When we woke up this morning and when I looked out the window – it looked like this. 
Now granted it could look worse right? So why in the world am I kind of complaining about it. Seriously I’m not trying to complain, but we’ve been so lucky this winter that it almost seems like we shouldn’t have any snow this year. But that’s pretty much an unrealistic dream and with hearing the upcoming weather forecast – I guess I better get used to this white stuff!
I got a message early this morning that the kids made it back OK. Kyle caught literally the last bus leaving the airport for the night and that was good. He has the next day off to get unpacked and catch up on his sleep. Even though he’s flown this trip multiple times, it still has to mess his sleep schedule up. Good thing he’s a kid!
Daryl spent the morning taking down the Christmas lights and garland off the front of the house and man does it look boring!! Now I don’t know why we think lights on a house or garland make the house (and farm!) look so much prettier, but it sure does. We were talking about this today and the question that came up was are we just conditioned to think it looks pretty? Well who cares right? It is a lot of work to put them up but it sure makes you smile and for me it brings back memories when I was growing up. When I was a kid we would literally take the branches off the evergreen trees that lined our grove and make our own garland. Now I just can’t believe that this was good for the trees, but maybe it was a way to keep all us kids quiet and busy so that’s why our parents never really cared! Not that we were loud and crazy.. but sometimes we were a little on the wild side and maybe just a little loud and crazy! Then we would hang the garland and all the big Christmas lights that are getting popular again around the outside of our picture window in the living room. We did this every year that I can remember as a kid and maybe that’s why hanging garland, hopefully from the nursery, just makes me smile.
As for me? Well, today after the Christmas tree was out of the house and a couple of pounds of beef jerky was in the dehydrator, I settled in to find a good soap recipe. William made me a new soap mold to put the raw soap in to cure, so I just had to find something to make!
My fancy new soap mold
I also kind of made people take my soap over Christmas so I really did need to make more. Today’s recipe was using 4 different types of oils and then came the hard part- trying to figure out what fragrance to use.
The oils were all melted – the next step was figuring out the fragrance
The scent that the soap recipe called out I didn’t have, but I thought honestly how hard is it to pick out a good smell? Yea.. let’s just say about 1 hour later I finally just settled for something that was literally in one of my storage containers. Did you know that you’re supposed to have 3 levels of scents in a soap? Well, me either until today! The first level is the one that you smell first – OK, that’s a no brainer!, then the second one should be the strongest, and the last one is what you remember the soap to smell like. And what did I put in mine? Well, after doing that hour of research on what should go together and then loosing the website where it talks about the ‘levels’ – I just literally guessed and put in some Lemon as the 1st level and Ylang Ylang as the base. Is it right? I have no idea. But does is smell? You bet! The Lemon oil is to revitalize and uplift you, while the Ylang Ylang is supposed to be a stress relief along with lowering blood pressure and prevent wounds from infections and speeds up the healing process. Whatever! It’s what I used and it should be OK. Like I said the recipe was a new recipe and when I was making it, it seemed a little smaller batch. It did end up being about a half batch and that’s OK too. I’ll just cut it differently tomorrow when I un-mold it.
As for the rest of the night? Well I headed to town to pick up some groceries. Not only did we need some, but there’s a big storm brewing that is supposed to hit tomorrow night. Man I sure hope that it isn’t too bad and we don’t get snowed in!
The photo of the day is a really cool one! My brother called and said that he was out driving and noticed the moon dogs out tonight. So I grabbed my camera and headed out to snap a few pictures. Even though the ‘official’ full moon or the Wolf Moon, Old Moon or Moon After Yule isn’t until tomorrow night – this moon and the moon dogs look pretty awesome! Take a look
Moon dogs