265 posts from 2007

street lamp behind branches

8 comments

Happy New Year to every one of you! I sincerely hope this next year brings all of you an abundance of
Peace,
Love,
New Passions,
Gently Learned lessons,
Great Dreams,
Goals met,
Beauty found,
Calm,
Good Health,
Healing of all wounds both physical and emotional,
happiness,
laughter,
joy,
I could go on and on and on.
I just want you all to receive the best of what life has to offer.
If you just happen to read this strangers blog, do not think you are exempt from my well wishes, it means you too!
 

I am stuck inside, it is raining rather hard this morning, so I decided to take pictures of some of my massive collection that needs to stop. I collect too much stuff.

What fragrance/cologne do you put on when it's your night out? 
Submitted by noiq.

I like the Demeter fragrances, I like smelling edible. Like Vanilla or cinnamon. YUM! But when going out I wear the Honeysuckle scent.  It really smells like the flower, not a strange bastard child of the fragrance, but like I rubbed the flower all over me. Clean, sweet, just simple.

I have been a bit obsessed with the scent lately. When I was a kid, honeysuckle grew wild on our property, We learned how to take the blossom and taste it's sweet goodness. The smell would stick with me all day long, probably the pollen on my nose. I lost track of this scent, and enjoying all other scents along the way of a hard childhood. I had no time to really enjoy them anymore. When husband got a better job and I was able to quit working for the first time, ever, I was walking along through my neighborhood and the scent almost picked me up and floated me towards the vines. Like on a cartoon. I found myself in front of a HUGE vine of honeysuckle. It was taking over this persons front yard! The smell was intoxicating! I took a blossom and tasted it like when I was a kid. It woke something up inside of me, something that has not been awake for a long time. I found this web site via this sweet little blog. I ordered it and was NOT disappointed. I wear it whenever I go out to dinner, or a movie. It is so light that you swear you smell the real thing somewhere close. It is  the smell of summer, the scent of play, the fragrance of my childhood before it got too complicated. Simple and sweet.

I plan on buying more of the demeter perfumes, but don't know where to start! Wonder what the holy water smells like, haha.

When did you really get to make a difference for someone else? 
Submitted by bodhibound.

I don't know. I can hope i have, but we never REALLY know when this happens. It can be the smallest of actions, smiling at a stranger who is feeling isolated and letting them know they exist. A donation to a charity helping people rebuild a life in chaos. Letting someone in  front of you on a busy road, waving back at someone showing you this kindness. Picking up somebodies dropped item. Holding your Grandfather's hand during his wife's funeral. Holding the door open for strangers. Thanking a service member for their volunteer. Giving what you can. Kind words to an artist sharing her self portraits online. Telling the waitress Thank You when she pours more coffee. Making eye contact with people. Chatting with a stranger in the grocery store line. You never know who you are going to reach. We need to be kind and courteous to others. We have to humble ourselves and realize We are not the only ones occupying the sidewalk.

Because we never know what is going to make a difference in someone's life. We just have to try and make it a positive one. Our actions are being watched, maybe the person we touch is someone who is just observing our actions.

While reading Waterbaby's Blog I thought of a story, it was too much to clog her comments page with, but a good story, I think anyway. So here you go.

 I live near the vast miles of endless car lots. I grew up with some of the kids of the owners of more than half of these lots. They felt such a sense of entitlement to this family money, they looked way down their noses at me while I handed them sacks of fast food. I worked at the window of this drive through for 6 years. I lived off of the $1 above minimum wage for years. I knew so many of the salesmen, only a couple were decent people, they did not work for this family, good men, they treated me with respect. None of the others did. They would pull out that huge wad of cash and flip through stacks of hundred dollar bills and 50 dollar bills to hand me a twenty that was residing in the middle of this wad of paper money that even they could not close their fist around. At that time I was living off of my one free meal there and top ramen at home. Here they had enough in those pockets to last me MONTHS! I could live off of that cash for months, not having to work 2 jobs to just survive. I would hand them the change for that $20 back, they never counted it to see if it was right, they carelessly threw the coins on the floor of the car, or in the back set, and toss the cash on the seat. The coins were just metal garbage to them.
They all had a nasty Coke habit. I knew the dealer to the salesmen, and management. He worked in the detail dept. Funny I thought. I ran into one of the salesmen a few years ago, he was homeless and asking for spare change. He was skinny and had not showered in some time. Long dry hair and scruffy beard. He did not recognize me, I had served him whoppers for 6 years, and I reached in my pocket for any spare change I had, gave him a few coins. He thanked me and walked toward another person walking on the same sidewalk.  

I was not sure about this weeks hunt. Magic. It has been hard to see any lately, I know it is there but I am just not in the right mind to see all of it right now. But i HAVE been looking for it. Thanks to Gus and the Photo Safari Society My spirits were lifted just trying to see. Then I realized I was creating it with my soap. My newly named Polly's Poppyseed Soap. It is magic every time I make it. It is Quite the process. First (I do not have a photo of this, it is kind of toxic) I take purified water and mix it with lye graduals, this heats the water up to about 200+ degrees and makes for a large cloud of toxic steam. Thi s happens on my back porch, not inside. I let that sit out there until I get vegetable oils melted and mixed.

After these are melted I have to cool it down in a cold water bath, down to about 100-105 degrees, and then the same for the lye water. They HAVE to be within 5 degrees of each other or it will NOT work! This is when the magic happens. I pour the lye water in with the fats and instantly the texture and color are different! It is no longer veggie fats and lye and water, it is glycerin soap. They begin to chemically alter each other, like chlorine and sugar make splenda. Magically it becomes thicker and thicker with every stir of my spatula. The color changes as well, it becomes more opaque. It gets hard to mix it by hand, but for the next 30 minutes, this is what I do, stir stir stir. My wrists begin to ache, it gets thicker still. I have to wait to add the lemongrass essential oil, and the poppyseeds until the thickness of the new liquid becomes so thick it will start to lay on top of itself instead of falling back into itself.

clouds up as soon as they mix together

getting thicker!

starts staying on top

Soap! Mmmmmmmm

ingredients

Now it is time for it to go into the molds. The molds are one foot lengths of PVC pipe with caps on the ends. I use an old glass lamp shade as a funnel. I fill up three feet of soap. I wrap it up tight in towels and place it in a cooler, not to be cool but to keep it warm. It has to stay warm so it will turn out. It will sit there for 12-24 hours. Until th liquid is the consistency of say, cheese. Yum!  Husband and I have found an ingenious way of getting the soap out of the molds. It is an antique sugar shaker (it fits PERFECTLY inside the mold) placed inside the mold, then PUSH!!!!! After it gets started we place a long maglite flashlight inside of the sugar shaker and push farther out. and VOILA! Soap! I slice it and let it cure for the next 3 weeks. Then I have soap for the whole year!

MAGIC! The smells soothe my soul, the monotony of watching the stirring spatula in the changing liquid. It is almost a meditation. I am magically healed by making my Polly's Poppyseed Soap.