Mama On A Mission...

For years now I have leaned toward finding a more natural lifestyle, which isn't always easy. It started small, with me learning about my oldest son having dry skin which turned out to be Eczema, which he inherited from me (who would have guessed it, all those years I thought I just had pimples all over... heh.) from learning we had Eczema to educating myself on the best ways to deal with it, I started to discover that all of the "soap" products we had were really nothing more than chemical filled synthetic products, nothing natural about them, it's no wonder our Eczema was constantly flared up! That's how I learned about all natural handmade soaps, and began making them myself.

I grew up on convenience foods (Hamburger Helper and Rice-A-Roni anyone?) and thought nothing of continuing to eat those after I had children of my own. My family was eating loads of just-add-water "homemade from a box" (as my ex mother in law used to say) meals, generally cooked in a microwave. (Have I mentioned I haven't owned a microwave in 4 years? It's amazing to discover you don't really NEED one!)

I'll tell you that for a good 8 years I fed my own family overly processed, highly synthetic, convenience foods, just like 60% of the rest of the Nation***

In the past 5 years that I have been with my husband, I have learned to make some drastic changes. I started to eat healthier, mostly because he insisted, and gradually I began to like some of it... though I was heavily into the coupon game for awhile and most of what you can get with coupons is convenience foods, so that's what I bought.

Around the time I got pregnant with my youngest, who will be 3 next month, I was starting to really get a good grasp on the whole thing... actually paying attention to what products we use, and more recently what we eat. In recent months I've gotten to the point that I absolutely dread going to the grocery store. I walk through the aisles and I can just feel the labels screaming all their obscene nasty chemicals and additives at me. Two months ago when I went shopping I literally stopped in the middle of an aisle looking around and could just feel myself getting wearier by the second thinking about how I KNEW all the crap that was in the food I was buying, but I felt nearly powerless to do anything about it.

Not anymore!

When we got our income tax return we bought half a cow and a pig from a farm down the road. The meat was butchered by two local meat cutters, and cost maybe $1,000 between the 4 checks we had to make out... was well worth it to have a stand up freezer so full of meat that it was overflowing... AND we supported THREE local small businesses in the process. Our hamburgers and roasts don't shrink when we cook them, and our pork chops have fat that gets crispy not chewy... how's that for GOOD products?

The meat tastes so much better than the junk at the store, and in the end cost about the same, we won't have to buy meat again until fall at least.

We also have 2 chickens who started laying eggs this winter... not a lot for a family of 6 but 2-3 eggs a day is helpful! We are getting a few more chickens to help increase the yield and then we can cut out having to buy eggs... yet one more thing we will know where it came from and what went into it and can feel good about eating it! It's also another good source of meat!

We are working diligently on growing a nice sized garden this year, which I've already mentioned here, and Last time we went for a big grocery shopping, we bought almost all fruits and vegetables, which is great and since we didn't have the added cost of meat to consider, I splurged and got lots of fresh ones and as much organic/natural as I could. We did buy a bunch of pasta and pasta sauce, cause lets face it, my husband is Italian and pasta is one of the ultimate comfort foods (go me!).

I've been researching more about MAKING more foods from scratch, and today I convinced hubby that it would be a great investment to buy a pasta machine. He was planning to save up to buy attachments for our Kitchen aid Mixer (Super frugal find from a couple months ago, I'll write about that soon!), but when I got looking at the cost and everything, explained to him that it might be more cost effective to buy a separate machine. After doing some shopping around and him thinking back on his childhood (his grandmother used to make pasta all the time... heck, probably still does!) we settled on an Imperia SP150 and ordered it from Amazon using some gift cards I've earned from Swagbucks (not many because I just ordered a bunch of books for my son who paid me cash in exchange for the gift cards I used)

We also got a 2mm Spaghetti attachment and a Norpro Ravioli Maker and Press.

Pasta is a big thing in our house, though we pair it with lots of veggies, salad, etc. I like the idea of making it myself so I can control what types of ingredients are going in it... and I think that by including the kids in the process they'll become a bit more aware of what they are putting into themselves and hopefully keep the love of making their own food with them as they grow!




