Be sure to put February 2nd on your calendar!

A special Stop and Shop event will be held in the Clio area! It's to be held as an open house with lots of goodies! Be sure to stop in! See below for details!!!

A variety of treats will be available from the Cake Lady including some for tasting!
Brownie Pops, Cupcakes and more. Dawn will also have her entire hairbloom inventory and availible for shopping! Check out the Cake Lady's work here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Classy-Cakes-Other-Bakes/291192675170

Miss Caila Saunders from Precious Moments Photography will be there with her "Kissing Booth"! Bring your kids in and get a photo of them in the kissing booth and have it printed on the spot!  $3 for a 3x5 or $5 for a sheet (2 5x7's or 1 8x10) 
Check out her work and LIKE her page here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Precious-Moments-Photography/130379053705313?ref=ts&fref=ts

Amanda Bleck will be here showcasing her beautiful items from Paparazzi!  Jewelry and Accessories! You can check out some of her stuff and LIKE her page here:  https://www.facebook.com/paparazzi.by.amanda.bleck 
  
Heather Porritt will officially be bringing her hand crafted TuTu collection! She's never done a show before so show her some love and come and check out her products!!!  (She does not yet have a facebook page - yet!)
 
AND A Touch of Eden will be there too! We will be bringing our new spring soaps!

There will be door prizes too with one from A Touch of Eden! All adults in attendance may enter! Kids will each receive a goodie bag (while supplies last).
 
Complimentary coffee, cocoa and punch will be served.

So come in out of the cold, have a cup of cocoa and see what all that will be offered from 3:00 to 7:00pm! The address is 1044 East Vienna Rd. Clio, MI 48420.

Over the past few days I have been working on a new website with Weebly and discovered they have thier own blog site available to work with the site. Well the website is up and running although there is some tweaking left to do and soaps to add.

I love having the blog site attached to the website, one less site to connect to! So I have copied several of the blog posts from the old Word Press site and added them to this blog site with the original dates posted inside the blog. And hopefully I can be more regular about posting!

Take a look at the new website. A big thank you goes to my son-n-law Kelly for all his help with technical issues! By the way, he has an official title as A Touch of Eden's Website Design Analyst!

October gave a party; The leaves by hundreds came - The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples, And leaves of every name. The Sunshine spread a carpet, And
everything was grand, Miss Weather led the dancing, Professor Wind the band.     ~George Cooper, October's Party

Well we certainly went from summer weather to fall weather quite quickly! What happened to those middle range temperatures? It seems just a couple weeks ago I was sweating at the markets and the last couple weeks I have had to pull out winter clothes.  Not to mention the rain we have had creating damp conditions. Just a couple more weeks though and our summer markets will be shut down till spring.

We are gearing up for the Holidays with craft shows. Be sure to put these dates on your calendar if you live in these areas: We will be taking a part in the 38th Annual Mason Christmas and Craft Sale. The dates are November 8, 9, 10th (Thurs & Friday 9 am - 8 pm Sat. 9-5). The whole town gets involved with this event with several locations hosting vendors. We will be at Nick's Attic, at the El Dorado Golf Course on 3750 West Howell Road in Mason, MI.  Round up some friends and make a day of it!

On December 1st we will be in Eaton Rapids at the Red Ribbon Hall downtown
from 10am to 5pm. This is the Eaton Rapids Hometown Family Christmas event.
There will be bands and choirs, food and other activites as well as craft vendors throughout the town concluding with a Light Parade at the end of the day.

We'll have our special edition soaps available at these shows. Pumpkin Lager, Apple Pie, Green Apple, Santa's Pipe, Frankinscense, Ginger Lime and
more. Several are made with beer (our new specialty!) and a few other surprises. 
Hope to see you at one or both of these events!

 

By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer's best of
weather And autumn's best of cheer. ~ Helen Hunt Jackson ~

The summer flowers are quickly fading away making room for some fall bloomers. I have even seen a few trees that are turning colors already. The weather man is predicting some much cooler weather this week, and it sounds like a bit of frost is
possible.

