Some nice soaps

These are sweetened honey soap with a goat's milk embed and perfect pumpkin fragrance. They have a raffia bow. These are wonderful soaps for a guest bathroom or to have in your kitchen. They have a wonderful spicey smell and the colors blend in just abut any kitchen decor.

The are my favorite! Shea butter snowflake soaps with either sparkling snowflake or first snow fragrance. These smell wonderful and make your skin feel fabulous. I also package them on a nice wooden soap holder. These are very useful and very nice looking soap holders. The soap does not get soft and mushy on these holders. The air can circulate and preserves the life of your soap.

I love using shea butter soaps, especially in the winter. Look for more items coming soon!

Had a great ski....

Tonight I had a great ski. Getting ready for guests this weekend. Working on linking and continuing to build the gift shop website. Things are slowly coming along. My first ever fund raiser starts tomorrow and I have a music festival for work this weekend. I'm co-chairing the festival which at times has been a huge amount of work. I'm glad I had a partner to work with. It makes things much easier. Tomorrow will be rehearsals with the concert on Saturday. It's all very exciting. I'm sure the concert will be as wonderful as ever. I'm going to be creating some new things within the next few days. I'm very excited about making them and then sharing them here. Time to finish the chores for the day and hit the hay. Tomorrow and Saturday promise to be very busy.

The Gift Shop....

As I continue to work on the website and making new things for the shop, I thought I'd upload some of the pictures to show the variety of items available. Here are some beautiful table runners. On the left are hand made cards for various occasions.

We also have a few Amish Pot Holders which have quite a bit of hand stitching on them. They are blue and pictured above. We have a variety of kitchen towels and soy candles.

There is a very wide variety of dried flowers for our customers. The ceiling is lined with statice that I grew and dried as well as natural grasses for dried flower arrangements.

Here are some hand painted candles, pressed flower candles, soy candles and soaps.  I'll post more pictures in upcoming blogs. That's about all for today.

New Things Are In, New Stuff In The Works!

As the day wore on, my one saving grace was coming home to the new things I had ordered. Blue jars and new baskets. Both wonderful. I'm only sad that I'm too tired to make anything. Once again, I need to go to sleep. I was hoping all day and imagining all night while sleeping of all the things I planned to make today. I'm simply too tired.

I did want to say that I tried both of the soap bags and I love them both. They make wonderful bubbly lather and feel great on my skin. I'm sure anyone who purchased them or will purchase them will love them! That is a wonderful thing. Well, that's all for now. Hopefully, I'll have more energy and a better day tomorrow.

Today It's All About The Cookies....

There are some days when the appropriate thing is to make cookies. Today was one of those days. I woke up too early for a Sunday and actually did attempt, without success, to go back to sleep. After some coffee and breakfast, I went to the grocery store. When I got home, I decided it was time to bake cookies. I wanted molasses cookies and found a wonderful recipe. This picture is of those delicious molasses cookies. I really wanted to do more than one kind. I just love to bake. I especially love to bake cookies. The second batch were Amish Sugar Cookies and oh man are they good! I had never made either recipe. I was pleased with both and so was Tim.

I have to say that these are one awesome cookie! If you've never tried them, you must.

The baking was followed by skiing. I cut some completely new trails even though it was kinda windy. Tomorrow I can add another loop to my skiing. Or maybe later in the week actually as I have a pretty busy schedule tomorrow and will probably have to ski at night. Not good for picture taking but it works for getting outside and being able to ski. Actually we're supposed to have a southwest wind and often that brings lake affect snow. Oh well, it doesn't hurt to dream. Now it's off to figure out some new valentine labels. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? First day of the work week. Hopefully it will be a fun day.

Skiing in Paradise!

These are pictures of porcupine trails. I hope I spelled that  correctly. My daughter, a wildlife scientist, taught me what they look like. It is always a pleasant surprise when I find one in the woods while skiing. All those feet trudging along from one tree to the next producing the most amazing foot path. In this picture, above, you can see the path right by the tip of my ski. The top picture is where I tried to show the depth of the path and photograph how neat it is to see one of these in the woods!

This picture is coming onto the back trail. I took these yesterday when I went for a ski. It was snowing like crazy. I love skiing into the woods when it's snowing. The snow just kind of sprinkles down into the woods. This path has a watering place for the deer in the winter. As I skiied, I noticed several places where trees that are leaning over from the weight of the snow have been eaten by the deer browsing for food. It's quite magnificant. No matter how many times I ski the trails, I'm always amazed by one thing or another.

I am sooo glad that this picture came out! I took several, trying to get the right shot. This is it! Snow laden branches, deep in the woods. No wind has touched them yet. The quiet takes your breath away. I just had to share these experiences. Some of you may live in the south and miss the snow. Others, may be wishing you could have snow. So this way everybody gets to see the snow and the woods in winter. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Pressed Flower and Hand Painted Candles

North Fork Gifts has beautifully crafted candles done in pressed flower designs or hand painted. These candles are a wonderful way to brighten a winter day or create atmosphere on a cold winter evening. As the candle burns, the light shines behind the design. They are very pretty and a great "pick me up" for the winter months and into the spring and summer. We have both scented and unscented candles. Each one is different and unique. Due to the fact that they are all hand made, no 2 are exactly alike.

My hope is to be able to make some new things very soon. Having moved everything, I'm in the process of figuring out just how I'm going to put together a work space. I have just about all of it figured out now and hope to begin creating as soon as this evening. The only thing standing in my way at this point is tiredness. I am very, very tired. I'm not sure if it's all the extra at work, the weather or a combination. Hopefully, I'll be up and running this evening and presenting some cool stuff by tomorrow. We'll see what happens. Now it's off to work!