Brown Sugar and Fig is back!

Naiad's Brown Sugar and Fig soap is back in stock! Let the cheering commence!



Not only is the soap beautiful and gorgeous, not only does it smell absolutely divine, but it was amazingly helpful last month during a time when I thought I was going to die from ladytimes. I can't guarantee that it'll work so well for everyone else, obviously, because aromatherapy is pretty personal, but I plan to keep this in my house as long as she's making it.

I was also so sold on it that I ordered the Brown Sugar and Fig sugar cubes and the Moroccan Fig Bar last time I put an order in with Naiad, on the grounds that perhaps it's the fig that had such a great effect on me, and maybe I can get more of it. ^_^ I'll let you know how that works out.

Anniversary soaps!

Grant and I have a pretty awesome system for getting each other gifts. We make lists. ^_^ Or at least... I make lists! This year I gave him a list of a bunch of different soaps I was interested in, and he ended up putting together a gift box full of lovely fall-scented stuff.

It's an even more thoughtful gift than you'd think, actually! Grant and I are from the Midwest -- Indiana, to be specific -- where the seasons really turn. There's a definite spring, summer, fall, and winter. Fall was always my favorite season. My birthday is in fall (late September). My wedding was in the fall (October 21st), with the leaves changing color and looking absolutely gorgeous. Fall in Indiana is fantastic; the weather is beautiful, the scenery is as gorgeous as you can get in Indiana (Brown County is unbelievable), and it starts my own personal holiday season -- what could be better?

Well, when we moved to Seattle, we discovered that we get two seasons: the most amazing summer ever (okay, it's a little cold for Grant, but I love it), and what passes for our winter: six months of cloudy, overcast mist. It's not an awful kind of winter -- it beats snow -- but there's no definitive "fall" season. The leaves don't even always change colors or come off the trees; it just doesn't get cold enough here to shock the trees into hibernation. (Or whatever it is that causes leaves to change colors and fall off.) I mean, it's almost November, and the tree outside my bedroom window is lush, green, and leafy.

So a whole gift basket of autumn-themed soaps makes me really happy, and reminds me of fall without making me have to rake leaves. :) I'm quite pleased! Here's what I wound up with:



This is Atomic Cherry Amaretto Shaving Soap from Bunny Butt Apothecary. (Okay, okay, it's not a fall scent, but it was in the basket because both Grant and I love amaretto scents.) I may not like shaving my legs, but I sure hate it less now that I've discovered handmade shaving soaps! This one smells just divine and gave my razor a perfectly clean slide. \o/ Definitely recommended, and I'd buy shaving soap from Bunny Butt again in a hot minute.



This one is Hard Cider Soap by Balsam. It smells wonderful -- the shop description is "Cinnamon spice meets autumn apples. Just the soap for a hot bath on a cool, fall evening!" And it's definitely a spicy, apple-y scent that reminds me of a nice hot cider. The soap feels great, too, nice and smooth and clean. I used this one this morning, and paired it with JoJoElle's "Fall Love" Ultra Luxe Lotion. (And there's a whole post coming about JoJoElle. SO MUCH LOVE.)

These are the items I haven't yet tried out -- all of which I'm totally excited by --

Also by Balsam:



Pumpkin Spice Soap

And these are from Magic Hands Workshop:



Honeyed Peach soap (darn it, can't find a link)



Honey Oatmeal soap



Two kinds of Body Butter -- Honey Oatmeal (again, can't find a link) and Caspian Dancer!

And somehow he lucked into a sample of Magic Hands' Sugared Pumpkin Sea Salt bar, which I didn't even realize existed. But I'm thrilled -- Magic Hands makes awesome salt bars!

Happy anniversary, sweetie! :)

Seattle Rainwater Soap Company

Seattle Rainwater Soap Company is a local-to-me soap business with a variety of neat-smelling, scrubby soaps. The soaps also feature "real Seattle rainwater", which, unlike someplace like New York, is the kind of thing you might actually want in your soap. ^_^

So far I've tried the following varieties of soap:

Orchard Fruit: Apple/Peach - A bestseller. Not too sweet, with poppyseed for scrub. It was definitely fruity, and it was the soap I could smell the "Seattle rainwater" best in -- it really did smell like an orchard on a rainy day. The poppyseed scrub was a little much for me, though.

