Candles

I love candles. I've always got a candle or tart burner going. I've gotten back into making them now too. My mom has been looking for something to do ~ she is bored out of her mind since she retired. I tried to get her to help me make soap, but it wasn't for her. She decided she wanted to help me make candles. So, I've been teaching her how to make them the past couple of weeks. So far, she's done a good job. Tomorrow I'm going to show her how to add color and make layered candles. Once we get them made and tested, I'll start listing them.

50 Available Scents:

Almond Cake ~ Amaretto ~ Apricot ~ Banana Nut Bread ~ Black Cherry ~ Black Raspberry Vanilla ~ Blueberry Muffin ~ Bubble Gum ~ Butt Naked in Bed ~ Butter Pecan Pie ~ Caramel Toffee ~ Carrot Cake ~ Cherry Pie ~ Chocolate Mint ~ Cinnamon Bun ~ Coconut Vanilla ~ Cucumber Melon ~ Endless Love (VS Type) ~ Espresso ~ Eucalyptus ~ Fresh Baked Bread ~ Fresh Comfort ~ Fresh Linen ~ Hot Apple Pie ~ Jack Frost (Type) ~ Lavender ~ Lemongrass Sage ~ Lovespell (VS Type) ~ Magnolia ~ Milk & Honey ~ Oatmeal Raisin Cookie ~ Passionfruit ~ Peach ~ Peanut Butter ~ Pear Glace ~ Pineapple Coconut ~ Pomegranate ~ Pumpkin Pie ~ Red Currant ~ Red Velvet Cake ~ Rootbeer ~ Strawberry Cheesecake ~ Strawberry Shortcake ~ Tropical Fruit Salsa ~ Vanilla Bean ~ Vanilla Hazelnut ~ Warm Vanilla Sugar ~ Watermelon ~ Wedding Cake ~ White Tea & Ginger

I Wish I Was A Little More Crafty

I'm not a crafty person. Not one little bit. So imagine my dismay when my youngest son brought home a paper from school about the upcoming play the 1st graders are doing. I have to make him a costume. He can choose to be a forest animal, a nut or a bird. He decided he wants to be a skunk. That should be easier than some of the other choices to make. Thank goodness I have a month to get this ready for him.

My Favorite Soap on Etsy!!

I love getting packages in the mail and today I hit the jackpot! I got my soaps from Bare Bumm Bathworks!! Not only does this lady make the best soap I've found on Etsy (besides my own), she is the sweetest seller too! Her soaps always smell wonderful and they create tons of fluffy lather (I love lots of lather!) and leave my skin feeling so clean and soft. They also last a long time ~ I hate when I buy soaps and they melt away in a matter of weeks. The scents last and last too! I've bought other soaps only to have the scent disappear after sitting in my shower for two weeks, but I've had one of her soaps in my shower since Christmas and it still smells as good as it did when I got it. Even my mom, who doesn't appreciate handmade soaps like she should, absolutely loves her soaps. She's always commenting about how soft her skin is and how she doesn't even have to use lotion anymore since she started using them.

Here are the three I got today:
The one one the left is I Want Candy. It smells just like a sucker! My boys loved it and took it upstairs to put in their bathroom.

The soap in the middle is All Juiced Up. It does smell like Juicy Coture and it smells wonderful!! I love the color of this soap, it pops!

The soap on the right, the Breath of Fresh Air, is my favorite. It's minty (I'm a sucker for anything minty) and fruity and very fresh.

My Other Obsession (Fish, Not Soap)

I got some new mushrooms for my tank today and managed to get pictures of some of my camera shy critters too!

These mushrooms are my favorite ones so far. They're teal with purple around the edges.

This starfish usually hangs out on the glass at the back of the tank or in the rocks, but it was out in front today.
I got this big rock with 11 green mushrooms on it today. The shrimp came out of his rock cave to check it out.
My Mandarinfish. He usually hangs out on the back of the rocks so I was surprised to see him out.

This is Spike. He's my meanest looking fish.

Hungry?

I know not to order molds when I'm hungry because this is what I end up with!

Carmel Latte Soap and New Scents

I made coffee soap. My whole house smells like Carmel Latte. I almost want to run down to Starbucks and get one now! I got my new fragrance order today. I've been reading the comments on A Giveaway A Day and have a few more I want to order now too. The fragrances I got today are:

~Acai Berry
~Apricot & Honey
~Be Delicious (DKNY Type) - A blend of green apple, grapefruit and white amber.
~Breathe Happiness (BBW Type) - Citrus Watermint (My absolute favorite from Bath and Body Works)
~Brown Sugar
~Buttered Popcorn
~Candy Corn
~Caramel
~Caramel Popcorn
~Cheesecake
~Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcake
~Cookies & Cream
~Curve Crush (Liz Clairborn Type)
~Deep Cool Water (Davidoff Type)- Notes: Mandarin, Kiwi, Cactus, Clary Sage, Cedar, Elemi, White Musk, Hinokiwood, Smokey Gaiacwood.
~Drakkar Type
~Dried Bud
~Dulce de Leche
~Fresh Comfort (Yankee Candle Type) - My favorite from Yankee Candle. I almost cried when they discontinued it.
~Fresh Dirt
~Graham Crackers
~Kama Sutra Aphrodisiac
~Toasted Marshmallow

I'm off to make more soap before the boys get home from school!

