Happy (last night of) Hanukkah!

After my husband and I attended a friend's Hanukkah party last Saturday, I was inspired to make latkes from scratch for the first time. So on Monday, we invited over my in-laws and my brother-in-law and his wife for dinner. I made my favorite brisket (in the slow cooker, with just a chopped onion, a beef bullion cube, a packet of Lipton's onion mix, and a little water) and these latkes, shown here frying up in a pool of peanut oil. All it took was 5 potatoes (shredded -- thank heaven for the food processor), one onion (shredded -- ditto), four eggs, about 1/3 cup of matzo meal (probably more), and salt and pepper to taste. For me, the secret was frying in peanut oil and gently flipping the latkes using two forks, not a spatula. They were so delicious --- AND I impressed my mother-in-law! I think I'll be making these at every opportunity!

This Just In... Vegan Scrubbing Cream

We have a new product in the store: Vegan Scrubbing Cream. Our scrubbing cream is a cream soap, made from scratch with coconut oil, olive oil, jojoba oil, and vitamin E, then mixed with apricot seeds to make a gentle and cleansing scrub.

Right now, our Vegan Scrubbing Cream is available in gift sets with Vegan Body Wash and Vegan Body Lotion. Just in time for the holidays! :)

Well... that was a bummer.

A few weeks ago, I wiped out -- no, really, I launched through the air after tripping over my own feet... in NY Penn Station... during rush hour -- and landed on my knees and right elbow, resulting in a fractured left kneecap, though it could have been much worse. I had to wear a straight-leg brace for a month, then take it easy for a month after that. For such a small injury, it sure destroyed the rest of my body, including my lower back. Needless to say, soapmaking wasn't on the top of my list for a while. But I have learned about the importance and joy of having fully-working joints, and I'm (pretty much) healed. It's good to be back!

We've moved!

Little Owl Soap has a new home in Metuchen, New Jersey. That's right, my husband and I are now homeowners, and we've had a busy three weeks. First, we packed. Then Dave, a recent law school graduate, sat for the New York and New Jersey bar exams. Next, we closed on the house and moved. (Somehow, we managed to fill an entire house with the belongings we had crammed into a one bedroom apartment.) Finally, we unpacked, my parents came to visit (and help do a little painting around the house), and my husband and I celebrated our first anniversary. Phew! Our Etsy shop has been closed while we were busy, but we recently re-opened, and I look forward to getting settled in the house, setting up my soapmaking "laboratory," and experimenting with new products, recipes, and scents. Stay tuned!

Fruit Fly Pie -- One of My Favorite Things

It's no secret that I have an "owl addiction." And nothing goes better with an owl addiction than an "owl tchotchke" collection. For this, I've turned to Wendy at Fruit Fly Pie, one of my favorite Etsy sellers. All of Wendy's ceramics are made from scratch, then hand painted in her home studio. She makes all of her products from either throwing on the potters wheel, slab building, or slip cast from vintage ceramic molds. Not only does Fruit Fly Pie offer a wondrous collection of owl items (though Wendy's heart belongs to her two potbellied pigs), there are also plenty of other darling items, like a cookie jar shaped like a pretty pink cupcake and a vintage-design pig that can do double-duty as a planter and a sink sponge holder. Stop by the shop, and you'll be inspired to start your own collection!

Heat Wave

We are experiencing a massive heat wave here on the East Coast. In fact, it is after 10:00 p.m. and it is still 90 degrees! We've got 102 degrees to look forward to tomorrow. Yikes! And all I really want to do in the whole entire world is make some cream soap. I love cream soap because it's not a liquid soap and it's not a solid. It's this amazing mix of both and, for an amateur chemistry junkie like me, making this soap is one of the most fascinating processes to watch. The process, however, requires cooking the soap in a large double boiler for about three hours, and that does not sound like the greatest idea right now. On a regular day, the process steams up our entire apartment! So for now, I can only dream about soap. Soon, though, I hope to get more cream soap cookin' -- and maybe even mix in some ground apricot seeds for a double-duty body scrub.

Scrub Experiments

I love a good body scrub. The first scrub I ever used was the St. Ives apricot scrub, and even though I make my own scrubs now, that's still one of my favorites because it's creamy and doesn't separate. Also, when in the shower, I also love mixing together a facial scrub from Cetaphil liquid soap and baking soda. No kidding about the baking soda; it's so fine and gentle that you can use it every day.

The body scrubs I make for myself are usually just a mix of oils, glycerin, and salt. The scrub shown here on the left has jojoba oil, avocado oil, sunflower oil, sweet almond oil, vegetable glycerin, and kosher salt. I like that the kosher salt is so coarse, but the oils and glycerin separate from the salt, which requires a good mixing before use.

