| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 |
| 2:54 pm |
This is what the soap looks like a few days old. The fragrance oil might still darken the soap a bit in time.
American Cream dupe: "Listen up! Vanilla lovers - this fragrance is unbelievably good! It's vanilla with a touch of earthiness added for depth. Top notes: soft floral, jasmine, violet. Middle notes: fresh lavender, rose. Bottom notes: woody, vanilla." Vanilla Ice CreamHmmm… mmm… Welcome to Texas! You’ve not had Vanilla Ice Cream ‘till you’ve stated our State’s delicious Blue Bell Ice Cream!This fragrance smells just like that famous Texas ice cream we all love! Creamy milk and French vanilla beans are churned into this richly sweet fragrance.Does smell vanilla but not really ice cream to me. Reminds me a bit of those cupcake dolls?  Tea for a Dozen
Home of the First & Original dupe of this popular blend!
Compare “Tea for Two” by L’Artisan Parfumeur® [brand], to our interpretation “Tea for a Dozen.” Warm and tender fragrance of lapsang souchoung tea vapors with its smoky, woody aroma. It is an interesting blend of spiciness, smokiness of slowly brewed tea. It contains notes of aniseed, gentian, bergamot, ginger, cinnamon, honey, and vanilla.
Hard to describe this scent. Not a classic tea scent.
|
| Monday, November 9th, 2009 |
| 2:09 pm |
|
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 |
| 3:55 pm |
Chinese weddings traditions
I've been reading up on Chinese wedding traditions for the upcoming wedding. We're going to keep it simple. We're just going to do the most important things like fetching the bride and the tea thing (preferably NOT on my knees). The wedding won't really be for us. It's more like a party for my relatives. I kind of see it as a puppet theater where we are the puppets. It's one day and then I will be saved from a lifetime of nagging. So I'll just shut my brain off and do as I get told. Below is some wedding traditions with my comments in italics. A big and expensive wedding means that the families are wealthy and proud of the bride. A small wedding means that the bride's family and the groom is ashamed of her. A table will sit 12 people and most weddings will have at least 10 tables of people. It's not unusual to have 20-30 (the more the better) tables. Each married guest will bring a red pocket with money in lucky numbers. In return they will also get a red pocket from the couple but with less money. In old traditions, different gifts sent between the families before the wedding. The groom's family should show their wealth and give gifts. This is the proposal. If it is accepted, the bride's family will send the grooms family the date and hour of her birth. Together with the groom's date and hour of birth, an astrological expert will see if they are a match. Then a good date needs to be chosen. Numbers are very important. 8 is good, 4 is bad. The bride and groom aren't really the focus of attention. There is also bargaining about how much money and gifts the bride's family will receive. This is to thank her family for bringing her up. To me this sounds like trying to get a good deal on a mail-order bride. Typically a pretty young girl is considered more valuable. Their value starts to sink in their twenties. A small mouth is also good, that means that they can't eat that much and will be cheaper to keep... In the old, old days, small feet were important. It was believed that small feet had a correlation to tightness in a certain body part. For some reason, if the bride has younger brothers, the groom should buy them new shoes. The bride's family will then gift the groom new shoes, belt and wallet. In some traditions (they vary from city to city) the bride will live separate from her family until the wedding day in something called the cock loft. The day or evening before the wedding, a woman who has had a good life and marriage is hired to comb the bride's hair while mumbling stuff for good fortune. The bride takes a bath in water infused with pomelo to rid her of evil influences. The couple also needs a new bed. A couple with good fortune and many kids should install it and make the bed with red sheets. Young coconuts and fruits are put on the bed for fertility. Young kids are invited to play in the bed (also for fertility). The wedding day starts with a procession from the groom's house with firecrackers and flowers. The groom is going to the bride's house to fetch her. Nowadays, a nice car (can be rented) decorated with flowers is important. The bride's friends will be waiting at the door and there will be haggling and bargaining with red pockets (with money). They will not surrender the bride until they're satisfied. OK, so the bride will be sold by both her parents and her friends. Great.The bride and groom will kneel in front of her parents, offer them tea and thank them for the upbringing. They sit in chairs, take a sip and then hand over a red pocket (with money). This