Carrot Soap and a Walk

Hi! Seems like I could upload the rest of the photos today with no dramas!!
How was your weekend?

As you can see – finally putting the first batch of relish together for this season. Seems a long time coming! We’re just finishing the first month of autumn!

Love my Nanna’s old scales. The best thing about them is how cool they look, the second best thing is, unlike a digital scale, it doesn’t switch itself off after 25 seconds of inactivity!!
One day I will put my hands deeper into my purse and buy some super kitchen scales (that DON’T get bored and switch off to ‘save power’)

Done.
I also made some muffins

Pip has a thing for banana muffins (no we don’t spoil him that much)
(Really!!)
(I can tell no-one is believing me at all)

And soap… something different, first I boiled up some carrots…

Do you know its the first time I’ve really looked at the cross section of a carrot closely! They are so pretty!!

I was using the carrot to make the colouring. So when I mixed the lye, I used the water that the carrots boiled in, then when it cooled a little I mixed in the pulp

When I was ready to mix it all in together with the oils, I put it through a strainer so no bits would get in… I suspect there would be mould issues with the cooked food in it… not sure

I tarted them up with some poppy seeds on top. The yellow (Which was part the kitchen lights) has faded now… there is an interesting smell – maybe its the poppyseeds, not sure as I didn’t put fragrance in. (Nor goats milk this time)
I just wanted to see how it all behaved.

It mixed up well and set quickly so I was able to unmould today quite early.
I would love to work on making a range of botanical/vegetable soaps using plants from my garden. Would be very bohemian and cool!

To be honest I am dying to have a go at using beetroot but I reckon people would come out of the shower looking a little purple haha

I’ll have to see if I can remember to get a snap of the unmoulded soap in the natural light tomorrow.

So… today – back to Oldina for a 10km hike up those gnarly hills!

It rained off and on…

The creek seems full

Lots of people were out there today on motorbikes and quadbikes

We found a random golf ball… reckon one of the crows (ravens) dropped it – probably pinched it from somewhere thinking it was an egg

And up the ugly hill we go!! This stretch is super testing!! But we got up to the top with no stopping along the way… just a bit of whinging on my part haha
Once we get to the top of this, there is a slight down before going up the rest of the way.
Its all a good workout anyway.

Thats all from me tonight… planning to head to the shops in the morning to pick up groceries I need for when my parents arrive (booked to arrive Tues) and the afternoon tea party on Wednesday!

Have a great week everyone!
Cheers