Advent Tea Party!

I had some fantastic girl-time this past Saturday, with some of the sweetest girls in my corner of the world.


The theme: Salvation History via the ancient symbolism of the Jesse Tree – except, instead of a tree, we used a tea!

The Goodies

1. “Jesse Tea” – TEA - we had peppermint tea; peppermint/peach tea (YUM!!!); and hot chocolate for the non-tea drinkers, with a touch of peppermint — peppermint? it’s winter, the weather is CRAZY – so… health benefits! (we had some sugar, but mostly healthy items — yet to be aware of the time of the year and how things DO go around — and in thanksgiving that the 5 families in attendance have ZERO sick girls right now, let’s keep the health going). Plus it helped with breath   
2. “Adam’s Apple” (Genesis 3: 6) – APPLE with 1 gummy worm (the girls opted for quartered apples)
3. “Noah’s Ark” (Genesis 9: 12-17) – 3 GUMMY WORMS in rainbow
4. Abraham’s Stars (Genesis 15: 5) – CUT THE APPLE during the presentation to show the star
5. “Isaac’s Bundle of Sticks” (Genesis 22: 6) – 8 PRETZEL STICKS
6. “Jacob’s Ladder” (Genesis 28: 12) – Same pretzel sticks, built into a ladder
(isn’t it interesting how God can take our weaknesses and turn them into strengths? *HE* can work all things for good…. so we can re-use these same objects to show us something new and better)
7. “Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors” (Genesis 37: 3-4) – 4 GUMMY WORMS (2 folded in half for the “body”, with one on each side bent at 90 degrees bottom half as part of the body, top half as the arms extending out)
8. “The Burning Bush” (Exodus 3: 2-3) – BROCCOLI AND RANCH (3/4 cup of ranch is dyed with 1/2 tsp turmeric to show the “fire”)
9. “Moses’ Tablets of the Law” (Exodus 34: 1) – MILANOS (we did raspberry/chocolate – YUM – and least cost per ounce)
10. “The Root of Jesse” (Isaiah 11: 1 and 10) – CARROTS
11. “David’s Star Tea Sandwiches” (1 Samuel 17: 12-51) – STAR-SHAPED SANDWICHES – cut into triangles then top half turned to create 6-pointed star. 
12. “Bethlehem, House of Bread” (Matthew 2: 5-6) – DONUT HOLES (could have made scones or small biscuits – short on time and the donut holes were calling my name)
13. “John the Baptist’s Honey” (Luke 1: 41; Matthew 3: 3) – HONEY in tea (could have had honey on biscuits/scones if I’d made those)
14. “Angelic Messengers”  (recall various angelic messengers we know about in the Bible) – ANGEL-SHAPED SANDWICHES – cookie cutter
15. “Pure White Cakes for Our Blessed Mother” or “Flowers of Jesse” or both – TOMATO AND CELERY for flowers (thought about doing a white frosting made of cream cheese, powdered sugar, touch of milk, homemade vanilla – spread on graham crackers, but with the donut holes instead of bread, thought against it this time)

 Left-overs and bread trimmings? Went to the “boys” (my son; the father and brother of one of the girls at the tea party — who all went off for a few hours so we girls could just be girly — in our fancy hats!)

Hm. No picture of me. I had a santa hat because my two fancy hats were on loan. 

The Ladies

The Ladies again couldn’t decide which I liked best

Best Jacob’s Ladder constructed with pretzel sticks

“This sandwich is SO GOOOOOOD!!!!” (apparently so is the white-sprinkled chocolate donut hole  )

This young lady is so full of joy - she finds it everywhere - and spreads it everywhere!

AHA! She CAN be serious!

but apparently not for long  (she was tipped sideways to sneak into another picture for this one) LOVE her 3rd lip there

Enjoying the tea-party

So sweet!And such shining eyes

Trying to avoid her photo being taken.Gotcha anyway!

Thank you everyone for coming!

Have a wonderful remainder of Advent and a fantastic Christmas season!

God bless!

Advent Jesse Tea

 

I had some fantastic girl-time this past Saturday, with some of the sweetest girls in my corner of the world.

