Body and Linen Spray

In the past, one thing a homemaker did was use linen spray to freshen the bed sheets between washes.  It was quite simple to spritz them when the bed was made each morning.  The reward was a lovely fresh scent of lavender or other calming, relaxing herbals rising softly when the covers were pulled back at night.

This has become a rare practice today.  And it is one that adds that special something to your home--it makes home a special place, a comforting place, a place of refuge.  It associates home with pleasant smells and will bring home to mind every time that smell is encountered the rest of your life.

Linen sprays are very simple to make and there are numerous recipes online. 

You can use any herbal scent you prefer...for bed linens a calming herb is best.  However, you can also spritz the towels in the linen closet and your undergarments in the dresser drawers.  If you make your own soaps, lotions, bath salts and scrubs, you might prefer to use the same scent for your undergarments...and when you make your own linen sprays, you can do that.  Linen spray can also double as a body spray; again, you might like to layer the scent by using it in all your personal body products.

I offer these for sale as part of our bath/body line of products.  As you can see, you only need some sort of spray bottle to hold your spray and these can be found in most discount stores very inexpensively.

This only takes a few minutes to prepare and minute to use each day...consider adding your own special scent to your bed linens and make your house a special place for your family.

Lotion Bars

Another item in my bath/body line of products is lotion bars.  These are a hard bar of lotion, similar to a bar of soap.  You rub it between your hands or on your body and the heat from your body melts the bar and leaves the lotion behind.

I much prefer these to the typical bottle of lotion.  I use less this way--and I am not a fan of having all that lotion liquid on my hands.  I can easily tuck a lotion bar into my purse and take it with me.  I can make my lotion bar in a scent that matches my soap, bath salts, and sugar scrubs.  And when I make it myself, I know what is in it.

This is what my lotion bars look like.  Since I sell these, I make them in batches that produce 7 bars at a time.  You can adjust recipes to make just one or two at a time if you prefer.

There are numerous recipes online for lotion bars.  You can do basic bars using cheaper oils and butters or you can make luxurious bars using more expensive oils and butters.  The choice is yours when you make it yourself.

They are made using a double boiler setup.  The oils/butters/beeswax are melted in the top pot.  Scent is added if you like(I don't add colorant) and then the liquid lotion is poured into molds and allowed to cool and harden for several hours before unmolding.

You can use many different things as molds.  Some online stores sell tins for this type of use.  You can use silicon molds available in many stores--cupcake molds, tart  molds, brownie bite molds, etc. 

 

I use a 12 cavity rectangular silicon mold I bought from Amazon.  You can see them in the above picture.  My son is cleaning the molds out before we begin measuring and melting oils and butters.  In the forefront of that picture, the two Tupperware containers hold the starters for our sourdough bread.

 

 

This is a close up picture of the mold I use, placed upside down.

And here one of my lotion bars is packaged up, ready to sell.

Bath Salts and Sugar Scrubs

I have a bath/body product line that I make and sell through my husband's business.  The soap I make is part of that.  Bath salts and sugar scrubs are another part of that line.

I make bath salts and sugar scrubs in scents to match my soaps.  Pictured above is Southern Belle.  I color the bath salts, but not the sugar scrubs.

My children help me to make these.  They are incredibly simple to make and there are many recipes available online if you'd like try your hand at it.

This is another way you can be thrifty and save money--make homemade beauty products instead of buying high cost items at the store.  They also make lovely gifts for friends and family.

 

Pictured above is Florida Sunrise.

Fall Table Linens--An Overview

When I made the Fall Kitchen Linen set for my daughter's hope chest, I also made a matching table linen set.

I used the foundation fabric--the leaves/flowers on a baige background--to make 2 table toppers.  Each was 1 full yard, hemmed all the way around.  Then I used the brown, yellow, and reddish fabrics to make more table toppers, 2 of each fabric.

These can be mixed and matched to decorate a table, giving my daughter 7 different looks.  The table toppers protect the tablecloth, extending its use.

I also used a baige fabric to make a dozen napkins.  These are approximately 15 x 15 and were hemmed all the way around.

If she has a dine-in kitchen one day, the matching kitchen linen set and this table linen set will coordinate nicely.  If not, she still has a nice fall table linen set to use.  And her fall apron will not clash when she is serving food in the dining room.

More New Soap Looks

I promised a picture of our new Summer Sky when it was cut...and here it is.

It turned out better than I had hoped...the white does look like fluffy clouds on a blue sky as I had envisioned.  All in all, I am very pleased!  This is an example of using two colors and a textured top.