***I have no idea what the general statistics are, but I'd wager on it being more than half, lol

Full disclosure: If you click on any of the links that go to Amazon.com above and purchase any of the items I posted, I'll get a tiny reward for sending you their way, I'm all about saving money though so if you can find it cheaper somewhere else,  more power to ya! As for the Swagbucks link, if you sign up through the link, I'll get matching Swagbucks for your first 1,000, which will net me somewhere around two Amazon gift cards for $5 each :)

Recipe: Monkey Bread Muffins

So let's rewind, back to December 2011. I had just finished closing my consignment store and moving all of my stuff to storage, and it's my first week as a stay-at-home-mom in about 3 years... I'm bored out of my mind, not sure how to pass the time with my 2 1/2 year old who has either tagged along with me to work or gone to daycare since I opened my store.

We decided to make a fun breakfast of Monkey Bread Muffins! I don't follow a recipe for these, I just kinda wing it, but here's about how it works :)

First, get together your ingredients...

• Sugar (I used Organic Raw Cane Sugar)
• Grands Biscuits (any refrigerated biscuit should work)
• Cinnamon
• Powdered Sugar (Not Pictured)
• Water

Next, cut your biscuits into quarters... I used kitchen scissors to cut them into little triangles

Next you roll each quarter into a ball (or let your 2 1/2 year old squeeze them and THEN you roll them into balls!)

Put the balls into the plastic bag with about 1/4 cup each of Sugar and Cinnamon - I put 8 balls in at a time (2 biscuits worth) because that's what fits in one large muffin cup (we use the BIG muffin pans for this, but you can use the standard sized muffin pan and just put 5 or 6 "balls" in) ---- AND SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE!

After you have shaken the living daylights out of those balls of dough and cinnamon and sugar, you put them in the muffin pan, like so

Bake on 350 for about 20-30 minutes (will depend on your oven), start checking them around 20 minutes, pull gently on the top "ball" and if it pulls off some and still looks dough-y, it's not done, put it back in for 5 more minutes... While this bakes, work on your icing!

Put about 1/2 cup of powdered sugar in a cup, and slowly add warm water, stir with a fork until it reaches a thick enough consistency so that it will drizzle off your fork

After your muffins have finished baking, allow them to cool for 10 minutes or so, and then add your icing!

And then enjoy with Coffee or Hot Cocoa! As you can see here, my beautiful assistant enjoyed her hot cocoa BEFORE her Monkey Bread Muffin :)

So sad...

Back in December, on Christmas Eve, while preparing for our annual get-together with Hubby's family, he fell down the stairs. It wasn't a typical case of clumsiness, see half of our house is in a perpetual state of renovation, we tore everything out except the outer walls about 4 years ago, and every time we've thought we might get it done, plans have changed. Over time it's become an unofficial storage area. We were storing some things for my sister-in-law when she moved to North Carolina, and when she came up over the Christmas holiday she wanted to take some of her stuff home with her

Best Christmas Gift ever - Dixie, a rescue dog from NC

So in the process of him helping her bring her things down, she tells him to be careful on the stairs because there is some lumber laying on them. He gets cocky, says he's fine, that he's been up and down that death-trap set of stairs hundreds of times. No sooner does he say this, and he steps on the lumber, slides down the stairs, and then can't walk properly for a good month. After having it examined the day after Christmas at the ER and then by an Orthopedic Surgeon we knew that if it wasn't better by the beginning of February, we'd be looking at surgery.

Luckily for him, it was fine by the beginning of February, and after a month of living on short-term disability we were ready for regular paychecks again. No such luck. Work had no work for him, and he had to use the ONLY 3 weeks of vacation/personal time he gets for the whole year so that we could have an income. After that, still no work. Time for unemployment. It is now March 26th, he's been out of work for over 3 months and home with me every day... As a happily married couple, you'd think we'd be driving each other crazy and just about ready to start calling divorce lawyers by now.... not so much... the last 3 months have been the best in our married life, but alas, it had to end sometime... he went back to work an hour and a half ago, and I'm missing him like crazy already...