 

 

The theme: Salvation History via the ancient symbolism of the Jesse Tree - except, instead of a tree, we used a tea ;)

 

The Goodies

1. "Jesse Tea" - TEA - we had peppermint tea; peppermint/peach tea (YUM!!!); and hot chocolate for the non-tea drinkers, with a touch of peppermint --- peppermint? it's winter, the weather is CRAZY - so... health benefits! (we had some sugar, but mostly healthy items --- yet to be aware of the time of the year and how things DO go around --- and in thanksgiving that the 5 families in attendance have ZERO sick girls right now, let's keep the health going). Plus it helped with breath ;) 

2. "Adam's Apple" (Genesis 3: 6) – APPLE with 1 gummy worm (the girls opted for quartered apples)

3. "Noah's Ark" (Genesis 9: 12-17) – 3 GUMMY WORMS in rainbow

4. Abraham's Stars (Genesis 15: 5) – CUT THE APPLE during the presentation to show the star

5. "Isaac's Bundle of Sticks" (Genesis 22: 6) – 8 PRETZEL STICKS

6. "Jacob's Ladder" (Genesis 28: 12) – Same pretzel sticks, built into a ladder

(isn't it interesting how God can take our weaknesses and turn them into strengths? *HE* can work all things for good.... so we can re-use these same objects to show us something new and better)

7. "Joseph's Coat of Many Colors" (Genesis 37: 3-4) – 4 GUMMY WORMS (2 folded in half for the "body", with one on each side bent at 90 degrees bottom half as part of the body, top half as the arms extending out)

8. "The Burning Bush" (Exodus 3: 2-3) – BROCCOLI AND RANCH (3/4 cup of ranch is dyed with 1/2 tsp turmeric to show the "fire")

9. "Moses' Tablets of the Law" (Exodus 34: 1) - MILANOS (we did raspberry/chocolate - YUM - and least cost per ounce)

10. "The Root of Jesse" (Isaiah 11: 1 and 10) - CARROTS

11. "David's Star Tea Sandwiches" (1 Samuel 17: 12-51) – STAR-SHAPED SANDWICHES - cut into triangles then top half turned to create 6-pointed star. 

12. "Bethlehem, House of Bread" (Matthew 2: 5-6) – DONUT HOLES (could have made scones or small biscuits - short on time and the donut holes were calling my name)

13. "John the Baptist's Honey" (Luke 1: 41; Matthew 3: 3) – HONEY in tea (could have had honey on biscuits/scones if I'd made those)

14. "Angelic Messengers"  (recall various angelic messengers we know about in the Bible) – ANGEL-SHAPED SANDWICHES - cookie cutter

15. "Pure White Cakes for Our Blessed Mother" or "Flowers of Jesse" or both – TOMATO AND CELERY for flowers (thought about doing a white frosting made of cream cheese, powdered sugar, touch of milk, homemade vanilla - spread on graham crackers, but with the donut holes instead of bread, thought against it this time)

 

 Left-overs and bread trimmings? Went to the "boys" (my son; the father and brother of one of the girls at the tea party --- who all went off for a few hours so we girls could just be girly --- in our fancy hats!)

Hm. No picture of me. I had a santa hat because my two fancy hats were on loan. 

 

The Ladies

 

The Ladies again couldn't decide which I liked best :)

Best Jacob's Ladder constructed with pretzel sticks

 

"This sandwich is SO GOOOOOOD!!!!" (apparently so is the white-sprinkled chocolate donut hole ;) )

This young lady is so full of joy - she finds it everywhere - and spreads it everywhere!

AHA! She CAN be serious!

but apparently not for long ;) (she was tipped sideways to sneak into another picture for this one) LOVE her 3rd lip there ;)

 

Enjoying the tea-party

 

So sweet!And such shining eyes :)

 

Trying to avoid her photo being taken.Gotcha anyway!

 

Thank you everyone for coming!

 

Have a wonderful remainder of Advent and a fantastic Christmas season!

 

God bless!

 

Homemade LIQUID soap

 

There are so many sites out there in the internet-world describing how to make liquid soap - and most of them can be described in one word:
COMPLICATED.

 

Seriously? The same bar soap just liquified needs to be THAT hard?

 

I think not.

 

The problems with what is out there:

1) store-bought bar soaps (and many soaps bought online, but not all) have the glycerin removed during the soap-making process. Therefore glycerin needs to be added back in to the soap to help it "be" liquid.

2) Alcohol and other additives can be DRYING. These are not necessary - neither for preservation (most liquid soap keeps itself preserved, or one can use particular essential oils for preservation - vitamin E is great too) nor for any other reason (I had a second reason but have now forgotten it).

3) Starting with liquid soap kind of defeats the purpose. Seriously.

4) Dr. Bronner's Castille soap is great - but a little secret: castille soap is simply olive oil soap. Guess what!? You can make that at home.

