a washcloth full of feta

One of my goals for this year was to try my hand at making soap. Not just the soap where you buy some glycerine from Michael's and pour it into a mold, but real, good, all-natural soap.

A few years back a friend of mine gave me a bar of her friend's goat milk soap. At first I was kinda weirded out--I mean it just seemed SO hippie-ish. Also, I despise feta cheese and in my head there was some bizarre correlation there that gave me the mental image of my family laundering their nethers with a washcloth lathered in feta. Ew.

But then I tried it, and I was hooked. It worked great. It smelled good. When used on my face I noticed a decrease in breakouts and I no longer needed to put lotion on my face. Seemed win-win to me. So naturally the making of goat's milk soap landed itself on my lengthy to-do list.

Well yesterday, after some lengthy contemplating, fearing, getting over my fear, stocking up, driving out to timbuktu to a random goat farmer and buying milk, and just plain working up the motivation to do some semi-dangerous chemistry experiments in my kitchen with three kids under foot, I went for it.

Tada!

It's all natural, too. Goats milk, castor oil, shea butter, olive oil, red palm oil (which gives it that mango color) and coconut oil. And of course essential oils and the lye for the dangerous chemical part of the experiment.

I did a lot of research, but mostly used the info gleaned from here, here, and here to get started. I really wondered why so many tutorials had bad pictures of the process until I actually started and all my ideas about taking step-by-step pictures vanished. It was just too messy and there was too much danger of dropping my camera in a vat of liquid-hot-magma. So all you get are end result pictures. Next time I'll enlist some photographic help.

Anyhow, today I cut the log of soap into these bars, and now I have to wait a month (!!!) for them to cure so they won't disintegrate in the shower. *sigh* I guess the good Lord is putting another opportunity to learn patience in my path.

In the meantime, my back room smells super good, and I can check #3 off this year's goal list. Yay!

run, forrest, run

heart, have no pity on this house of bone:

shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.

no man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;

to give, to sell at auction, to destroy.

Back in, I don't know--November maybe?--I remember sitting in front of the computer, thinking about how much I dislike running and yet am burdened with the perverse desire to become a runner. I thought about my body and how it's getting older, fatter, and harder to move. Thoughts of how terrible I look in "performance" fabric entered my self-conscious head.

Then I thought to myself: whatever. My body may not look great, and I may sweat a lot and turn bright red and jiggle, but who cares? At least I'm moving around. I know skinny people who couldn't run a mile let alone three. So I bit the bullet and signed myself up for my first 5k as motivation to start running regularly. Then I was reading on a blog somewhere about this mom who runs the races that Disney holds. It looked so fun, but it was prohibitively expensive. A regular 5k costs around $40 bucks or so to register, but the Disney races are easily three times as much. Crazy! But...it looked so fun. So I told my mom. My mom loves Disney more than anyone I know. She also hates running as much as I do but also wants to be a runner. So it was pretty much settled. She paid for my registration as my birthday present and we were the "Sweaty Yetis" getting ready to run an obstacle race, through the Animal Kingdom, at 11:00 at night. 

Yeah you read that right. Nearly midnight. Running with 4,000 other people. Hurdling hay bales, running through tires and crawling in dirt under a cargo net (at least I did that last part, my mom refused to do it cause it was "dirty," hahaha). It was pretty great. Until we got to the finish line and realized we still had a scavenger hunt to finish before we were officially done. Now, when I initially read "scavenger hunt" I think of searching for objects and clues. But this hunt turned out to be running from one place to another to pick up cards with obscure clues about points on a compass. It was hard. We started off running, all excited from our race, but that soon petered out and we ended up strolling with the rest of the crowds. The stations weren't clearly marked and at one point we had to backtrack all the way back out of the park. It was frustrating. Then the final clue was so hard that there were literally hundreds of people sitting on the ground with papers trying to figure out what the heck we were supposed to be doing. It was actually kind of funny, I overheard so many people grumbling about how late it was and we just ran an obstacle race and couldn't we just be done already? I had to agree. 

