It's not always roses and sunshine ...

... but sometimes it is! A few days ago I dried 2 trays worth of these cute, fragrant little spray roses

natural light at dusk

that I grow in my front yard. I ended up with just about 1/3 of a cup dried rose petals, and thought they'd be perfect for a honey oatmeal rose petal bar.

flash - how much more dramatic

I stuck to my own recipe that uses a nice combination of highly moisturizing oils, and is vegan and palm oil free. A hard to find combination. There are some sourcing issues related to palm oil and orangutans. I certainly wouldn't want to mess with apes that are bigger than me so I have made it a policy not to use palm oil in my soap making. 

 

I added a bit of rose, lavender and sweet orange essential oils and the end result looks good enough to eat! It will have to harden for quite a while (courtesy of the no palm, no lard recipe). Sadly, the rose petals didn't hold their color very much, which I had hoped they would. I still think they added to the wonderful scent though, and I like that there is something homegrown in this bar.

Then I made my first batch of shampoo bars. I slightly modified this recipe from Andrea @ frugallysustainable.com, and made it a Sunshine Shampoo with chamomile and lemon. I used the room temperature method, so I'll have to wait a few weeks to give this a try. I'm having high hopes it'll work for me and the kids!

If you liked my last post about soap, here are the two soaps I made then, cut in bars by now: 

A coconut castille soap - it looks so clean! Hoping this will be a good one for the kids' showers.

This is version 2.0 of the citrus scented cook's bar 'Lemony Lather' - the bits of dehydrated lemon peel turned reddish, so it has a funny speckled look. It smells amazing of a combination of lemon grass, lemon balm, lemon, and citronella.

Sunshine and Roses! I'm so hooked on soap making. This is going to be one clean family :-)