The Coffee Worked

'The coffee worked, so we did too!

This morning, we drank a pot of coffee, Al had two work phone calls, and I surfed the net and bantered on Facebook.  I made sandwiches for lunch, and decided I wanted to make a batch of soap.  ( I have been making soap for almost a year now, and have used natural soaps for almost two years -- purchasing from my mentor.)

This is my first batch of castile soap, using only olive oil.  At trace, I added vanilla fragrance oil and thought 'Yum.  That smells like it needs sugar!'  So I added a 1/4 cup of sugar.  We will see --  if it didn't dissolve, it will add a nice 'scrub' to the soap.  And it smells like Vanilla Pudding.

Well, that went so well, I decided to make a second batch.  I used my mentor's recipe she taught us, and I tried 'superfatting' this time with an ounce of Shea Butter.  I finished it off with Creamy Coconut fragrance oil.  So then there was so little left of my coconut and palm oils, I decided to finish them off!  I made a THIRD batch, weighing the remainder of the oils and calculating the necessary lye.  I found for the second time, that wintergreen essential oil has a curdling effect on the soap --- not a bad thing, it just sets it up a little quicker than expected.

I then set out to do the chore I mentioned to Al needed doing when we pulled up to this dock--the fenders needed scrubbing.

Last January we attended the Seattle boat show, and discovered a product new to us:  www.quicknbrite.com

It comes in a paste and a liquid, and you can mix and spray according to the job at hand.  My favorite is the paste, and it works especially well in the shower.  I wish I had had this product when we had our house!  We had glass shower doors that I just could NOT keep clean!  Contributing factors being my past carpal tunnel surgeries, and my fibromyalgia.  But this paste is magic!  Just apply with the scratchy side of a sponge and rinse off!

Back to the fenders.....I don't think we had ever scrubbed them, and we have spent alot of time on the Willamette River this year, and the fenders had built up a yucky scum.  The blue fenders came out wonderful. The white ball is still scuffed, but it's ring around the bottom is now gone.  Yay!

And during this whole time, Al had been busy too.  He drilled out failed bung plugs, prepared the holes, drilled new plugs and glued them in.  We are anticipating more rain in the next couple of days.  This should help with the water into the bilge that we experienced with the last rain we had.

Tomorrow I plan to see a movie with a girlfriend to celebrate her birthday, which is today.  Also, visit grandkids that live near her.  Al has a couple of projects lined up which will require  working in the garage.  Saturday there is a fashion photo shoot scheduled!  And we anticipate leaving for our upriver trip Sunday.

Check back often!