Orange Blossoms

I love the smell of orange blossoms. Preferably the real thing. Yes, there are some nice essential oils that capture the fragrance pretty well, but there's nothing quite like sticking your face into a blossom-covered citrus tree and inhaling the "natural" perfume! (It IS the state flower of Florida, after all!) We have three citrus trees in our yard. One tangerine, one grapefruit, and one orange. All produce really nice, tasty fruit in the late fall/early winter. So for a few weeks in the spring, like now, they are covered in the little white blossoms and that fantastic smell wafts around the yard on every puff of breeze. Heavenly!

Last weekend I noticed that the tangerine tree was white. I'm talking white, like it had been sprinkled with snow. The orange and grapefruit trees are pretty "puffed up", too, but that tangerine tree has simply gone crazy this year! (That's a good thing--out of all the fruits we have, I like our tangerines the best!) Yesterday afternoon I went over and looked at it closer. Many of the blossoms' petals have already fallen off, and in their place are tiny little green dots--those are the baby tangerines, and there are a LOT of them!

I stroked a couple of the tiny tangerines, stuck my face into a cluster of the remaining flowers and inhaled a few times, and just smiled. Tangerine party at my house in November! Everyone's invited--we're going to have plenty!

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Incredible Handmade Soap!

I don't know anything about making soap. I don't know cold processing from hot processing, I don't know how to add scents or mix ingredients or even cut the stuff up when it's done. I only know that I LOVE handmade soap!

I don't think I realized that people still made soap until I opened my shop on Etsy. I hung around in the forums and read posts from soapers and checked out their shops, and I thought, "Hmmm...it might be cool to try some of that!"

Then the problem became WHICH ONE to try! There are so many soap makers with so many lovely, yummy-sounding soaps that it took me about 3 weeks to decide. And then I didn't really decide--I bought soaps from three different artisans! After they all arrived in the mail, I had to spend another two days just "sniffing" them to try to figure out which one I wanted to use first. Honestly, I had no idea it was going to be such an ordeal just to experiment with a new way of getting clean!

I finally chose one I had received from ABreathofFrenchair. She calls it Cucumber Salad now, but at the time I bought it, it was Cucumber Wasabi. I actually discovered it in a forum discussion she had started about whether or not "wasabi" would scare anyone off. At the time, I didn't even know what wasabi was, but it sure sounded exotic and I knew I liked cucumber-smelling stuff. I HAD to have it. As I recall, the forum discussion wasn't even completed before I had clicked into her shop and snatched it up!

ABreathofFrenchair uses a variety of essential oils and shea butter, and her soap is moisturizing, clean-rinsing, and great-smelling! You can probably imagine a handmade soap called Lemongrass Lavender, but how about Kumquat, Fresh Cut Grass, Tangerine Twist, or Grab a Beer? I'm dying to try them all! But of course, one can only get so clean, right? So I have to be patient (and take lots of showers!)