Blogmas - December 2nd: Hi Ho! It's Off to Work I Go!

No picture today. I never got to take a picture, and as I'm typing this on my phone I doubt the post will be long enough for one anyway :)

Blogmas - December 1st: Sick Days

I made the mistake of waiting until the end of the day to finally put together this post. I had so much I wanted to talk about and show you guys. Now I'm just sitting here with flushed cheeks, a sore throat & horrid cough, and congested head. I've been sick since Thanksgiving, but today just took the cake. I'd been at least functional until about 30 minutes ago, where everything seemed to hit me at once and exhaustion set in. Not to mention my headache that is brewing at my temple. I'll try my best to make this a worthy post, though. I kept telling myself that no matter what I was going to start Blogmas on time. I may have some gaps in posting when (if) we fly out, but that's a whole other story. My point is, I'm all drugged up and the side effects are kicking in. I apologize for any weird phrasing/typos ahead of time.

Early Holidays Ho!

M got his orders and we are currently using his month of leave to visit family. After this we will be flying off to places unknown! Kidding. We know exactly where we're going, but I'm not allowed to give public specifics until after we arrive. For those of you reading from our OotO group, however, we got that location I'd last talked about in our group message :)
I brought most of my soapy supplies to my parents' since a majority of it could not be packed and moved, so this time has been spent being a soapy fiend. I've taken lots of pictures with the intention of posting eventually, but I'm concentrating more on family during this time. I promise I'll post all about any soapy adventures I have or will embark on, as well as some more wax reviews and hauls. It just might be a while :)
One of the benefits to our vacation being just before the holidays is our families have decided to do certain things a little earlier. Just last weekend we had a true Thanksgiving/Christmas meal with turkey and ham and mashed potatoes and... you get the point :) This also means we've decorated for Christmas in early November as opposed to the week of Thanksgiving. I feel like this makes up for last year never feeling like it got to Christmas for me. I was robbed of my holidays last year!
Anyways, just checking in to the few people who consistently read my blog. I've not been as good about keeping up with my reading of your blogs. Update me! How are things going in your necks of the woods??

Crabby Candle Co - Autumn Harvest

Scent Description: Put simply, this is a leaves dupe. Hint of cinnamon and an all around Fall scent.
Weight Melted: 1.7 oz
Cold Sniff: 4/5 I'm always a fan of Leaves :)
Warm Sniff: 4/5
Scent Strength: 2/3
Scent Throw: 4/5
Melting Power: 2/5 Unfortunately all I got was about 5 hours from this entire tart before the scent died off.
Repurchase: Most likely not.

Does anybody happen to know what happened to Crabby/Dutch Candle Co.? I have so many of their tarts but when looking for their website for this post I couldn't find anything recent. It's like they just stopped one day and never looked back.

Welcome to my Science Room!

I figured I would give a little tour of what M and I lovingly call the science room! By tour I mean you get to see the one table all the magic happens at/on.
Above you can see the general look of the table, minus the containers I use while actively making soap. Usually the table is a lot more cluttered.
I recently moved our stereo system to right under the table so I can jam out to some music while making my soap.

On the left are my oils and butters. This picture is a bit old and I've added some stuff, but you get the idea. I have palm oil, hemp seed oil, almond oil, castor oil, coconut oil, shea butter, cocoa butter, and olive oil (which is usually stored under the table). I also keep a bag of beeswax pellets in this area, but I don't typically use it for soap.

Under the table I have my lye, distilled water, vinegar (to neutralize any lye spills), epsom salts, and empty chapstick containers. I make all of the chapstick for myself and my immediate family, so we tend to go through a lot. The chapstick is what I use my beeswax for.

In the middle of the table I have a hodgepodge of items. Gloves, solo cups (useful for small pour-offs or just to hold a dirty stick blender in), my loaf cutter, safety goggles/mask (not pictured)... I dunno, you can see all of it, can't you? The metal tin has some wax tart making supplies for the days where I feel like pouring some wax.

On the very right is where I put my soaps that have been cut and need to cure. I should have put some of my more recent soaps here that don't look icky :). The soaps you can see right now are my first several batches I'd made after my year long hiatus from soapmaking, so you can sorta tell I was just getting back into the hang of things. At this point there are 3 layers of soap layered with some parchment paper on this end of the table.
Hey, I said that this table is usually cluttered!

