Journal

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It's now just a plain ole Journal!

April 25th, 9:47pm CDT

 

Ok my dear Aunt Julie & cousin Amy brace yourselves...2 updates very close together! Don't faint!!!! heeeeee.

Well I'm getting ready to rework this website. It will be slow going but hey, what else is new! I've had to take down the old Journal Pages to make some room on my host. I've got the quilts I had been doing finished and have to deliver the last one. One of my eBay friends is deployed here in the States with the National Guard. Before she left she sent me a HUGE box of fabric and some more Dresden Plate blocks she found (I had bought some from her). She asked me to finish some of them out into a quilt for her daughter and she also found a crazy quilt her grandmother made. That one she'd like quilted for her son. Since she's such a sweetie & I love her to pieces I said of course! So I'll be working on those for her.

Calving is coming along at a fair clip. I stink at tagging calves. I only do the easy ones the ones who act nutso I let Frenchie deal with. I'm evil :0)! I just got home from Ladies Night out. It was a lot of fun. My cousin & some of his friends did the program. They sang a lot of good songs & sounded wonderful. I sat at their table and had a nice visit with them.

Deshia & Austin went to Fun Night at the school and they had a lot of fun. I got home and Deshia had her finger & toe nails painted all purty with the polish she got. So far I haven't seen it on anything except her so she did pretty good. Jacob didn't want to go so he came home and help Brett with chores. They did good this time since they had most of the chores done before Daddy got home.

Tomorrow Brett has District Band and he's excited about that. Jacob has a birthday party to go to tomorrow. This should be interesting since they are going to be doing Paint Ball! I wonder what color he'll be when he gets home LOL! Deshia has a birthday party to attend on Sunday too. Poor daddy is not going to get much help this weekend and Saturday is his day off. Hmmmmm, maybe I ought to go find someplace to hide before I get recruited! Well that's about all the news for now!

May 8th, 9:37 am CDT

Hi again :0) Well it's been busy lately. The kids have had so many activities and everyone is going in different directions. I'm beginning to be ready for school to be out! We're getting close to the end of calving. I still stink at tagging but getting a little braver if I have one of the kids with me. At least when they are with me someone can go for help if the cow nails me good LOL.

Frenchie got the field fertilized last night so as soon as it's dried up some we'll be able to plant the field & sweet corn. I'm hoping the sweet corn does well. Haven't raised a good crop in my little garden. Maybe it will be different this time. I bought my garden seed and some plants yesterday. I'm starting to get antsy about getting my garden in. Hoping the hoppers don't wreak havoc with it this year. I'm wanting to grow herbs & flowers for my soaps.

I have the bare bones of the site for my soaps up now. If you want to bookmark it the URL is http://soaps.heartlandquilting.com. I'm going to be trying out a new lotion recipie I wrote today. I finally found a lab that can test my lotions for me. As soon as I come up with a recipie that I like I can get it sent off for testing. I was hoping to find a lab in-state but no such luck. I got the name of a lab in Minnesota so I'm going to use them.

Lil Miss is home with tummy troubles today. I'll end now as I have to go look for new babies!

June 10, 2003 11:24pm CDT

Where does the time go? Figured I better get something written! School's been out a while and I'm counting the days until August LOL! Not really, my chores have become the kid's chores so that means I get to spend more time soaping and experimenting with new formula's!

Mother Nature has been pretty good to us lately. We haven't had to fire up the irrigation well yet, planning on it pretty soon though. I finally got the rest of my garden planted so now we'll have to see if I can get anything more than weeds to grow. The kids have been busy cutting hay, checking cows and what not. Brett is making a go cart out of an old lawn mower. He said the other day he's about got it done. He can't quite get it started but he's getting there. Austin & Deshia have been running the lawn mowers and practicing washing the car. I inherited Rylie's old car - I love it! I doesn't hop the mud as well as the old rust bucket but now the kids can ride with me without being crammed in the pickup.

The other day I took a bunch of my soaps into the beauty shop in Litchfield. Kim had gotten a hold of some that I made for the church ladies and asked if I'd like to put some in there. I said sure since I'm running out of room here at home. We'll see how that goes. I'll have to re-do my soaps webpage. My Summer Melon soap isn't as pretty as it once was. I used Chlorophyll to color it and found out later that the color would turn as it cured. It's just about all cured out and now it's not a pretty green anymore. It's more of a greyish green. I made some more the other day & used my Labcolors so hopefully in about another 6-8wks it will be still be pretty when it's cured.

I'm still experimenting with lotions. It is so much fun to sit down and write the formula's for soaps & lotions. I've made a few batches and so far 2 of them are holding up. One batch was a real diappointment - Summer Melon again. I put it out in the hot car to test it out - see how it would stand up to the heat and such. LOL it flunked BIG TIME! Seperated out something fierce. Lotions will be a while in the coming. I plan on giving them a good go around at home to see how they fair while I write up different formula's to find the one that suits me best. I learned about how to match the emulsifier's to the oils so you can get a more stable emulsion. So now I just need to get more supplies so I can play more. I told Frenchie as much as I hate math you'd think I'd pick something else to tinker with! There's a wonderful man who shares his knowledge of how to formulate lotions & such on a soaping forum. He's my hero and so is Frenchie - Frenchie has to interpret a lot of things to get the light bulb to go off for me. I just love it though. I have learned so much lately, and I need a good swift kick in the butt for not doing better in school!

Tonight I tried my hand at making transparent soap. On the soap forum a couple of poster came up with two different formula's for Syndet Bars (Synthetic Detergent Bars). I would have loved to try theirs but I didn't have the raw materials they had. So I decided to bite the bullet and try out the one I had that used Everclear. While searching I found out I had an ingredient that I could sub for the Everclear so I tried it. So far it looks like trasparent soap. It's not clear more of an amber light orange color you can see through. It's setting up now so I'll know later if it flopped or not.

Well I guess that's about all the news for now. Until next time :0)