Step Away From the Cake

Woke this morning to the sound of rain. Pretty heavy rain at that. As I lay in bed I considered my options. This was Weight Watcher morning and I really wanted to go since I missed last week. The plan was to ride my bike there and back. I did not plan on the rain. I could get up and catch a ride with Hubby, but that would mean getting up much earlier then I needed to and hanging around for at least an hour. Really didn't want to do that. I could skip it completely and use the rain as an excuse. And believe it or not, I really didn't want to do that either. So I dragged my butt out of bed. Got ready and headed out. I did not get rained on there or back. It was chilly but not freezing. I wore my new rain jacket there and sweated a lot. But I was extremely glad I went. I was down 1.6 pounds :) and that leaves just 2.6 lbs and I will reach 5 lbs. Yes, it does not sound like much and it seems I've been doing this forever but I'm over the moon ecstatic about it. Let m...

Hopefully it's all behind me now. It all started a few months back. Our neighbors kids moved out of the house and the owners moved in. We had had little contact with them and didn't know them very well at all. Well, things went downhill pretty quickly. The boyfriend pissed off the neighbor above who is friends with my husband. Then Charlie wouldn't stick up for the boyfriend in an argument with the neighbor above, that pissed off the boyfriend. Next thing we know he is totally freaking out over Bella and threatening to kill her and kick Charlie's ass and calling us all kinds of names and stuff. It got ugly fast. We ended up having sort of an armed truce that was not good and not getting better on it's own. We had looked into putting in some serious fencing like swimming pool fencing I went to the other neighbor and talked to them about trying to find a way to settle this thing. To make a very long story slightly shorter, we had mediation on Monday and Wednesd...

I love soap. I love using it. I love smelling it. I love looking at it. I even love making it. Really. It absolutely amazes me that you can take sodium hydroxide and fat and end up with soap. Awesome. I should say chemistry!!!! But it's a tedious process. You have to stir it almost constantly and keep an eye on it so that it doesn't burn or boil over or whatever. Also, it has to reach a very specific state or consistency and if you're not good at it you won't know when you get there or you will stop too early. It's very tedious work. So what can you do? Well, if you really want homemade soap you can buy blocks of soap base pre-made. There are lots of private label soap manufacturers out there. It comes in all kinds, kinds that are very hard to make at home: hemp, castille, honey, oatmeal, olive oil, etc. You can then melt the base and add all the stuff you want - colors, smells, whatever. You can make yourself some really nice soap. This opens up a whole new wor...