to read my review, clicky the linky, otherwise skip over and keep reading. It didn't work and the only way to make it work is all long and complicated so I'm putting it on my Creative Writing page under writing anomalies.
sorry if that didn't work, I'm still figuring out the formatting on here.
On a cleaner and less dreary note, I just got the mixed bag of soap (mainly black raspberry vanilla) that I ordered from Gassner Custom Soaps, a link is on the side. I love them all, especially the Pumpkin Spice soapsicle they put in and lots of lavender is always nice in the hotter weather. I'm also using a little peppermint essential oil instead of perfume as I've just started getting a mild reacting to any of the commercial body sprays with lots of alcohol in them. Which is not so great, I love my pear blossom spray from Bath & Bodyworks, as inorganic as it is, it's so light and summery.
I have a new musical obsession with Escala. An electronic string quartet that competed on Britain's Got Talent. They didn't win, but I think that they are absolutely amazing. I also have a (not so new) obsession with Legend of the Seeker TV show. Love it! Very SiFi/Historical Fantasy, not sure yet if I want to to read the Sword of Truth book series that it is based off of.
That's all for now. Until next time, happy reading.