Lavender soap

I'd hoped to write yesterday about things rattling around in my mind, but I woke up at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning with a screaming UTI and ended up drinking copious amounts of water mixed with cranberry juice from then until at least 8:00. Not. fun. Then, when the symptoms started to subside, I was hit with stomach cramps of the type that would seem I had eaten something bad. I was cramping up all day yesterday and was tired from not much sleep the night before and got nothing done. Zip. Nada. If you only know how much I hate non-productive days at home. I'm home so little that when I am, I want to do.

But, today I am better - though am still downing lots of water - and have an apple crisp in the oven and finally took pictures of my lavender castile soap. It's 70% olive oil like my rose soap. It was so soft that I had to wait about five days before cutting it and it's still soft. But that's pretty typical of olive oil soaps; they take longer to cure. I am not very happy with the scent. It's a phthalate-free lavender fragrance oil that smelled nice out of the bottle, but once in the soap, saponified, I'm not too impressed. I'm sure some people will like it, but I'd never buy it for my nose, but at least it's not very strong. I didn't put any color in the soap, and with the ingredients I used, it turn out a soft yellow... kinda pretty... looks a little like butter. See?

Those are lavender buds on top just for texture and color - and fun. The soap hasn't been neatened up at all and looks a little rough, but I like its appearance. You can see, again, some white in the soap that is kaolin clay. This recipe is almost exactly like the rose soap.

I have a vacation day tomorrow since I forgot and went to work this past Monday. Now I'm glad I did! I'm hoping to make some bath bombs and a few other things, but we'll see how it goes. If they turn out, I'll post pictures.