Getting Ready for a new selling season

Ok, so I have been very slack concerning this blog. I am going to try and be a bit more serious about keeping it updated, especially now our soaps are getting known far and wide. I have been super busy about making soap lately, getting ready for the spring and summer markets, we have a definite 3 local markets and I am looking at doing a big one a bit further away, starting in September, but more on that closer to the time.

One of my main soap projects has been to turn 20 litres of beautiful organic olive oil from Tim and Vivienne Paramore of Woodburn Olives at Walla Walla. The oil smelt SO yummy, when I first opened the drum my mouth started to water. We poured some into a jar and totally pigged out on fresh stoneground wholewheat bread, ( I also buy organic wheat from Tim and Vivienne) dipped in olive oil. Enough of our eating habits, this blog is about soap. I ended up making 9 batches of soap for them, some pure olive oil, or castlie, and some milk and honey and some just my standard recipe. We ended up with: Unscented Castile, Green Tea and Eucalyptus Castile, Gardeners Soap with lots of exfoliating bits, Choc Peppermint, Orange and Cinnamon with honey yoghurt and almond meal, Coffee, Lavender, Sea Salt scrub with lots of salt for a good scrub and eucalyptus peppermint and spearmint essential oils and Lemongrass and Lime Castile. I didn't get any photos of those soaps, but I am in the process of making them all again for me, as I was so happy with how they all turned out in the end. I do have some other photos of some  soap I have made for me. Some of it has almost sold out but there will be more coming.

Gardeners Soap, Milk, Oatmeal, Poppy Seeds, Peppermint, Eucalyptus, Lavender Essential Oils.

Breakfast Bar, I am thinking of changing the name to Oatmeal, Honey and Green Tea Cleanser, People seem to get a bit turned off by the name breakfast bar. The bottom layer is a muesli type bar with oatmeal, poppy seeds, bees wax, honey, yoghurt. And the top layer has green tea and pink clay, scented with grapefruit and orange essential oils.

Summer Wine. This is a fun coloured, one off soap. I was cleaning out my soap scraps and my oil store, so there is bits of lots of essential oils and dewberry and champagne fragrant oil.

Lemon Myrtle and being busy!

Hey everyone! This is Katherine here, Mum was a bit busy so I am filling in for her.

So we are going to be rushed this weekend!

The Myrtleford Festival is on this Saturday and the Upper Murray Farmer's Market is on Monday, we plan to have a stall at both although whether we will all make it to both will depend on what is happening at home and with the shed building and all.

We have a new soap up (well to be perfectly honest, that is LOTS of new soaps) but for this post I will just cover the one. Readers meet the Lemon Myrtle soap.

Lemon Myrtle, please meet our readers :).

I wont do a huge write up like Mum (mostly cos Mum hasn't given me one to give you!). So this is it. Bye!

Helping Snowy Swim School raise money for Solar Blankets

Recently my friend and milking buddy Mel, who is the owner of Snowy Swim School decided to swim Khancoban dam to raise money for solar blankets for both Khancoban and Corryong Pools. I pondered how I could donate to the cause as our finances have been extremely tight the last few months, and I came up with the idea to make soap and donate the batch to Mel to sell at the pool. I will also have some at this weeks farmers market.

Here is what she wrote on the Swim Schools facebook page:

On 16th January 2010 I am going to Swim Khancoban Dam x 6 18.3km to

raise money for Solar Blankets for Corryong and Khancoban pools.

 I have a quote for $20,000 for both pools. This includes rollers, bioniser's for

 both pool (this reduces clorine levels and eye irritation) and

 two pool testing kits. This company has ...taken $5,000 off the

 quote for sponsorship!!! WOW. I do need a bit of help to achieve this

 so I hope you all will support me. "The Big Swim" will also commemorate

 20 years since Graeme Middleton swam the Murray River.

The Solar Blanket will increase temp by 10 degress, great for all the

 kids and community. If anyone has any ideas that will help me

raise money or ideas for sponsorship please let me know.

YOURS IN WINTER SWIMMING

MEL

The soap has, as always, our local snowy mountains olive oil, and our localy grown and produced peppermint oil. I have swirled some dried peppermint in the top. Soap is for sale at the swimming pool.

Twilight Christmas Market

This afternoon we went to the first Cudgewa twilight christmas market, it started at 4:00 in the Cudgewa Hall. During a quiet period Ayala and Sarah went around with the camera.

Of course I had to show you the soaps first.

