Soap Making Part Two and Our Busy Weekend

This weekend I was able to turn the homemade soap out of the mold and cut it into bars. My pastry scraper made short work of cutting the soap. Each of the homeschooling moms who participated with take home eight bars of soap. The color is not good on this picture but the soap is an earthy marbled color and smells of ginger, lime and patchouli. Here it looks drab gray.

The bars cut very easily once I figured out that there was a hard melamine board underneath it.

Aren't they pretty all lined up?

Stewie the wonder dog ran and ran all weekend. He's been jogging three miles every morning with my husband and comes back ready for play. He got some playtime in the kiddie pool too while we swam in the somewhat chilly 72 degree pool.

Morgan and her best friend from next door played in the trees.

The husband had to put more fencing up on the inside of our fencing around our garden. We've had a huge amounts of rabbits this year and the baby bunnies have been destroying my garden. They ate what few peas I had and chewed off all my sunflowers leaving me some just beautiful stalks of nothing. The baby bunnies squeeze right thru the lattice work on the fence and helped themselves to the lettuce and a few ears of corn. Larry spent a couple hours yesterday stapling new chicken wire to the inside of the fencing to keep them out.

Despite all of the rain we've had, the garden is doing surprisingly well. The corn has taken off, the cukes are doing well on the new teepee system I'm trying for the first time this year, and the marigolds are mostly working to keep the bugs away. I do have an organic pest spray that I use for the few stray bugs that come along.

The zucchini suffered quite a bit. The blossoms rotted and fell off and so did the few fruit we had. Now that the sun is out they are producing many more flowers and hopefully fruit.

The cherry tomatoes are loaded with fruit.

I made some homemade pita chips yesterday to have with some hummus.

And Rice Krispy treats that lasted a whole 30 seconds.

Sadly, we lost one of our Dominique chicks this weekend. She got very sick on Friday, rallied on Saturday but quickly deteriorated on Sunday. She spent the last 3 days living in our kitchen in a crate. We named her Hope and buried her outside under the pine tree.

All of our other chicks are thriving. This is the White Rock that still isn't named.

The babies are outside regularly now and are separated from the big girls for a while longer. The heat lamp is now off in their pen and they've grown so much. I do think we might have another Rooster in our new group. If so, he'll have to find a new home.

The big girls enjoyed foraging out of the pen. I need to build some fenced area to keep them in our yard. They keep wandering over to the neighbors and the Rooster crows on their doorstep. They are also hiding in poison ivy and do not make it easy when I need to get them back in the coop. The new babies will be out foraging soon so trying to corral 15 chickens will be no picnic.

The mama sparrow continues to yell at us. She's had two broods of babies already this year.

Moonlight, our guard cat likes to sit on top of the chicken coop and take in the scenery. She doesn't bother with the chickens at all and only gets upset if the chickens take her favorite dirt spot under the tree. Mostly she takes a 23 hour nap each day and then manages to drag her behind to a food bowl. We keep her around because she is the best mouser ever. I just wish she didn't feel a need to share her discoveries with me.

Hope you all had a great Fourth of July!