Here is a picture of the new look for our Sweet Pea soap.

This is a three layer soap using two colors.  I think it looks good, but I have an idea to make it even better and will try it the next time I soap Sweet Pea.

Homemade Bread

We make bread almost daily at our house.  Not only are we big bread eaters, but our family also sells homemade bread in our business.  Our speciality is sourdough bread.

We got some starter from a dear friend, LMM, who had starter that was known to be 30 years old!  We keep two very large containers full of starter going because we make between 3 and 6 loaves at least 5x a week.

We make cinnamon sourdough, plain sourdough, and garlic cheese sourdough breads to sell.  Our family eats the day old bread that didn't sell.

One advantage of homemade bread is that you know exactly what is in it.  And it doesn't have artificial preservatives and chemicals, a major plus for those who prefer healthier foods for their families.  The taste of fresh baked bread is on a whole other level than store-bought bread.

Our daily routine involves feeding the starters every morning and letting them sit out all day.  In the evening, we use the starter to mix our dough, cover it, and let it sit out rising overnight.  The next morning, we kneed our dough and divide it into portions which we form into loaves, place into pans, and let rise all day.  That evening, we bake our bread.  None of the steps take very much time--it's the sort of thing that you can do in a couple of minutes here and there in the morning and evening.  But it gives the phrase "our daily bread" a whole new meaning!

If you don't need the volume of bread that we do, you can use the starter only once or twice a week, even once every two weeks, leaving it in the fridge in between times.

We make toast, garlic toast, cin toast, French toast, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other fresh sandwiches out of our bread.  And if we are lucky enough to get it hot from the oven, we devour it plain.

We also use the sourdough to make homemade pizza crusts and *hot pocket* type meals.

Anyone can do this.  My daughter, aged 12, has been in charge of making the bread for our use and for our business for a year and a half now.

You can find many different recipes online for sourdough starters--they don't have to be old to be useful--and those recipes will give you instructions on using the starter to make bread and other things like pancakes.

Kitchen Linen Set for the Hope Chest--An Overview

For my daughter's recent birthday, I made her a kitchen linen set for her hope chest.  I began with a foundation piece of fabric which I sewed into an apron.

 

 

Using that fabric and its colors, I decided to make potholders, dish clothes, and trim dish towels.

I began by making potholders.  I used the foundation fabric for the top of 6 potholders.  I backed two with a reddish orange fabric, two with yellow fabric, and two with brown fabric.  The potholders have two layers of batting inside to protect hands from hot pots.  I also quilted the top fabric, batting layers, and backing fabric on the sewing machine so they could be washed without the batting breaking up inside.

Next, I crocheted 6 dishcloths in yellow, 6 in brown, and 6 in a reddish-orange cotton yarn.  These are very simple to make, using only the single crochet and double crochet stitches.

Every kitchen needs dish towels, so that's the next project I undertook.  I used 3 brown dish towels and 3 yellow dish towels I bought at the discount store.  For these, I then used a thin baige cotton thread and crocheted a small flower.  I hand sewed 3 flowers at the top and bottom of those towels.

I found some baige dish towels online and used 6 of them to fill in the kitchen set.  For those towels, I cut 2 inch wide strips of fabric in the foundation fabric and in the reddish orange fabric.  I ironed under 1/4 inch on all edges, then sewed those strips down near the bottom and top of the baige dish towels, using the foundation fabric on 3 towels and the reddish orange fabric on 3 towels.

That means this set has 12 dish towels total, 18 dish cloths total, and 6 pot holders total in addition to the apron.  At some point, I'd like to add some pot scrubbers in the selected colors of brown, yellow, and reddish orange.  These can be crocheted out of netting.

New Look for a Few of My Soaps

I've been playing around with making soap a lot the past month or so.  I enjoy trying new color techniques and we have amassed quite a bit of soap.  As a result, our business has been giving out small soap samples of some of my earlier soaps to make room for new inventory.

Here is the old version of my Cool Citrus soap.

Here is my new Cool Citrus.  It still has a light green color base, but it has been swirled with a darker green.  Now it has  more eye appeal.

This is my old version of Young Love, a rose scented soap.

The new Young Love has a pink colored base and darker reddish-pink swirls.

Here is my old Georgia Girl, a peachy scented soap.

My new Georgia Girl has a medium peach base color, accented by darker swirls.

All of these new soaps are examples of a two color, in the mold swirl.

Here is Maverick, a new soap I am adding to my inventory.  It has a masculine *manly* scent.