However....!

With him being gone, it will be much easier for me to find time during the day to get some stuff updated on the Lupine Ridge website, get some new soaps made, fix some candles that need fixing, and prepare some orders! So thank goodness for the rain today, this momma is gonna be busy!

I love playing dirty...

Or maybe that should be, I love playing in dirt, lol.

Hubby and I spent this past week working on prepping our yard for gardening... three years ago we had a pretty successful garden behind our house in a 10x35 foot strip, utilizing Square Foot Gardening and raised bed practices. It worked out well, but the following year we stripped siding off the back of the house and lead paint got through the garden area, so we had to relocate.

This was our garden that first year

Over the last 2 years whenever we've tried to grow anything, we've had these nasty ground hogs that have eaten everything! And then last year it was the chickens too! This year we got the chickens moved, and are working on gardening in the side yard, which is bigger than what we grew in 3 years ago, but it's also where the kids play, so in taking that into consideration, we've had to be careful about how we plan to plant. Here are some pictures of what we've done so far:

2ft by 32ft, for Corn and Squash type items - the pallet's create a box for potatoes

16ft x 4ft -for Tomatoes and Peppers - Hot boxed

Lots of other stuff has been going on... I sold some of my leftover inventory from the consignment store I closed this past winter, had to restock soap inventory at Madlyn's and lined up another store to put my soaps in... got some new candle sizes and fragrances too!

Honey, Honey, Honeycomb! And new labels!

Here are some pictures of the Oatmeal, Milk & Honey soap I made yesterday... made with real chopped oats and clover honey... I added a cute honeycomb imprint to the top, I love it!

And this, this would be my beautiful new product labels... I left the blank area so I can handwrite the type of soap/candle/etc. Once I get a bit busier I'll have them pre-printed with the different types so I can cut out that extra step, but for now, I think this will work nice! Thank you LOADS to my best friend Alisha Robinson of The Pixel Alley for the beautiful flower logo and her amazing ability to design things exactly right for me with only one try... I don't think I've ever had to send something back to her for adjustment... she's wonderful about just "Getting it!" every time! Love her to pieces :)

Hubby and I decided not to go through with The Big Move for the moment, so instead of being cramped and having soap, candle and mineral makeup supplies and inventory take over every inch of our living space, he's making me my own product lab in the basement! Not sure how long that will take to complete, but you can bet I'll be posting pictures of the progress!

Soap, soap, soap!

Well, the citrusy soap I made with sea salt didn't work out so well, so that's been put away to be turned into laundry soap or something someday...

Today I got some soap supplies I've been waiting on, and made some much anticipated Lilac soap... I was going to try and experiment with color swirling, but I added the color too late in the game, so I just mixed it all in and made it a light lavender color, smells great though!

In the process of making some Oatmeal, Milk & Honey soap now, with real oatmeal and honey and a honeycomb pattern... excited to see how this one turns out :)

Soy candle materials should be here next week sometime, and in a few more weeks I'll be ordering supplies for making Mineral Makeup! Business has been great, and I'm feeling awesome about the direction things are going in!

Busy Day In Kitchen Chemistry!

Today hubby and I each had half the dining room table occupied... He was on his side siphoning off some homemade blueberry wine that has been setting for about a month (time to separate the good stuff from the stuff that's settled to the bottom!) and I was on the other side whipping up a new sea salt soap concoction in my crock pot... I got Oldest Son to help out with that, he zested some orange peels for me while I mixed up the soap and hand chopped some lemon-balm... What we created was something that I hope turns out really well (though in the next batch I may add some citrus essential oils for added fragrance purposes!)... We made something of a Citrus Sea Salt Scrubbing Soap! Working title of course, so bear with me if it sucks, haha...

I put a little White mica in with the stick blender to add a tiny bit of a shimmer, but didn't add much... when we added the orange zest the soap mixture turned a light orange, not sure how it will look once it finishes curing, though it looks a bit more yellow now in the  mold... Put some chopped Lemon Balm in for looks and a little citrus-like fragrance... mixed in fine sea salt and sprinkled coarse sea salt over the top... What do you think? I'll be able to cut it tomorrow, and I'm hoping it doesn't crumble!

