I’ve been very happy with the homemade deodorant though I hadn’t found a delivery method I was happy with until I found empty deodorant tubes on Etsy. Having just finished up batch #1 I made up another batch to try out my new tubes. This time I let the mixture cool in the refrigerator, stirring frequently to keep everything in suspension. When it was about as thick as pudding I transferred it to the tubes. It set up very fast so that went well with tube #1 but not so well with tube #2. I won’t chill it quite as much next time. I let those solidify in the fridge overnight before using them. They are quite stable at room temp now and I am very happy with my new tubes. When this batch is gone, I plan to try adding some BioKult probiotic as a modification to the current recipe. I got the idea from this recipe.

The holiday gift parade continues with some whipped body butter. My normal recipe uses shea butter but I belatedly discovered I was out and Google turned up this alternative. I added spearmint essential oil to one batch and lavender essential oil to another. It sets up firmer than my usual recipe but it melts very easily and absorbs quickly.

The new metal bath bomb molds are ace. I just need a bit of practice determining how much witch hazel to use as it’s a fine line between crumbs, just right, and setting off the fizz reaction. These are rose scented with a sprinkle of rose petals and some pink mica for color.

I’m testing out a new bath bomb recipe that has shea butter in it for moisturizing and cornstarch which is supposed to make it float as well as being good for your skin.

I’ve started to have allergy/sensitivity issues with deodorant over the past several months and have been searching for a solution. The commercial “all natural” deodorants have been less than satisfactory so when a friend pinned a recipe for DIY I was all over it. So far it beats the commercial  “all natural” hands down. I chose a combination of mint and lavender essential oils (3 ml each if you are wondering) but I think next time I’ll go with straight lavender as they seem to clash a bit. I also had to guess on the amount of vitamin E since the original recipe calls for capsules but I get mine in liquid form from Brambleberry. I’m guessing 1 ml of vitamin E is sufficient.

This week I’m working on bath bombs again. Relative humidity seems to make an enormous difference in how much witch hazel you need to add. I was afraid to add too much so these are a little crumbly. I think I need a weather station so I can record the humidity each time I make them. These are lavender and part of my lavender essential oil sampling. I bought 4 new varieties to try and this one is Lavendin aka Lavandula hybrida.

For dinner we had a nice chicken tikka masala made with a spice pack that came to me all the way from the UK where the dish was first created. It has onion, garlic, ginger, hot chili peppers, crushed tomatoes, yogurt, chicken broth and cilantro as well as the chicken. The spices were equal portions of cayenne, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric and ground cardamom.

The pumpkin lasagna only used half the pumpkin so what to do with the leftovers? How about moist and delicious pumpkin cake. I replace 3T of oil with butter, added pecans and baked mine in a round pan rather than a bundt pan.

and to finish off the week of skin care experimentation I made a batch of mint soap and another attempt at massage bars. These bars are much closer to what I want, just a wee bit too firm so next time I’ll  replace some of the cocoa butter with shea butter which has a lower melting point. I can now reclaim my kitchen table until after Thanksgiving.

There is a lot of conflicting information out there on soap making both in books and on the web. I’ve been gradually finding out what works for my base recipe and I think I have finally found the bottom and top of the temperature range for my ingredients before I mix them. Yesterday’s batch of Sandalwood soap turned out very nicely. I’ll still have to be cautious each time I try a new essential/fragrance oil but I suspect most will behave nicely if I stick to the center of my range. A temperature too low means the beeswax will come out of solution, a temperature too high means my soap will go to trace too quickly causing lumpiness and sometimes scorching/discoloration.

My second attempt at making bath bombs was a resounding success. The tip to add witch hazel from a spray bottle gave me the control I needed. I had only the tiniest bit of foaminess and my bath bombs turned out firm and well shaped, they popped very easily out of their molds. I was using up little bits of essential oils so these are scented with amber and geranium.

Jason was planning a beef stew over the weekend but wasn’t feeling up to it on the day so he made a salad and left the thawed CSA stew beef for me to cook Monday night. I also had some white wine left over from the weekend so made this delicious stew.

Yesterday there was a flurry of activity here at Stoneview. I finished the free motion quilting on the table runner in order to clear the machine for another project. I also made some lotions bars- lavender, sandalwood and mint (my favorite).

Next up was a batch of rose scented soap. I’ve made this before and it didn’t scorch like this. I *think* I need to let the oils and sodium hydroxide solution cool more before I combine them. I keep careful notes each time I make soap so that eventually I should be able to figure this out. It doesn’t help that each essential or fragrance oil acts a bit differently. This soap went to trace very quickly and was a bit lumpy when I poured it into the molds.

I finished my long day by making a batch of chicken and dumplings with our  CSA chicken. A new 6-month CSA share has just begun and we opted to leave out the lamb this time which means more chicken. My method for these was just like chicken soup only I added the dumplings for the last 15 minutes of cooking. I haven’t settled on a dumpling recipe yet but this time I followed Tyler Florence’s recipe for dumplings. I used a bit of dill in my soup and dumplings because I know Jason likes it and I had some potatoes that needed to be used up so there are potatoes in here as well. I like to have a lot of veg in my soup so there is also a good deal of carrot, onion and celery.