But at last we were done and we ran/limped tiredly to the finish line and got our awesome finisher medals. They have a compass inside, how cool is that?

The only thing that was not great were the pictures taken by the photographers. Oh. My. Goodness. Worst things ever! Picture if you will:  flash photography, at night, taken from the perspective of someone sitting on the ground looking up at runners. Sweaty overexposed double chins galore. Ick. I mean even super skinny people looked terrible! I know I decided not to care about not looking athletic and all, but there's a line, people.

Since we were there alone, and had no way of carrying cameras, we didn't get any good photos ourselves, but a Disney worker was nice enough to at least get this grainy yucky iPhone picture of us at the post-race party. 

The highlight of the whole race for me (besides the obstacles) was getting my mom to ride the Everest roller coaster with me at the party. Hahaha oh my gosh. It was funniest thing ever. She kept up a steady stream of comments that started off with "okay, okay, that wasn't so bad" "I'm gonna like this, this is fine" and progressed to "I hate this" "I hate you" "this is HORRIBLE!" "who likes this?!" and "please please tell me this is the end this isn't a fake ending right the ride is really over now right?" and lastly, "I think I'm gonna cry." I ended the ride bent double, crying from laughter, and my only regret from the whole night is that I didn't bring money to buy the picture they always take when you're the most freaked out. In the picture I was laughing and my mom's hair was sticking straight up and her eyes were scrunched shut and she looks like she's being tortured. Ah *wipes away a tear* I am a bad daughter. 

So. Two of the four 5k's I wanted to run this year: done. This upcoming weekend I'm going to be getting muddy with another friend of mine. Kinda nervous about that one. Me and monkey bars are not friends. But slowly, sloooooowly, I think running and I might be getting on better terms.

clarity

I know I say this a lot, but this past month was really, really busy. Every weekend of the calendar was completely filled with races, fetes, flights in, flights out, inspections, birthdays, and the little dots that indicate days my children are grounded from video games.

Between the weekends of preplanned insanity we had busyness of the impromptu, outdoor variety: beach days, water park days, days of laying around our pool, days of laying around the pool at my mom's timeshare in Orlando...suffice it to say there was a great deal of water-related activity this month.   

We were excited to have my mom and stepbrother come to visit and there were thrift-store runs, ice skating, and more ice cream consumed in a week than we probably see in two years. 

I got to hold my little nephew a lot, my youngest started to swim, my mom and I ran a race (more on that later), and we got to enjoy the brief time in Florida where the sun feels great and the water is refreshing and everyone is tan. Soon enough we'll be in the doldrums of 100% humidity, pee-warm pools, and the reversion back to pasty-white as we cower in our air-conditioned hidey holes. 

Anyway, all this is to say that we did more in the last few months than we have since the year started, and thanks to our ten-year-old point and shoot camera finally giving up the ghost, we have no pictures to show for it. I was complaining to my husband about feeling like we aren't recording anything anymore, and how much we'll regret it later, and he finally agreed to let me use our credit card points to get a new a camera. 

What? REALLY??

You can bet your butts I went and ordered it right away before he changed his mind and decided to get a chainsaw or something instead. 

Yesterday it arrived, and I found myself suddenly owning a Canon Rebel T3i, with all its gadgets and accoutrements. This morning I started playing with it. Now granted, I quite literally have no idea what I'm doing with it. I need to have my talented sister-in-law show me how to use it because I don't want to have a camera like this and only know how to put it on "auto," y'know? And I will learn. I know that. But in the meantime...oh, the clarity. 

Yay for better pictures! 

honesty

Hi. This is me. I'm Jenn. Nice to meet you.

Reading the responses to my last post (which, just to clarify, wasn't a test to see if you would actually read that particular post, but more to see if anyone else gravitates towards pictures rather than words when it comes to blogs) I was reminded of a few things that I have been meaning to talk about. 