Almond Latte: With cocoa butter for creaminess and coffee grounds to exfoliate and remove odors. This one smelled really good out of the packaging, but ended up having an almost... bread-like smell to it in the long run. The coffee grounds were definitely scrubby! It was nice, but not the kind of almond I'm looking for. (I have recently found the almond I'm looking for, and will tell you all about it in an upcoming post.)

Ginger Zest With Lime: Bright and citrusy, with hints of orange, lime, and ginger ale. By far my favorite of the soaps I've tried from them. This is very much a CITRUS!!! soap, with lots of yummy, spicy ginger, too. I'd use it again in a heartbeat. The scrubbiness in this one seems to come from the citrus zest. It isn't a harsh soap in the least, though; it's very nice to the skin.

Like anyone looking for a bargain, I was excited to see that they offer a discounted "odds & ends" bag full of imperfectly-shaped soaps. I may have to give that a try at some point. :)

Update: Country Heart Gifts Soaps

A while back, I mentioned a sale on closeout soap samples that Country Heart Gifts was doing on Etsy. I've had a chance to test out some of those soaps now -- the only problem is that, since all these scents are being discontinued, it seems less than useful to go into detail on specific scents. So instead, a more general review!

First off, soap-as-soap. It's quite pleasant soap to use, very silky, very clean. A very nice sort of soap to have around, and the samples are terrific for hand soap, just the right size.

As for the scents, well! I grew up in the Midwest; I know from country. :) My favorite scent families out of the samples have been the peach scents (a more sweet peach scent than fresh-fruit peach scent), the strawberry scents (ditto), and the vanilla scents (a nice strong vanilla extract sort of scent). These all seem like the kinds of things I'd find in one of the independent country-home-stores back in Indiana, the kinds of places I could find sheep, bins of nickel candy, and the occasional bar of handmade soap that smells like cherry almond or strawberries & cream.

So if that sort of thing is up your alley, this store comes highly recommended! You can still find terrific bargains in her sale section, so have a look. :)

Serpentine Hair shampoo bars (Esquire, Kahlua, Vapor)

One of the first things that got me hooked on handmade soaps was Telesilla pointing me at Serpentine Hair. (You can see her review of it here!)

I'd been curious about shampoo bars for a while, but in mass-market stores they're few and far between. What pushed me over the edge to ordering them from Serpentine Hair was the great descriptions on her website and the reasons she had for making shampoo bars in the first place. My hair is short -- not quite buzzcut, but not much longer -- and finding a shampoo that doesn't just make it stand up in a large cloud of POOF is a challenge. Even with a couple lathers of conditioner, not much helped, and you know, it's a pain in the ass to effectively wash your hair three times and not get what you want out of it.

The second thing that sold me on Serpentine Hair was the ability to get sample slices, something I could (and did!) share with friends. :) That way, if I didn't like it, I could still hand 'em out to people and know that someone was getting a good time out of the deal.

So my first order from Serpentine Hair included samples of Esquire, Kahlua, and Vapor. I'll take 'em one at a time here so I can do a full write-up of the scents -- here goes!

Esquire: On the website, this is described as follows: Our first blend aimed at the men in our lives, Esquire is a sophisticated, masculine blend of amaretto and leather with the barest hint of coconut to turn down the heat. All smoking jackets and luxury, this is a terrific blend for a man who thinks he can take on the world--and win!

My impression: The bar was a mostly-brown color with the barest hint of pink to it. Lots of almond, and I could definitely catch that leather scent, too. I actually ordered this one because my husband (Grant) loves almond, but it turns out that almond scents really vary from place to place -- some of 'em he loves, some of 'em not. Some of 'em I love and he doesn't. And so it goes! This one, I enjoyed quite a bit; he wasn't so fond of it, so the rest of the samples went to friends.

Kahlua: Website description: Warm and sensual, this gorgeous scent is wonderful for java junkies and chocoholics; it's a delightful blend of coffee and chocolate scents with a shot of creamy vanilla. Kahlua is also a great choice if you're trying to turn the men in your life on to sulfate-free haircare; its delightful fragrance rarely fails to entice!

My impression: The bar was a definite strong brown color, just what you'd expect from a coffee/chocolate blend! And it really did smell like coffee and chocolate, too. As promised on the website, Grant found it enticing. :D But it wasn't my favorite of the bunch, so most of these samples went to friends as well. (It paired great with Naiad's Coffee Chocolate Scrubby bar, though; for a couple weeks there, our shower smelled like a Starbucks.)