will be repeated at the groom's house. This tea ceremony is also done with the couple grandparents and many elders. Not sure if you have to kneel for them though. Yay, a chance for the bride should show that she is a good servant (and good on her knees?).Homage is paid at the family altar and then there's dinner. What is served should sound good and lucky. The couple, together with their friends, will go from table to table and drink with the guests. Good friends will drink instead of the bride and groom so they won't have to get so drunk. Sometimes games are played like making the couple eat a banana hanging from a string from separate sides. Public kissing is still not all that accepted so there will not be a make-out session. The games often have a slightly sexual nature so the couple will be a little embarrassed and entertain the guests. I DO NOT want this!I think that's pretty much it. |
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 |
| 10:27 am |
Wedding anxiety
We have been talking a bit about the wedding lately and now I'm starting to freak out. Not over the getting married part but the wedding part. Two cultures, relatives in two countries = bleh. It's leaning towards a Chinese wedding in China and a smaller ceremony here for Björn's grandparents. I don't even know much about weddings in any culture and if I could decide, it would just be me and Björn. But everybody wants to attend the wedding. And people keep asking me about wedding stuff! I don't want to have lots of people staring at me while I'm wearing uncomfortable clothes and have to behave and be social. I think a marriage is private and I want the wedding to be too. Björn's parents will be mad if they don't get to attend. I don't want my parents there but I can't have his parents there and not mine. Poo! Now I don't know if I even want a wedding but I don't want to be unmarried for life either. Blah. |
| Sunday, October 18th, 2009 |
| 6:54 pm |
Cake rant
Making cake for my brothers birthday tomorrow. I like making cake but I don't like the demands from my family. No, I can not make the cake bigger. The cake pans for consumers are this size. I can't make it in s big rectangular pan that you have because it would be impossible for me to carry that to their house. But then my mother complains that since there will be 7 people there, they will just be able to have a thin slice each and not get seconds so can I make something else too? She wants everything to be not to sweet, no buttercream, not a lot of whipped cream, not a lot of chocolate, no fruit and no marzipan. I just want to bake my little brother a cake that he will enjoy, I'm not a caterer or a baker and I can't really be creative when there's so many limitations. My economy is pretty bad so if they want me to bake lots of stuff they could at least offer to pay for some of the ingredients. 2 cakes and 2 batches of muffins + presents the same month I just paid insurance = not much money left. I had to buy boxes for the cakes too and that wasn't cheap either. Just needed to get that off my chest. Hormones are making me a little irritated. |
| Thursday, October 15th, 2009 |
| 10:55 pm |
Soap gremlins
I got a visit from the soap gremlins! My blue and pink swirly soap has got some brownish discoloration on it and not even people on the soap forums know what it is :( The soap is still usable but less pretty. Like me. |
| Monday, October 12th, 2009 |
| 6:02 pm |
Soaping and tallow
I usually don't soap with tallow but I decided to give it a try. It looks gross though before it is rendered. Lookie!    Some of my soaps:  Oatmeal, Honey and Milk  Olive oil soap with tea leaves  Scented with Warm Vanilla Sugar |
| Thursday, October 8th, 2009 |
| 12:38 pm |
I just got my tallow. It was a special order at my local grocery store. So I went to the deli and asked for my 5kg of beef tallow. The girl looked and me, went to the back and talked to another girl and pointed me out. Then she came back and asked "beef what?". "Beef tallow. Beef FAT", I replied. "Just the fat?". "Yes". She went back and after a while she brought it out. She looked kind of shocked. I've never seen raw beef tallow either. It looks like giant tentacles of hard fat. Slightly paler looking she asked me if I needed anything else. Perhaps I should have told her that I was going to make soap? I've never soaped with animal fat before but after asking some talented soap makers about how to make a good shaving soap (that will be a Christmas present), I decided to get the tallow. It sounds kind of yucky, I know. But when you think of it, we eat beef, fat is fat, and we might as well use it. It's supposed to make good soap anyway. |
| 12:00 pm |
Bread and soap pics
Sea soap that will lather in salt water  Latte soap  Bread:   This one is called Laputa. It's a Swedish bread with scalded rye but in Spanish I think it would be called "the whore"?  Baguettes  |
| 11:50 am |
|
| 10:07 am |
What to do?
