My God is so Big...

Do you remember being a child and singing those songs in Vacation Bible School? My God is so BIG, so strong and so mighty. There's nothing my God cannot do. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Or maybe you never went to church as a child and did not know the songs. If you didn't get to sing those songs as a child, children believe them. They sing those songs with the faith of an innocent child. They must be true because my Sunday School teacher says they're true. Children are unencumbered by the evils of the world. They have no doubts, only faith.

As we grow to adults, those songs become a distant memory like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. Maybe those songs fall into the same category. Maybe joy, peace, love and truth are just for the innocent children to believe. We become so tainted as adults with everyday life and our trials and tribulations we forget that innocence and that faith. We cannot return to that innocence but we can reclaim that faith.

I was such an outsider at church. My family didn't go with me as a young teen. My parents mocked my warnings of hell and their need to be saved. Everyone had learned those VBS songs and I didn't know them. Everyone had been through Sunday School classes and learned the books of the Bible. Everyone understood God's grace and mercy, and I was still in the dark. I wanted what everyone else had already gotten. I wanted to be on the inside like them. Yet, I wondered why God would want me. I didn't know all the right words to pray. I wasn't raised in the church. It's taken me 36 years to realize, He does want me. He wants all of us. We just have to be willing to hold out our hand and accept the call. We have to be willing to step forward in faith and believe that our God IS so big and SO mighty, there is nothing He cannot do. He made us all with a purpose. God is still the same God we sang about as a child and believed in with the faith of a child. We can and should have that same faith today.

Our dear Molly dog died in June. I have always wanted a pug and this seemed like the right time. What we didn't know is that God had been working on it for a year before we knew we wanted one. We are being blessed with not one, but two pugs in a way that only God could have orchestrated. We are going today to pick them up.

Hurray!

The website is now up and functional! Please check it out and let me know what you think.

http://www.renasoap.com/

Mad Monkey Soaping

Having heard lots of good feedback from friends and family, I am getting ready for the holiday season. That means making up enough soap to get me through December. The problem with soapmaking is the cure time. If I run out, it will be another month before I can have more. The prospect of running out is both exciting and frightening. I would truly be blessed if I sold it all but probably stressed about making new bars.

For all my super sensitive friends and youngest daughter, I have whipped up a batch of good old olive oil soap. It is unscented and un-colored. I added a very small percentage of coconut oil for lather and hardness but the remaining is pure extra virgin olive oil. It turned out such a pretty lime green color.

Also shown is a felted bar of salt soap. I saw it in a magazine and remembered that I wanted to try it with one of my soaps. My first sample didn't go quite as planned but I think this one looks great. I may eventually put some up for sale on my website. They feel so neat. It's like soap and wash cloth all in one. The wool provides a gentle exfoliant. The trick is to make the soap strongly scented to overpower the "wet sheep" smell.

Back to my mad monkey soaping...

Pretty New Batches

I'm taking a new look at an old process...hot process. I originally attempted crock pot soap and was disappointed with the results. They looked clunky and homemade and I hid them in the corner. While not pretty, they turned out to be wonderful bars after they had aged a bit. They had a nice lather and felt so nice on my skin. Feeling inspired by a soap blog, I decided to try it again and use the teacup mold I had hidden away.

Sometimes as new soapers we get blinded by all the oils available and try to put every one of them in every recipe. I am definitely guilty. I have calmed down a bit and call this recipe Simplicity because it contains only 3 oils: coconut, olive, and avocado. I made a 2 lb. batch and soon realized that I had a lot more than I needed to fill these 4 teacup molds so I began searching the kitchen. I found some silicon ice cube trays shaped like hearts so I filled those. Still more so I pulled out a silicon mini muffin tray and filled that. Still more and getting desperate for a place to put this, I pulled out some plastic cookie cutters from my closet. I laid them on a sheet of parchment on a cookie sheet and filled them up. I was so excited when they turned out just fine. I had to shave off the one side because it was a bit gloppy. I am hatching some new Christmas soaps that I cannot wait to try out.

Yesterday was also the day to make yet another batch of spa salt bars. Everyone loves them and I am having a hard time keeping up my supply. I decided to use up some leftover bits of oil so I hope they are as good as the last batch. They sure are pretty and smell fabulous. I was using up bits of fragrance oil too. I half hazzardly dumped Sweet Grass and Cucumber green grass into the oils.

My Aunt has asked me to make a "manly" gift basket. I have some new scents on the way and cannot wait to get started making some new masculine soaps. My website is just about done and I cannot wait to let everyone see it. My goal is to cover the cost of my oils and fragrances and maybe a new mold here and there. Hopefully that's attainable.

