Italian White Sage, Geranium & Yarrow Soap from Pangea Organics

 I first found Pangea Organics when I was searching for something to add to my oil cleansing method skin care routine. I wanted something that didn't have a lot of unnecessary ingredients and was affordable. Pangea Organics delivers big on the ingredient part, but I struggled with the price tag. I jumped into their multi-level marketing because it helped with my personal costs. Unfortunately the MLM was very badly handled and they have since discontinued this type of sales. Great products, just a poorly managed company. Their soap bars remain one of my favorites.

Ingredients (from package): Palm Oil, Palm kernel oil, sodium hydroxide, water, glycerin, geranium oil & citrus oil, sage oil, sodium chloride, citric acid, rosemary leaf extract, rosemary leaf powder.

First Glance: Packaging is very earth friendly, made from recycled materials. Soap carton contains seeds that can be planted to grow spruce trees. Bar size is a nice fit in the hand. Smooth surface with nicely rounded edges. Very shiny and creamy looking bar. Stamp in the center is a nice touch. Light and pleasing fragrance, not too floral or spicy.

First Use: Because I have been using this soap for four or five years, it's difficult to remember what my first impressions were. I intentionally didn't use the soap for about six months, hoping to refresh the experience. Soap lathers easily with medium sized bubbles. Very smooth lather. Bar is slightly slimy after use. Scent is very light even in water. Pleasant after skin feel with a squeaky clean rinse.

Overall Thoughts: This soap fits somewhere between a commercial soap and a handmade soap. It's a nice transition between the two types. I had three handmade soaps in my shower at the time, and found myself going to them more often. This is a nice soap, and I would buy this before I picked up any other commercial bar, but it can't compare to a nice handmade soap on any day.

Dead Sea Spa Bar from Great Cakes Soapworks

 Here's the last bar of my Great Cakes Soapworks stash. I had received a sample in my first order and I liked it enough to add a full-sized bar to my second order. I am going to review it based on my thoughts of the full-sized bar.

Ingredients: Saponified Olive Oil, Shea Butter, Coconut Oil, Tallow, Castor Oil, and Cocoa Butter, also Dead Sea Mud, essential oils of lemon, grapefruit, tea tree, and patchouli, kaolin clay, and titanium dioxide.

First Glance: This comes packaged in a nice box with a window for smelling, aside from the errors in the ingredient label it is a professional looking packaging. The bar is a large bar, probably the biggest I have gotten from Great Cakes, and heavy. Bar texture is a bit grainy. Colors are muted gray, olive, and white in a nice swirl pattern. Fragrance is a light ocean scent - not tropical but very "lake" or "water where fish are" smelling, in the pleasant sense, not the "there's a dead fish somewhere" sense. (some day, I promise, I'll work on my ability to describe fragrances.) Essential oils are very complementary to the bar.

First Use: This bar requires a bit more water than normal to lather. I assume that there is quite a bit of dead sea mud which would inhibit the lathering affects of the soap. It's not difficult to get a lather once enough water is used. Lather is low and creamy. Slight grit feeling when applied to skin - not blast your face off, but not completely smooth feeling. Leaves a light film on skin when rinsing.

Overall Thoughts: I added this into my morning face wash rotation. It's a nice indulgence that pops up every few days. I don't think it's one that I can use daily because of my skin type (cystic acne prone) and my sensitivity to tea tree oil. This is a very hard bar that I have used about 10 times and it shows no signs of wear. The fragrance takes a bit of getting used to, but I'll own up to not being a fan of "water" scents, so that may be why I notice it more.

Lemon Pepper Soap from Great Cakes Soapworks

 I received a sample of Lemon Pepper Soap in my last order from Great Cakes Soapworks. I like lemon pepper on chicken, but in soap? Color me intrigued!

Ingredients currently unavailable on website and none on packaging.

First Glance: A generous chunk of soap for a sample. Very pretty light yellow and gray variations. I would have like to have seen a whole bar, it looks like the design concept might have been very cool. Smooth, creamy looking bar. Smell was very faint.

First Use: A nice sudsing bar. Very smooth, good slip, not slimy or soft. Fragrance became stronger when wet, but still a lightly fragranced bar. Couldn't smell any pepper notes, but lemon notes were sweet - more like lemonade than sour fruit. (if that makes sense...)

Overall Thoughts: As far as soap goes, this was nice. Fragrance wasn't that great - maybe why this bar is no longer available in the store?? - I was able to pick up some pepper notes as I used more of the bar. A very well colored bar that gave white lather. I was glad I tried it, but I was expecting a stronger and more masculine scent from the lemon pepper.

Black Raspberry Vanilla Salt Bar from Shari's Handcrafted Soaps

 My first month as a member on the soapmaking forum, one of the most talked about soaps was (and still is) salt bars. I went "Whaaat?" and began to read numerous threads on the topic, and then I Googled and read some more.


