Showing posts with label Ramblings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ramblings. Show all posts

Friday, April 3, 2015

Business and Blog is Moving Over to Vitae Essentia

I am working on a new VE logo. This was my first attempt and now I am hiring someone to do a better job!

I have been hard at work getting everything done for the opening of Vitae Essentia. You may have noticed that I am winding down activity on all things Ladybug Soapworks. I have closed my main website and only have my Etsy store still active. I still have a lot to do before I open vitae essentia, but if you are interested in following my journey and keeping up to day with what is going on, please check out my vitae essentia blog. I will start updating it regularly. You can also subscribe to my email newsletter to be kept in the loop and receive discount coupons when I open the new store.

You can also follow me at Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The BIG Spill! Oh NO!

Here I was multitasking while preparing all the oils for my next batch of soap. I had put some coconut oil in the microwave to melt and was filling a container with olive oil and then decided to do some dishes. A few minutes later I remember that I have olive oil pouring into a container and look over to see about a gallon of oil spilled all over the floor. I had left it too long and the oil filled my container and then just kept on coming! Oh man what a mess! Can you see the darker oil covered area on the floor? This is after picking up a bunch of the oil already.

What a slippery mess!

So I had to get on my hands and knees and figure out a way to scoop up all that oil. I seriously scooped up nearly a gallon of oil! Luckily the floor is not even so the oil pooled in one area and using a flat sided scoop and a silicone spatula I was able to pick up most of the oil. I am still trying to work out how to clean up the rest of the oil on the floor. I think it is going to take a few times cleaning it with a strong detergent to get up all that oil and finally get the floor to no longer be slippery. Not sure what to do with this oil now.  Any suggestions?

Look at all that oil!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Did you know....

Did you know that you can regrow some vegetables after you chop off all the good stuff? I have been regrowing scallions in a glass of water for years with great success. All you have to do is put a bunch of scallions in a vase filled with just enough water to cover the white part of the scallions. Then just clip off the green as you need it and the scallion will just keep regrowing. Typically you can get a few weeks out of the scallions, before the white part starts to get mushy. One of my friends likes to plant her scallions in a pot with some soil and that should eliminate the eventual rotting of the scallions.

Keep your scallions growing

Recently, I found a site that showed lots of vegetables that could be regrown from their scraps and decided to try out another veggie. So, when I finished cutting off the green parts on a head of romaine lettuce, I placed the remaining part of the lettuce in a vase with a shallow layer of water. As you can see in the photo below, the leaves start growing from the center of the head after a couple weeks.

Regrowning romaine lettuce

This method can also be used to regrow celery. Just make sure to change the water every 3-4 days. Have you tried to regrow any vegetables? If so, what was your experience?

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Happy St. Patrick's Day!


Saturday, February 23, 2013

Art Auction

My friend Callie is hosting an art auction on Facebook to help raise funds for her pet's expensive doctor's bill. Ladybug Soapworks has donated a large basket of goodies (see below) to the auction. This basket includes herbal insect repellent, lavender perfume, lavender bath oil, geranium rose bath melts, sweet berries solid sugar scrub, frankincense and myrrh salt soap bar, coconut lime cupcake soap, tea tree shampoo bar, and a soap saver sack to use in the shower.

Gift basket in auction.

Callie has written up a nice blog post on Ladybug Soapworks at monsterhollowstudios.com. Go support the auction here. Just comment on the photo of the item you want to bid on and place your bid in the comments section. The auction is running through tomorrow (Sunday Feb 24th), so hurry up and bid!

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day!


Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. ~Aristotle

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Top 5 Cleaning Tip Links

My unemployment time has been filled with trying to my business in gear, cleaning, painting trim in my house, and cooking! So you will see a lot of this coming into my posts. This weeks "Top 5" list is filled with cleaning tips that I have come across recently and just love.
  1. Rain-x to keep glass shower door soap scrum free! This might also be great to do on the out side of windows. here
  2. Spring cleaning tips at a bowl full of lemons. It is almost time to start thinking about this!
  3. Non-toxic bathroom cleaning plus links to recipes for making many of your own cleaning solutions at Chiot's Run.
  4. I have been trying to get a lot of house painting done before I have to go back to working full-time and cleaning my paint brushes is always a dreaded pain. So this tip from the Creek Line House titled "the Easiest, Laziest Way to Clean Your Paintbrushes" should help!
  5. Green cleaning tips using common household items over at cozi.com.

PS. Don't forget to clean the pets!



