Suggest A Soap Combo – and Win

Mother's Day is nearly here and I thought it would be a great idea to have a Mother's Day giveaway. SquiggleMum has very kindly joined forces with me to give away some of our all natural handmade soaps.

If you’ve never seen this wonderful blog before, now’s your chance to have a look, SquiggleMum is one of the nicest ladies and very clever too, have a look at the wonderful comp she has put together for me. You can also find some great reading while you sit back and have a nice cup of tea maybe.

All you need to do is to help me out by suggesting what would make a great Mumma-Bubba gift pack and you could win that very pack that you suggest.

Sound simple? full details on how to win a Mumma-Bubba gift pack can be found here, so hop on over for your chance to win yourself or someone special, a well deserved Mother’s Day pressie.

Olive Oil Butter

Butter versus Margarine. What is better for us health wise, butter or margarine? It depends on who you listen to.

We are told butter is bad for us because it’s high in saturated fat and margarine is bad for us because of the trans fats they contain. Talk about confusing, who do we believe?

I think it really is a personal choice. I prefer butter myself, because it's a natural product. Margarine is manufactured and contains not only trans fats, which seem to be in just about everything we buy these days, but other undesirable ingredients as well.

A tub of margarine contains vegetable oils, emulsifiers, preservatives, food acid, flavour and colour.

A pack of butter contains cream, water and salt.

No comparison in my opinion. Natural has to be better compared to a man made product. As long as you don’t overdo the butter of course.

Now we all know how good Olive Oil is for us, not only for our skin, which is why I use lots of it in my handmade natural soaps, but it is wonderful for our inner health as well.

I like to make my own Olive Oil Butter as an alternative to our normal Butter and it’s very simple to make.

Find yourself a nice container that you’d like to use and measure how much it holds. For a 500 gram container you'll need:

250gram pure butter
250gram of light olive oil

You could use Extra Virgin Olive oil if you wish, but I find it makes the spread too strong tasting, but that’s just my taste, you might prefer that. You could even add some herbs if you’d like.

Melt your butter then add the olive oil. Place in fridge and stir every 30 minutes so that it blends well together. If you forget to stir, it could separate.

That’s it, an even healthier alternative to pure natural butter, it tastes great and it spreads well straight out of the fridge.

Free Prizes?

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter:) I just wanted to let you know about a promotion that I'm very happy to be a part of; it's for the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign.

Would you like a chance to win over $2,000.00 in prizes? Leigh from MUM e ASSISTANT has organised 32 different sites to donate over $2,000 in prizes to raise money to help this wonderful cause, so head on over to Mum e Assistant for your chance to win some great prizes.

Cyclone Ului

Well, I've just been though my first cyclone, a category 3 and very scary, so I'd hate to think what a category 4 would be like.

I'm so sorry to everyone I wasn't able to respond to, but we've only just got our power back after 3 days, so please be patient and I'll answer everyone as soon as I can.

I've had to throw out all the things from my fridge and freezer that didn't quite make it, what a horrible job that was! I also found it very upsetting having to throw away food when so many people go without it every day.

But, we're all safe and only suffered minor damage and God willing I won't have to go through another one ever again.

Special Order!

I've had a special request from Christie from Widdlewuns (maker of beautiful nappies and babies clothes) and also my talented Daughter:) Christie was very specific in what she wanted, a nice hard bar of soap that smelt of vanilla and mandarin.

I wanted to come up with something that looked really nice for her, something bright and cheerful. I'm really happy with the final result and it smells amazing.

First Sunday Donation

Well it's the first Sunday of the month again; I can't believe how quickly it has gone.

This month Rebecca has nominated to help orphans in Thailand. The charity is called Hands Across the Water and is run by Peter Baines a NSW policeman who worked in forensics and Gil Williams a UK policewoman.

Every cent donated will go directly to improving the lives of children at orphanages in Thailand. Not one cent is spent on administration (how great is that?) any costs incurred in running the charity are personally absorbed by Peter and other board members. There really are some wonderful people around and I'm sure they would appreciate all the help they can get.

So come on everyone, head on over to Hands Across The Water to donate your $10.00 now.

Cupboard Bakery

Last week we had cake, this week I thought I'd try some tart. Turned out OK, what do you think?

My walk in robe is looking more like a bakery than a cupboard, it's now got cake and tart and I also have some cupcakes in there as well:)

For anyone new reading this, it's OK; I don't really hide bakery goodies in my cupboard, just my newest soap additions.

Oh, and a few chocolates, can't forget the chocolates, yep, have some of those in there too, but these really are edible ones. Just a few left of my Valentines pressie and very sadly they are just about gone but probably just as well.

I've been known to hide chocolates in my cupboard on the rare occasion:) especially Easter Eggs. Now they have to go in the cupboard, because if I leave them in the fridge they are too much temptation for not only me but everyone else, to keep eating until it's all gone and I really do like to TRY and make them last as long as is possible.

At least I can't put weight on with the soap cakes and tarts:)