Margarita BLoom is Having A Sale

I'm broke, folks.  Well, sort of, anyway.  And there is a great reason but I can't tell you yet. 

Anyway, I just noticed that one of my most coveted shops, Margarita Bloom is having a 15% off your ENTIRE order sale until the end of August.

Enter code "temptation."

For the love of Nancy, please go order stuff and write me and tell me about it.

No soap for me for awhile...

~ The Clean Diva

Finally, a freaking review

Hi all,

I am a champion soap slacker.  I have been so involved over at the FOOD blog that I didn't get myself together very quickly on this one.  I've been eyeing my new Angelic Soaps daily and not mustering the photo taking time to make a bath possible.

Well, last night I did.  .

The packaging

I adore the packaging.  The soaps are in individual little gold net bags and cards identifying them inside.  It must be a high touch process and its worth it, in my opinion.  Getting these soaps felt extravagant.

Up close of the packaging and the soap inside

The soaps themselves (and I will talk about them in two separate blog posts) are gorgeous.  Much care obviously goes into the work and it shows.

I love the shop name stamped into the soap.  A small detail that goes a long way

The bad photography doesn't do this soap justice.  It is a deep pink/almost red color and has gold sparkles throughout.  I am hesitant to show you this next photo as my skills are seriously bad here but it illustrates the top of the bar, which may be my favorite part.

Ignore the shadows, look at the GOLD

And it smells divine.  Like jasmine but NOT like jasmine perfume, if that makes sense.  The scent is incredibly strong when sniffing the soap and in the shower but, when it dries on your skin, there is just enough scent to remind you of the awesome shower you took that morning.

The texture on this one is definitely different that what I am used to using.  I realize that this is probably due to the massive amounts of shea butter in it.  You have to get this soap really wet to get it working against your skin and the lather is think and not conventionally "soapy" at all.  But it rinses cleanly and smells so amazing during the shower.

I love jasmine and this is no exception and I just think the work is so artistically gorgeous.  I'm excited to try the other bar...

I Guessed I Missed it When Etsy Got an iPhone App....And Soap Arrived!

Today I discovered that Etsy now has an iPhone app. 

Dear Bank Account,

It was nice having money in you.

Now I don't. 

Blame Etsy.

*le. sigh*

At any rate, in other happy news, two recent soap purchase have arrived in my humble abode...Cedarwood and Cypress Handsoap from Solstice Botanicals and the two soaps I ordered from Angelic Soap.

In other news, I am also the first purchaser of Bacon Bits the soap from Happy Goat Soap which is exciting for so many reasons.  One is that I read the shop's blog, The Maa of Pricilla, religiously (its refreshing and funny and delightful) and another is that I have been watching the progress of this little soap for awhile.  So to order it first is SO exciting.  But more on that later.

Teresa over at Angelic Soap was nice enough to send me some samples with my purchase (which I bought on epic sale so she is just so generous).  I didn't take a picture of the first one I used, which was Black Raspberry Shea, so I am borrowing one from her Etsy shop.  Take a look.

Its like art...real art that smells amazing...

I literally used the whole sample in one shower.  It went something like this...

Wet and lather left arm, rinse, sniff, repeat on right arm.
Decide left arm needs another washing (so I can sniff it)

Repeat process.

I swear the stuff even moisturized my horrible Hobbit feet.  I smelled like raspberries all day but not cloyingly so.  And the texture was simply divine.  The only reason I haven't tried the two I bought yet is that Miss Lazy Pants (yours truly) needs to take some photos of the epic packaging before getting said soap wet.  Tomorrow morning, I swear.

Also, while borrowing the picture above, I noticed that some of the soaps in Angelic Soaps shop are named Black Temple Incense and Grimoire (Book of Shadows).  The description of the latter contains this:

"Grimoire will leave your skin silky and smelling faintly of the rare treasures of antiquity."

 I CLEARLY need to smell like the rare treasures of antiquity.  And so do you.

So much excitement to come!

And then he said

...Stop ruining the bathtub, Erin!

Sigh.  It seems my haphazard methodology of leaving the soaps on the side of the tub is pulling up the paint.  Bad Erin. 

So now I am in the market for some soap dishes.  Preferably suctiony ones that will stick to the wall in the shower.

I think I like this one:



Helps!  Helps I say!

 This is probably the practical choice:

I'll be practical when I'm dead!

This one is nifty but would it damage my lovely soapies?

It's magnetic...like my personality

And this one is pretty but pricey:

So niiiice

So which do I pick?  And how many is too many?

A Shameless Plug

I just started another blog.

Here it is http://ekcantcook.blogspot.com/

It's about my culinary adventures.  You should read it.

That's all.

Erin

My First Handsoap Review

Recently we ran out of hand soap in the bathroom.  The other person in my abode is a big fan of Method Foaming Hand Soap which is totally cool if you aren't a complete and total soap snob.  Also, Method contains SLS and we all know I am not a fan of that.  While SLS is certainly not the devil, I do find one thing I contained on the Method Web site interesting.  It lists the ingredients and notes the following with regards to SLS and it's "Health + Environmental Summary": "low skin irritation in use and non toxic; readily biodegradable; derived from coconut oil."  I'm fairly certain that this cannot be patently UNTRUE or the legal team for Method wouldn't let them post it on the site.  All up, however, it isn't what I want for my family.  So I convinced my co-decision maker to let me shop for some handmade hand soap on Etsy.

Thanks co-decision maker...

I came up with two that were nice, well made, reasonably priced, and had scents that were refreshing but not too feminine.

I'll discuss the second one when it arrives and we use it.  But our first new hand soap is Citrus Basil Foaming Liquid Soap by the cleverly named Foam on the Range.  Hailing from Kansas (The Sunflower State) all of the products contain sunflower oil, which is nifty.

Here is a pic from the Etsy posting of this soap.  I will show you my pics as well but I think our friends at Foam on the Range are much better photogs than I:

The bottle is cute enough to just plop on the counter

The soap arrived and, after we finished up what we currently had, we busted out the Citrus Basil.  I was instantly surprised by how clean the soap left my hands feeling. I know that Foam on the Range doesn't use harsh chemicals as their blog is as adamant about ingredient quality as any I've seen.  But the lack of commercial detergents does not show itself in this product.  My hands felt squeaky clean after washing.

The co-decision maker said he liked the soap claiming it had a refreshing scent that was clean and safe for a man but not too manly.  We like this soap.  We like it a bunch.  And the price is so reasonable.

Here are some pics of the soap in my humble bathroom.

I genuinely love the labels

neatly blending in

A quick post

So, as I was cruising through my daily blog updates I saw this blog from Etsian, Angelic Soaps.

She's having a sale, ya'll...and not a little sale...a 50% off sale.

So I hightailed it over there and bought the Sensual Jasmine Velvet Shea (typical, I know) and the Gingerflower Shea.  Here are pics from Etsy side by side!

I am so excited to try them!