Like the fact that even though I know 90% of my readers are here because of quilts, I don't consider myself to be a quilter. 

Throughout my life I have found a few hobbies that I have become interested in, briefly obsessed with, then tired of. Like knitting. Jewelry making. Etc. I read this post by Oh Joy! recently and found it summed up my feelings on the subject very neatly. Only in my case, I don't have a business that I found I was meant to do. (At least not yet. We'll see what happens later.)

For now, I am content with being a maker. I make pancakes. I make school portfolios. I make quilts and paintings and flower arrangements. I make smiles and scowls, soap and scrubs, silliness and seriousness. I didn't pick my blog name just because it sounded fun, I picked it because it's true about me. I doubt I will ever be focused enough on one single thing to master it, because there are just too many trades I'm interested in learning about, dabbling in, obsessing over. For me, it's part of the fun. When I get bored, I move on. Sometimes I come back after a nice long break. Sometimes I realize it was a phase and it's time to pass those knitting needles on to a fellow maker. 

But more importantly than what I make, I am a wife, a mother, a follower of Jesus. I realize that not everyone wants to see pictures of my kids. Or my gardening. According to some "blogging rules" I've read in the past, speaking about my love of God is strictly taboo if I want my readers to be happy. 

However, I can't just separate out my family from my crafting, my making from my faith. They are, for me, so tightly woven together that you can't get one without the other. Why would I quilt if not for family and friends and orphans to make quilts for? Why would I garden and paint if not to express the joy I feel at all the beauty that God has surrounded me with? To deny these relationships is to deny all that I am. I could keep this blog just about the crafty stuff, and keep my family blog for all that other stuff, but I shouldn't have to. 

I certainly don't wish to offend anyone, or to alienate those of you who read this, but in all honesty I'll probably post pictures of plants and chicken coops sometimes. I'll probably mention my family on occasion and even break taboo and talk about Jesus. Because that's my life. It's what I'm about. It's always awesome to hear from someone who enjoys what I write, or who likes what I've made. I know for certain it isn't always the case, and that a huge chunk of people will merely skim this post. That's okay. I love you anyway. :)

all wrung out

The past few weeks have been very, very sweaty for us here at the Grigoryev house. We were carless for awhile, so I figured our house arrest would serve as a good opportunity to get some house and yard chores done. There were hours of gardening, weeding, raking, pressure washing, etc. Add to that the fact that summer has started to weave its tendrils of humidity and heat into the air, and we spend a lot of time in or around our pool as well.

Also, me and my oldest took part in a parent/child race this weekend, which had us sweaty-wet and water-wet as well. You can read about that here if you like.

I don't know why, but there is something perverse in me that refuses to be motivated to do outside work when it's nice outside. As soon as the air starts to get nice and steamy, and the mosquitos are on the hunt, and an hour of work can suck all the water out of you leaving you unable to swallow around the sandpaper that was once your tongue, that is when I am inspired to run outside and pull weeds.

Sometimes I'm not even inspired. Sometimes I just go outside to put something in the mailbox, notice a weed, and five hours later I'm still in my pj's, covered in dirt, wondering what I was doing to begin with. But that only happens when it's hot.

There is something wrong with me.

On an unrelated note, do you think it says something about who we are becoming as people when a blog post without a photo is not something we're interested in? Am I the only one who sees a post that's all words and goes, "Deeerrrrp" or "I don't have time for all those words" or "where are the pictures?"? I'm totally admitting that I do it. And that bugs me. I don't want to be dumbed down, or only be interested in the online version of a preschool picture book: BIG PICTURES! SHORT SENTENCES!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be judgmental, I'm just wondering if anyone else finds themselves doing the same thing. Out of curiosity to see if anyone even notices this post, I'm not including any picture. Anyone?? Hello?? :)