 I am currently in Wisconsin waiting on the arrival of a new grandbaby (due last week!). My daughter and I have been doing quite a bit of walking in the local parks and to a small botanical garden. Most of their summer flowers are spent but we saw some gorgeous vines with flowers. In particular was a Sweet Autumn Clemantis. I did  not realize there was a late summer blooming clemantis and is it wonderful! Full of small, white, fragrant flowers that filled up an entire arched trellis. I am thinking that I need to find a good starter and plant that in my garden.

 Today we stopped at a small cafe called Harmony Cafe and had some yummy chicken salad on croissant along with a wonderful iced tea. The tea was a house specialty called Evening in Missoula and flavored with peppermint, vanilla, anise and spearmint. It smelled great and got me thinking it might make a really nice soap scent.

Prior to driving to Wisconsin I was busy making several fall scented soaps. Two batches with pumpkin puree, one with a pumpkin lager and one without the added beer. Also some great smelling apple scented soaps. These are now curing on the racks and will be ready early in October. When I return to Michigan it will be time to start the Christmas soaps. I've orderd some nice scents like Cranberry Spice and Frankinsense and Ginger and a few other surprises.

 Till then I wll be here with the expectant family waiting .....


 

I haven't posted for some time now, just plain busy! The beginning of the summer has been very dry. The only plants that really grew were the weeds (go figure!) Finally we got some rain, though from what I understand a little too late for the farmers. But for us the grass is green again and growing and I much prefer that over the brown, crunchy stuff we had going. A few flowers are blooming including a few blossoms on the wisteria.

As for the soap making, I've had to take a few breaks here and there due to time away from home but I have several new fragrances and colorants to work with for some nice fall and winter soaps. Will be getting a few batches made asap. Then it's another road trip to Wisconsin to be with a daughter who is expecting in mid-September.

The farmer market's are going well this year too. We are in Lansing on Wednesdays from 2:30pm to 7pm and then in Jackson on Saturdays from 8am to 1pm. We will have several varieties of the new beer soaps as well as some great fragrances and essential oil soaps on hand along with Hickory Knoll Creamery's goat cheeses. If you haven't had a chance to try them you should! There are several great produce vendors at these markets as well. Come and support our local market!

Originally posted July 4, 2012

A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for
learning how to grow in rows ~Doug Larson

Sure is a lot of truth to this. With this heat it seems the only that is
growing really well are the weeds! And boy are they tenacious! Seems they have
dug their roots into the soil and are hanging on for dear life. I love going out
into my gardens and to be honest I even like pulling the weeds unlike most
folks. To me it is my therapy.

I do some of my best thinking while pulling weeds. ~
Martha Smith

If I am mad at the world I can just go pull a few weeds and the mad melts
away with the work. When I need a few moments to myself, I learned a long time
ago that escape route was in the garden. The kids really didn't want to find me
as I might just have a job for them to do! I love to see the weeds removed and
the beauty of the flowers shining forth.  And I definitely do a lot of thinking
while pulling weeds: planning, organizing and of course a bit of dreaming!

 Happy 4th of July! Enjoy your holiday time!

Originally posted June 29, 2012

It certainly has been a hotter summer for Michigan than normal. We've had several really warm days. These are usually reserved for the month of August.  Today has been a record setter all across the states. We shut up the house, put sheets over the windows without curtains and turned on all the fans. Alas, no air in this old farmhouse. It has worked fairly well. It is now evening. I have slowly been opening a few doors and  windows as the temps drop. Maybe I can cool it down enough to keep the house cool again tomorrow. The past two weeks have been busy making it hard to to find time to soap. So much on my schedule that my plate seems to be overfilled. A three day hand's on session at MSU working with the search and rescue dogs, the Jackson and Allen St markets, my dad is having some serious health issues and my husband had an overnight stay in the hospital as well.

So in spite of the temps reaching over 90 degrees I decided today was the day
to do soap. I had four different beers that I had frozen in the freezer that I have been looking forward to trying.

