Bedtime Soap - Wonderful Scent

Tonight I decided to try something different. I made a light orange color soap and scented it with an essential oil put out by "Now" brand.

It smells so good I could wear this scent all the time, but since it is supposed to help with sleep, I better only use it at night!

Here is the oil I used to make this soap with:



I may take pictures of the soap once it is out of the mold. Hope it continues to smell as nice and as strong as it does now!

I think I will call this soap, 'Bedtime Soap'.

(I will receive commission for those who go to the amazon site from the link above, from any orders on amazon connected with that link. Thank you for those who have ordered through my links).  

My First Dollhouse Floor

These pictures are not in order, but I am so excited about almost being done with this floor. To get the correct size for a room, I measured our dining room and divided the measurements by 12. Now to measure the size of a room in a finished dollhouse and see how close I got! The floor looks nice but I may give it one more coat of stain. It looks nicer with each coat I give it. It has had three coats of stain so far. I will take pictures when finished.

Now I want to make another floor, but will make it light brown or off white in color. I still have to see if this is the correct size, or if it will fit into a dollhouse. Next, will be figuring out how to make the walls. We start at the bottom and then go up. 

My Crazy Creative Activity

Do not laugh at me! I do have some way out ideas, but as I have been studying the pins on Pinterest, I can see that I am not the only one. I have seen tutorials on how to make miniature items out of straws, paper clips, bottle caps, and sponges.

 With all that in mind, I have an idea with making cereal boxes for the doll house. First, I came up with a name for the make believe company that will produce the products for my miniatures. It will be called "Eternal Perspective" (E.P. for short). So my little cereal boxes will all have the E.P. logo on them. I am designing the cereal box right now. Rather than taking a name brand logo such as "Kellogg" I will make my own. I don't think it is proper to use a copyright name or trademark when designing a product that you want to sell. So, with that in mind, I need to have a homemade picture to put onto the tint cereal box. Last night, I spent a considerable amount of time looking for a picture I had taken of a bowl of cereal. Well guess what? I looked through every photo I had uploaded to Facebook and found nothing. In fact, my computer froze in the process and I decided to call it a night (this was after 2 am). Nothing. No picture of a bowl of cereal was on my computer either. Since I need a picture of a bowl of cereal to put onto my cereal box, I decided to get a bowl out and our some cereal in it with a couple of large pieces of dried fruit. Here is the pic. When I get the design for the front of the cereal box finished, I will post that as well.

Real bowl of cereal to put on doll house
people cereal boxes

I got the bowl of cereal picture onto the box. Here is the pic:

Of course, I have to make the rest of the box. All of these little details!

The Ideas Are Endless - Many More Fun and Neat Items To Come

   I feel like I am on an unending chase of following ideas for things I can make to go in the doll house. I literally could spend all night on the internet going through tutorials and Pinterest, coming up with all these items I can make and sell for doll houses all over the country and even the world!

  Realistically though, I need a unit of measure. For example, I want to make bed pillows for the doll house, but, what size do I  make them? I want to make candy canes to put on doll house Christmas trees. How big do I make them? I found a simple weaving tutorial this morning and I want to make a mat out of jute, but I am not sure what size it should be. I can only guess!

   As I watch these really informative videos, the first instructions are almost always, take a small ball of clay. Well, that's nice, but what is small to me might be another size difference to another person. All I can do at this point is buy a cheap set of doll house people and use them as a gauge to measure everything else with.

   Some of the things I made this week were really cute. I made a donut box, with the cellophane lid and put 2 donuts in it. I also took a picture of an ancestor, and made a frame from Fimo clay to go around it. It was a little more work than what I originally thought it would be. But I want to make a table. How big should the top be? All I know is that everything is in 1:12 scale. So that means that I would take the size of a regular table, which is about 6' long, and divide that by 12 to come out with my measurement. 6 X 12 is 72 and that is how many inches a grown up table for people is. Divide 72 by twelve and you get 6 inches. So, if my guess is correct, you would make a table 6 inches long. Haven't even gotten into the width part yet.

I am working on a candy shop for the 1:12 inch dolls. I will try to find a picture of the items I made to go into the candy shop. You know I don't approve of candy though, so why am I making a candy shop of all things? It goes back to the difference between the way life was when I was real small, and how life got to be when I was older.

When I was a very little child, once in a great while, my mom would take my brother and me to this little candy shop a couple of blocks away. We didn't go there very often, and I don't remember what I ever got from there, but it was a nice treat and a nice memory. Contrast that with the scenario a couple of years later. We moved away and settled in Florida when I was 9. By the time I was 10, I got an allowance and I spend most of my money on candy. We had a toy shop a couple of doors away from where my parents used to go grocery shopping. As soon as I got my allowance, I would go down to the toy shop and spend my money, mostly on candy. No wonder my teeth started rotting! Candy was no longer a luxury, but now it was an expectation. Candy lost its specialness, and it became common place.

