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Showing posts from July, 2014

{I've Been Discovered!}

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Tonight my wonderful (not so) baby boy says "I discovered a new planet today." Um, OK Mr. Doesn't Even Own a Telescope, how did you discover a new planet? "I googled myself and discovered planetcaddick." Oh, that could be bad. Think quick mom, have you said anything bad? Yes. Are there possible embarrassing pictures of your now teenage boy? Oh yeah. This begs the question "Are you ok with me putting stuff of you on the blog?" "Oh yeah, I'm fine with that." Whew! It's not like I was actually going to stop or anything. =) His favorite page - "Life Lessons from Zach" (natch). I feel he will be making sure I add to that more often. He also pointed out that I haven't blogged since the 17th of July. *gasp* He has no idea how long my no writing streaks can last! Silly boy! Funny thing is I was thinking about having him start a little blog (or take over my homeschool blog ) for typing and writing practice. That's a goo

Field Trip Day

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We took our first field trip of the new school year this past week. I like taking trips to indoor places during the summer. Bonus - his friends are out of school so we get to go with other people! I got to hang out with my good friend while Zach hung out with his. Those always make the best trips! We headed to Discovery Place in Charlotte. Now I've never been to Charlotte, only through on the highway, and this city is beautiful. Even though it's in the 'wrong' Carolina I can see why people are drawn to this city. Discovery Place is similar to COSI but it seemed like there was more variety here - an aquarium, alien exhibit, rainforest, and a place to make stop motion movies. Because he had a friend to hang out with he did all the stuff he wanted to do, for as long as they wanted. I didn't get a lot of pictures because they spent most of their time on their own, doing their thing. We parked in a garage across the street that had an innovative way of marking their floo

{More Soap Trials}

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First I'd like to give you an update on our hot process soap .  I've been using the unscented version of these puppies and they are very nice. Lather well, do all the things soap should do - but I do wish I'd had some scent to add to them. I guess I could rebatch them and add fragrance, but I'm not sure if I want to do that yet. In the meantime I will keep using them because I like them. But, Mr. Man asked for some kind of scrubby soap to clean his mechanic hands. OK, I think I can handle that. I did these the melt & pour way. 8 oz. Goats Milk M&P Base 8 oz. Olive Oil M&P Base .5 oz oatmeal (finely ground in my coffee grinder) ~This is a variation of a recipe I found on Soap Queen TV ~ I also tried to add some lavender essential oil, but I only had about two drops. The soap still smells good though. I decided to mold them in my silicone muffin pan. I don't use it for muffins so I may as well use it for something =) Here's what they l

{Hot Process Soap}

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I've been researching making soap for a very long time. Very long. And there are many ways to make soap. We've been making melt and pour soap around here for almost a year. You can read about our first go round here . I make this kind of soap a lot because I found this bug repellent essential oil blend that works great when Erik is out hunting. But I still wanted to try my hand at lye soap. You can make lye soap two different ways, hot process or cold process. Although the cold process lets you make all these really cool swirls and such I'm not waiting 4 to 6 weeks to use a bar of soap. I think we all know I'm not a patient woman. =) So, I know I want to make hot process, but I also don't want to stand over the stove for a couple hours stirring soap. So, I sacrificed my oldest crock pot to try my hand this 'must try' thing. Now Google is a beautiful thing - seriously - google making soap. I dare you. This is how I found a recipe for crock pot soap usin