The other day, I decided to experiment with making a scrub that doesn't separate. Also, if I decide to offer my scrubs at Little Owl Soap, I want to make sure that there won't be so much separation that the jars would leak during shipping. First, I tried a mix of olive oil, sunflower oil, avocado oil, sweet almond oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, stearic acid, and emulsifying wax. I added plain white sugar, which, alas, is not vegan. It had a lot of body, as shown by the picture on the right, but it did experience a fair bit of separation. Additionally, the small grains of the sugar dissolved quickly in the stream of water from the shower.

For my second experiment, shown here on the left, I tried sunflower oil, avocado oil, sweet almond oil, mango butter, and a higher percentage of emulsifying wax and stearic acid than I had previously tried. To this, I added turbinado sugar, which is vegan. This batch cooled to a creamy paste. I really thought I was on to something, until I gave it a test run. It was actually a little bit too creamy, and I was disappointed with the texture of the sugar; I simply felt as if I didn't get enough exfoliating done.

In the end, I learned that I still preferred the salt scrub I usually toss together for myself, despite the separation. What kind of scrub do you prefer? An oil-rich scrub or a creamy, emulsified scrub? A salt scrub or a sugar scrub? So many options!

Little Owl Soap on FloweredSky

Special thanks to Sema at FloweredSky for featuring Little Owl Soap in her "featured artist series" on her blog. Each week, Sema is featuring Etsy shop owners from every state, and we are honored to be featured this week focusing on New Jersey Etsians. Come check out the post and the free giveaway offer!

Don't forget to visit Sema's Etsy shop where she offers her gorgeous handmade sterling silver and Murano glass evil eye jewelry.

Free Lil Birdy -- One of My Favorite Things

One of my favorite sellers at Etsy is Emily at Free Lil Birdy. In December, I purchased a water pitcher with a playful paisley design. It was supposed to be a Christmas present for my mother, but when I received it in the mail, I was so taken with it, I kept it for myself!

In June, it was my mom's birthday, and every year, I usually get her a coffee mug and a little something extra. I still felt guilty for keeping the water pitcher for myself, and lucky for me, there was the most gorgeous coffee mug of all time at Free Lil Birdy. I ordered it for my mother, and even though I coveted it as much as the water pitcher, I practiced some self control and gave it to my mom as planned. She LOVES it!

What I love about Etsy the most is that it brings together artists from around the world and creates a community of people who would never have met otherwise. Emily at Free Lil Birdy is so kind and so very talented. She's out of town for the summer, but make yourself a note to visit her shop in a few months. You'll be happy you did.

My Soap Journey and the Necessity for Little Owl Soap

We're Jen and Dave of Little Owl Soap. It's Jen, here, the one who is completely obsessed with making soap.
In 2000, I decided to make my Christmas presents for family and friends. My only problem was that I didn't know what to make. So I turned to the marvelous interweb and did a lot of clicking around. Eventually, I came across soapmaking websites. The more I learned, the more excited I became about "cold process" soapmaking. The only problem was that it looked fairly complicated and required a bit of equipment -- like a digital scale and a tall stainless steel pot and a wooden mold -- I didn't have in my college apartment. It was all too soon to jump into this for Christmas presents.

So I made a wish list of all the equipment I would need, and I settled on making melt-and-pour soaps for the holiday. Melt and pour soapmaking is the easiest and safest of all the soapmaking arts. At its simplest, all you have to do is find a good glycerin soap base, melt it in a microwave-safe container, add fragrance and colorant, pour into a plastic soap mold, and pop the bars out when cold. Instant customized soap!

But I couldn't stop there. The call of cold process soapmaking was too strong. Cold process soap is made by mixing fatty acids (oils) with water and sodium hydroxide (lye), which triggers the saponification process. On its own, lye is a caustic substance, but when combined with the correct amount of water and oils, it creates an entirely new substance: soap. It's pure chemistry, and I became entirely fascinated by it. Not to mention, it seemed pretty hardcore to mention to people that I had to wear safety goggles and chemical-resistant gloves for my hobby!

So for a few years, I made cold process bar soap, then slowly, slowly, I began to lose my preference for bar soap and turned to body wash. I stopped making my own soap, and I began purchasing body wash.

In October 2008, I read the ingredient list on a bottle of body wash I had purchased at the store. I could barely pronounce the dozens of words. And when I Googled some of the words, I was a little disturbed. Body wash, I learned, wasn't really "soap." I thought, "There has to be a better way... Why should I be covering my body every day with dozens of unnatural sufactants when I could be covered in suds made from as little as three natural ingredients?" At that moment, I knew I had to learn how to make liquid soap.

After a crash course in "hot process" soapmaking and working with potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide, I made my first batch of liquid soap. And it worked! So I kept making more... and more... and more... My husband and I couldn't use it as fast as I was making it. I had an entire closet shelf filled with 16 fluid ounce bottles of my homemade body wash. I knew at that moment that I had no choice: I needed to open an Etsy store. But what to name it...?

(to be continued)