It has a top that was spooned on at a thicker trace and then it was top-swirled in a *frost the cake* sort of method, leaving the bottom layer exposed in places.

Here is an old picture of Summer Sky, a favorite of many of our customers.

Today I gave a new look to Summer Sky.  I colored most of the batch a nice deep sky blue, then spooned on a top layer of white and played with it, giving it a texture much like soft fluffy clouds.  It's still in the mold, so no pictures of the cut soap yet.  But here is one of the soap in the mold.

I will try to add a cut picture of this soap soon.  I'm hoping it turns out like I want. This is an example of a two layered soap.  The first time I tried this technique, I ended up with a huge mess--the two layers separated and a bunch of gooey soft soap ran out everywhere when I cut it.  OOPS!

I am planning to do a hanger swirl soon, probably when I update our soaps, Southern Belle and Florida Sunrise.

Aprons

Aprons--such a simple little item, yet they serve a big function in a busy household.  Historically they were used to keep one's clothes clean in order to reduce the laundry load in a time when all laundry was washed by  hand.  They still serve that same purpose today, particularly useful when you are frying up supper on the stove or having guests over and are busy with last minute kitchen food preps.

Aprons can have pockets added to the front, which is very useful when you are going from room to room, tidying up.  If something isn't where it belongs, you slip it into your pocket and then when the current room is finished, you can replace each item where it belongs.  Those pockets are also useful to hold your cleaning supplies, clothes pins (when hanging laundry on the line), tissues/hankerchiefs, etc.

Aprons bring back many memories for me.  I spent many hours with my grandma growing up and she always wore an apron in the kitchen.  I have a couple of her old aprons now.  They are old and faded, some falling apart.  She was born in 1907 and died in 2000, so her aprons were old and very much used when I inherited them.  But I keep them still, hanging on a nail in the corner of my kitchen.

Here is one of my Grandma's aprons.  You can see it is stained and ripped.  But it still has meaning to me.

This is an apron a dear friend, A. Morton, made for my oldest daughter several years ago one Sunday afternoon.  She used ribbons for ties and added a cute ruffle at the bottom.  I used this apron as a pattern to trace on old newspaper and I use that newspaper pattern to make little girl aprons to sell.

These are some of the adult aprons I made to sell this past Christmas.  I simply enlarged the pattern I use for little girls.  I use ribbon ties at the waist and one at the top.  I also add a ribbon loop at the top so that the apron can be adjusted to fit the wearer.

These are some of the little girl aprons I have made the past year.  Aprons are a fun and quick sewing project...and easy enough to be one of the first few items a young girl sews herself.

And that brings me to this apron pictured above.  It's one I have made for my daughter.  It is the basis of a kitchen linen set I have made for her hope chest.  I'll be showcasing that kitchen linen set on the blog the next few days.

Sandalwood Soap

My beloved  hubby was telling me a couple of weeks ago about the first time he smelled a particular scent and how much he liked it.  So I filed that info in the back of my mind and later I ordered that scent--sandalwood--so I could surprise him with this:

Here is my latest soap creation drying in the wire basket I use as rack for my soaps.

I kept the main portion of my soap a natural color.  I colored about a cup or so with brown, then poured that on top of the main soap batch and swirled it in.

I've experimented a good bit--and had a LOT of failures (in terms of coloring and getting the dreaded orange spots)--and have ultimately settled on soaping at room temperature.  I measure my oils, liquid, and lye early in the day.  I then melt the oils and set them aside to cool down.  I also go ahead and mix my lye and liquid (all  if not adding milk to the batch or only half the liquid in water if I am using milk).  This I also leave sitting to cool down.  Several hours later, I go back and add room temperature milk if this batch calls for milk and my oils.  Then I mix it all up to a light trace before adding colors and/or fragrances.  I have chosen to do my coloring first since some fragrances/essential oils accelerate trace and don't leave me enough time to color the way I'd like.

I am currently using an 18 bar plastic soap mold which I spray with cooking spray before pouring the soap batter.  I put my filled soap mold in the fridge til the next morning.  The next day I leave the soap in the mold for several hours before unmolding.  And I leave the unmolded soap sitting out another day before I cut it into bars.

My mold has cutting lines imprinted which makes it easier for me to cut the soap into consistently sized bars.  At some point I'd like hubby to make some wooden loaf molds, but this will do for now.

A close up of the soap...which will be ready for him to use in another week or so.

