Category: Vintage Sara’s Soaps ‘n Such

Image via WikipediaPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed 7 December 1941 as “a day which will live in infamy.”  It’s on the calendars – if you get the right calendar – as “Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.”  Seventy years after the fact, and we still remember when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  We tell our children of what happened on that fateful day and what consequences it had for us as a country.

There’s another day that will live in infamy – 11 September 2001.  It was on this day that terrorists hijacked four airplanes and crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.  That last plane – United flight 93 – was meant for the U.S. Capitol Building.  However, brave, terrified passengers fought back and gave their lives to save unknown hundreds.  This is true heroism.  Thousands were killed on 9/11, and hundreds of others remain unidentified.

The president of the United States wants to make the tenth anniversary of this tragedy a day of service, asserting that we should move forward, that remembering 9/11 is “clinging to the past.”  Now I have nothing against serving others, whether in my own community or in other parts of the world.  In fact, I believe service should be a regular part of our lives.  I do, however, have something against trying to block these events out of our minds.  Let’s review what happened.  Extremist Muslims (those who are dangerously faithful to their faith) hijacked planes in our country filled with innocent people and used those planes to essentially fire bomb buildings where there were thousands of other innocent people.  These people were children.  Mothers.  Fathers.  Grandparents.  Sons.  Daughters.  Friends.  Beloved aunts and spoiling uncles.  Think for a moment of all the people who love you, those who would be sad if you died suddenly.  Now multiply that number by about 3,000.  That’s how many lives were indelibly changed that day.  This doesn’t include the bystanders and the rescue workers.  Nor does this include you or me.

Pentagon Building, Washington D.C. ~ The space circled in white is where a friend’s office was.  He was called out to a last-minute meeting earlier in the morning.

Do you remember what it was like to fly before 9/11?  Do you remember going into government buildings or hospitals without having to pass through metal detectors?  Do you remember not having to have your bags searched when you went to concerts, theme parks or sporting events?  I do, but that memory is getting distant and faint.

ALWAYS remember.  NEVER forget.  Don’t dishonor those who died for another group’s jihad by NOT remembering the events of September 11th, ten years ago.  Serve others every day; remember these Americans at least once a year.

While I adore making soap (obviously), there are times when I simply must break away from soapmaking in order to be better at it.  My favorite non-soap craft endeavor is sewing.  I really like machine sewing pillows and gift bags, though I’ll also cross-stitch on occasion as well.  I had three sewing projects in queue going into this week, and I’m proud to say that I’ve knocked out two of them.

The first project was a pillow for my husband – a late birthday present.  I found this fabric remnant on sale, the price was right, so I got what I needed to make a pillow for him.  I have to tell you, being an N.C. State fan, this pillow was painful to make.  I finally found the time to finish it late last week and am really pleased at how it turned out.

Peter‘s ECU pillow

My second project was a baby doll sleeping bag for my older daughter’s baby dolls.  I’d bought some of the material for project #3 (which I can’t disclose at this time) and had some left over.  My daughter jumped on it and was very excited to have something just for her dolls.  It also gave me a great chance to review how to sew in zippers, something I hadn’t done in many, many years.  It was a success and one or two of her dolls sleep very snug and warm each night.

One of my daughter’s favorite dolls tucked in all cozy

Today I was back over the soap pot.  I made a test batch of soap for a great supplier and prepped the lye mixture for a batch of green tea soap.  I was excited about soapmaking again, telling me that taking a break to sew was exactly what I needed.

What do you like to do to refresh your creative juices so you can work better and with more enthusiasm?  Share it below in the comments.

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe sky is grey turning to black.  Rain’s spitting on us, and the winds are quickly beginning to kick up.  Overhead, the variations of grey in the clouds show us how they’re circular around us, moving counterclockwise.  Yes, folks, we’re battening down for Hurricane Irene.  We’ve got nearly two cases of bottled water, we’ll have more than a tank full of propane, our cars are filled up and we have enough food to last us for a few days.  Short of evacuating, I’m not sure we can be more prepared.

