Scrub-a-dub-dub

If you ever want folks to look at you like you've gone off the deep end, tell them you make your own soap! (Well, admittedly, that's only one way...)
Quite a few years back, a friend of mine taught me how to make soap. The ingredients can be as simple or complex as you choose. I've done the more elaborate but still prefer the plain and simple.
Over the years I have also discovered different methods. My latest and most favorite is "blender soap". Unlike long ago when you combined the ingredients and stirred and stirred until you thought your arm would fall off, blender soap lets the machine do all the work.
Does that make it cheating? Does it make it any less home made? I'll admit that I have a problem with the soap kits you find in most craft stores. They usually consist of a blob of glycerin that you simply melt down and pour into molds. That to me doesn't count as home made.
I still prefer the science end of it. I enjoy taking the lye and the oil, mixing them together and have the soap magic happen! (The actual word for that is saponification) And the beauty of the process is that when the magic happens, the soap has lots of glycerin in it! Nowadays when commercial soap is made they extract the glycerin. That is then turned into glycerin bars that sell for much more than "plain" soap. That helps to explain why store bought soap can be very drying on your skin.
Homemade soap contains wonderful things like olive oil or coconut oil and the glycerin that occurs naturally! And unlike storebought soap, your skin feels clean when you rinse it off, not like you have just applied a layer of something.
I suppose I should climb off my soap box for now. If any of you are interested in trying a bar, just let me know!

Interesting projects

With the weather turning nicer (at least for a few more days!), it's getting easier and easier to come up with projects to do outside. Some are given to me by nature and others will satisfy my more creative side.
Nature gave me more strawberry plants. Runners that had cascaded over the side of the planters last year managed to grow all the way down to my lily plants. As I was cleaning around the lilies today, I discovered quite a few strawberry plants! So now, beside moving the rosebushes that the lilies were squeezing out, I need to re-pot the baby berry plants!
My more creative project is to build a cob oven. What it a cob oven, you ask? It's a wood fired outdoor oven. I've used these over the years (or ovens like them) and love the flavor of food that comes out of them. It's the same theory as using a beehive oven (which is built inside a home, right next to the hearth). It shouldn't take too long to make and the list of "ingredients" to make it is very straightforward. If it works, I'll post pictures throughout its creation. Then I can show off what I've baked in it! Keep your fingers crossed!

Networking

Just returned home after attending a "Career Connection". This was sponsored by a local television station and many local employers. There were workshops, resume building assistance, and prospective employers.
That got me to thinking.......again, things were so much simpler in the olden days. Many years ago, if you were a female, your "career" was pretty well mapped out. You grew up, learned all the skills needed to run a household, got married and applied the learned skills. If you were a male, you either took over the family farm or you apprenticed to learn a trade.
Nowadays? You'd better be well versed in all of the latest internet tools. Are you LinkdIn? Do you tweet? You DO have a web page and a blog, don't you? And by all means, don't just list your skills on your resume, list all of your transferable skills.
There's the rub. I can list all of my skills, but my primary skills aren't transferable in the 21st century!
Scotty, beam me up.

Not in this century

Having spent the day looking through employment websites, I guess it's time to admit "out loud" that I have few marketable skills in the 21st century. If you asked me what my skills are, you'd see what I mean.
Let's see......I can weave baskets. I make my own soap. I spin wool and flax into yarn and linen thread. I can cook and bake over an open fire or in a beehive oven. I can hand sew complete outfits. I can make a custom fitting corset. I can garden and "put up" fruits and veggies to use in the winter. I can work in the summer wearing a shift, 3 petticoats, a corset and a long sleeved dress. (And you bet your bum it's hot!) I can do laundry by hand (the soap comes in handy there). I can melt tallow or beeswax and make my own candles.
Definitely not 21st century skills.
In the olden days, the aforementioned skills were commonplace. Women like me would have been a dime a dozen. Nowadays, you're lucky if you can find a woman who knows what a kitchen is for!
So, therein lies the challenge. How does one parlay such skills into a money making proposition?

Signs of Spring

It only takes temperatures in the 40's and a bit of sunshine on a March day to turn thoughts towards Spring. Today is one of those days. It got me to thinking about signs that Spring is just around the corner. These signs aren't much different now than they were years ago. Spying your first robin. Seeing pussy-willows. Seed packets for sale in the store. Brown snow (ewwwwww) and one of my favorites, seeing sap buckets on maple trees!
As I was driving into the city this morning, I saw my first buckets of the season. It gives me hope that we're on the downhill side of winter. I realize that we could still get more snow, and in all likelyhood we will, but it was a sign of hope.
Rumor has it that robins have been spotted in northern Pennsylvania, so it won't be long before they're gracing our backyard.
What are your favorite signs of Spring?

Real people

Welcome to "In the Olden Days"!
In this blog I'll be discussing how things were done before there was tele-commuting, blogging and internet. (Yes, there was life before the Internet.)
Please humor me on today's topic.
Have you ever had to telephone a company, only to be met with the web of computerized choices? Press one, press two, punch in directory extension, and so forth.
Why can you rarely hear an actual person on the other end of the line? Have companies cut back so much that they have forgotten how important that "first impression" is?? It seems to me that any company that would go back to having a real human being answer the phone would be a leg up on the competition. Face to face (or human to human), a handshake and your word seem to have fallen along the wayside. I wonder what we should do to bring them back. Any suggestions?