Crocheted Bedspreads--Teaching My Daughters

I learned to crochet when I was a young girl, but I never really did anything with it.  Many, many years later, I determined to learn to crochet again.  My first projects were making dishcloths.  After that, I made king sized bedspreads, done in a double crochet.  I made one in camo yarn for my boys and another one in pink for my girls.  Next, I made 3 more and gave them to my mama, my mother-in-law, and my father-in-law for Christmas one year.

Then I decided my girls needed to learn to crochet.  It's a very useful skill, much like quilting.  You can make many different things using crochet.  We began by learning to make chains.  They made chains for months and months, learning to get the tension right.  We took those chains and glued them around cans and containers, making pencil holders and treasure boxes for their daddy, brothers, and granddaddy.

They then moved on to making a simple dishcloth and did up a set of 12 for their hope chests.  My oldest daughter also made 3 dish towels by simply adding length and width to the dish cloth pattern.

At that point, my girls began working on a bedspread in their favorite colors (purple for oldest daughter and pink for my youngest daughter), using a double crochet.  It took forever!  But they finally finished them and were so proud of what they had accomplished!

Our next project was a bedspread using the granny square.  We determined that they needed to use colors that would match the quilt they had each made.

Here is my youngest daughter's afghan.  As you can see, it matches her quilt, pictured below.

This is my oldest daughter's afghan. 

It matches her quilt, pictured below.

All they need now, to finish this bed linen set, is  a set of sheets and pillowcases, embroidered in a coordinating pattern.  Oh, and perhaps we'll add a matching dresser scarf.

 

Learning to Quilt--Teaching my Daughters

Once I made a quilt or two, I decided my daughters needed to learn quilting as well.  It's such a useful skill--being able to take scraps and bits and pieces of material and turn them into something useful and beautiful.  A quilt brings warmth to the bed and body, fills a need to be creative, and makes you feel so good inside when you look at what you've made.

I wanted to make things very simple for their first few projects, so I purchased charm packs--precut 5 inch squares in coordinating fabrics.  We planned 18 rows of 18 squares each.  This gave us enough overhang on each side and the bottom.

I also used a ruler to mark 1/4 inch on each side of the squares.  This was so the girls could easily see where they needed to sew the fabrics together.  They spent months handsewing those squares together.

Then I took those rows of squares and machine sewed each row together--this was mostly because it had taken so long to get to this point and I could tell they were getting discouraged and thinking they would never finish.  Once the tops were pieced together, we sandwiched the top, batting, and backing fabric together, pinning them together with large safety pins.

At that point, I ended up putting them aside for just over a year...but this past fall I pulled them out and machine quilted *in the ditch* (a term that means I sewed in the seam where two fabrics were joined together).  We used the backing fabric to form the binding and I machine sewed that down as well.

This is my oldest daughter's quilt. 

This is my youngest daughter's quilt.

We made sure to embroider their initials and the year in the bottom corner of each quilt so one day their granddaughters and great granddaughters can see these quilts and know who made them and when.

Crocheted Bedspreads/Afghans

I love to make useful things.  I enjoy keeping busy, but I enjoy being creative even more.  Last year, I decided to make each of my daughters a crocheted bedspread.  These were done in their personal favorite colors and were made to be put aside in their hope chests to use in their own homes one day.

I needed something fairly simple, since I had two to make.  I also wanted something that would reflect each girl's personal tastes.  And I wanted it to look good.

I choose the same simple pattern I use for doll blankets--a gaint granny square.  I did the center color much larger than normal so I could add a crocheted flower to the center.  I choose to alternate colors in the granny square, but kept it to two colors only.

My oldest daughter loves purple, so I used purple and  cream to make this bedspread.  I put a double Irish Rose in the center of each square.  There are three rows of three squares each.

My youngest daughter loves red, so her bedspread is done in red and white.  I didn't make the center of her squares quite large enough, so she has a single crocheted flower in the centers.  Again, there are three rows of three squares each.

Both bedspreads are finished with two rows of double crochet all the way around.  These will fit a double bed with some overhang on each side and at the bottom.

Our aim is to complete a quilt for each in a coordinating color along with an embroidered sheet/pillowcase set and perhaps even an embroidered dresser scarf.

Making Soap

There are many ways a woman can save money by being at home.  Because she is home, she has time to devote to being creative, time to pursue useful hobbies, time to experiment.  She can sew, crochet, knit, grow vegetables/flowers/herbs, make herbal tinctures and learn to use them, make soap and laundry detergent, etc.  The list is endless.