Okay, I just thought this was too cute and I needed to post it! Meow

Monday, February 11, 2013

The most beautiful flower treasury

My Geranium rose soap has been featured in a beautiful Etsy treasury. Check it out below or here. If you like it, you can comment on the link and it may get to the front page of Etsy! You can pick up some of this pretty soap here. I love having people select my products to go into their treasuries and I feel like they all turn out so beautiful. Have you made a treasury on Etsy? I still have not, but I probably should try to put one together someday.

 

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Nemo Attacks! Snow Overload!

Well, the Blizzard Nemo has come and gone and left about 3 ft of snow behind. We have drifts over 6 ft tall and no place to put the snow from our drive way. We spend hours shoveling the sidewalks (note to self never buy a corner lot house again as you have twice as much sidewalk to shovel!) and still need to figure out how to do the driveway. Our road still is not plowed and may not be plowed until tomorrow.  Pretty crazy! Here are some pictures for you all! Enjoy!

Snow Angel!





We have walls leading up to the house.

Dylan action shot.

The only reason you can tell there is a road here is cause the stop sign!

Maybe I should make some soap with the snow! Like a wintery peppermint....

Monday, February 4, 2013

Bulk Whole Wheat Pancake Recipe

I mentioned in my last post that I had plans to mix up some bulk pancake mix. I tend to eat only whole wheat products and most whole wheat pancakes tend to be hard and thin. I found this great recipe in the Martha Stewart magazine (see original here) a few years ago and have been making it since as my only pancake recipe. It produces nice, fluffy pancakes that are thick, soft, and delicious. The wheat germ just helps to round out the flavor perfectly.


Ingredients:
Dry
1.25 cups Whole wheat flour
0.25 cups Wheat germ
2 Tbsp Sugar
1.5 tsp Baking powder
0.5 tsp Baking soda
1 tsp Salt

Wet
1.5 cups Buttermilk
0.25 cups Vegetable oil
2 Eggs, lightly beaten

Recipe:
Combine and mix dry ingredients.
Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix.
All to rest for 10 minutes.
Cook on griddle.


For the bulk batch that I made, I multiplied the dry ingredient volumes by 5 and mixed them together. I then placed the mixed dry ingredients into a storage container. When I go to make pancakes next, all I have to do is measure out 1.5 cups and 3 tbsp of the dry mix and add to it the wet ingredients as listed above. This might make it quick enough that I get back into making them every Sunday! If you are like me and never have buttermilk, you can easily substitute any type of cow's milk (skim-whole) with a bit of lemon or lime juice added. If you make this with low-fat buttermilk the calories, fat, etc should be correct in the photo below.

 


Saturday, February 2, 2013

My 5 favorite links of the week

I am spending way too much time on Pinterest, but I am finding so many great projects to do on everyone's boards! I think all of these links come from Pinterest finds. So here is my list of top five links for the week. 
  1. Homemade baking mixes at Fake-it-frugal. I plan to make these plus a bulk pancake mix and homemade instant oatmeal! This will save money and time!
  2. Make your own microwave popcorn at Frugal Living NW. I spend way too much money on microwave popcorn.
  3. Homemade pizza crust at Annies eats. I want to make up a big batch of this and freeze it to have on hand for quick dinners.
  4. Homemade chocolate sauce at Small notebook. This looks like it would be good on ice cream and in alcoholic drinks as well as to make chocolate milk.
  5. Make your own instant oatmeal at Amy Loves Her Life. I plan to make this and store it in a jar instead of individual bags. I will probably modify it a bit to cut down on the sugar and replace some with stevia (I think they have a brown sugar version!). I'll let you know what I come up with!
Picture from smallnotebook.org

As you can see my mind must be on food! I will be going back to work soon and I really want to get the kitchen prepped for quick homemade dinners. I have really enjoyed cooking good food while I have been at home, but once I start working again it will be hard to find the time. So, I am hoping to stock up my pantry and freezer with prepared or quick to prepare foods so I can continue to eat well!

Monday, January 28, 2013

Ladybug Soapworks blog now available on Kindle!

I am so excited to announce that the Ladybug Soapworks blog is now available on the Kindle store for a monthly subscription cost of $0.99. This allows you to read my blog even when you are not connected to the internet. This is also a great way for you to take my recipes and tutorials with you into your kitchen or soap "lab" and have them easily accessible without printing them out and wasting paper. Want to sign up?  Click here.


Sunday, January 27, 2013

Indian Samosa Casserole

If you know me, then you know I LOVE Indian food.  If I could, I would eat it every night! So when I came across this recipe for a Samosa casserole, I just had to make it! The recipe below is based off of the one on the vegetarian times website (see it here). I have modified a few things in my recipe to suit my tastes, but you may prefer to use the original.