Vapor: Website description: Divinely devoid of any adulteration, Vapor is our fragrance and color free scent for sensitive skin and sinuses. A unisex treat that's an absolute delight for all chromosomal persuasions, with fabulous follicular results!

My impression: The bar's almost pure white, just slightly off-white. And even though it doesn't have any added fragrance, it's still made of various kinds of oils. Oddly enough, though it doesn't list almond oil as one of its ingredients, when I sniff it, I definitely detect a hint of almond. And I love it. It's a very, very faint, natural scent, not something you can smell when you're out of the shower, but it's definitely a pleasant one, and it goes with everything. I have no qualms pairing it with any number of other kinds of soap (whereas I saved Kahlua for times when I was using soaps that had definite chocolate or coffee notes). I hoarded almost all the samples of Vapor for myself. ^_^



Okay, okay, so that's all well and good about the scents. What about the actual shampoo effects?

I am happy to say that these shampoo bars kick ass. They're as soothing to my hair as any number of hair treatment products, and they haven't left any kind of residue. I will say that it took about three days for the residue left over from my regular shampoo to finally wash out and be completely gone, and at that point, the shampoo bars really started to shine. It's quick, it's easy, it doesn't take a whole lot, and I'm thrilled with the results.

Doesn't take a whole lot meaning... Well, I've got short hair, so I skip the recommended step of using a loofah to lather up. I just rub the shampoo bar on my head for a bit and lather up that way. (And for all the warning about "not much lather" on the website, I tell you what, there's plenty of lather for me! Sure, you won't drown in it, but do you wanna?) Anyway, because the bars do melt if you leave 'em in the shower without benefit of a wire rack (mind you, my shower rack for soap is a wire rack), I cut mine into sample-sized slices before putting them in the shower.

This is both good and bad. Good, because one small sample slice (say 1/4 inch) lasts me over a week, and you can cut those bars into quite a few sample slices -- so I've been using just the samples I didn't send to friends (I think I kept about 8 at home) for almost three months now (!), and I've still got two that I haven't touched. (I should really keep better stats on how long these things last; I'll do that next time I swap in a new slice.) Bad, because it means I have less excuse to try new scents. :)

This said, I ordered three new bars of Vapor, and one each of Edge of the Earth, Czarina, and Forbidden Fruit, a while back. I've only tried out Forbidden Fruit so far, but I'll see if I can make it a point to try the other ones in the next couple weeks so I can do reviews of those scents, too. :)

Whipped Bubble Scrub from JoJoElle

It's not often that a product can make you totally rethink your thoughts on a whole product type, but that happened to me today!

See, I'd tried a sugar scrub before. The one I tried was an almond-scented body scrub from The Body Shop. It was heavy and thick, didn't spread, didn't dissolve, and didn't rinse off -- I had to take a second shower just to feel clean. I thought, okay, maybe sugar scrubs aren't what they're cracked up to be.

Ha! No, I just hadn't tried the right one yet. And what one was that? Well, the one I tried today was Lemon Wedding Cake Whipped Bubble Scrub from JoJoElle. (You can find a version of it directly from her, or you can get the double-set I got, with Lemon Wedding Cake and Key Lime Cake, from the Soap Box Company.)

First of all, it smells fantastic. Both the Key Lime Cake and the Lemon Wedding cake smell... well, exactly like their names. :) The lemon wedding cake brings back memories of really awesome lemon wedding cakes I've had, and it's a welcome indulgence for my on-hiatus sweet tooth.

Next step: trying it out. It's very, very scrubby, much more than I realized was possible in a sugar scrub! (That'll teach me to go for big-box retailers...) It went on nicely, lathered (that was a surprise!), and rinsed perfectly clean. I was utterly and totally thrilled!

Post-shower, I smell very very faintly of wedding cake. :D I don't mind it a bit. I feel clean and exfoliated -- this will be a great thing to keep in my shower and use weekly, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a nice sugar scrub. There are several flavors--er, scents--available at The Soap Box Company, so give them a look and see if there's one that suits you. :)

Travel soaps!

As Telesilla said, I've been out of town for a few days in my favorite vacation spot -- Las Vegas!