I'm been thinking about what to do with this blog. Kill it? This used to be my venting space but I no longer feel the same need to vent. Maybe I will keep the blog but completely change the subject. And blog about making soap and sourdough bread. Might as well? So what have I been doing? I'm learning mandarin (Chinese), trying to finish my thesis, baking bread and making soap. Soap is my new hobby. Today I'm actually going to pick up 5kg of tallow!! I probably have to render it... I'm also making Char Siu Bao (Chinese BBQ buns). I guess I'm some kind of "housegirlfriend" or something. |
| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 |
| 3:25 pm |
1 hour on the Orbitrek = 17,5km = 400kcal |
| 12:05 pm |
Diet with cat food
It's not as disgusting as you think, I'm not eating it! I made a decision to lose weight. I'm never going to be 51 kg again but I don't need to look like a pile of lard. I'm fat and I'm broke so I should eat less. This is where the cat food comes in. Cat food smells horrible! So I sit down with the cats now when they eat and I get so disgusted that I lose my appetite. I'm also constantly tired so I'm gonna start drinking coffee again. Another plus is that coffee makes me less hungry. I'm not going to starve myself, I just don't need to eat til I explode. I need to learn portion control. |
| Monday, June 29th, 2009 |
| 8:47 pm |
Kittens!
They will be 6 weeks tomorrow and their all booked. Hermine (cat mommy) adopted 3 motherless kittens a few weeks ago. Their mother had died suddenly when they were 2½ weeks old. Hermine didn't have enough milk for 6 kittens the first few days so I bottle fed them a few times a day too. They moved back to their owner yesterday since they can eat solid food now. They had a very sweet and caring daddy at home looking for them. The kittens are running around like crazy, chasing each other and they are soooo cute! We wanted to keep one but couldn't choose so we decided to keep the last one. Tiger got booked first and then Button, so we're keeping Nugget. Cute kitten pics on link below. http://pici.se/gal/Cookie-Chan/Kattungar/ |
| Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 |
| 12:59 pm |
Kittens are born!
3 kittens were born yesterday! Mom and kittens are doing well. We came home around 20 and checked on her and the first one was halfway out! Her belly was so big we thought it would be a big litter. But we got 3 big cute kittens instead. They're usually between 80-110g.  First one: Orange, 111g, female (we think)  Second one: Black/grey, 109g, male (we think)  Third one: Tortoiseshell, 123g, female (we think) The orange one is a little bossy. She will gladly push away her sibling to get more milk and she squeaks when she doesn't get attention or can't find a nipple. |
| Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 |
| 2:35 pm |
|
| Sunday, May 10th, 2009 |
| 6:55 pm |
Preggy cat has arrived!
She is a small dark Tortoiseshell colored cat. She is very social and let us pet her at once. Not scared at all and she's already made herself comfortable in the bedroom. Her belly is pretty big for her size. Will know more tomorrow after she's been to the vet. |
| Saturday, May 9th, 2009 |
| 8:12 pm |
We're expecting!
Yes! We're expecting kittens! We're going to be a foster home for a preggy kitty. She and the kittens will live with us until the kittens are 12 weeks and have found new homes. The preggy kitty will probably arrive tomorrow after we've gotten some stuff for it. And Björn has got a job! We're also buying a car! Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Thursday, October 30th, 2008 |
| 10:40 am |
Long time no see
Writing used to be my way of handling my anxiety (well, that and some other less productive ways) but this last year or so I've found other things. That's why it's been so quiet here. I've found that I really like mixing things. But I can't keep making muffins and cookies since I don't want to gain another 20kg. So I've been making body cream (went really well, I even sold some!), mineral make-up and now I think I'm gonna start making sourdough bread. I found this really interesting bread blog http://paindemartin.blogspot.com. I never knew it took so long to bake bread and that the traditional Swedish method isn't the best one. So I just started a sourdough starter last night. It will be done in about 4-5 days. So I guess my bread will be done in 6-7 days, LOL! My degree theses essay isn't going too well so I think there will be quiet a lot of baking, haha. |
| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 |
| 2:03 pm |
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
kakmonster's journal
happy
