Painting my world

I don't know how many days it's been since we've seen the sun in Boise ... at least a week ... going on two. But really this is getting dreadfully depressing!

I'm so thankful I talked my husband into a painting project over the holidays. Color is so uplifting!

Today I made a batch of Orange Oatmeal Soap. Customers have requested that I share the story behind each soap I make. I decided that today is a good day to write about Orange Oatmeal. Orange essential oil is amazing! I was seriously down yesterday with a migraine too. The bright spot of my day was receiving an order of essential oils. I quickly opened the package and inhaled deeply the bottles of spearmint and orange essential oils. My daughter looked at me and said, "Mom, are you getting high off your oils." It was an attempt to be sure. According to Susanne Fischer-Rizzi in Complete Aromatherapy Handbook, "The essential oil of the orange is sweet, warm, sensuous, radiant, and alive. The oil is wonderful to use when we take everything too seriously and forget how to laugh - when we feel tense, nervous, and withdrawn." She also states that orange essential oil's "influence on mood is positive and joyful; it harmonizes feelings and awakens creativity." Making orange oatmeal soap today has been the best antitode to this inversion yet. I'm continually amazed at the effect that essential oils have on me, especially orange. By nature I tend toward the melancholy side of mood, but especially with the icky gray clouds looming over me, day after day, I've sunk into this aimless sort of existence. But today, I made soap, now I'm blogging, and I have a new outlook despite the gloom outside.

Back to the soap, I also add lemongrass essential oil to this recipe, it too has refreshing and mentally stimulating properties. An infusion of annatto seeds in the olive oil gives this soap it's radiant sunshiney glow, and to all that I add oatmeal for mild exfoliation. This is a great morning wake me up soap. It's kind of like having oatmeal and oranges for breakfast. Only in the shower, it is mentally stimulating, the orange essential oils really does make me happy.

This brings me to an important point, I started making soap as a creative outlet for me. But I soon discovered that having my family test the soaps was creating shared experiences and as my test subjects they were soon lending their creative ideas to the process. This led me to what has become the underpinning of my goals with making soap and bringing it to the consumer: to create soap that provides multisensory goodness on three levels. I want the aroma to be inspiring and revitalizing, the color to be soothing and of course match the aroma, and I want it to feel rich and luxurious on the skin. Because each of us is unique, I make lots of soaps with the hope that you will find one that will nurture a unique you. But honestly I use them all, and I have anywhere from five to eight different soaps in my shower, primarily because I test everything before it heads out the door, but secondarily because aroma and color have such a powerful effect on my brain, I get to pick the one or two I need for that day.

I am grateful for my husband who partnered with my in coloring my kitchen world so that when I'm in that room my mind is soothed. But since changing the color of my kitchen every day is not so feasible, picking the soap of the day is a way for me to color my world with aroma and color that nurtures my mind and body. So that's my tip for the inversion blues, pick up Orange Oatmeal soap, or if you don't have a bar, pick up an orange and take a good sniff.

If you'd like to get your hands on a bar of Orange Oatmeal Handcrafted Soap go to http://www.lavandedebois.com/