Lovely Buttery

Yesterday, I made a body butter for my Mum to take to my godmother in Menorca next week. I have made them in the past with varying degrees of success, but I am really happy with yesterday's efforts.

It is a shea butter, coconut oil whip with added avocado butter, fragranced with geranium essential oil, and absorbs beautifully. I hope that she is happy with it. It is good to have as many guinea pigs as possible, and the body butter is something which I hope to sell at some point.

It would appear that spring has finally sprung. We have beautiful blue skies and sunshine today, although there is quite a wind which lowers the temperature somewhat. I spent a few hours potting up seedlings and planting seeds in the vegetable patch. The seeds which were planted a couple of months ago - aubergine and tagetes are doing very well, although the celeriac have died a death. The consensus is that it was too warm for them in the propagator. I have put celeriac seeds in the veg patch to see if they will be any more successful. I can't wait to be able to pick and then cook my own veggies.

The clocks to forward early tomorrow morning. That will confuse the animals.

Soap or Croap

A couple of weeks ago I made a batch of my usual soap, and it was a complete disaster. It was supposed to be my first batch for sale, and the really frustrating thing is the waste of essential oils, which are not cheap.

Today, I decided to bite the bullet and make another batch. Just in case, it all went pear-shaped again, I left it unfragranced, and thankfully it worked. I was beginning to think that I had lost my touch, but it has set and cut really well. I was so pleased with the result that I made a fragranced batch later in the afternoon scented with my geranium mix.

I have also, finallly, decided on my packaging. It has taken a while. I kept allowing myself to get distracted by what other people were doing, but once I had decided on a look for the products it all fell into place. Watch this space, and all will be revealed shortly.

This year, I have taken over Dad's vegetable patch. I am really not known for my greenfingered abilities, but I am giving it a go under the watchful eye on my Mother. The garlic is growing nicely - at least the garlic that my brother's dog is not pulling up. I am not sure that she is digging it, but I think that it is more that she tears around the garden like a mad thing, and churns up the plants.
Last weekend, we reinstated the propagator and planted aubergines, tomatoes, salad leaves, celeriac and tagetes (the tagetes are to keep away greenfly and other such creature) and the cucumber seeds went in yesterday. At the moment, we have two aubergines, one tomato and lots of celeriac and tagetes growing nicely. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks the soil will be warm enough to be able to plant seeds directly in the garden. We have lots of other vegetables to go in - garlic chives, leeks, khol rabi, baby turnips, French beans and other things I have forgotten. I am terribly excited about it, although there is absolutely no guarantee of success.
My soap safety assessment came through a little while ago, so I am desperately trying to finish the website, decide how I want my products to look, find packaging, look for boxes to ship my products in, and of course make the products. Still, it keeps me out of trouble. There is a lot of competition about and I need to make sure that not only are the products lovely, they look great too. Decisions, decisions.
The weather this weekend has been glorious, giving hopes of a summer to come. The sun is shining, and the sky is blue although there is still a real chill in the air. I do hope that we have a decent summer this year, we deserve one. The winter seems to have lingered longer than normal, but that may just be my perception. We are in March and still have frosts.