Well, maybe I shoud have waited for the temps to drop! First batch started out as an epic failure. I had a coffee flavored beer, some nice coffee fragrance oil, and a sample of coffee butter all planned out for this special soap. Sounds wonderful doesn't it!  I made a small cup of coffee to use as the additional liquid with the beer and added my lye... hmm. First clue something might be off.  Never saw my lye mix get thick quite like that. When It cooled I added it to my oils and I could see right away there was going to be an issue. Oh dear, a serious, lumpy conglomeration. 

I decided to hot process the entire congealing mess. I am a cold process soaper, meaning that I heat my oils, cool them and the lye to about the same temp, then mix the two until it saponifies. Then I pour the soap into my  molds and allow time for the soap to gel before it hardens enough to cut into bars. Hot process is exactly what it sounds like... cooking the mix together to bring it to the gel phase. The nice thing about HP is that the curing time is greatly shortened. The flip side is that you are working with lye and the process is hot. 

I poured the mess into the crock pot to heat up. It took some time but eventually I could see that the oils/lye were mixing as it heated. After a couple of hours I added the coffee fragrance and plopped the whole thing into the mold. Well, it's not pretty! Definitely looks more like the old fashion soap bars, a bit lumpy even! But it does smell like a good pot of coffee. I did the "zap" test and surprisingly I did not get a charge. (you ask... what is a zap test? It's like touching your tongue to a 9-volt battery to see if you get a zap. No zap, no lye!)

I made two more batches with strawberry and blueberry beers. No drama with  them thank goodness. Not so sure how blue my color will be in the end result for
the blueberry. Again, time will tell and these will need the full 4-6 weeks of curing. Considering the high heat temps and humidity it may even take a bit more  time to cure in this old house.

As for the coffee soap... I will unmold in the next day or so. I know it's already soap not only did it pass the zap test, but when I washed out the crock pot I got  lots and lots of soapy bubbles! I am going call it "Cowboy Coffee". It reminds  me of the coffee our camping neighbors made every morning. Mrs E. literally threw the grounds into the pot of water, boiled  it over a fire then poured it into our coffee cups, floating grounds and all!

Originally posted on May 31, 2012

Farmer Markets are opening up all around Michigan indicating that summer has
officially begun. Some of the bigger markets that are inside permanent
structures have been going on all year but it's the outdoor markets I enjoy. I
love seeing the spring vegies on the tables, the colored lettuces, spinach,
swiss chard and the first strawberries. I enjoy watching people milling about
and enjoying the warmer weather.

 A Touch of Eden is planning on being at a few market this summer, most regularly at the Allen St Market in Lansing. This is a smaller community market just a few blocks east from the downtown area. They set up in a corner parking area and the folks that run it are very friendly. Each week a different musical group will be performing to add to the atmosphere. This week it was a bluesy threesome with a keyboard, trumpet and cello.

What amazes me is there are three of us that live within a mile of each other  outside of Lansing!  My two neighbors and I have all lived near each for  years. So funny that we all end up at the same place. Green Eagle Farm has been growing organic vegies for many years and Hickory Knoll Creamery, LLC is one of the few working goat dairies in the state. Yes, we have lots of small family goat
farms in our neck of the woods but these guys produce soft flavored cheeses, feta and some hard cheeses. 

The Allen St market has a nice variety of vendors including fresh vegies, some herbs and fruit as it becomes available, a great bread baker, organic beef, big yummy cookies, popcorns and more. You can also plan to eat dinner at one of the food vendors chosing from homemade burritos and tamales to egg rolls or some
great organic choices from the Trailer. A Touch of Eden will have a variety of homemade soaps and lip balms and a few dried herbs.

You may also find us in the Jackson area. We may be sharing a booth at times with our friends from Hickory Knoll. 

We will have all of basic "flavors" of soap such as lavender, calendula and patchouli along with some of our limited edition beer soaps! So if you are in  the Lansing area come on by and check us out. If not, please visit your local farmer markets and support the small family owned businesses and local growers.

Originally posted on April 28, 2012

Recently another soapmaker gave a challenge to create a soap using an alcohol
based drink. Well it got my interest and I have been reading everything I can
find on using beer as an ingredient in soap.