5) The ones that do provide a recipe from scratch, want you to use a different form of lye - Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) instead of what is typically used in bar soaps: Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). I do NOT understand this. I have put out some requests and have heard no responses. If YOU know why, please respond, because I genuinely want to know the reason why a different form of lye would be needed for liquid soap.
Now. Why would you want to start with bar soap (that was liquid during the soapmaking process to begin with) and liquify it? Because not everyone can have lye around. It's dangerous stuff with little ones or if you don't have the greatest coordination. I think I'm pretty decent and I've had a couple of minor incidents with yellowed curling finger nails and one spot on my arm. All is well now, but it was pretty scary (and stinky). If you cannot have lye in your home, purchase a "full body bar soap" - this is MY terminology alone, not an official label. What you are looking for is a simple, all-natural soap containing ONLY the ingredients YOU want (you can add more if you want during the process, but make sure there is nothing in there you DON'T want) - and make sure the glycerin has not been removed (this is what I call "full body" - it's all the soap, nothing removed). Grate it up into a saucepan and add twice as much water as the amount of soap you have. Bring to a gentle simmer and stir almost constantly until the soap has melted - add any additional ingredients you want. Allow to cool - if it gets too thick, warm it back up and add water about 1/2 to a full cup at a time (you can gauge the amounts based on the thickness - very thick, add more water; getting close to what you want add less at a time), stirring and cooling until it gets to the thickness you like. After a time or two making it like this, you'll recognize the thickness it needs to be when "hot" to be the consistency you want when "cool". This is how I always used to make our soap.

 

 

So how do *I* make liquid soap now?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="270"] Those of you who visit my home and recognize the pitcher: Rest assured I do watch it. Remember that my alternate dish soap is this SAME soap plus coconut oil soap. It's JUST soap ;)[/caption]

 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="360"] I had 2 more of the "smaller" jars as well. From that one pitcher of soap!!![/caption]

Start with making olive oil soap, adding the highest amount of the required range of water. When any soap is made, a typical lye calculator will give a range of water amounts to use - use less if you want to set up faster; more if you want it to set up slower. Olive oil soap takes a while to set up anyway, so I typically use on the lower end if I am making bar soaps. For a recipe of 32 ounces of olive oil, I need 4.2 oz of Sodium Hydroxide (lye) and 8-12 ounces of water. I made a recipe last week with 15 ounces of water (I didn't want to over-do it because I did want the oil and lye to be close enough to saponify well. This all perfectly fit into my beautiful glass pitcher.

I used a stick blender to bring it to trace, but I used to wait and stir and wait and stir - sometimes up to a full day to get the olive oil soap to trace. I LOVE stick blenders ;)

Then I separated it into two large old spaghetti sauce jars, filling each about half. I filled the rest with water and stirred. Added essential oils (in this case I used lavender, tea tree oil and grapefruit essential oils as well as vitamin E - to personal scent-preference). Let it sit. Stirred the next morning - it was THICK. Poured some out into 2 other jars and filled up with water again. Within 12 hours: thick again.

 

Poured into 2 more of the smaller jars and some into our current soap dispenser, adding more water to bring it to consistency in the dispenser.

 

The stuff in the glass jars is still thick though very close to the consistency I want and I will thin it as we use it.

 

That is a LOT of soap - for almost NO work. Next time, I'll stick with 16 ounces and I'll probably fill up this same amount of jars with soap at the proper consistency.

 

 

I didn't use any of the complicated process (one site says you can't make liquid soap using cold-process soap-making - ummmm, this is my second time making liquid soap from scratch and the ONLY way I like to make soap is the cold-process version. I abhor heating it up and dealing with the curds - I do it only when absolutely necessary - and liquid soap-making from scratch works just fine in cold-process, thank you very much).

 

 

I don't do any of the other more complicated steps, because frankly - this method WORKS - we are getting ourselves clean - it is simply liquified versions of my bar soaps - so why would I go to more trouble for a liquid than I do for the bars?

 

Lazy Mom syndrome again ;)

 

Or maybe I just want to spend time with my son....

 

 

;)

 

 

Homemade Liquid Soap

There are so many sites out there in the internet-world describing how to make liquid soap – and most of them can be described in one word:
COMPLICATED.

Seriously? The same bar soap just liquified needs to be THAT hard?

I think not.