That being said, we realize that higher than our chances of being flooded or sustaining wind damage is the chance that we’ll lose power.  Obviously, without electricity, I will not be able to respond to emails or process orders as usual.  I’ll still be able to accept orders, and your credit card payment will go through just fine (that’s all done automatically), but there may be some periods of silence.  I’ve asked my web guru Donal to monitor my site’s admin for me, so if any issues come up, he’ll be on top of them.

I’m hoping for the best, that we’ll get some much-needed rain and we’ll all stay safe.  My preparedness kit also includes a lot of books, and there might be some marathon Monopoly games going on, too, should we lose power and cable.  If you’re on the East Coast, please stay safe.  If you’re told to evacuate, then get the heck out of Dodge.  Prayers go out for all of us and the emergency crews already hard at work helping people.

It hardly seems believable that Summer vacation is drawing to a close.  We’re doing a year-around schedule for homeschool this year, so we’ve already been back to school for a month.  Yet, my Facebook news feed is buzzing with tears and joy from parents whose children are going back to school this week or starting school this week.  Those moms I met in our kindergarten year are wondering how they suddenly have third graders.  I’m right there with them, remembering the excitement my daughter felt about her first day of school and then wiping tears with the moms of her classmates in the parking lot.

I have friends whose children are going back to school and who are delighted.  It’s been a long summer, especially here in Pender County, with forest fires polluting the air to the degree that it’s been unpleasant being out for long.  We endured weeks of 100+ degree temps and are chillin’ with temps around 90 (cold front!).  Our neighbors have dismantled their pool and put it by the curb for trash pick-up, we battled the traffic around UNCW during freshman move-in weekend and amongst my colleagues – fellow soapmakers – the soap pots are brewing up warmer soap fragrances, those that are more autumnal.  Yes, Summer is well and truly coming to a close.

Image by Sara’s Soaps via FlickrA part of me is sad to see it come to a close, yet we’ll be enjoying weeks more of summer temperatures.  After all, Summer doesn’t officially end for almost another month, and with homeschooling, we have the freedom to hit the beach pretty much whenever we wish.  My own soap pot will soon be producing Christmas spice soap, in conjunction with festive Autumn and Winter lotions and lip balms.

If you want to carry a bit of Summer with you, why not grab a Sun On The Go set to take your mind back to that tropical paradise where you vacationed?  You could also pucker up with a delicious fruity lip balm in some awesome flavors!  To celebrate being back at school, pick up some Literary Lip Balms in such fun flavors as The Grape Gatsby, This Side of Paradise and Lip Balm on the Orient Express  Finally, for the parent who’s dealt with Summer restlessness followed by Summer boredom followed by more restlessness, treat yourself to a mini-spa at home.  After all, you now have 6-7 hours a day all to yourself, and my Mediterranean Spa Collection is a great way to pamper your body and your senses.

Do you have children going back to school?  What’s different for you in your home now?


Don’t forget, Free Shipping Friday is happening in TWO DAYS!

My friend Ginger of Neos Creations challenged me over the weekend, after hearing about our plans for our firstborn’s eighth birthday celebration, to write a blog post about how to do a kid’s birthday party on the cheap.  Since I really didn’t have anything better in mind to write about, I decided to take her up on her challenge.

In this day of large bouncy houses, local bands and everything else that goes into making birthday parties bigger and better than what the next door neighbors did, we opted for something more sedate and low-key.  In the past, we’ve done more expensive parties, but we usually favor more intimate parties, conveying our belief that it’s not the extras that make a good party; it’s the time spent with friends (and cake and ice cream, of course).  Last year, when she turned seven, we hosted a soapmaking party, allowing all her friends to make some bars of melt & pour soap they could take with them.  Our ice cream last year was homemade, and every girl took a turn at turning the crank on the ice cream freezer.  For our daughter’s fifth birthday, we rented the clubhouse at our apartment complex (this was what jacked the price up so high).  However, it was much roomier than our townhouse, and we were able to use the pool.  We had a lot of space and just had a blast with our beach party!