Have a peaceful Sunday.

Anyone See Elephants?

My latest soap now presented in living color. So what did I change? I followed the directions for the soap colorants I'm using. These are a bit bold but I'm so excited to see some bright colored soap that I can look past the gaudiness of it all and admire the elephants.

Is it just me or do you all see elephants too? The green looks like an elephant with it's trunk spraying water in the air. Do you think they could use my latest creation as one of those ink blot tests? They would think I have some hidden issue with elephants because every bar says elephant to me. Maybe I will just call this bar Ink Blot.

Have you ever tried to do something your way over and over and failed every time? Yet like some insane person, you continue to expect different results. That would describe me and my colorants. I refused to dilute the colors because I was too busy. Surely, I could just add a couple drops and that would be the same thing. My bars ended up either completely void of color or had clumps of color speckled throughout. Why did I make this so hard on myself?

I find myself asking that question often lately. God's way is always the easiest way even though it doesn't seem that way at the time. I insist that my way is easier and will work just fine. Again and again I am reminded that I need to give it all up to Him. When I ignore His plan, I live in my own gray world. Doubt and fear creep into the shadows. When those Israelites wandered around in the wilderness, God showed them over and over why His way was better. He provided for them miraculously, even though they grumbled. It was the journey through the wilderness that brought them closer to Him. It was the miraculous provision that led them to trust Him. God has given us the instruction book, we just have to trust enough to follow the directions and not make up our own.

Grrr... Colorant

I whipped up 2 batches yesterday. First is a beer shampoo bar that will hopefully be better than the last shampoo bar. I personally do not like it, but others say it's great. The second soap sounds fabulous, smells fabulous, looks less than stellar. It is a basic bath soap with some apricot seeds for exfoliation, honey powder for moisture, and scented with cucumber melon.

The problem with the 2nd soap is the colorant. I seem to be colorant challenged. I know a lady that turns every soap the color of cheddar cheese. I think at this point, I would be happy with that outcome over the diluted, practically non-existent colors I'm getting. I pulled some water out of the water for the recipe and added colorant to 2 bowls. It looked very dark and scary. When I added it to the soap, it didn't even show up. The swirls look beautiful if you look very closely. I'm so annoyed that they didn't quite turn out the way I'd planned.

Things don't turn out the way I'd planned a lot lately. I'm participating in a Women's Bible Study written by Priscilla Shirer. It's called One in a Million. It focuses on the Israelites and their meandering through the wilderness after they fled from Egypt. This really speaks to me. I have all these great plans but I need to let God do the planning. God tells us to "be still and know that I am God". It's the "be still" part where I struggle. I want to do something. The Israelites saw God's glory over and over when they waited and watched. Sure enough, when I am silent and still, I see God's awesome power as well. It is when I try to make things my way or plan things my way that things fall apart and I become frustrated.

Take some time today to "be still".

A Time for Soap

If only I had more time to do all the things I love doing. I love to sew, write, read, make soap, bake, garden, paint, and still have time to hang out with my family. There just are not enough hours in a day. There is always something on the list, like the overalls I just finished that my daughter is wearing while playing the piano. She is growing so fast that I cannot keep up with her wardrobe needs anymore. I am facing the reality that she might have to wear what "all the other kids" are wearing. Maybe that will have to be ok.

I took the girls to dance today and stopped to talk to a friend. I had given her a bar of soap to test out for me. She loves it and said she wants to buy a bunch for the holidays as gifts. I've given it to other friends and they too want to buy more. The realization that I do not have enough to survive the holidays sent me into a bit of a panic this evening. What can I bump to make soap? If it takes a few weeks to cure, I better get busy. For the longest time it seemed like I had so much laying around but now thinking about the holiday season and the potential for people to purchase several bars at a time, I definitely do not have enough.

I've decided soapmaking and sewing have a lot in common. The ingredients are like fabrics and the process is soothing like sewing. The finished garment and finished product beg to be shown off even if they are not perfect. We are definitely harder on ourselves when it comes to perfection. I see the wavy topstitching lines on my daughter's overalls. I see the flecks of color in my soaps that should have been mixed better. I see the uneven bars of freshly cut soap. I see that one leg is an 1/8 inch longer than the other. These are not things that anyone else would ever notice. To me they look like big neon signs. I suppose it's these errors though that keep us going, keep us creating. We want to be better than we were. We want a goal to work towards. So it is the same with our walk with God. He wants us to be better than we were too. He wants us to keep our goal in focus. Moving further in a craft is like moving further along the spiritual path. We will make mistakes but it is ok.