Spring Holidays Part One - "Gefilte fish is still gross"

Happy Easter/Passover/Spring!

I've been having a wonderful but busy week. Last Wednesday night I celebrated the first night of Passover with my friend Julie and a very nice group of her friends as she led us in a Seder. It was my first Seder in several years and the first time I recall ever being responsible for asking the Four Questions (it's generally the responsibility of the youngest person and I have a younger brother so I was generally safe).

It turned out that out of the 9 of us there, Julie and I were the only two Jews, so luckily there was no pressure to embarrass myself trying to read the questions in Hebrew. It was a lovely gathering and the Jews and "gentiles" all participated, even going so far as to try the gefilte fish. I convinced myself to try it as well, since I've spent the past several years convincing those around me to avoid it. Tastes can change, right? Wrong. As Julie's friend Sarah said, it still "tastes like something my cat would like". Thankfully, the rest of the meal was delicious :)

Thanks for including me, Julie!

Soap Geek

I already took a photo of my giant soap brick last week, but I felt it appropriate to thoroughly commemorate my first bulk order by introducing Soap around the apartment.

Soap, meet Projector. Projector, meet Soap.

Soap, meet videos.




Soap, meet Kitty Litter.




Meet couch. Meet Bailey.



Welcome.

Coming Soon...

Any requests?

Mica happy

Along with my giant soap block/salt lick, I received my new sample pack of colorful micas on Monday. Last night I finally got around to sorting through them and I mixed them all in bottles with some glycerine so that they're easier to work with later.

I can't wait to start playing around with them! Keep your eye out for some fun new colorful projects next week...

Tweet Tweet

Quick note to let y'all know that I have given in to Twitter madness. You can now find me there as rebeccaloft.

Join the conversation!

I'll still be posting here when I have time, but Twitter and Facebook are the best places to find me for some quick internet stalking tidbits (if you're into that kinda thing).

Giant soap brick arrival

Last weekend I had a fabulous visit with my old roomie from Peru (Chloe) who got into Berkeley for law school and came out from Philly for the admitted student event. Unfortunately, it seems that my hometown university put together a pretty crappy event, so I did my best to convince her to come out to Cali anyway! Keeping my fingers crossed that she is unable to resist the appeal of BOALT and moves out here in the fall despite the disorganized admit event. It's always nice to have more good friends who are local, since I'm so bad about keeping in touch with my East Coast buds :)

I have a couple new projects to share in the next day or two, but aside from having had a fairly busy weekend, I've been a bit low on soap this past week since I had to wait for the new month (and new budget) to order more supplies. Last week, I finally decided to take the plunge and ordered bulk soap base for the first time. It arrived yesterday in a single giant 25-lb. block and my housemate thinks it looks like a giant salt lick.


In addition to at least 25 more pounds worth of melt and pour soaping, I'm getting really excited to try cold and hot process soap making. I'm taking a workshop at the Nova Studio in Point Richmond next month to learn the basics and I can't wait! In the meantime, my acupressure guy put me in touch with a friend of his who is also interested in soap making. I think we're gonna be "lab partners" and meet up next weekend to make our first batch.

Anyway, I'm off to play with my new micas and lip balm flavor oils. Oh yeah, and I guess I should try to get some work done as well... :)

Plaid attempt

These soaps were inspired by Soapy Love's plaid soaps, which were featured in the Soap Queen blog last month. I was waiting on an order of my favorite soap base so I had to combine what I had left with a lesser quality base. The resulting product isn't really much of a "plaid" and you can really see the flaws in the second soap base I used (it's kind of cloudy and lumpy looking) but they get the job done and I used fresh cotton fragrance oil, so at least they smell nice!