So here's the basics of a salt (or spa) bar. It's soap with salt grains in it. It's reputedly good for your skin and can make bathing in hard water feel like soft water. The soap bars, when made well, are rock hard and long lasting. I was intrigued.


I ordered one from Shari's Handcrafted Soaps, and the dear sent me two. The one I had ordered was "only" four months old. Salt soaps really come into their prime with age (which is really true about any handmade soap), so Shari added an older salt bar, Black Raspberry Vanilla.


Ingredients (from package label): Coconut Oil, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Coconut Milk, Sea Salt, Avocado Oil, Fragrance, Mica, and Tussah Silk.


First Glance: Molded in a lovely flower mold and a fitting shade of purple for the Black Raspberry Vanilla (BRV) fragrance. A very heavy and solid bar of soap. The soap fits nicely in the hand.


First Use: I'm going to admit to being a bit disappointed. Totally not the soap's fault. It had a huge setup based on my interwebz reading. I was expecting an angel choir, heavenly light, and to suddenly have the body of my 23 year old self. Needless to say... I had to adjust my expectations. Reality is that this is a nice bar of soap. A lovely creamy lather that is very gentle on skin. I used the bar directly on my legs and definitely got some light exfoliation from the salt. It was scrubby but not scratchy. Left a slight skin scent after showering.


Overall Thoughts: I am not a BRV girl. It's much too sweet for me. I use this about once a week simply because of the fragrance. It's such a nice bar of soap, I can't let it go. Showering with a salt bar is definitely an experience not to be missed - one that I look forward to more often once this bar is gone.

All the Lasting Things

All the Lasting Things by David Hopson


This was a well-written book with very clear characters. A well-written setup for the fatal secret, this book read quickly and was quite entertaining.



Summary: The Fisher family of Alluvia, New York, is coming undone. Evelyn spends her days tending to her husband, Henry—an acclaimed and reclusive novelist slowly losing his battle with Alzheimer’s. Their son, Benji, onetime star of an ’80s sitcom called Prodigy, sinks deeper into drunken obscurity, railing against the bit roles he’s forced to take in uncelebrated regional theater. His sister, Claudia, tries her best to shore up her family even as she deals with the consequences of a remarkable, decades-old secret that’s come to light. When the Fishers mistake one of Benji’s drug-induced accidents for a suicidal cry for help, Benji commits to playing a role he hopes will reverse his fortune and stall his family’s decline. Into this mix comes Max Davis, a twentysomething cello virtuoso and real-life prodigy, whose appearance spurs the entire family to examine whether the secrets they thought were holding them all together may actually be what’s tearing them apart.

Dismantled

Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

An uncompleted book. Writing was well done. Characters were a bit flat. The ones that weren't flat were just weird. The intrigue and plot fell short for me.

Summary: Dismantlement = Freedom
Henry, Tess, Winnie, and Suz banded together in college to form a group they called the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of their manifesto—"To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart"—these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism and plotting elaborate, often dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz's death and the others decide to cover it up.

Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are living just an hour's drive from the old cabin. Each is desperate to move on from the summer of the Dismantlers, but their guilt isn't ready to let them go. When a victim of their past pranks commits suicide—apparently triggered by a mysterious Dismantler-style postcard—it sets off a chain of eerie events that threatens to engulf Henry, Tess, and their inquisitive nine-year-old daughter, Emma.

Is there someone who wants to reveal their secrets? Is it possible that Suz did not really die—or has she somehow found a way back to seek revenge?

Reading The Bible in a Year

Reading The Bible in a year should be fairly easy, right? I mean, it's a book. It's got words. It's got stories. Easy? Notsomuch.


This is the third year I have put "finish reading The Bible" on my resolution list. I haven't finished it once in any of the previous two years.


I lead (term used loosely) the high school youth group at my church. Why? Because I'm not perfect. I swear. I make bad choices. Multiple times. I watch questionable TV shows and R rated movies. I think that's what teenagers need to see, is someone who struggles the same way they do. They need to see someone who still tries, despite everything, to find and keep a relationship with God. They need to see what letting go of worldly things looks like.

I am not a perfect role model for "my" teens. I'm honest about it. I curse - I try not to and I try to be more conscious of what comes out of my mouth - but I don't hide it. They ask me questions and I don't lie about who I am. We talk about changing our lives, we talk about God, and how to follow what our true lives are. The kids come back every week. They bring their friends and I bring cookies.

Every week I rant a little bit about reading The Bible (see how I'm connecting all this now?). It is the foundation for a relationship with God. The Bible is not just words or stories. The Bible is us. It is a living relationship between us and God. You can't read The Bible without being changed.

This year, they told me to make them excited about reading The Bible. So I'm throwing out the challenge to them. If they buy the dailyaudiobible app, and use it for a month, I will pay for the app. I love this app. I love hearing The Bible read to me. I love hearing Brian explain things, break things down, and make them real. Most of all I love how it connects me to God.