Getting all dressed up!

Grace has hit the stage where she wants to do everything herself. She is also developing strong opinions about what she wants to wear and since she is only 20 months old, this scares me to death!! What is she going to be like when she is 3 or worse yet, when she is 16?! Aaaggghh!!

Anyway, one morning after her bath she wanted to get herself dressed. She began by putting on one of Bob's dirty socks that she pulled out of the laundry basket. It went clear up to her hip! Then she put on his shoe and tried to walk around but the shoe kept falling off and the sock kept sliding down so while I was running downstairs for the camera she pulled those off and decided to try one of Nathan's pajama bottoms instead. One leg in, let's try for two!

Two legs in but something doesn't seem quite right. On the bright side, she is ready for the potato sack race!

Notice how she very cleverly ignored the blue clothes (at the bottom of the picture) that I picked out for her! She is at such a fun age right now. I love watching children starting to figure out the world around them.

A Box Full of Possibilities!

Bob gave me some soap molds for Christmas which reminded me how much I enjoy making soap. I love the chemistry of it all, chemistry I can do right in my kitchen! As it turns out soap is made up of two main ingredients - oil, the very thing soap is so good at cleaning up, and a lye solution which is way too caustic by itself to be good for much. Put them together, add a nice fragrance and something for color and "Viola!" you have the best soap in the world.

Bob and I made a couple of batches of soap together over the Christmas break and we had so much fun together that we decided to use the Christmas money that Grandpa Bill gave us to buy some stuff that we wouldn't normally be able to get. We went online to Majestic Mountain Sage at http://www.thesage.com/ and had a lot of fun picking out a lot of different things. We picked up our order in Logan (where MMS is located) last weekend and it was so fun to bring the box home and go through it. What should we make first? Some Sandalwood shaving soap for Bob, some spearmint lip balm, a headache balm or I even want to try my hand at making my own lotion. So many choices!
In the end I wanted to try some soap made with ground up vanilla beans (for color, smell and texture) and scented with Tahitian Vanilla fragrance oil. So yesterday, while the older kids were at school I laid Grace down for a nap, put in Scooby Doo for Nathan and away we go!
First thing to do is gather everything I needed and prepare the soap molds. The last batch of soap we made did NOT want to come out of the mold! It took two days, two trips to the freezer and finally blunt force, Bob-style to get the soap out! I did not want a repeat of that so I brushed my molds with a little bit of mineral oil this time.
Then I measured out the different oils into a microwave safe bucket. An accurate scale is very important as is a good recipe! You can find some fun recipes on http://www.thesage.com/ as well as this cool feature they have called a lye calculator. You put in how much of each kind of oil you want and it tells you exactly how much lye and water you need to get the job done. You don't want too much lye (burning soap - bad!) or to little - soft, oily soap isn't much good either!
After the oils were ready I measured out the lye, the water and then proceeded to my front porch where I stood upwind to mix the two together. This is where the chemistry starts to get interesting. When you combine the lye and water not only does it temporarily produce fumes you don't want to breath but the whole thing heats up to somewhere around 160 degrees! After it has cooled down a bit I took it back inside. Now, I'm sure some of you are saying "Are you crazy? Lye is so caustic!" Well I was nervous at first too but I realized that I deal with plenty of caustic chemicals around the house anyway. If you treat a lye solution with the same respect you do your bottle of bleach you will be just fine!

After the oils are melted, the lye is ready and the two are about the same temperature it's time to get the party started!

I poured the lye solution into the oils and whipped out my favorite kitchen tool, my immersion blender! It doesn't take long to bring the oil and lye together with the blender, less than a minute with this batch. Before I added the fragrance and vanilla beans I tried pouring just a little bit of the white soap into the bottom of my molds. I wanted the roses and the dragonflies to be white.

This is what the soap looked like after adding the fragrance and ground vanilla beans. Yummy!

I poured the rest of the soap into the molds, covered them with cardboard and then wrapped them up with towels for a long winter night nap.

Wrapping the soap up like this helps the saponification (the oil and lye becoming soap) process. It's so hard not to peek during this stage...

