Soap

Beautiful Claus Porto soap

On Saturday my husband Sam went to the local Ballarat Lakeside Farmers Market to pick up some of my favourite soap. I’m fussy you see about what soap I use. Only in sheer desperation will I buy a block of Pears from the supermarket – which is just to get me through until I can get my next fix of handmade olive oil based soap.

Good old fashioned lavender is my favourite and I’m not a fan of too many bits in my soap that might scratch. The bigger the block the better too because they seem to disappear fast in our house (it may have something to do with the littlest one in the house who is very good at washing his tummy!).

I also love french milled soaps in beautiful packaging (like the gorgeous portugese made soaps from Claus Porto. I also love soaps that have been made in molds with embossed writing.

Native Bliss Soap from Ballarat Farmers Market

A couple of years ago I collaborated with a friend and we made a lovely lavender and aloe vera soap and a lemongrass and green clay one and I packaged them up as Bushka soaps – it was in the lead up to Christmas and they sold out at my market stalls – all this talk of soap – makes me want to do this again….the Crafty Squirrel could do with some lovely soap for sale! Watch this space!

Singing Silly Songs

I'm going to start this post with an apology to my husband for putting a photo of him in his pj's on the net - but really it was the best image I had of him and the kids to show how much we LOVE singing silly songs in our house.

I'm sure not a day goes by when there isn't a little ditty made up by one of us about another member of the family.
It's all my fault I'm sure - years of singing to the cats and making up silly songs for them mean't that when I had human babies the tradition just continued.

We also all love singing nursery rhymes and funny songs we know so often this turns into a little 'performance' of one sort or another which is filmed on the old digital camera. As the children have got older they have fully embraced the silliness and will pick up instruments to join in or do a little dance.

I love the ukulele action in this photo - it was taken quite a while ago at our old house in Seddon and seeing it again reminds me of that moment. It was LOUD and raucous and very very silly but also lot's of fun!