I had a soap business for 10 years called eScentially Yours. It was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. I closed up shop and luckily sold most of my equipment two years ago. I haven't had the need to make soap in those two years. (lots of leftovers) Our lab celebrates 'National Medical Laboratory Week' in April. One of the activities we look forward to is a Chinese Auction. This year I donated 2 batches of soap for 2 lucky winners. Two of my friends won. Over this past holiday weekend I made their batches of soap. It is addictive so I went ahead and made my own batch yesterday. The last time I made a batch 'just for me' I ended up allergic to the lemongrass essential oil I used to scent it (love that smell). What a bummer. I sure hope I'm not allergic to this batch. Here it is fresh out of the mold. It will need to sit for a month to harden up and cure. I used to make 42 - 84 bars at a time so 9 bars is really small to me. If you ever get a chance, try it. It's great for the skin.

While grocery shopping with my DH this past weekend, he got me this:

I see the new shuffles are 4GB's. This one is 1 GB. It still took most of the day to load iTunes, learn what to do, download 30 cd's and then figure out how to make the playlist load up. I've been enjoying the fruits of that labor. A lot. I wanted something small to start to see if I even liked it. I sure do! New earbuds are being shipped as we speak. (who can wear these things anyway?)

Today was book club day. I always look forward to it. Our members are/were co-workers in the hospital laboratory where I work. We were always talking about books we read and decided why not start a book club. We each take a turn picking a book. I was the book picker for our meeting today. We read The Lace Reader. Very interesting with a nice twist at the end but I wouldn't rate it as excellent. Do you have old lace passed down to you? This is a box of lace given to me that was my grandmother's.







So here we are (missing 3 members and one extra 'not reading yet' member):

I said I would post my WIP but I haven't taken the time to take their pictures. I would have to get it all organized and I'm not in the mood yet. Anyway, here is a small part of a WIP for the Christmas in July swap I'm in.

I wonder what it could be?

Marsha