My love affair with handmade soaps

I absolutely <3 handmade soaps, if you remember I have this  full of soap.

And even though I have all this soap I have to restrain myself from buying anymore soap and its not easy when a vendor I have tried before or I am dying to try has a sale. 

What I look for in a handmade soap is:

1. A nice scent (sometimes I like a strong scent that lingers or sometimes a scent that is light)

2. A good size soap that I can get alot of uses out of.

3. A soap that cleans the skin but does not strip it dry.

4. A soap that gives me a nice amount of suds

5. and of course a soap where I feel like I got my money's worth and more

Some soaps I have tried (in no particular order):

1. Rebeeca's Soap Deli I love the Rosemary Mint

2. Hairveda's Champaka Ayurveda Soap  Now this soap gave me big bang for my buck, its only $3.50 not including shipping and it lasted a long time.

3. Gassner Custom Soaps  This is my holy grail facial soaps.  It cleans and leaves my skin not strip of moisture.  Look how beautiful the soap looks

4. Shea Butter Cottage Ok not only is the owner THE BEST, all her products are great.  I LOVE her soap and I have restrained from buying every bar.  Some of the soap below:

5. Chagrin Valley Ok this is another bar where you get more than your money's worth and the selection is to die for, don't take my word for it got to the website and see yourself.

6. Zaja Natural Another Awesome owner and wonderful soap with a great selections and you can get matching fragrances of body butter, sugar scrub, soap and perfume to name a few.  Oh did I mention she also makes beer soaps and has wine soaps and tea soaps coming soon. 

7. Lavida given by nature forgot this one and thanks to Amina I am adding it.  I love Lavida's soaps and I have many more to try, I cant wait until she reopens to see what goodies are available.

Why oh why do they do me like this.

Soaps I am dying to try:

Verbena Custom Blends

Deshawn Marie

Southern Vt Soap

Spa Goddess

Spa Therapy

Oh I am doing the happy soap dance because my fav candle maker Lilac Ave will be selling soap soon!!!!!!

Do you have any fav soaps?  Share them with me PLEASE!!!!

Search Amazon.com for handmade soap

Puff and Candles

Well thanks you to my friend Amina I decided to try LilacAve and can I say I am loving the packaging alone.

This is the lovely packaging!!!

I can't wait to burn these candles!!!  Oh I got Sunshine and Sweetpea

And in hair news....I was able to get a puff!!!!  I am a month away from being a year natural and I am so happy to have a puff.

Winner winner chicken dinner

Just coming to show off the beautiful free cut paper illustration from the beautiful Ellia @ Green Bean Baby Art.  Ellia does some awesome work and my children already have two of her custom pieces which I love.  

The funny thing about the illustration is that I told Ellia I would accept whatever she created and she sent me the above illustration.  I LOVE French Fries especially Mc Donald's, when I was pregnant with my daughter I would have French Fries and Strawberry shakes all the time.  I love this illo and can't wait to frame it and hang it somewhere.

Product Review

Fleurtzy from textureplayground recently started selling products and I purchased Curls Nurture Cream.  I decided to try it on my daughter because she never keeps a scarf or satin cap on during the night.  I washed & conditioned her hair and then while her hair was still damp I smooth in the Curls Nurture Cream and braided her hair in box braids.  I love the texture of this product and could see myself using it for my twist outs.  After about a week in the braids I took her hair down and after the adventures of a two year old her hair was still moisturized and could of been worn in a braid out if we chose too.  I will definately be repurchasing this product.  The product costs $9 for 4 ozs and can befound at the above link.

Life........

So it's been a while since I blogged anything, I have been dealing with the things that come along with life, work, being a mother, my son having a muscle biopsy and my husband's grandmother being on life support.  Sounds like alot as I type it but you know what I do when I feel stressed or overwhelmed, I shop like many of you probably do also.  So I decided to blog about what I have bought since I have been away.  So I have purchased everything from accesories to hair products.