This year, our daughter wanted a beach party.  “OK,” I replied, mentally pondering how to convert our home into something with a beachy atmosphere and wishing momentarily that we were back in our townhouse with the clubhouse and the pool.  Then, before I could sink too deeply into “If onlies,” she clarified, “At the beach.”  Now that’s a totally different ball of wax there!  I already had in mind who we’d invite, but I wasn’t sure if their parents would be willing to make the drive.  It’s only 30-35 minutes, but that’s still more than everyone walking over to our house.

We created our plan and the other parents were on board with the idea.  After all, who doesn’t love a day at the beach when you know you’ll have other eyes on your children, right?  That part taken care of, I moved on to the food.  We’d eat lunch at the beach, then come back here for cake and ice cream.  My daughter prefers cupcakes to cake, and I discovered a local baker who makes the most incredible cake creations.  My daughter told me what she wanted her cupcakes to look like, and Monique at the Burgaw Bakery did a wonderful job of making the vision come to life.

Completely homemade cupcakes with fondant flip flops – totally delish!

While these artisan cupcakes were the best I’ve ever had, the other kids only wanted to eat the frosting, so I decided that next time, I’d buy my daughter the mondo cupcake and get the rest of them from the grocery store.  (No offense to Monique, but I have to work on a budget, and I’ve heard rumors about homemade cinnamon rolls in her bakery case, so I think she’ll be getting plenty of money from us in the months to come.  Did you catch that?  Homemade cinnamon rolls.  In our little town of indie businesses.  Woohoo!)

OK, so how exactly did we do this party on the cheap?  Some of it was pure dumb luck.  My daughter picked out the flip flop decor she wanted – invitations, cups, plates, napkins – and with it being so late in the year, everything was half off, including the cool flip flop lights my husband picked up.  We drove to the beach and picnicked on take-out chicken when it was time.  The kids were able to play in the sand and water to their hearts’ content, and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect.  This way, everyone got to play, without us having to worry about party games and stuff like that.  We came home and showered, then all the kids reconvened at our house for cupcakes (sugar-spiked icing?), ice cream and gifts.  Our daughter played with her friends afterward until it was time for everyone to go home.

There seems to be a climate of near-bribery in childrens‘ birthday parties these days.  Children want and expect bigger and bigger gifts, so parents feel, in order to justify that – to soften that blow – they must provide flashier, more elaborate, more expensive birthday parties.  We’re trying to emphasize to our daughter that it’s mostly about the time together.  Sure, gifts are wonderful, and there’s certainly an appeal in sugar-hyping children before sending them home, but time together is so valuable, and it’s here where the memories are made – memories that’ll last long after the last cupcake wrapper has been trashed and the toys have broken, worn out or been donated.  We tried to model this on Friday.  Two little girls – sisters – had been invited to our daughter’s party, but they weren’t able to make it.  The younger one, a little angel who’s three, happened to be at her dad’s (our neighbor) unexpectedly.  Obviously, she didn’t have a present, and she asked if she could stay.  We had cupcakes for her sis and her, anyway, so I told her, “Of course, you can stay!”  It wasn’t about if she could “buy” her way to the party with a present; it was about her presence as a friend of our daughter’s.

What tips or hints do you have for throwing a child’s birthday party without breaking the bank?

Image via Wikipedia

I can’t remember where it was, but sometime last week, I saw a challenge issued in a blog.  This author’s assertion is, those of us in business and with business blogs tend to blog almost exclusively about business.  He further challenged to take a day and write about yourself, opening yourself up and sharing parts of yourself that your public may never see.  This isn’t a bad challenge, and although he was proposing that Monday of this week be that day, I simply ran out of time before now.  So, I’m making this week’s blog post about the real me.

