Live.Simple.

Rerunning an oldie but a goodie from earlier this year. But with Christmas season coming up, I thought it might be a good idea to refresh everyone's memories!

 Live.Simple.

My new motto. My new viewpoint. My new everything.

It's also the name of a new adventure I'm taking: homemade soap making. The idea behind it is quite, ahem, simple. Simple ingredients. Simple scents. Simple clean. Simple to use. Simple to love.

My friend, Char of LiveLifeLoveOils, and I went to The Prairie Peddler last year to walk around in the bright October sun and take in the sights, sounds, and smells of autumn. While there, we  discovered that we shared the same desire to learn to make soap. REAL soap. LYE soap. Saponified soap. SOAP soap. Your grandmother's soap. HER grandmother's soap. The soap of generations and generations before us. I think you get the idea. 

For those of you who have never been to The Prairie Peddler, it is a festival held in a grouping of permanent, rustic structures built into the woods of the area near Mohican State Park in Ohio. The atmosphere with the brilliance of autumn's color plus the smell of woodsmoke from the vendors cooking fruit cobblers in Dutch ovens over campfires plus the dirt paths and stick built wooden cabins is truly absorbing. It almost feels as though you are walking through an 1800's village. Almost.

Our interest was piqued at a particular cabin. In this cabin, we learned that the owner of the company offered soap making classes. So, we each took a flyer with us. The seed had been planted. The following Tuesday, I called and signed us up. 7 classes. One night a week. 40 miles one way. It.was.awesome.

By the time we finished with our classes, we were certified as Apprentice Soap Makers in the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild. We each only need a few more hours of training before we are certified as Master Soap Makers! <--that is so cool to me!

We not only learned how to make soap, but how to make soap. The chemistry behind it. The method to the madness shall we say. We were each instructed to create our own recipe. What did we want our soap to do? Oddly enough, it doesn't simply clean. I learned that true soap has characteristics: lather, scent, feel, bubbles, moisture on the skin. Beyond that, there is always the next level of clearing up skin issues such as psoriasis, eczema, acne. We're not at that level yet. But we'll get there.

Once you decide what you want your soap to do and how you want it to act, you create the recipe based on your knowledge of the ingredients. Let me tell you, there was tension that night at class: Would it work? Would it not work? Would we blow the place up? I'm kidding. Our teacher was confident it would work.

We learned that good quality ingredients produce good quality products. We learned that mistakes can be fun. We learned that we wanted to learn more. But what we really learned was that we loved doing it, our skin had never, ever felt better, and that we were extremely happy to share with our family and friends a non-toxic, natural, healthier way to clean the largest organ of your body. 

So, it is my pleasure, honor, and joy to introduce to you Live.Simple.

I've finally created an Etsy Shop from which I can sell it- take a look!

I hope you will learn to love Live.Simple. as much as I do.