Let's get into the accesories first:

I bought this beautiful necklace from ClassicknessVintage, if you think the products in this shop are beautiful you should check out the owner's handmade shop here

This necklace is even more beautiful in person.

I also bought some beautiful earrings from Lunaversoul

The plan is to wear these in a photo shoot.

I also bought this vintage snake belt from LoveBrownSugar.  This beautiful lady also has a blog located here.

I found these beautiful headbands searching etsy and they are by QuellyRueDesigns

I also bought some crochet headbands from LuvNaturals.

Now on to the hair products, I did not go crazy because I have pretty much found my staple hair products which are Darcy's Botanicals but I like to try other company's variations of products so I bought three products from NUNULOVEHANDMADES

You should know by now I moisturize my hair and my daughter's with spirtz, oil and then cream based moisturizer. I have heard good things about Nunulovehandmades from my friend @ Coup de Coeur.  So I had to try them, I will come back and let you know what I think.

My Protective Style....

only lasted a month.  I had really bad loose hair withdrawal.  I proceeded to take it down after much discussion with myself and shampooed, conditioned and then henna for the first time with Nupur Mehendi.

Nupur has a list of Ayuerudic Herbs:

Brahmi/Shikakai/Aloe Vera/Methi/Bhringraj/Amla/Neem/Hibiscus/Jatmansi

I always wondered if I could add the herbs I already had to my henna and Nupur answered this question.  So I only keep the henna on for 45 minutes and then rinsed it out and moisturized with my Darcy's Botanicals Triple Threat (Herbal Spritz/Cocoa Bean Oil/Curl Detangling Milk). Then I three strand twist my hair with Wet Set Pudding from Curlsbysistersmith.  Here are my results:

I Love three strand twistouts.

I also did a twist hawk on my daughters hair:

I have......

the holy grail of moisture for my daughter.  And it is druuummm rolll please ..................................................
Darcy's Botanicals. 

Ok so I really didn't feel like doing her hair but of courseI couldn't have my baby girl walking around like she doesn't belong to anyone.  So I spritzed her hair with the herbal spritz, followed by a slather on of the cocoa bean oil and then the detangling milk.  I did some medium size piggy back braids and she rocked that the whole week.  Well I yesterday I took her hair down to put it in some box braids because I will be gone for work and I don't even want to think about what dad would do.  When I took the hair down from the piggy back braids her hair was sweet puffy clouds, so much so I didn't want to wash it but I did, so for now on this will be her moisture regimen.

I am in...

in a protective style.  My mom was here for Christmas so I had her put in some twists with human kinky hair.  Here is the pic:

So my plan is to keep these in at least two months if I can last that long because three days after they were in I longed for my hair.  At night I alternate spritzing my hair with Darcy Botanical's Herbel Tea Spritz and Bee Mine Grow Spritz oil free serum and I also plan to do some hot oil treatments using my steamer.  I also will be putting my daughter's hair in box braids and we will try to keep them in for a month, her hair gets frizzy easily and I cant stand it so I find myself doing her hair once a week but we are going to try to keep the braids in for a month.

I am...

obessed with Etsy.  It's more than just the hair stuff but it is everything from jewlery to beanies to clothes.  I have 11 pages of favortie items that I plan to buy and 20 pages of favorite sellers.  I can spend hours on etsy just looking at the beautiful goodies and it doesn't help that when I find a seller I like I go and look at their favorites which only adds more to mine.  Here is the link to my favorites: Etsy favorites.  What are your favs from Etsy?

I am......

a sucker for great customer service.  Recently I ran to buy the last of Lavida Given By Nature's liquid shampoos because she is going to shampoo bars and she has the liquid shampoos on sale.  Well I got the notice that the order had shipped and I was ecstastic to say the least, now its not like I need shampoo but that I love Lavida's shampoo that much.  Well the next day I got an email from Lavida saying the products were sent to my old address and she wanted to fix the problem right away.  There is nothing that will either drive a client away or keep one coming back then the type of customer service a business has.  You could have the holy grail product but if your customer service is horrible word of mouth will kill your business so I am a sucker for great customer service.