Technically speaking, the me in my blog posts is real.  I’ve blogged about vacations and vacation disappointments, soap production, recipes and day trips.  These are all me, all bits and pieces of my life and that of my family.  This week, I’ll open up a bit more to you, make it less business.

Not only do I run my own business, but I also homeschool my older daughter and am the family’s Minister of Finance.  That means I’m in charge of making sure what’s supposed to go out goes out when it’s supposed to, and holding people accountable for not spending recklessly.  Say my husband wants a brand new flat screen TV.  He can have a brand new flat screen TV – if he can show me how he’ll be able to afford it without compromising the household finances.  It’s up to me to keep things in balance, which I don’t like more often than not, because I feel like the bad guy, always saying, “No, that’s not in the budget.”  (Why don’t homeschool moms run the government?  We’d have the budget balanced and America out of this debt in under six months!)

I love to write, which presents a struggle with my math-lovin’ daughter, who can’t stand writing.  I have a few blogs besides my business one, and I enjoy writing stories with romance and passion – when the time allows for me to indulge my hobby.  It totally blows my mind that she can be my daughter and not LOVE to write.

So, I’m business owner and homeschoolin’ mama and baby wrangler and minister of finance.  My friend Donna Maria said the other evening, “You multi-task like nobody’s business!”  Another friend, Ginger, chimed in, “I want her to bottle that skill and send it to me.”  I only make it look easy.  Truth is, this level of multitasking is draining.  They might admire my multitasking skills, but they don’t see me in the wee, predawn hours of the morning, wide awake because my to-do list is running through my head.  They might see how well I finesse homeschooling and business, but not the heartbreak I feel when one of my girls wants to spend some quiet time with me as I’m scrambling to cook dinner, return emails and throw down just that one batch of soap.  The tension is how to do it all without staying up half the night.  I look at Saturdays and think, Woohoo!  A whole day with backup to get things done!  But then I think, A whole day of family time.  And, yes, there are days I work.  And then there are days – like a couple of weeks ago – when I say, “Let’s go to the beach!”

This coming Sunday, my baby turns two.  Since my older daughter doesn’t do so well with watching her sister getting all the attention, I’m toying with the idea of taking her to a movie on Saturday, just the two of us.  I don’t know.  I’ve got 175 bars of soap to make for an order and some experiments I want to try.  And a party to put together.  It’s hard sometimes.  OK, a lot of times.

As my older one gets older, we have to find new ways of getting along together.  I’ll send her outside to play just to ensure that she gets time to be outside playing with her friends.  This is the same girl who’ll ask me a hundred times a day if she can go outside to play with her friends.  This evening as we sat beside each other on the loveseat, she told me she doesn’t always want to go outside.  I told her that sometimes I want her to go outside so she’ll have a chance to play with her friends, and sometimes I just need a mommy time-out but have to get work done in the kitchen (meaning no hiding out in the bedroom for a bit).  We just have to keep the lines of communication open.

We had some good giggles today.  We decided that our language for this school year would be American sign language, something she’s interested in and something we can learn together.  We were going over hand lettering, and she was looking at her hands as she formed the letters.  I instructed her to turn her hand around; she was talking to herself.  This is fun so far, because it’s like translating English to English, and we both talk with our hands.  Besides, she could use this one day in church to minister to people, something she’s seen done in our church.

I’ve probably rambled enough.  If you could ask me anything, what would it be?  I’m fine with answering almost all questions.

Image via WikipediaOne of the joys of being a small business owner is being able to take a full day off to play – go shopping, go to the beach or just bum around the house in my pajamas.  Last Thursday, despite the 100-degree temps, the girls and I headed down to the beach.  We love going to the one at Ft. Fisher – ample free parking and lifeguards, as well as showers and bathrooms.  Perfect, right?  And Thursday was topped off with just a little more perfection, as the risk warning was low, the water was the perfect temp and the waves were pretty mild.

