Vacation's over... time to blog!

Well folks... where to begin? I had a super fun trip. Funny though... I thought we cleaned the house before we left. So this morning was spent tidying up.

You know good and well though that the first thing I had to do when I got back was to check on whatever soap project I had on the soap shelf.

So what you are looking at here are some seashell soaps. They were really tedious to make. First off... I need to give credit to PJ Soaps and Brambleberry for their tutorials on the melt and pour variety of these soaps. The soaps in the picture are actually layered cold processed soap. So it took me about three days of soaping for a little batch of twelve small soaps. They look really neat... but I think it's too much for the work. However... I would consider trying these again by using a swirl technique instead of layers. Once I did the first dark layer, I carved out channels and poured a light layer... then finished off with the dark. It's cocoa soap with cocoa butter on the dark and shea on the light.

Like I said, we had a great trip. On the way back we stopped in Leavenworth again. Lucky for us, there was an accordion festival over the weekend, so there were some Lederhosen sightings.

Now for those of you who aren't familiar with Leavenworth... in short... it's a town nestled in the Cascades that was settled by Germans and is modeled after a little German town. What can I say... I only dig the town of Lynden more because it is Dutch and if you know me... then you know how I feel about Dutch things. (Pardon my punctuation.)

Anyway, Leavenworth is pretty neat. All of the signs are catered to the feel of the town.

This is the 76 Station and a Subway sign. But all of the signs are like that. Cold Stone... you name it.

The town pretty much looks like this. The soap shop was closed again. Which I think is really weird for a Friday when the accordion festival is in town. But I won't dwell. A good time was had by all. We're glad to be home.

More soap tomorrow! - H