This is the gingerbread house that we made. Kath made the gingerbread, and the Sarah and I decorated it while Ayala and Kath went to Albury shopping. We didn't make it to sell but just as decoration. And it worked, it was only basic as you can see but it was different and eye catching so people came to look. As we were packing up we broke it up and shared it around.

This is the girls food stall.

All but 2 cupcakes sold and all the coconut ice

 and fudge went.

 For all the new food fads the

 good old coconut ice is still a firm favourite.

Carol Hawk makes all this beautiful jewellery,

it was great for a few christmas pressies.

 She also takes beautiful wildlife and landscape photos.

We didn't get any good photos of that.

A selection from the new Cudgewa Store.

Our wonderful Snowy Mountains Olive Oil, which I buy lots of to make my soap.

And the man behind the oil Alan Evans.

Jennifer Fennell with her amazing photograph cards

Yummy Mt Mittamatite Bites. Chocolates and cakes.

Our favourite school bus driver "postie" and his lovely wife Trish and their timber creations. More chirstmas shoping.

Some newcomers to the area. I didn't get their name but they were selling biodynamic eggs and chooks. In the box under their table that nobody got a photo of they had turkey chicks. Very cute.

Christmas Baskets and Another Market

We are having a beautiful wet and lazy Sunday here in the stunning Upper Murray. It is one of those days where you just want to curl up with a movie or a good book. I thought about making some more soap after I got out all the hearts and cupcakes yesterday to see how many gift baskets I could make up with them and discovering that I did not have as many as I thought but I need to ring my neighour and on farm butcher to get some more fat to render down, I am also low on olive oil, and coconut oil. The coconut oil is easy it is in the supermarket fridge. The olive oil is a bit harder as Dot has been very ill for quite a while. Thankfully she is slowly recovering. Alan has been spending a lot of time at her bedside, I think this time has been harder for him than her. Hence I have not felt like chasing up olive oil. So no soap making for me today. But Kath decided, well I decided for her, that she should make me some recycled paper baskets for our soap gift packs. I already have an order for 5 of them, so I had better get moving. I did take some photos but I am not on my computer and this laptop does not want to load them. So they will have to wait a bit.

Next weekend is the Upper Murray Farmers Market, hopefully the weather will be fine for it. And I hope we see lots of visitors to it.

Markets

November is shaping up to be a busy month. We started with the Upper Murray Farmers Market on the 7th. I love doing the farmers market, meeting new people and catching up with friends and neighbours in a relaxed atmosphere. The weather was beautiful, and of course we forgot the camera. The local photographer was there as always, but I wasn't quick enough to ask him to email me some photos. Maybe next time. We also had a stall at the Weekend of Wonders, which is an arts, music and poetry weekend at Tintaldra, Walwa and Jinjellic, which are 3 tiny towns on the Murray. It would have been a wonderful weekend if the weather had been fine, but instead it rained and the forecast was for floods, so in light of the flooding we had already had this spring lots of people decided to stay at home. Mark and I also had to take a drive to Tumbarumba one day, so while we were there I could not let the opportunity pass to visit the farm where we buy our essential oil. Mick and Karen Clifford at Rosewood essential oils grow and distill their own Lavender, Kunzea, eucalyptus and peppermint oils. I have bought oils over the internet from them and had always wanted to visit but even though they are only an hours drive away it always seems to be in the wrong direction. We were not disapointed to see their farm, it is only small but it showed us how you don't have to have a big expensive set up to make a quality product. The Tumbarumba area is beautiful and well worth a drive and I highly recommend the bakerys pepper steak pie. Hopefully next time we drive up there we will male the time to see the Mannus Dam that burst during the last flood.

So because I now have restocked my oils, I have been busy making more lavender soap, see post below, and restocking the Aussie Bush soap which I made with goats milk this time instead of cows milk, I also made a small lot of plain Kunzea soap, just to see how it would sell. I'm not sure if I will continue that line as the Kunzea is very expensive. I'm also looking for some Sandalwood oil as I have had request for it, that will be a very expensive soap. But we will see if I am game enough to spend that much money, and then charge accordingly.

 LAVENDER

Finally I have managed to buy some more lavender essential oil from Karen and Mick at Rosewood essential oils. So now I have lavender soap again.
I have enricned this with milk and almond meal, and as always it is made with Alan and Dot Evans' Snowy Mountains Organic Olive Oil. So it is beautiful and creamy, and the almond meal makes it gently exfoliating.
$4.50 per bar, $3.50 per cupcake