The addiction continues: Lush temptation!

Although I'd heard of it before, this weekend I had my first real Lush experience while visiting some old college friends for Memorial Day weekend down in Santa Barbara. I had a quick stop I needed to make to the mall on the way to my friend's nursing school graduation/RN pinning ceremony. Honestly, it was a sick decision on my part to only allow myself 20 minutes in one of my favorite time-sucks (aka, the mall), but I guess I'm a bit of a masochist. It caught my attention on the way back to my car to get to my friend's graduation party. LUSH!

If you haven't already checked out this store, you must immediately find the nearest location and make a point to check it out next time you're in the area. Lush is an organic, vegetarian (and mostly vegan) bath and body care store and a perfect example of what many of my dreams have been about of late :P

Of course, I didn't have time to spend more than a brief couple minutes surveying the store to see if it was worth returning for. I decided that it was definitely worth it and promptly dragged one of my friends back there with me the next day. Let me tell you, this place is HEAVEN for soap geeks and body product fiends! I've been thinking about playing around more with solid perfumes and lotion bars so I treated myself to a great massage bar, but otherwise managed to exhibit uncharacteristic willpower and didn't allow myself any of the other temptations, such as a yummy new face cleanser or bath bomb.

Blog stop

As some of my loyal attempted readers have recently noted, I have been seriously neglecting my blog lately! I've been really busy working on a new spoken Dutch test, searching for a new apartment, and a packed schedule of "extracurricular" activities. Have no fear, though. My passion for all things SOAP continues!

This week I am gearing up for the Soap Making Boot Camp at the Nova Studio in Point Richmond this coming weekend. I've been looking forward to this course for months and only waited this long to take it because the first session offered when I first heard about this workshop was already full and I had already planned to be in Portland when the next session was offered.

I'm sure I'll have lots to say about the classes this weekend, so stay tuned for some Boot Camp blog posts!

Cold Process!

It has finally begun. You might recall that I mentioned my (former) acupressure guy TJ, in a previous post. He was kind enough to introduce me to his girlfriend Talia, who is also interested in soap making. After months of emails and anticipation, we all finally met up on Sunday for our first batch of cold process soap.

I was having too much fun to remember to take lots of pictures of the first batch, but here are a couple pictures I did manage to get:

Testing the temperature of the lye solution.

Melted oils mixed with lye solution to trace, oatmeal added and poured into our makeshift mold to saponify and cure.

Oregon Soap Company

The Oregon Soap Company was the most expensive of the 4 soapers' booths I checked out at the Portland Saturday Market. Prices for a 3.75 oz bar of their certified organic soap START at $7. Ouch!

I checked out their website, though, and was pleased to read about their commitment to fighting climate change through sustainable business practices. Their pledge to plant one tree for every 10 bars of soap they sell means they do much better than just offsetting their carbon emissions - they do it several times over.

And their soap? Pricey, yes, but a great treat to use in the shower. I bought a bar of the Forest soap (pictured above), which has a very mild yet consistent lather and gently exfoliates with oatmeal and bran. This particular bar has a great unisex scent, which makes it a great treat for your favorite (male or female) tree hugger.