Indian Samosa Casserole Recipe

Crust
  • ½ cup all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup whole-wheat flour
  • ¼ tsp. salt
  • 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
Filling
  • 2 Tbs. yellow mustard seeds
  • 2 tsp. curry powder
  • 2 tsp. ground ginger
  • 1 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)
  • 5 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered (1 ¼ lb.)--I used closer to 2 lbs
  • 1 ½ tsp. vegetable oil
  • 1 large onion, diced (~1.5 cup)
  • 1 large carrot, diced (~1 cup)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced (1 Tbs.)
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • 1 cup low-sodium vegetable broth
  • 2 tsp. agave nectar or sugar
  • 2 Tbsp milk

1. To make crust: Preheat oven to 375°F. Whisk together flours and salt in bowl. Stir in oil and then add 6 to 10 Tbsp cold water  until dough holds together. Shape into ball, cover with damp towel, and set aside.
Crust dough
2. To make filling: Stir together mustard seeds, curry, ginger, cumin, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl and set aside.

Seasonings
 3. Cook potatoes in boiling salted water for about 15 minutes, or until tender. Drain, return to pot, and mash, leaving small chunks.
Potatoes mashed
4. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, and garlic, and sauté 5 minutes, or until carrot is tender. Move onion mixture to side of pan, and add mustard seed mixture in center. Toast for about 30 seconds.

Toasting seasoning

5. Stir in frozen peas and broth. Fold onion mixture into potato mixture; stir in agave nectar or sugar and season with salt and pepper to taste.
 
Mixing the onions, carrots, and pea mixture into the mashed potatoes.
 6. Spread filling into a 9-inch pie pan and set aside.

Filling spread in pie pan
7. Roll out crust dough to 11-inch circle on a lightly floured work surface. Cover filling with dough and crimp edges with fingers. Cut X in center to vent steam and lightly brush with milk just before baking.

Filling covered with crust dough.
8. Place pie on baking sheet to catch any potential bubbling over and bake 40 to 50 minutes, or until crust is golden. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Cooked until the crust was golden brown
 9. I topped it with a tamarind-date sauce I bought from an Indian grocery store.  Yum!

Delicious!
Let me know if you make this and how it turned out!

Friday, January 18, 2013

Adding Social Media Icons to your Blog

As you have probably noticed, I am making a lot of upgrades to both my blog and online store. My newest additions are the pretty social media icons you can see to the right. Adding these icons to my blog took a lot of trial and error, looking at the source code for other sites and trying to figure out how to modify it for my site. Well in the end Dylan helped me and I FINALLY got it to work.  Since I found this process so difficult, I thought others might be going through the same struggles as me and perhaps I could save them some time and hassle. These directions are only for Blogger (Blogspot) blogs. So here we go:

Step 1:
Find some social media icons that you like. A simple Google image search for "social media icon png" will bring up a ton of options. Download the ones you decide to use. For my site, I am using a set called "Minimalist" that was designed by Zee Que at designbolts.com. You can get them here for free.
Step 2:
If you have your own website upload your images to your Public_HTML folder. This will allow you to access the icon at www.YOUR_WEBSITE.com/IMAGE_NAME.png. Obviously, you need to change YOUR_WEBSITE to the name of your site and IMAGE_NAME to the name of the image (likely something like Twitter.png or Pinterest.png).

If you do not have your own site to upload the images you can upload them to a place like Flickr where you can get a link the the specific icon image.

Step 3:
Go to your blog and select the layout tab. Then click on the 'Add a Gadget' in the area of the blog that you would like to place your icons. In the popup, select the "HTML/JavaScript add third-party functionality or other code to your blog" gadget.

Step 4:
Give this gadget a title if desired. Then you will have to type in a modification of the code given  below. You will need to add the text highlighted in gray between <a and </a> into the content box. The first example is for Facebook. In the text below, where it says YOUR_USERNAME you will need to change to text to reflect your Facebook name. You will also have to change/modify the link to access your icon image; replacing YOUR_WEBSITE with the name of the site where the image is stored and ICON_NAME to the exact name of the icon.

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/YOUR_USERNAME">
<img width="60/" title="Follow YOUR_USERNAME on Facebook" alt="Follow  YOUR_USERNAME on Facebook" src="http://www.YOUR_WEBSITE.com/ICON_NAME.png"/>
</a>


Here are the examples for Twitter and Pinterest for my site. Now following the directions above, just change where I have Ladybug Soapworks and my website and image name to the appropriate names for your site.