Along another wall of the room, by my nail art supplies and wax storage are my fragrance/essential oils. I used to have a lot more, but I've been actively trying to use up what I do have so there's less stuff to throw out/leave behind when we move. Silly restrictions on what can and cannot be packed and shipped... *grumble* As is I have no idea how we're going to handle my nail polish.



And yes, I'm still here! We're getting ready for our (eventual) move, and I find my free time all eaten up by appointments left and right. Passports, immunizations, general health/check ups to make sure that I'm able to travel to the country M has projections for... it's all sorts of fun, outside of me cleaning up/tossing/using up items that I know we won't be able to bring with us. That, and the lovely dramallama decided to rear her head while I tried to participate in groups set up for spouses to help each other out with the moving process. I got to the point where I'd even typed out a very long winded complaint post about it. Ultimately I decided not to post it. Long story short: don't participate in 'support/help' groups set up for military spouses. Don't ask any more of me unless you want a long winded post LOL!

Cleaning Out My Wax Stash

Yesterday I decided to go through my wax stash and organize everything. I'm still not done, but I figured out what I'm keeping and what I'm tossing. Excluding some JLCCW, JMae's, and my March CFTKR order, what you see on the floor is what I went through. The pile on the left is my keep pile, while everything on the right is being trashed. I considered going through the effort of doing an ass wax pay only shipping thing, but decided that these tarts weren't even worth that effort. Their quality was bad, they were old, or I just straight up did not like the scents. Or, as was the case with the contents of one box, there was a mysterious accident and there was a permanent liquid in every single bag/tart container. I think that box was in a warm place and all the wax partially melted.
It was easier than I thought it would be to do this. I think I've had this wax for so long that at this point I can no longer justify keeping it by thinking about the waste of money. At this point the money is irrelevant. The waste in buying it occurred back when I bought it. I'm not going to melt it. So.... toss it! I may keep a few things from the pile and keep it in a bag to give to my mother, but I'm still undecided.
As for everything else I have, I think I can condense everything to the purple and black photo boxes you can see in this picture. Before this my wax was spread out all over the place.

A rather sad thing I realized when I started melting appropriate scents for the season is my love of this season has become tainted. I smell pumpkin and cinnamon and I think about Diana's last few weeks with us. It's not bad enough to make me stop melting, but there are moments when I catch a whiff and feel like I should go out back and play with my now nonexistent dog. It's weird having a scent that has been ruined for me. I've always had scents that I cherished because of fond memories associated with it. Never have I had to deal with the negative side of smell and memory's link.

Have you ever thrown out this much wax at once? Do you have scents that are harder for you to stomach because of memories?

Rosegirls - Strawberry Cotton Candy

Scent Description: A blend of strawberry and cotton candy.
Weight Melted: 1.0 oz.
Cold Sniff: 4/5
Warm Sniff: 4/5 No difference in smell between cold and warm. Pretty straightforward 50/50 blend of cotton candy and strawberry
Scent Strength: 1/3
Scent Throw: 4/5
Melting Power: 4/5 I let this go for about 18 hours before I grew tired of the scent and changed it out.
Repurchase: Probably not. When I bought this, I had thought the scent was different based off of a sampler I had gotten. There had been something almost bakery added into original tart, which was what I wanted in this. If I'm going to spend a lot of money on wax, I'm going to get unique blends, not a simple tart I could make myself. The performance was amazing, though! I'm just a cheapskate and like getting the most bang for my buck :)