 I cut the Cocoa-Mint Swirl soap first thing this morning and FELL. IN. LOVE. - Third time's a charm with that one... I've attempted it twice and it didn't work out either time, but oh my word, it smells DIVINE! Here's a picture!

 While sitting at the table with hubby and smelling this wonderful new soap of mine, we discussed our plans to move... which I realize I haven't announced before now, but that's because it was a completely out of the blue decision! A piece of land and a gorgeous historical house and barn were offered to us at an absolute STEAL of a price... and all I can say is two words... OCEAN VIEW! *Swoon* - We got in contact with the person offering us this huge deal the other night and confirmed with him that we wanted to go ahead with things. He emailed us this morning with some numbers we needed to consider, such as approximate utilities, taxes, maintenance costs, and then some other details he wanted to work out with us... it was a very good email and we are feeling much better about the idea of moving, and the potential income it brings us... during our talk we decided that I will be getting my very own soap lab (OFFICIALLY!) in the new house, where I don't have to worry about picking things up and putting them away so we can cook dinner or eat dinner, or anything else like that, haha... We also discussed the potential (if business keeps on at the rate it's been) to expand to the point that we have an actual retail presence for Lupine Ridge Botanicals right from home! It's all very exciting!

Aside from that, I've spent my day fighting with an almost 3 year old who doesn't want to take a nap, processing soap orders (I got more this morning, AND found out that my soaps are selling well at Madlyn's, a Consignment store in Waterville, Maine... AND, Annie's Consignment Corner, in Derry, New Hampshire contact me and ask about selling them as well!) and next on my list is tweaking some little things on my Soap website and adding some new content pages...

That Was Super Satisfying...!

First meal I've been able to eat since Monday, in a reasonable amount of time, with minimal cringing!

I got my left wisdom teeth out on Tuesday morning, and I think I've eaten a total of 5 meals since then... most of my sustenance has been of the liquid and pharmaceutical forms... No pain meds since 6:30am today though and only minor irritation in my lower gums... this is a plus, especially since the day after my procedure I developed an infection on my jaw and was laid up for the next 24 hours severely swollen and in pain, fighting chills and a fever... I slept Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday away!

Feeling much better now though, and was able to get back into soap making last night! Which is good because my new supplies have all arrived and even though I just launched my website a couple weeks ago, I've received a bunch of orders so my inventory has been running low!

I had a special request for Patchouli, so my first batch after I got my new supplies was a soap I call Patchouli Lavender Ripple. Same basic recipe I use for most of my other soaps except I decided to experiment some more with coloring soaps naturally (previously I've only used Cocoa powder for coloring). I added a little bit of Paprika and didn't stir it in really well so it has some flecks that are darker spots, but the whole bar has a slight orange/tan color to it. What do you think?

Since I've been feeling better I have done 2 types of soap. First batch was to replenish my inventory of Lavender Rosemary Bliss (my favorite so far!) and then re-did a batch I had messed up before... Cocoa-Mint Swirl... I swear it smells like Peppermint Patties! That batch is still in the mold and I can cut it tomorrow, but I'm very excited about how it's turned out so far... Here are some pictures of my latest two batches :)

The bars made with the new mold are not much bigger than the bars I made previously but with my new mitre box they are a much more consistent size and look so much nicer!

I signed up a few weeks ago to donate some samples and a door prize to a fellow small business that is celebrating their anniversary in a couple months... today my tape sealer bags from Cello In A Box arrived and I was able to package up a business card with a sample of my soaps for each of her goody bags. I also created a gift bag with a full size bar of soap and a scrubby that holds the bar of soap inside of it (reduces the risk of losing your soap down the drain, AND exfoliates!)

Here's a picture if the finished sample packs... and if you are looking for packaging ideas, click Here to check out the company and their products!

I'm off to go relax some now that I've gotten so much done today... Enjoy your weekend!