<a href="http://www.twitter.com/#!/LadybugSoapwork">
<img width="60/" title="Follow Ladybug Soapworks on Twitter" alt="Follow Ladybug Soapworks on Twitter" src="http://www.ladybugsoapworks.net/Twitter2.png" />
</a>


<a href="http://pinterest.com/LadybugSoapwork/">
<img width="60/" title="Follow Ladybug Soapworks Pinterest" alt="Follow Ladybug Soapworks Pinterest" src="http://www.ladybugsoapworks.net/Pinterest.png"/>
</a>

 

I hope this tutorial will help you to get your blog looking a little more professional, too!

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Brewing up a storm!

Pouring the malt into the kettle
 This weekend Dylan and I took a trip up to Nashua, NH and met my parents at IncrediBREW for Abe's Brewfest. IncrediBREW is a brewery and winery where customers can go to make their own beer, wine, and soda. There were 6 groups of people at the brewfest and we all made a different type of beer. In two weeks, we will go back to the brewery, bottle the beer, and all six groups will share what they made so that we can try an assortment of recipes. The equipment is more high-tech than what a home brewer would have access to, but it was a great way to learn about what goes into the beer brewing process. My parents (along with a number of my friends) have gotten the beer brewing bug recently and so they convinced Dylan and I to try it out.  Overall, it was an interesting experience but there was a lot of down time where we had to wait (luckily they gave us some snacks and a selection of beers to sample). I would recommend taking along a book or some good company to keep you entertained. We may be heading back in March for the St. Patty's Day brewfest.

The bottle filler


Friday, March 26, 2010

King Arthur Flour Blog...wow!

Can you say yummie? That was the first thought that crossed my mind when I came upon the King Arthur Flour blog. Just check out some of these pictures! I think I need to start baking.



Tuesday, January 5, 2010

My book list from 2009

So here is my take off of Anne-Marie's recent blog post about her favorite books she read during 2009.

Running the Amazon This is a non-fiction book about the first kayaking trip to navigate the entire length of the amazon river. I am pretty much obsessed with anything Amazon, so this was a great book for me.

The Lost Symbol The new Dan Brown book. I admit it, I love his books. I get so captivated that I read this one in about 2.5 consecutive days. I really like that I can sit near my laptop while reading his books and search the places and objects he talks about to learn more.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
Another Amazon book. This is the adventure of an early 20th century explorer who search the Amazon for a lost advanced civilization. He never returned. In this book, the author retraces Percy Fawcett's path through the Amazon to either find out where Fawcett died or if there really is a lost city. This was a large book, but again very captivating so I read it quite fast.

One River Most people probably will not find this book that enjoyable. I, however, really enjoyed it. This book is almost a biography of Richard Evans Shultes and two of his students Wade Davis and Tim Plowman. If you are at all interested in ethnobotany you will like this book. It covers all the rainforest explorations of the three men and their discoveries of unknown plants (their specialty is hallucinogenic plants and the study of how the indigenous people use them in their religions).

Ecotopia This book made me dream of living in the fictional country of Ecotopia. This book details a world where California, Oregon, and Washington secede from the United States and form a country called Ecotopia. This is a good quick read for anyone interested in creating an environmentally responsible society.

Eat, Pray, and Love I am currently reading this book and I really love it. It is such a good story of growth and finding oneself. I highly recommend this book.

Dreams from My Father This is one of President Obama's books. It is really well written and I am enjoying it, though I keep finding myself picking up other books to read. Thus, I have not finished this book even though I started reading it in 2008! Still for those who have not read this book, it is a great way to learn about the life of the President of the USA.

I also regularly read National Geographic Magazine and Martha Stewart's Living Magazine.

I hope some of you will also enjoy these books!

*These are affiliate links and at no cost to you, I will get paid a small amount if you purchase through these links.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

2 Sketches 4 You

I love making cards, but coming up with ideas can be really difficult sometimes. I have been reading a blog called 2 Sketches 4 You for a while and thought I would share it with everyone. They put up weekly sketches for you to turn into cards. The submissions they receive are just amazing and what is even better is that they pick a winner each week and give them more scrapbooking/cardmaking materials. So go browse your heart out and get some inspirations for your own creations!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Treasury!

My Chocolate espresso shea butter soap has been featured in an Etsy treasury. Check it out here and place a comment so that I have a chance of being featured on the etsy home page.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

New Etsy Purchases!

I have been dying to get some new jewelry from Etsy. There are so many talented artists it was hard to choose what I wanted. My cheap Target bangles have started to discolor so I went on the hunt for some new bangles. Check out these beauties that I just picked up from Painted Metal. I can't wait to wear them!An added plus is that all I had to do is tell the seller how I found her store and I got these beautiful earrings for free.I also picked up a very unique necklace from Meetalls. It is copper with beautiful patina. I think I am in jewelry heaven! I love Etsy!