I am not a beer drinker and had no knowledge of what makes one beer better
than another beer, so I did a little investigation. I found there are two basic categories for beer, ales and lagers, and there are many different types. Ales include stouts, brown and pale ales, wheat beers and the lagers includes bocks and pilsner, and then these get broken into more categories. I am not going to go too deep researching specific beers but I needed to learn enough so I could make a beer soap and use oils, additives and scents that will work together. I asked a few of my beer drinking friends what they liked about specific beers and found that helpful as well.

But why beer in soap in the first place? Beer is made with hops. Hops is  known as a relaxing and calming herb, and has polyphenols which may account for its anti-bacterial and preservative qualities in beer. It has amino acids that contribute to its skin softening properties. Beer has often been used as a hair rinse as the hops and wheat contributes conditioning effects and shine. The beneficial properties in beer are carried over into the soap and creates additional  lather.

To use beer in soap it needs to be flat and the alcohol boiled out or the beer will react to the lye mixture and volcano, according to other season soapmakers. Since I am not knowledgable about chemistry I carefully took in this information to be properly prepared. 

I recently made a trip to Missouri with friends who are wine drinkers and we stopped at winery on the way. As I was looking over the little store I found they produced  a special line of beers. We  all agreed that the cocoa stout sounded very interesting so a bottle came home with me. I made a small sample batch and added cocoa butter, cocoa powder and coffee grounds to add interest as well as a chocolate fragrance oil to enhance the subtle hint of chocolate and coffee. I am very pleased with the results and will be creating more beer soaps in the near future.

UPDATE on BEER SOAPS - originally posted June 13, 2012

Well I have certainly been having fun creating soaps with beer! I had no idea there
were so many choices when it came to beer! For Mother's Day one of my daughters  and her husband got me beer (pretty funny since I don't drink beer!). They had a lot of fun picking out some very different beers... including a milk stout! Last week another friend left a six pack on my table of some fruity beers. What fun
to scout out the online fragrances and try to match scents with the flavors for  each of these beers to create some new soaps. Can't wait to make some more!

Originally published n April 18, 2012

Olive oil is great for cooking but did you know it also has many benefits when
used as a base oil in homemade soaps? The olive oil in soap helps the skin to
retain moisture and is great for sensitive or mild skin. 

Olive oil is a fruit oil made from tree ripened olives. The oil comes via cold pressing the olives. Each pressing of the olives creates different grades of the oil. The first pressing is where we get the extra virgin or virgin oils, the best quality for cooking.  A second pressing will yield “grade A” oil, a lower grade due to the presence of free fatty acids. After these pressing a solvent, called hexane, is used to remove any remaining oil that is considered “grade B”. This is a lower grade and has even more free fatty acids. The lowest grade of olive oil is called pomace which is the oils that come from the pits of the olive.

Olive oil was one of the first vegetable oils to be used in soaps. Soaps made
with 100% olive oil are called castile soaps. They tend to produce a soft soap
but will harded nicely over times but they have low lathering ability. Other oils are added to soap recipes to create the lathering suds. Palm oil is added to help harden the bars, while coconut helps to harden and to create the bubbles, and canola oil may be added for a creamier soap.

Extra virgin is best for cooking especially due to the cost of the oil. Usually the lower grades are used most often for soap making and preferred by soapers as it will bring the soap to trace quicker.  Additionally, the lower grades are likely more beneficial as more molecules won’t go through the saponification process allowing the beneficial properties of the oil access to your skin. All labels must be read carefully as cheaper oils are being added to decrease the costs in manufacturing.

So what are the benefits of olive oil? Olive oil is rich in vitamins A  & E and beta carotene. It is considered to be an antioxidant, containing hydroxytyrosol that provides an anti-inflammatory effect. Olive oil contains oleocanthal, known as an anti-aging and anti-inflammatory agent. It is said to stimulate new cell growth which promotes healthy skin, and may slow down the progression of wrinkles due to pollution, smoke, and sun. It is also non-greasy so will not clog pores and moisturizing.

The above reasons may explain the high use of olive oil in salves and balms as well as being used in so many soap recipes. Now, I cannot say that all these benefits are actually found in our soaps but I do like the how the soap turns out when I do use it!

Note: Info is for educational purposes only. Be sure to do  your own research to find out more about Olive oil!