My Fish

It's been a year since I switched my big tank from fresh water to salt water. I can spend hours looking at my tank. Every fish has its own personality and habits. There are always new things coming out of the rocks like starfish and snails. My corals and mushrooms spread and end up in new places. Here a few of my favorites from my tank!

This is my Pink Spotted Goby. He lives in a cave under these rocks with a Pistol Shrimp. He spends the day perched outside the entrance to his cave. Every once in a while he darts out and picks up a shell or a rock to take inside his cave.This is my favorite hermit crab. It's an Electric Blue Hermit Crab. This is my Harbour Goby. He stays in the back of the tank under the rocks that the starfish like to stay under. He rarely comes out except to eat.
This is the Bi-Color Blenny. Most of the time he just kicks it in a hole in the rocks with his head sticking out. It's cool to watch him move from hole to hole. He swims pretty fast and backs into the hole.
These are my Clown Fish. The stick to the group of rocks in the middle of the tank. One of them sleeps on his side. The first time I saw it, I thought it was dead.

Ready for Spring!

I am so ready for Spring! I love the warmer weather. I am so sick of having to brave the bitter cold just to take my kids to school in the morning. Okay, it's not the bitter cold when it's 40 degrees outside, but it seems like it. I can't wait to drive my car around with the top down without having to turn on the heated seats and the heater, or having the boys beg for me to put the top back up because they're cold!

I can't wait for my grass to come back. It's so brown and ugly right now. I want to plant some flowers and work on the backyard a bit. I might even plant a little garden. My trees will get leaves again too! Right now it looks like I got some dead branches and stuck them in the ground out back.

My favorite part about Spring is Spring Break. It always falls around my birthday! We'll probably do the same thing we always do, kick it in San Diego for a week. The kids love San Diego. They love the beach and Sea World. It's close enough for me to drive to and I know my way around. It's always fun and relaxing. We found a beach where whole sand dollars wash up (not just broken pieces) and the kids will stay out there and collect them for hours. One time a surfer dude gave my son this huge clam ~ it was like 8 inches across. I didn't realize he kept it and by the time we got home to Arizona in 110 degree heat, it stunk!!

I've been ordering new molds for Spring. I really need to stay away from EBay:-)

I Really Hate Snow!

There was a storm moving in last night and it was supposed to rain. I love the rain! I watched the 10 o'clock news and it said the snow level could drop to 4000 feet. We're at just under 3000 feet here, so I thought I was safe. I woke up at 3 this morning because the wind was blowing really hard against my window. I looked outside and everything was covered with snow. Not just a light dusting of it but inches of the white stuff! I pulled the covers back up over my head and went back to sleep.

I got up later to take the boys to school and it had already started melting. I did still manage to throw a couple snowballs at them as I was clearing the snow off the windows of the car to take them to school.

I got back home and all I want to do is crawl back into bed but I can't because I have so much to do today.

Fruity Soaps, Easter Eggs and Broken Flip Flops

I made soap today. First I made some fruity soaps. The red and cream color is Cherry Pie, the yellow is Lemon and the green and white is Coconut Lime.
































I got my Easter Egg molds today, so I had to test them out. They turned out pretty good.











I have lots of spring and summer molds I need to get out. I made these flip flop soaps today. I made them in the colors of my favorite pair of flip flops that I just happened to break yesterday:-(

Beautiful Day For A Picnic

Today was a great day for a picnic, so we took the kids and headed up the mountain. Only one of mine wanted to go, the other one was too busy playing Halo 3 on the XBox. My brother and his 3 kids went too. They has fun throwing rocks in the creek and going on little hikes. Thankfully, they didn't find any frogs this time. Last time they found a frog and decided to take it home ~ it got out on the way home and started jumping around the car!




Jayden coming back from one of his hikes.



My nephew










My niece. She looked like an alien for the longest time, she's finally starting to look cute!



We stopped at the cemetery on the way home. The headstone for my Grandpa's grave finally arrived and we wanted to see it. When he died, the mortuary was supposed to handle getting one from the VA, but they never did. So we finally just went and bought one ourselves.

I'm So Excited!

My brother was over tonight and we cooked hot dogs and s'mores out back for the kids. We were sitting around the fire pit and he mentioned that he wanted to go see David Spade at the Improv. David Spade is one of my favorites! I saw him in Vegas many year ago and I laughed my ass off. I've always wanted to go to another one of his shows.

In high school, we had this Spanish teacher who would teach for the first 5 minutes of the class and then pop Saturday Night Live into the VCR for the rest of the hour. Every single day! He recorded them all so we would watch them over and over and he would sit at his desk and drink coke after coke and eat. Needless to say, I didn't learn much Spanish....but I could recite every skit from that season ~ Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey, It's Pat, Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley, Cajunman and Operaman, Coffee Talk, Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker & The Gap Girls.

I came inside and bought tickets and now I can't wait until Wednesday!

New Soaps

I made a few new soaps this past week. They turned out good.

Yuzu ~ Japanese Grapefruit













Love Spell

Smells like Polo Blue.