Next month my daughter and I will be selling our soaps and other wonderful goodies at the Shepherd's Harvest Festival in Lake Elmo. If you get a chance please come out and see us. We love visiting with our customers and friends. Keep watching the blog because once I know where we'll be stationed I'll make sure to post about it and as we get closer I'll share which soap fragrances we'll have on hand. I hope to see you there!
My daughter and I were enjoying a walk on this beautiful day in Minnesota when we stumbled upon a pretty large owl pellet, about golf ball size. This is the first time we've found one in the wild. She dissected a few back when she was in elementary school and when I homeschooled my youngest I ordered some owl pellets for her to dissect but we've never located one outdoors. It was fun digging through to see what little bones we could find.
Have you ever found an owl pellet in nature?
I've wanted this candle making kit from Bramble Berry since last Christmas. I was happily surprised when my daughter gifted it to me this year. I enjoy making candles and this kit takes all the work out finding the right wick to go with the wax and size of container. They came out beautiful!
The best part is the fragrance and eco glitter. The fragrance is heavenly and the glitter adds that bit of sparkle that every candle needs. Now I need to stock up on everything in this kit to keep making these. I'm sure that's the point of the kits, right?! They want you to love it so you keep buying more. 😂 Nice work Bramble Berry, nice work!
Oh my gosh! This is the first year that Christmas has snuck up on me. I'm usually done shopping for prezzies by the last week of November and at this time I'm watching Christmas movies by the fire and nibbling on the cookies I baked, but I'm sooooo behind. I thought I had at least a week and half beforeChristmas but realized over this past weekend how wrong I was. I finally finished making my Christmas cards so hopefully they make it to everyone on time. I'm relieved I got the cards done because it's the one of the things I really enjoy doing making this time of year and I think people really love receiving them.
I'll start my shopping tomorrow.
P.S.
I did manage to decorate for Christmas the first week of November though so I'm not a total failure this year. 😀
Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by the winter market and bought soap or purchased my soaps through Facebook this holiday season. Your support allows me to continue doing what I love and I really appreciate it.
Tomorrow December 10th my daughter and I will be back at the Winter Walk in Northfield. This will be our last day before the end of the year.
I'm still debating on whether I should open an Etsy account or a new website. I'll decide by Sunday so check back if you want to purchase any soaps for Christmas.
Maya and I sold our soaps at the winter market in Northfield on November 19 and now we are headed back for round 2 this Saturday. I’ll have 10 different batches for sale so if you’re in Minnesota and close to the area, come by and see us at 115 5th Street West.
We’ll also be returning on December 10th and I’ll be introducing five new batches of soap on that day. Two of them are pictured below. Strawberries in champagne and orange peel. Both smell incredible!
My daughter and I sold at the Northfield, MN Winter Market today and it was lots of fun. I didn't expect to see so many people considering it was 17 degrees outside, but they came out to shop and it was great to see everyone.
Maya and I arrived extra early since we weren't sure how long the drive would take us so we were both quite tired by 2 pm. Here's Maya right after we set up our table. She's not quite awake yet...and she was the one who had the coffee. 😂
A few years ago we decided to remove the majority of our grass in the front yard to make room for pollinator gardens. We removed about 1/2 of the lawn and planted numerous Minnesota natives to feed butterflies and bees. In our backyard we added several native trees to help feed the birds. Immediately we started seeing the benefits of both. The birds come to the trees to nibble on the fruits and the pollinators visit the flowers for pollen and nectar, but this year we were surprised to find this...
While I was up in Northern MN at our cabin a few years back I found a plant growing wild down the road and thought it was interesting. I looked it up to find it's name and whether it was native to the area or not. It's called pearly everlasting and it is a native to MN so I decided to plant it in my front yard. I ordered 3 plants from a local native wildflower nursery and put them in. Two years later (today) I noticed they had spread quite a bit. Three small plants that took up a total of a foot space had now spread to about 4 ft around. I thought that was exciting since I want all of my plants to spread. I went out a couple days ago to water and discovered what looked like dying pearly everlasting. I thought maybe it had some type of fungus or mite since it was covered in a white powdery substance with black flecks and it looked like it had little cobwebs all over the top. I started pulling back the webs and was surprised to find caterpillars inside. By the time I was done counting I found over 2 dozen caterpillars. I rushed to my resources to find out what they were and it turns out we created a home for the American Lady and Painted Lady butterfly larvae.
The pearly everlasting is a host plant. The caterpillars live as individuals in nests made of leaves and silk. Here are some photos of what I found.
This is EXACTLY what we wanted to achieve when we removed our lawn. In our front yard we have three sections with native wildflowers that feed the local pollinators. It's very exciting to see the fruits of our labor.
We also found that the butterfly milkweed we planted is covered in Monarch caterpillars. I didn't expect this. I assumed Monarchs would only lay their eggs on the common milkweed. Here are a few photos of what we found on the butterfly milkweed.
Now I know that the Monarch will lay her eggs on all 9 species of milkweed but the common milkweed usually has the highest number of eggs.
We have a lot of common milkweed growing so off to the garden store I go to get more butterfly milkweed.
The following soaps are currently on the website for sale. At the end of May I'll be uploading the Spring collection.
All of these soaps are made with skin loving butters and oils: almond oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, babassu oil, shea butter, and mango butter.