This morning I unwrapped the soap molds and to my relief the mineral oil seemed to do the trick because the soap popped right out. My idea of putting a little bit of the plain white soap in first didn't work out quite like I wanted it too though. When I poured the rest of the soap in it forced the white part out. Oh well, it still looks interesting and I'm sure the soap will clean just as well as if the white part had stayed put! Now I just have to wait a few weeks for the soap to finish curing and then I can try it out. I can't wait! In the meantime, what should I make next???

Congratulations!

My brother John and his girlfriend Bethany came over the day after Christmas for a visit. We were just finishing up a game of Life (which incidentaly, they had given us) and we were chit-chatting about this and that when out of the blue John asked Maddie and Jeni if they would like another aunt! He was so matter-of-fact about the whole think I don't think they quite knew what to think at first. But we are all excited to welcome Bethany to the family. Congratulations on your engagement you guys!!

Building houses

When I was growing up my Mom would make the most amazing gingerbread houses. She made them with windows in them that you could peek through and see Santa and Mrs. Clause sitting next to their Christmas tree in front of a fireplace (with a yellow light behind a felt fire). There were icing stockings on the fireplace and a wreath on the mirror over it. They were incredible and always smelled so wonderful as you were looking inside! It was a tradition I continued for the first few years of our marriage but sometimes life is just too busy and so - you buy a kit at Costco instead! This kit had all the gingerbread pieces already baked and cut out and came with the frosting and candy as well. There were two gingerbread men that we decorated and put inside their house to live for the Christmas season.

Gracie even helped with the decorating. Taste a piece of candy, then put the remnants on the house, taste another piece of candy...

In many ways this kit is so much more fun for the kids. I let them decorate it however they want rather than stressing out about making it look perfect. I also don't care when they pick all the candy off long before Christmas even gets here!

Good job kids, it looks great!!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

The kids woke us up bright and early the morning after Thanksgiving for our traditional "Set up the Christmas Tree" day. Bob and I were not very cooperative and tried to sleep in, but they persevered and were able to drag all the boxes of Christmas decorations up from the basement all by themselves. Unfortunately the Christmas tree itself was to heavy for them so they had to keep coming and poking at Bob until they finally got him out of bed to bring it up for them! After Bob brought up the tree they managed to put the whole thing together except for the top two rows of branches! I helped them with those and put on the lights and the angel at the top and they decorated the rest of the tree. I think having the kids do most of the work is definitely the way to go! Now if only they would be this eager when it's time to take everything back down...

Saturday we made our annual trek to a tree farm where you can find the tree you want and cut it down yourself. We picked out this tree for us and another tree for Bob's dad who decided that he wanted to spend Thanksgiving weekend in the hospital instead. Silly Grandpa!

Yay for big, strong husbands who can single-handedly cut down and haul away two trees all by himself while the rest of us followed behind and cheered him on. Someone had to take the picture, right!

It was tricky trying to close the car doors so we could go home!

Trick or Treat!

We had some happy haunters at our house this year. Maddie was a lovely renaissance princess in red and gold. Jeni was a fifties girl although she had a hard time remembering what decade her costume was from. 50's or 80's? Whatever it was she was cute and loved having a pink costume.

Nathan was a dragon again and loved to growl at anyone he could.

Gracie was a leopard this year and it looks like she is trying to take a bite out of my leg in this picture. Watch out for her!

I saved my leg by finding some chocolate for my ferocious feline! That is the preferred food of this little cat!

Happy Halloween!

I love fall!

At the beginning of October we went up the Blacksmith Fork Canyon to enjoy the beautiful fall leaves. We got there in the early evening and the kids had so much fun throwing the leaves around, throwing rocks in the nearby stream and waiting anxiously for Uncle John and Bethany to arrive so we could start a fire and have a picnic dinner.
Grace tried to copy her older sisters but her arms just aren't long enough!Nathan was ready to eat!I love the way the air smells when fall comes and the chill that comes in the evenings. I love the brilliant colors of fall, as if nature is cutting loose and putting on one last grand show before going to sleep for the winter under a blanket of white. I love fall!