There are other shops to make too, but I need to concentrate on making a home. What makes a home a home? I'm sure it has to do with lots of love!

In the doll house (which I don't even have yet, but will build one someday) I need to make rugs, bath towels, canned goods, furniture, pets, blankets, bedding, accessories and so on. The rest can take care of itself later.

So, here are a few of the little items I have made so far:

Tiny candy sticks, pretzels, and lollipops

Potentially, New Items Coming In The Future

  Don't be concerned about my leaving the soap industry to go and make toys and bread! Oma's Workshop will continue to make goat's milk oatmeal soap as well as all the others. But there will be some other items added to the menu here.

   Months ago, I planted several tomato, pepper, and other fruits and vegetable plants, with the thought that I could use the produce and sell or give away what was excess. We haven't had any excess yet, and the plants are very slow to grow and develop. In fact, some have died. So, at this  moment, there will not be any produce for sale. The plants are being grown organically, and some are even growing in the hydroponic system. I plan to sell the produce that will one day come, for $2 a pound. I will let you know when the produce comes in, or at least when there is enough to sell. I will call my gardens, 'Oma's Mini Acres".

  I have been baking in the past, so the baking part of it is not so new. But I will add it to the Oma's Workshop menu and see if anyone wants to order some cinnamon loaf bread or gingerbread man cookies. Also, I have some special chocolate chip (or variety chip) cookies that I can make. I can make either the regular version, which contains very good ingredients or I can specialize and use organic ingredients in these items. The organic items will be more expensive than the regular ones, as organic food is more expensive, unfortunately. But I think organic is the best anyway, so it is worth it to me. Regular cinnamon bread loaves will sell for $2 a loaf, while organic will be $3 a loaf. Gingerbread man cookies will sell for 50 cents and the ones made with organic ingredients will be 75 cents each. (Prices could change if I calculate the price of the ingredients and divide per cookie.).

  Last but not least, I am so excited to announce the making and selling of dollhouse items, also known as miniatures. I know there are people who collect miniatures as well as those who are building doll houses and adding to them over time. I have so many ideas and want to sort them out so I don't become overwhelmed or just going from making one item and then another, leaving several projects undone (which I have been known to do). I also want to build doll house rooms with flooring and walls. Right now, I am researching the materials and watching/reading tutorials on how to do all this. This could be an all consuming project, and I want to make a good product, so it will not come overnight. But I will post pics as soon as I finish them.

  Oops. I completely forgot the jewelry line I was working on. I'm learning how to make necklaces, earrings, and bracelets. I have some already made.

   My memorable jewelry story comes around the time I was pregnant with my son, about 22, 23 years ago. I was making some earrings out of something called 'friendly plastic' (I wonder what ever happened to this wonderful product) while my daughter came up with a pretty earring made with a little coin shaped piece. We got a lot of our materials from a local craft store and put out the goods on the day of the craft show. I don't think I sold any earrings, but all the earrings made by my daughter sold like hot cakes! People would look at her earrings and comment positively on them! Mine didn't even get noticed. Oh well. I will go for more beaded items next time.

  I do have some afghans available too. I will sell them at $65 each. The newer ones will be a little more pricy.

Yummy Lemony Soap

Yesterday, I made goat's milk oatmeal soap. The goat's milk oatmeal soap is under the category of 'Soaps For Life at Oma's Workshop', which simply means that a portion of the money made from this soap goes toward 'Sanctuary Ministries' which is a ministry that assists struggling women who are pregnant and have chosen to go through the pregnancy instead of having their babies murdered. Also the sheep's milk oatmeal soap is in the 'Soaps For Life at Oma's Workshop' category.

Tonight I made lemon soap. Last year, I made this lemon soap but was disappointed because the scent did not stay in the soap for long. This year, I used another type of oil, lemongrass, which should stick much longer.

  Last year when I made this soap, it turned out very pretty. The soap itself is yellow, but the lemon rinds turned orange as the soap was curing. It looks like the lemon rinds are turning orange in this batch. It should be a successful batch of soap that will smell really nice and will look pretty as well.

Lemon Scrubby Soap

Last year I saw a picture of lemon soap and found a recipe for this kind of soap. In the soap, I used lemon oil. It had a very nice, clean smell to it, and because I used the rinds (grated up) in the soap, it turned out like a scrubby soap. All the lemon rinds settled on the bottom of the mold and made a natural scrubby on one side of the bar.

  Unfortunately, the soap did not hold it's scent. Using essential oils that are made from citrus does not make a nice. long lasting bar of scented soap. But, the good news is that I have heard that Lemongrass oil holds the scent better. I ordered some and have used it a couple of times.

   I am going to pull a lemon off my lemon tree and grate the lemon rinds up and will use them in the soap after they are dried.

   Lemon soap is really cool.