Productive Day

Saturday was a busy day besides being a weekend day and not a day job day!  I made soap in the morning as you can see here. The one on the left is Chamomile Soap with olive oil infused with Chamomile Flowers and swirled with the herbal powder also. I decided to add some of the flowers on the top of the soap and I think it came out pretty well. There is not any essential oil added as it is one of my unscented soaps but after awhile you can smell the appley scent of the Chamomile herb in the soap. The other batch is Rosemary Lemongrass which really fills your senses with a herbal lemongrass scent. I do love making soap and I know that is is great for the skin because of the moisturizing oils that make up the soap recipe.

I choose to use a formula that is heavy on olive oil that is so wonderful for the skin, Shea butter which moisturizes, cocoa butter which is soothing to the skin, avocado oil that is a nutrient for dry skin and coconut oil for its wonderful lather. All these are blended together into a moisture rich bar with pure essential oils for an aromatic way to cleanse your skin.  All good reasons to use handmade soap as opposed to commercial soaps.

I know you have all heard that your skin is the biggest organ of your body and you need to be careful what you put on it as well as what you put in your body. You want to use things that protect it and take care of it and not harsh ingredients that dry it out and irritate it. One more note of information is that in commercial soap, the manufacturers skim off the soap's natural glycerin which is one of the main moisturizing components of the soap process as it draws moisture from the air and onto your skin. This glycerin is then re-sold to cosmetic manufacturers for a profit leaving commercial soaps not as moisturizing and can be and usually are dring to the skin. Handmade soaps have this wonderful ingredient in each bar and on your skin when you use it.

OK getting off my soap box for now. 

Scents are one of my passions as well as taking baths rather than showers.  So, making soap seemed like a natural way for combining these two into a business as well as the art and science that also go hand in hand with the making of soap.

Just wanted to share abit about me and Ritual Waters.....



Guess what I found.......

I feel excited about sharing this discovery. I went over to youtube to see if there were any videos about growing Lavender and of course, silly me , yes there are lots. There are videos about planting Lavender, propagating Lavender from cuttings, making Lavender wreaths. So please go check them out and I attached one on the many varieties of Lavender.

Enjoy and Happy Saturday!

More about Lavender

Lavender and Lavender Essentail Oil (EO) has so many therapeutic qualities and also many emotional/spiritual qualities that it should be part of everyone's household. From something as simple Lavender sachets added to scent linens or in a eye pillow to ease headaches and help one relax to sleep. We also have a Lavender Farm in Eastern North Carolina that I visited several years back that grow several different varieties of Lavender at their harvest festival. You can visit them at

www.sunshinelavenderfarm.com/    While there we had Chocolate Lavender ice cream plus they had several Lavender crafts they were demonstating. Their site also has information on planting and also recipes for using the herb Lavender. 

Now Lavender Essential Oil is what I use most. I use it in several of the soaps I make - Lavender, Lavender Orange Oats, Lavender Rosemary, and Walk in the Woods Soaps. Lavender is a versatile oil that blends with many other scents from the citrus scents like Orange and Grapefruit, to the mints and to the really earthy oils of Patouchli and Oakmoss. I also use Lavender in my Soaking Salts as the EO has the therapeutic properties to be sedative, antidepressant and analgesic which is great after a stessful day at work! If you are adding jus the EO to your bath , only add about 5-6 drops to you bathwater as you will be inhaling the scent through you nose and into you skin. EO's are very concentrated and as the saying goes "less is more".

Please note these are properties not prescribed by medical field but from aromatherpy and anecdotal only. I also use Lavender in my lotion bars as much for the scent as for its know skin heaing properties. I have also applied a few drop for insect bites to ease itching on my grandaughter's bug bites.

A wonderful book by Valerie Ann Worwood titled The Fragrant Heavens  talks about the spiritual dimension of fragrances and she writes about Lavender being " caring, cherishing, and nurturing " and an oil that uplifts the spirit. Lavender is a physically and emotionally healing oil and I hope you will welcome it into you daily life.

One place I highly reccomend to purchase wonderful therapeutic grade essential oils is http://www.lovingscents.com/   They have a wonderful newsletter and allot of information on their oils.

Lavender

I have had a Lavender plant for the past several years that grew quite big but finally died this past season. It was not as lush as the picture here but I usually was able to harvest a bunch of  Lavender that I could enjoy every year. I will miss that plant but will be picking up some new ones at the local Farmer's Market this year. People have asked if I grow my own herbs for my soaps or make my own oils, unfortunately the amount of Lavender Essential Oil I use requires allot more than one plant and I do not have as green a thumb as my Mother had. Lavender Essential Oil is steam distilled from the flowering tops only so it takes many flower stalks to make the oil. One of my dream vacations is to go to Provence, France during the Lavender harvest on an aromatherapy tour. A field of Lavender - what a wondrous site that would be to behold and to smell ! I think my senses would be overwhelmed but very very happy!

Lavender is an oil that has had a long tradition. The person who first coined the term aromatherapy was Rene-Maurice Gattefosse was working in a perfumier business and when he got a sever burn , he stuck his hand in a vat of Lavender oil and as a result was able to heal his hand quite rapidly and the oil helped to prevent scarring. So Lavender was there at the start of modern day aromatherapy. Lavender is one of the few oils that is said can be applied directly to the skin.

The scent of Lavender is usually familiar to everyone with its fresh herbaceous, floral aroma. This little oil has over 100 constituents including linalyl acetate, linalol, labeandulol, etc. Its amazing to me that how these different components are broken out depends on how the Lavender smells and what its characteristics are. For example there is Lavender grown in France and there is also High-Altitude Lavender- both the same species but depending on where it grows affects the chemical makeup of the plant and the final scent of the flowers and this affects the therapeutic properties of the essential oil.

More tomorrow on the qualities of Lavender Essential Oil.

Ingredients - Calendula officinalis

Calendula officinalis is a wonderful herb that we use in several of our products. This beautiful flower is a perennial that is also known by the name of "pot marigold". Please note that it is not considered the "common marigold" or Mexican mariold as these are part of the Tagetes family and do NOT have the same properties.
The Calendula plant is easy to grow and will tolerate most soils if you are a gardener. The flowers are considered edible which I thought interesting and they vary in color from yellow to various shades of orange. This wonderful plant has been used as a dye plant to color butter and cheese in Europe and to flavor soups and stews. We add Calendula petals to our Calendula soap and the petals keep their wonderful orange color and do not turn brown. I have been wanting to try adding Calendula powder to the soap to see if it will impart a yellow color that stays through the soap curing. For the Calendula soap I infuse olive oil with Calendula flowers to make a nice soap for sensitive skin.
Calendula has many medicinal properties as it has anti-inflamatory, antiseptic properties, and is also antibacterial and antifungal. This makes it a great addition to any cream or salve and helps soothe irritated, chapped skin, eczema, and insect bites. We use Calendula infused olive oil in our Herbal Salve and all Lip Balms for these reasons.
We will be showcasing more of our ingredients in the coming weeks to explore why we choose our materials carefully in preparing our products for your use.