HandmadeFuzion

I've been working hard on setting up my newest shop at HandmadeFuzion. It's a juried site, so I'm hoping that selectivity will be an advantage for the sellers.

Vicky was home for a few days and it was so much fun having her here. Now she has gone back to school. The house is less bright and cheerful without her, that's for sure. Tomorrow is her 19th birthday. We celebrated early by going out to Da Ru Ma, her favorite Japanese restaurant, this weekend. It will be a little sad not to be with her on her actual birthday. It's the first one we haven't all celebrated together.

I've been soaping many fall and holiday-ish fragrances this past week. Coming soon: Pumpkin Spice, Cranberry Orange Marmalade and Iced Gingerbread. Also soon: More Arabian Spice and Celtic Moonspice. Man, all these brown soaps. I wish the spicy ones would come out a bit lighter in color!

I recently had my first true soaping disaster. I poured 5.5 oz of Lemon Verbena fragrance into a double plastic cup so it would be pre-measured to add to the soap. So here I am with 8 lbs. of yellow soap, pick up the plastic cup with the fragrance, and it all pours out onto the counter top and floor. It ate right through the bottom of the cups. You wouldn't believe the mess you can make with a little over half a cup of fragrance oil. I had to run and find another scent to go with yellow soap, grabbed some Honeysuckle, mixed it in and realized that I'd tracked the spilled oil onto the Pergo floor.

Meanwhile the dog is coughing, my husband with asthma is wheezing from the stench, and I'm trying to clean up a greasy, stinking, oily mess. You can't just wipe it up, it has to be washed with a grease cutting cleanser in hot water. Geoff comes home and says "Wow, what are you making, lemon bars? I can smell it all the way out in the driveway!" It ended up taking me almost an hour to clean up all of it, even the bits that seeped into the little crack where the stove joins the counter.

This stuff melted the bottom of my Crocs! Note to self: Never, ever again measure fragrance oil into a plastic cup. It's what we psychologists like to call a One Trial Learning Experience. From now on when I smell lemon, I'll probably go into Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.