Yesterday I drove to Fort Worth to pick up some super cheap sodium hydroxide for soap making from Star for Sand Creek (and myself) for our soap making classes. After picking it up, it seemed like a waste to turn around and go home, so we went to go find some place to eat (Yelp recommended Fuzzy’s Tacos, and I was expecting something Taco Deli like – boy was I disappointed to find regular old Tex Mex) and since we were half way there already, I made a trip to North Park Mall to hit the Lush and Teavana stores.
I love Lush.
My first introduction to Lush was via a well-timed package one of my friends sent me when I was trapped in northwest North Dakota for a month for work. I had just gotten dumped by a guy I was seeing and had been listening to Coldplay’s “Parachutes” album repeatedly when I got the package at the front desk – total surprise! It had some fantastic stuff in it; a bath bomb, some shower gel. It was perfect for April blues in North Dakota! Since then, I’ve been obsessed with it. I’m very much looking forward to having a HUGE tub to use all my stockpiled bath bombs that I’ve got (my favorites are the Jasmine scented and the Cherry Blossom one).
Speaking of soap, I finally made that batch that I started prepping last weekend. The oils have been sitting in a pot on my stove – all combined already – for the last week. I mixed up the lye and broke out some oils that I thought would be nice (bergamot and lemon) and mixed in some orange peels and lavender for scrubby bits. It was a much larger batch than what I usually make, so I accidentally overfilled my soap mold (oops) and still had enough for a couple smaller containers. We’ll see how this one turns out. It’s got tallow in it, in addition to the other oils. In retrospect, I should have just made it plain oatmeal since it made so many.
At Teavana, I fell in love with the cast iron teacups, specifically this one. I have a cast iron teapot that I’ve had for years but I don’t remember where I got it. The one reason I haven’t used it is that I thought it couldn’t hold that much and I had no way of keeping it warm. I ran across a cast iron stand that you put a tea light in and it keeps the tea warm! *squee!*
So here’s what I’ve got now as a set.
I usually drink tea a couple of times a day, especially in the afternoon (I’m trying to make my way through my tea collection at the moment before I go purchasing any more). I have an electric kettle that I’m completely in love with and this will work perfectly to transport said tea to my desk for consumption.
Today we went to drop some stuff out at the property. The wildflowers are starting to come up like mad everywhere. It’s started with these little red things (that I don’t know what they are).
There was lots of yellow things too and little purple clover-like flowers. I anticipate a HUGE wildflower year this year. My peach tree in the backyard is going crazy, more blossoms on it than I’ve ever seen and much more than what the neighbors have on theirs. I attribute it to the heavy pruning that we did last year trying to get it into shape. It didn’t do much last year, but I think this year it’s probably the best likely as ever to actually make peaches than ever before (though I’m still unconvinced that they won’t fall off before true peach-hood). My friend was saying that the peach growers expect a bumper crop this year due to all the chilling hours we got this winter. I hope so, I’ve got a TON of plans for canning peach everything – rum peaches, peach jam, peach sauce, peach pie filling, peaches in cardamom syrup.