My recent blogs have dealt with how to fail and succeed in business, and next week I’ll most likely swing back to serious, but I felt the need to post something a little bit lighter.  The third Saturday in June, I vended at the NC Blueberry Festival.  It started with this soap…

You simply can’t visit the Blueberry Festival without indulging in some delicious, locally grown blueberries.  Plump, juicy and sweet, these little blue bits of bliss freeze beautifully and since that very hot day have featured in cheesecake, muffins, pancakes and even barbeque sauce.

Peter’s birthday cake – homemade blueberry swirl cheesecake

Since his birthday fell on a Thursday and I wasn’t a hundred percent prepared to make him breakfast for his birthday (we let him sleep in), the weekend immediately following, I made muffins.  These are blueberry banana with shredded wheat topping (because I hate wasting that half cup of shredded wheat crumbs in the bottom of the box).

Blueberry and Banana Whole Wheat Muffins with Shredded Wheat Topping

We made some beautiful sand dollar cookies, too, but we gave those away before I could take pictures.  I’ll share those later, because those are truly beautiful and cleverly designed.  We’re going to make another batch, because my husband has a wonderful, kick-butt customer who deserves some.

Do you have a favorite berry dish?  Please share it.

I’ve been looking at feet lately – namely, those of my girls.  (It’s crazy where I’ll find inspiration for blog posts sometimes!)  What I’ve observed has some good guiding principles for business.

Observation #1:  My baby likes to walk around in her big sister’s shoes and in my shoes – mainly her sis’s.  How can one apply this to business?  Have shoes in which those coming behind you want to walk.  In a literal sense, if you’re a shoe fashionista, you’re not going to want to put your feet into a pair of grungy, beat-up shoes from three seasons ago.  Likewise with business.  People don’t want to walk in the footsteps of business owners who are behind the times, irrelevant to the current market and treat their customers poorly.  They want to emulate businesses who change and grow with the times, who treat their customers like royalty and who are somewhat adventurous in how they approach business.

Observation #2:  When my baby and I go down the stairs, she’ll sometimes let her foot hover over the next step for a few seconds before stepping down.  She’ll let it hover, pull it back to the step, giggle, let it hover again and then finally step.  It reminds me of when I had to take my deep-water swim test in college to pass P.E.  I didn’t learn to swim until college, and as I stood on the edge of the pool down at the deep end, all I kept thinking was, “It’s over a one-story drop from here to the bottom of the pool.”  Never mind that I’m buoyant and would never have gone all the way to the bottom; all laws of physics were moot at that point.  Besides, the water never studied law or physics.  Well, my baby makes it down the stairs and I passed P.E. (and, therefore, college), but it takes a giant leap of faith.  She has to trust that I’m going to hold her hand, not let her fall down the steps.  I had to trust that the water would, in fact, hold me up.

Business often relies on these leaps of faith, too.  While there’s a lot to be said for planning and drafting ideas, creating a budget around those ideas and so forth, eventually you’ve got to stop planning and just do.  It’s scary.  What if the plan fails?  What if an unexpected expense pushes you over budget?  What if the plan succeeds?  What if you come in under budget with a perfect execution?  Sometimes, success can be just as scary as failure (but in a good way).

Observation #3:  Sometimes, my baby tries to go down the steps too fast and ends up falling.  She takes a step and almost without pausing, she takes another step with the other foot, feeling so successful that she wants to take a bunch more – more steps and faster than she’s ready for.  As it is with business, it can be easy to ride on a success and suddenly want to do more, faster than for which we’re prepared, with miserable results.  Then we need to fight the temptation and stop, proceeding through our next steps slowly and cautiously, being careful to make sure we are firmly stable on one step before going on to the next one.

What are some important steps you’d recommend for someone just starting out in business, taking those initial baby steps?