However, in the meantime, just let me announce that....

I WON A CUSTOM BLOG DESIGN!!!!!!!

I'm so excited about this. I entered a giveaway contest at Mommy's Quiet Time for a custom blog design by Subjective Beauty! I'm so excited. My poor blog needs so much work and I'm so happy to have won this.

So exciting things to come!

I was featured in the Issue 2 of Around zine. :) Around is a homeschooling mini magazine that instead of being comprised of practical and scholarly homeschooling resources, actually focuses more on eclectic issues and ideas that make up the daily lives of homeschooling families.


Laura from Around zine asked to interview me and then she sent me some interview questions. Click to enlarge and then you'll probably have to zoom in a bit to see the article.

Free Hugs

Watch the video.

Woooooooots! Found this when I logged into Twitter this morning.


This is my Rosemary Orange Goat's Milk Soap as it looks on Etsy.

My name was mentioned in The Crafty Crow in regard to my upcoming interview with About zine. It will be in this month's publication. I'm so chuffed. :)


Here's the preview for the issues of About zine.

I just purchased a new soap cutter and got it in the mail a couple of days ago. This is from Anhoki on Etsy. This will cut 12 bars - or 9, or 8, or 6, or 4, or 3 depending upon where you put the combo cutter/divider. With the larger surface area, I should be able to swirl and combine colors a bit better. I can still use my other mold for bars of one color or for bars that the colors don't actually have to blend. I'll be experimenting with my new mold in the next few days. :)

This has been a favorite soap and it was high time to make another batch and tinker with the ingredients a bit. This is a skin loving, nutrient rich, all natural harvest soap. These bars contain real avocado - pureed by me from fresh avocados! Avocados by themselves, don't add a bit of fragrance, so I've scented this soap with a combination of essential oils - lime and patchouli.

Now, there are usually two sides of the fence regarding patchouli. Either you love it, or hate it. Most people I know fall into the later category. So why am I making a soap with patchouli in it? Well I've found that if used in small quantities, it actually adds an intangible type scent to the soap. So it smells like a woodsy, earthy lime. Pretty much what I imagined for my Tijuana Iguana.

Being all natural, the soap is colored with natural mineral pigments for the deep green portion only. The rest is left in its natural state with just a tint of green from the avocado puree.

Besides the usual oils that I put in my soaps, this one contains both castor oil and avocado oil as superfatting agents. The definition of superfatting is basically 'adding in more oil than is required to have a complete reaction with the lye in a batch of cold process soap. The small amount of extra oil left over in the soap adds extra moisturizing qualities to the soap.

Rich in fatty acids and is very soothing and lubricating to the skin. It acts as a humectant and conditioner by attracting and retaining moisture to the skin. Also promotes lather and contributes lots of bubbles to soap.

Castor Oil – (ricinus communis) Rich in fatty acids and is very soothing and lubricating to the skin. It acts as a humectant and conditioner by attracting and retaining moisture to the skin. Also promotes lather and contributes lots of bubbles to soap.

Avocado Oil - (persea gratissima) Rich in vitamins A, D, E, B1, B2, beta carotene, as well as amino acids and protein, pantothenic acid and fatty acids. Known for its healing and regenerative properties. Wonderfully moisturizing and excellent for anyone with extremely sensitive skin. Nourishes and restores dry, dehydrated, and mature skin and especially helpful to skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.

You must watch this and appreciate.

Birds Fly Away by Theresa Andersson.

Thought I'd share this. A couple of nights ago, as my eldest daughter was home for Spring Break, we made one of her favorite meals for dinner. Homemade Lemon Chicken.

It turned out SO good.

My daughter, Emily, originally did the write up for this one over here.

Our Bar None Goat's Milk Soap is all natural, and is just the ticket for people with sensitive skin and people that have sensitive noses. Made with double the amount of goat's milk than any of our other bars, this soap is made to be gentle. Bar None contains absolutely no fragrance and no colorants.

We took some more pictures of the Bar None and as we all gathered around we all came to the same conclusion. The bars look just like vanilla fudge.

This batch of Bar None will be cured and ready for shipment mid April.



My ingredients are as follows:

goat's milk
olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
castor oil

Today's guest blogger is my daughter, Emily.

Haha! I have officially taken over my mom's blog, though she says she gave me permission, I say I've commandeered it. So, on Saturday of this weekend, the fourteenth for those mathematically challenged like myself, Mom and I made a batch of Bar None goat's milk soap. Well... she made it while I watched and chattered her ear off. It turned into a nice buttermilk color as we mixed all the ingredients together in her big pot of soapy goodness. It lightened a bit after that when we poured it into the wooden mold she has, giving it the appearance of some delicious vanilla pudding. She wrapped it up and put in the pantry, trying to save it from poking little fingers. We left it be after that.

The next day, Sunday, we took the Bar None out of the pantry and took the wrapping off, simply to see if it had set up nicely. To our surprise the soap turned out a nice cream color and was ready to cut into bars as soon as we took it out. Mom used her new Feral Moon soap stamp to mark them as her product, before giving them the longest photo shoot I've ever seen soap have. Backdrops and talking to them included. All I did was wield the hammer to hit the stamps. Yay me!


Jenine here again. The wonderful custom stamp done for me (great picture of it below on one of the bars of Bar None) is from Melita at Print Letterpress on Etsy.

Since I like spotlighting my fellow crafters so much, I thought I'd try and do it on a regular basis. Kind of like a show-and-tell for either cool things I've come across and really neat things that I might have purchased in the crafting world. I'm always in awe of the craftmanship and creativity from my fellow Etsians and other crafters so here, I'm going to show them off just a little.

Today's spotlight is going to Small Town Toys for their really nifty Stackers. I purchased the Tree Stacker this past Christmas for my two year old niece for a gift. This tree was beautiful in the photo and even better in person. The colors and workmanship were stunning.


Above, my youngest daughter is giving the toy a good test drive before we wrapped it up for her cousin. She gave the tree was an A+.

This is a nice, solid stacking toy that is bound to get lots of use and wear well. Each piece has been hand painted with non-toxic stand and is cut and stained to order. The stain job was so fresh, we could smell a hint of it when we first opened the parcel! (This wasn't a bad thing.)

When I first ordered this tree stacker, Small Town Toys had both the tree and a Flower stacker. Now they also have an adorable Sailing on the Waves stacker. I'm going to have to think of another child to give this one to!

My niece was just a little young for it, perhaps, since she had just turned two at Christmas time. However, my daughter (who just turned four) showed her how to put it together over and over again. So if it's given to a child that maybe a little young, don't worry - they'll grow into it.

Today, I got something in the mail that I ordered over the last week. Wonderful metal stamps from Melita at an Etsy shop called, Print Letterpress. I ordered a small one with the intention of stamping my thank you notes, but she assured me that the depth of the stamp would mean that I'd also be able to use it for stamping my soaps. She quickly came up with a design for me based on my specifications, and worked with me to get it right. The entire process took less than a day with back and forth communication to get the design right. Plus, I thought I'd use the one stamp for both letters and soap, but she actually included a larger stamp that I could use as my soap stamp! I can't wait to try these out.



Thanks, Melita!

I've hit a landmark number.

According to Etsy...

"30 users call Feral Moon a favorite."

Joy!