Over the years, the hotels in Las Vegas have tried to distinguish themselves with everything from floorplan (the Venetian has particularly nice ones) to... well, soap. I thought I'd take a quick spin through some of the Vegas soaps I've run into in recent years. Obviously these aren't handmade, and I'm not suggesting anyone go to Vegas specifically for the purpose of acquiring soaps from these hotels, but I thought it'd be fun. I've got twelve "real" reviews in the queue after this, so no worries, I'll be going back to handmade and e-shops next time. :)

Caesar's Palace: Tangerine and Olive Flower
Caesar's offers a whole suite of things in the same scent: Tangerine and Olive Flower. Did you know that that basically means "tangerine and cucumber"? Me neither. (And I don't know if all olive flower scents smell like that or if it was just theirs.) I'm not real crazy about melon/cucumber scents, so this one didn't do much for me. They sure tried hard to give us all the soap we could want for a month (it's hard to make them stop).

I have turned up a few e-tailers that sell olive flower soaps, if you're curious about them! I haven't personally ordered any of these soaps (although at least one of them is now on my wish list), but just in case the information could be useful:

• Olive Blossom Soap from CandaLisa (Virginia locals, you can find CandaLisa stuff at a variety of local events and festivals!)


• Sicilian Olive Blossom from Swan Mountain Soaps (on vacation from August 17-27, orders shipping out when they return)


• Olive Blossom Vegan Soap from FlameWorks -- wow, that looks lovely!


• Olive Blossom Glycerin Soap from 4th Avenue Soap Co. (gorgeous!)

Palazzo: Lemon Verbena
It's not the most unusual scent out there, but the Lemon Verbena soap provided by Palazzo was actually very nice. If my memory serves, the soap was actually Agraria, and it was really nicely-scented stuff -- lemon without being overpoweringly ZOMG LEMON! -- and quite gentle on the skin. Definitely the nicest hotel soap I've ever used. :)

Treasure Island
What does Treasure Island have going for it now that there aren't any pirates? Well, it has some seriously interesting soap. They stock "massage bars" (you know, the kind with the little bumps) in rosemary mint (one of my favorites!) and -- this is the kicker -- oatmeal cookie-scented soap for face and hands.

I'll be honest here -- it's plain old garden-variety mass-produced soap, and if your skin is anything like mine, you'll probably need to use some serious moisturizer afterwards. But the oatmeal cookie scent is awesome, and it's one of the few soaps my husband has ever said "Wow, that smells good!" to. We packed away the soap they gave us every day, and are down to our last bar or two. It's good stuff. :)

There are, of course, any number of places you can get oatmeal cookie-scented soap! Here are a few that caught my eye on Etsy:

• Oatmeal Heart Ice Cream Sandwich Cookie Soap Bar from Sunflower Gardens (check out the rest of her soaps; they're adorable!)


• Oatmeal Creme Pie Cookie Soap from LoveLeeSoaps (also made of adorable)


• Oatmeal Cookie Handmade Soap from Willow And Fern


• and, of course, you can get an Oatmeal Cookie soap that's shaped like a sheep! (this one's from Shine Your Hiney)

Much as I like Vegas, I'm very happy to be home (I think my hair is the happiest thing around; I'm back to using my Serpentine Hair Shampoo Bars, and they are so, so, so much nicer than standard shampoo & conditioner), and look forward to writing up some of the soaps I've got in the review queue!

Local soap: Moon Valley Organics (Creamsicle)

The more I look around, the more I find that independent folks and local folks are making great-smelling, natural-ingredient soaps. I'm not a stickler for organic and natural ingredients (I live in a house where Diet Coke is the beverage of choice -- artificial works for me), but it's always neat to see what people come up with in that arena. Local places are also fun to shop from; I like the idea of giving my money to smaller and local businesses.

Review: Soap from Moon Valley Organics
Scent: Creamsicle

Moon Valley Organics is a local company right around the corner from me -- they're located in Arlington, Washington. Around here, you can find their soaps both at Pike Place Market and at the local Whole Foods. The Pike Place Market shop is a lot of fun; samples are all around the outside of the store, and if you want more (or less) of a soap than what's in a bar, they'll sell it to you by the ounce.

I picked up two ounces each of Creamsicle and Chocolate Comfrey, as well as a bar of Mint Sage -- I'm a sucker for mint. The first one to come up in the rotation was Creamsicle, so that's what I'll be babbling about today. :)

Look: Creamsicle is a medium-orange color with little speckles of darker orange to it. It's a standard sort of hand-made bar soap, hand-cut, etc.

