Overheating & Magnolia Pie

What a day yesterday turned out to be! First, it was a struggle at the post office with people (it's always people, right?) sighing and scoffing as I unloaded 17 packages at the self-serve kiosk and proceeded to do the postal thing (not the one with the gun, obviously). Then bad news about bad characters came across my desk at home, so a regrouping and some cheerleading commenced until the bad news didn't feel quite so bad anymore. Then a normal, average trip to the grocery store turned into a five-hour-long ordeal with the darned car overheating and having to be babied from one parking lot to another parking lot until I got it home. In 106 degree heat. With no AC. And then when I finally got it home, I realized that the main thing I went to the store to get wasn't . . . got. 

But! I also made a fabulous batch of soap! It started out with kind of an apple pie theme, something sweet and spicy and really feeling of fall, and it ended up slightly different, but still sweet and spicy and fall-like. It's got loads of fruity florals in it, like davana and magnolia, plus more of that vanilla accord, oh, and a gorgeous wild chamomile concrete, and Roman chamomile eo, and more stuff. It really smells lovely. It reminds me of my old storefront, Delicia. We had these exquisite magnolia bath bombs that sold out every time we put up a batch, and they were the first thing you'd smell when you walked into the shop before all of the other smells would overwhelm you. 

Making this soap spurred another idea for soap, something like honey lemon drops, sweet and musky-warm with tart lemony notes. Now that I'm making smaller bars, I find myself making more variety of soaps. Soaps inspire solid perfumes, solid perfumes inspire oil roll-on perfumes, and on and on. Fortunately, my pandemic buying and hoarding of materials are paying off -- I rarely have to buy anything new, I just walk into the recently organized shop and get to work.