One way I enjoy being creative at home and being thrifty is by making soap for my family's use and for gifts.

This one is called Cool Citrus and is colored a solid light green.  My boys like it very much.

This is Young Love, a pretty solid pink scented with roses.  It's perfect for my young girls.

 

Maverick is a top swirled masculine scented soap.

Georgia Girl, a peachy solid colored soap, has peachy undertones that I really like.

This one is called First Blush.  It's an unscented soap in a nice medium rosey color.

 

The possibilities are endless in terms of scents, colors, techniques, etc when you make your own soap.  I use what is called the Cold Process or CP method.  You can find numerous recipes online along with tutorials and pictures of various decorative techniques. 

 

 I use castor oil, olive oil, coconut oil, and lard for my oils.  Some of my soaps have milk added and others do not.

 

There are many things you can add to suit your own family's skin needs.  Tea Tree Oil can be added to help with acne or skin rashes.  Those with sensitive skin or skin that is easily irritated might find that oatmeal is a good additive.

This one is made with oats lightly powdered, added milk, and includes some whole oats sprinkled on the top of the slab when it is poured.

 

 

 

 

Crocheted Doll Blankets

I have two daughters who have spent hours playing with their dolls:   changing their clothes, putting them to bed, having tea parties.  There is a certain pleasure in watching your little girl mother her doll.  You catch glimpses of their grown-up selves being real mamas to your grandchildren one day.

I wanted to foster the mother instinct in my girls.  One way I did that was to provide things they could use in their play.  I made a couple of cloth diapers for their baby dolls.  I whipped up a couple of doll slings.  I bought a number of really cute doll dresses.  We were given two wooden doll beds and we painted them a nice crisp white.  Then I stenciled a pretty pink design on each end.

So now their dolls were all set, except that they had NO covers when they slept at night.  :)  Which led to this:

These worked up very nicely, but are quite simple to make if you can crochet.  It is a basic granny square using alternating colors and is finished off with an Irish Rose crocheted flower attached to the center.

These make a nice gift for a little girl and aren't very time consuming to make.  You need less than a skien of each color, so the cost isn't high, making this a good way to stretch your gift budget.

I also sell these, mostly during the Christmas shopping season.

A Quilt for My Beloved

My 3rd quilting project was much simpler than my previous attempts.  I decided to make a quilt for my beloved husband for Christmas.  The previous year my dds had pieced together quilt tops (another post coming soon) using charm packs--which are pre-cut 5 inch squares in coordinating fabrics.  I used their leftovers to piece together a king size quilt to fit our bed.

I did 18 rows of 18 blocks each--a total of 324 squares!  It too has many mistakes, but I'm not perfect and I decided that imperfections are just a part of whatever I do.  :)  This has helped keep us warm on many a cold night and I love the idea that *I* made it all by myself.  Thankfully, hubby was thrilled by my efforts.

I always wanted to learn to quilt, but never thought I could do it without someone to teach me.  I'm not that experienced still, and I can't do the complicated patterns that the old-timers made or that I drool over online, but I hope to continue to expand my skills and to pass them on to my daughters.

A Character Quilt for the Girls

I started work on this quilt before I did the Character Quilt for the boys.  I began it about 5 years before I actually finished it...it was my very first quilt and it was way too ambitious!

The design layout is similar to the boys' quilt.  Each row deals with a character quality, including the definition and Bible verses that illustrate that quality.

I used blue denium for the squares, then sashed it with white strips.  The backing is a mottled pink Baltic.  I used bright colors like pink and orange, blue, and purple, red and teal for the flowers and the words.

 

Though the picture above is turned sideways, you can see a close up of the embroidered flowers and the character quality Patience and its definition.

 

I spent a year working on the embroidered flowers, then put it aside because I felt overwhelmed.  It lay in a box for a number of years, though occasionally I'd pull it out and make a couple of flowered squares.  Then one day, I decided enough was enough--and determined it was finally time I finished this UFO (unfinished object).

 

Having never quilted before, and having no one in my real life to turn to for help, I struggled mightily with getting the sashing done and making the edges line up correctly.  It has a LOT of errors, but they are not very noticeable when the quilt is on the bed.

 

While working on this project, I also did three baby quilts because I badly needed the encouragement of finishing a quilt.  I don't have pictures of those, but they were very simple.  Just rows of 5 inch squares sewn together on the machine...

 

I have used these quilts to review character qualities we are struggling with and their Biblical basis with my girls (and boys).  This quilt serves as a vivid reminder of what we should be striving for on a daily basis.