The Bathing Garden - Rainbow Apothecary

Scent Description: A perfect blend of fruity and floral, beginning with pear, green grapes, kiwi, raspberry and peach; followed by middle notes of jasmine and lily of the valley; and finishing with white musk.
Weight Melted: 0.9 oz.
Cold Sniff: 5/5 I was really craving something more Summer appropriate after my pumpkin awesomeness. I guess my nose wasn't ready to say goodbye to summer! This was exactly what I needed. Brought to mind Summer parties in the backyard, fruity drinks,  and showers (this smells exactly like an old shampoo my Mom used to get in the summer).
Warm Sniff: 5/5 What you got from the package is exactly what you got when melted. I like scents like that - no surprises. The thing that was awesome for me was the pumpkin from my previous melt was lingering in the air and mixed with this a little to create a perfect in-between scent. Not quite Summer, not quite Fall. The lingering scent really speaks volumes about SMT, though. :)
Scent Strength: 2/3
Scent Throw: 5/5
Melting Power: 5/5 >24 hours. I melted this for two days straight and it stayed strong the whole time. I'm so glad I have 4 more cubes of this to use!
Repurchase: Yes! This is over two years old and it still performs spectacularly! I'm impressed! The funny thing is, I've never ordered directly from TBG before. All of my stash is from destashes. So I guess this is one more thing to make me want to order from The Bathing Garden :)

Do you have any old wax that somehow performs spectacularly?

Sniff My Tarts - Pumpkin Mallow Latte

Something about the weather yesterday had me craving Fall and all its lovely fragrances. Maybe it was the fact that we're in September, as well. I don't know. In any case, I had a very pleasant time with this scent.
Scent Description: A combination of Pumpkin, Marshmallow, and Coffee fragrance.
Weight Melted: 2.5 oz. I was too lazy to cut it and I wasn't sure how this tart would perform since I've had it for over two years.
Cold Sniff: 3/5 I got a very heavy coffee scent from this. In fact, it's like the coffee scents from Yankee candles. I didn't pick up on very much of the other notes here. This worried me.
Warm Sniff: 5/5 Ah, nice, light, pure pumpkin with just a hint of marshmallow and coffee. I felt like I was having a pumpkin latte or whatever that drink is that Starbucks always sells around this time of year. The coffee wasn't very prominent, but it helped even out the scent so it was just a big generic smell of Fall to my nose. I very much loved this.
Scent Strength: 2/3
Scent Throw: 4/5
Melting Power: 5/5 >24 hours. I put this in early yesterday morning and just now took it off as I type this. It still had plenty of scent left in it.
Repurchase: Yes! You know, if circumstances ever allow me to buy anything from SMT. I've only ever gotten their stuff from destashes. Now that I've melted this and know how the performance was, I wish I had cut the tart in half. Eh, you live and learn!
Also, just from checking my labels I've found out that this is my first SMT I've melted. Very impressed! If I remember correctly this is something I got in a destash from Lauren a long, long time ago.

Candles From the Keeping Room - Chunky Serendipity Pomegranate

What? No, this picture is PERFECT.

Okay, you got me on the picture. In my defense I took the picture at 6 AM, before the sun was up and I had enough lighting to take a good picture.
It's not quite midnight of the last day of the month but I figured I would make one last post to say goodbye to August... and hello September. During which we will very likely be moving. AGAIN. Right as I got everything unpacked and set up where we want it to be. Sigh. Anyway...
Scent Description: None available on website. Pretty self explanatory.
Weight Melted: 1.4 oz
Cold Sniff: 5/5 I loved this on cold sniff! The pomegranate was so prevalent, with just a hint of bakery plus serendipity. Perfect, to my nose!
Warm Sniff: 3/5 Unfortunately, my favorite part about this scent just was not there when I melted this. I enjoy serendipity, but usually as a mixer, and this time all I got was serendipity with maybe a pinch of something bakery. Decent enough, but again, not what I wanted.
Scent Strength: 2/3
Scent Throw: 4/5 It's hard for me to rate the throw as we're in a completely different setting, but I tried to translate it to how I thought it would perform under my previous rating system. I don't think I'll bother revamping it seeing as another move is coming up... sigh.
Melting Power: 4/5 I got 12 hours from this before calling it quits.
Repurchase: No. If this had smelled like it did in the bag I would be all over this baby, but that wasn't the case. :(

 I'm trying to figure out what to write about my soap adventures you ladies want to read about, and I've got to say I'm at a loss. Do I share my finished products? My process? My supplies? My setup? My thoughts about being all science-y? There's just so much I could write about, and tell you about what I've learned! I don't know where to start! One thing I can tell you for certain is seized soap is the hardest darned thing to work with LOL!