Feel: Perfectly smooth soap that lathers well under water and rinses clean.

Ingredients: MVO is very proud of its natural ingredients, which -- for this soap -- include the following: Saponified oils of Organic Safflower, organic coconut oil and Organic Palm, Organic Red Palm, Beeswax, *Sweet orange oil, Vanilla Fragrance, *Castor oil, Raw honey, *Paprika, *Castor oil, and Rosemary extract. All starred ingredients are organically grown or wildcrafted. Creamsicle is listed as petroleum-free, cruelty-free, and made of 84% organic ingredients.

Lifespan: It took me a good week to use up a half-ounce sample of this stuff; it definitely does not melt right away.

Scent: The first time I sniffed it, I thought, Hey, wow, it's a creamsicle! It's definitely got that orange-and-vanilla scent to it, and anyone who was a fan of those ice cream bars in their youth (or, hey, nowadays) will find it familiar.

When you come right down to it, though, I'm a single-note kind of girl. I'm often willing to give combination scents a shot if they smell good on first whiff, or if they're a combination that sounds interesting to me. But it takes a lot to get me interested in combinations, and this one has an herbal thread running through it that just didn't grab me in the long run. I'm not sure if that's the paprika or the honey or the rosemary, but something in there just isn't for me. I'm hoping I'll like the mint sage and chocolate comfrey a little better. :)

Cafe Mocha Sheep Soap (Goat's Milk) -- Gassner Custom Soaps

In the interests of giving soaps a fair shake, I'm going to try to use them for a week before reviewing them, unless the smell is Just Not For Me. So far I haven't run into anything that makes me say "run away!", but of course I'm picking out most of the soaps I'm using, so I'm getting a biased sample. :)

Offering you a piece of proof that it is, in fact, All Telesilla's Fault, let me show you something she sent me:



N'AWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Sheep soaps! (As Telesilla knows, sheep are my favorite animal. What? They have wool, which you can knit! They are cute! They are lovable! They bleat cutely! There is nothing not to love.)

These are custom-made soaps from a local-ish soapmaker -- Gassner Custom Soaps, in Oregon. (I'm in Washington, Telesilla's in California. Local-ish!) You can find an option for ordering the adorable sheep soaps on Etsy. The ones I have are made using a Goat's Milk base, and one of them is Lemon Zest and the other is Cafe Mocha. In spite of the numerous soaps already in my shower, I opened up the Cafe Mocha one and sniffed.

MMMMMMMMMM!

Review: Goat's Milk Soap from Gassner Soaps
Scent: Cafe Mocha; SHEEP SHAPE!
First of all, I don't see how you can go wrong with a sheep-shaped soap. I just don't. That's as cute as it gets as far as I'm concerned. It's an adorable sheep with wool whorls all over! Love!

Look: The sheep soaps were tightly wrapped in plastic wrap, then put in little plastic bags with paper labels attached. Very professional, very cute, ingredients listed right on the label -- all touches that were greatly appreciated. Plus... SHEEEEEP! Many bonus points for sheep!

Feel: The goat's milk soap is a lovely, creamy, silky-smooth soap that lathers nicely (passes the loofa test) and rinses off nice and clean. It's a pleasure to use! Very soft, very smooth, gentle and non-drying on the skin. Thumbs up! It's not quite right for my face, but it's great everywhere else. :)

Ingredients: As explained on the website, the goat's milk soap contains the following: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Safflower Oil, Glycerin (kosher, of vegetable origin), Goats Milk, Purified Water, Sodium Hydroxide, (saponifying agent), Sorbitol (moisturizer), Sorbitan oleate (emulsifier), Soy bean protein (conditioner), EDTA (water softener). And, of course, fragrance. :)

Lifespan: I allow all my soaps to drain and dry on wire racks or nubbly plastic ones (I have a very inexpensive one from Target that's working out great). This one looks like it's got a lifespan of a few weeks of very heavy use, or quite a bit longer if you're more conservative with your soaps than I am.

Scent: Holy cow, this smells amazing. It's a wonderful coffee/chocolate scent, a perfect mix of both. It lingers for a while after you use it, but not heavily; you can't smell yourself unless you're sniffing your hands or somesuch. It did make my husband sniff me, though!



Gassner Custom Soaps has a TON of other scent options. I'm looking forward to sniffing Lemon Zest, and I suspect I'll be ordering more (OMGADORABLE) sheep soaps further on down the line. :)