The problems with what is out there:
1) store-bought bar soaps (and many soaps bought online, but not all) have the glycerin removed during the soap-making process. Therefore glycerin needs to be added back in to the soap to help it “be” liquid.
2) Alcohol and other additives can be DRYING. These are not necessary – neither for preservation (most liquid soap keeps itself preserved, or one can use particular essential oils for preservation – vitamin E is great too) nor for any other reason (I had a second reason but have now forgotten it).
3) Starting with liquid soap kind of defeats the purpose. Seriously.
4) Dr. Bronner’s Castille soap is great – but a little secret: castille soap is simply olive oil soap. Guess what!? You can make that at home.
5) The ones that do provide a recipe from scratch, want you to use a different form of lye - Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) instead of what is typically used in bar soaps: Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). I do NOT understand this. I have put out some requests and have heard no responses. If YOU know why, please respond, because I genuinely want to know the reason why a different form of lye would be needed for liquid soap.
Now. Why would you want to start with bar soap (that was liquid during the soapmaking process to begin with) and liquify it? Because not everyone can have lye around. It’s dangerous stuff with little ones or if you don’t have the greatest coordination. I think I’m pretty decent and I’ve had a couple of minor incidents with yellowed curling finger nails and one spot on my arm. All is well now, but it was pretty scary (and stinky). If you cannot have lye in your home, purchase a “full body bar soap” – this is MY terminology alone, not an official label. What you are looking for is a simple, all-natural soap containing ONLY the ingredients YOU want (you can add more if you want during the process, but make sure there is nothing in there you DON’T want) – and make sure the glycerin has not been removed (this is what I call “full body” – it’s all the soap, nothing removed). Grate it up into a saucepan and add twice as much water as the amount of soap you have. Bring to a gentle simmer and stir almost constantly until the soap has melted – add any additional ingredients you want. Allow to cool – if it gets too thick, warm it back up and add water about 1/2 to a full cup at a time (you can gauge the amounts based on the thickness – very thick, add more water; getting close to what you want add less at a time), stirring and cooling until it gets to the thickness you like. After a time or two making it like this, you’ll recognize the thickness it needs to be when “hot” to be the consistency you want when “cool”. This is how I always used to make our soap.


So how do *I* make liquid soap now?

Those of you who visit my home and recognize the pitcher: Rest assured I do watch it. Remember that my alternate dish soap is this SAME soap plus coconut oil soap. It’s JUST soap 

I had 2 more of the “smaller” jars as well. From that one pitcher of soap!!!

Start with making olive oil soap, adding the highest amount of the required range of water. When any soap is made, a typical lye calculator will give a range of water amounts to use – use less if you want to set up faster; more if you want it to set up slower. Olive oil soap takes a while to set up anyway, so I typically use on the lower end if I am making bar soaps. For a recipe of 32 ounces of olive oil, I need 4.2 oz of Sodium Hydroxide (lye) and 8-12 ounces of water. I made a recipe last week with 15 ounces of water (I didn’t want to over-do it because I did want the oil and lye to be close enough to saponify well. This all perfectly fit into my beautiful glass pitcher.
I used a stick blender to bring it to trace, but I used to wait and stir and wait and stir – sometimes up to a full day to get the olive oil soap to trace. I LOVE stick blenders 
Then I separated it into two large old spaghetti sauce jars, filling each about half. I filled the rest with water and stirred. Added essential oils (in this case I used lavender, tea tree oil and grapefruit essential oils as well as vitamin E – to personal scent-preference). Let it sit. Stirred the next morning – it was THICK. Poured some out into 2 other jars and filled up with water again. Within 12 hours: thick again.

Poured into 2 more of the smaller jars and some into our current soap dispenser, adding more water to bring it to consistency in the dispenser.

The stuff in the glass jars is still thick though very close to the consistency I want and I will thin it as we use it.

That is a LOT of soap – for almost NO work. Next time, I’ll stick with 16 ounces and I’ll probably fill up this same amount of jars with soap at the proper consistency.


I didn’t use any of the complicated process (one site says you can’t make liquid soap using cold-process soap-making – ummmm, this is my second time making liquid soap from scratch and the ONLY way I like to make soap is the cold-process version. I abhor heating it up and dealing with the curds – I do it only when absolutely necessary – and liquid soap-making from scratch works just fine in cold-process, thank you very much).


I don’t do any of the other more complicated steps, because frankly – this method WORKS – we are getting ourselves clean – it is simply liquified versions of my bar soaps – so why would I go to more trouble for a liquid than I do for the bars?

Lazy Mom syndrome again 

Or maybe I just want to spend time with my son….