Quick Review - Treasure Gardens

My old soap is finally finished, so I have to again give props to Lana at Unicorns Pride for her awesome Lemon lime soap which lasted me two and a half months of daily shower usage.

So, I broke into my bin of samples from my wonderful samplers, and reached in willy nilly (yes, I still use that term, and yes, that is how I choose my soap).  What I came out with was a lovely wrapped soap that came in my Sampler Village box recently: a FULL SIZED sample of Heavenly Honeysuckle soap from Treasure Gardens.  FULL SIZED!!

This soap gives of such a robust scent, it has scented my whole bathroom like honeysuckle, which I love.  The soap lathers wonderfully in the shower and leaves my skin feeling soft and clean.  the shape of this soap is perfect to fit in my hand, so I find myself not even using my scrubby much.

Another thing I love about this soap is that, though it smells wonderful and strong, it does not leave a strong scent clinging to my skin.  As a teacher, I need to be careful about the scents I wear (if any), and soap is usually the only thing I use as a scent before leaving the house.  This soap leaves jus tthe right amount of scent, as there's just enough that the hubby can smell it when he hugs me, but it does not come off of me in waves.  Perfect. In the past I have felt like I needed to stick with a very clean scent to avoid this, but again, my eyes have been opened to the soapy possibilities.

Treasure Gardens has a great little shop with gorgeous looking soaps and a few adorable shaped soaps that may end up in a Christmas stocking here. I encourage you to check them out.


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On a side note, I think I will do my reviews like this more often.  I felt like I was avoiding full sized samples because they take so long to get through, and I wanted to keep up my reviews, but it was taking a lot of the fun out of the reviewing.  Now, I will just write a review as I open up and use something.  Sound good?  Good.

Maylee's Garden...the Shop that Started it All...

I was talking to someone the other day about handmade bath and body products, and she asked me how I got into using them.  She was telling em that she has always felt skeptical of handmade body care products and whether or not they are actually as effective as store bought products.  This woman had noticed that I don't seem to be a very "crunchy" person, so to find out that I use almost exclusively handmade bath and body products surprised her.

It got me thinking. How DID it all start?

The answer is actually pretty simple.

As you may well know, I have been sewing for myself and my kids for a long time.  For a long time I was a member of a "hippie sewing" group.  I know, I know. ME a Hippie??  Well, yes.  I have gotten away from much fo the patchwork loveliness in my everyday wear, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have a number of years where that was pretty much all that I wore.  I also tend to be relatively politically radical, and have always been a proponent of conservation and recycling.

On that board, I met some wonderful women who made their own bath and body products.  But I never tried them. For YEARS.

Then I started my Jewelry Business (Now Known As AngelTree Gems).  One of these wonderful ladies on the board saw and loved a few of my jewelry pieces, but she was not in a position to purchase them, so we worked out a barter.  She would send me a few bars of soap, adn I would send her some jewelry.  My thinking was, "I'll just have them around if I needed some hand soap).

Well, the soap arrived, and one bar smelled SOOOOOO good, I just had to try it.  Soon I noticed how soft, yet not greasy my hands felt after using the soap, so I brought it into the shower with me to use all over.  My skin came out of that shower softer and better feeling than it had ever felt even using fancy bath gels and creamy clenasers.

The rest, as they say, is history.  I may never go back to commercial soaps (well, after I finish my BB&B stash in my closet).

Who was that wonderful woman?  The one who got me hooked on handmade soap?  Libby of Maylee's Garden.  She hasn't popped up in my reviews, because her soaps are my go-to soaps.  I have bars stashed all around the house.  And her bars last FOREVER!  I just get sick of using the same scent for a month, so I switch them out a lot.

Another great thing about Libby, is all of her products are Vegan.  I, personally, am not a vegan, but I know many people are.  She caters to this group without them having to sacrifice quality, scent, or beauty.   

Libby also makes laundry soap (I am still scared to use this in my high efficiency washer), perfume oil, dreadlock shampoo, body butter, and some of the most awesome smelling bath salts EVER.

Check her out, You will not regret it. I highly recommend her soaps, they are rich smelling and gorgeous.  Maybe we can even convince her to make one of her fancy swirled circle soaps that are so gorgeous.

The Week's Products in Review - 12/13-20

This past week was a weird one.  I have been sick as a dog, so I have not been burning any candles or incense as I try to get my sinuses back into working order.  Also, the hubby has been making me take ALL of my new items and put them under the tree, so I haven't had a chance to use any of the awesome looking things that have been arriving.  He has taken to beating me to the mail and wrapping the boxes as they arrive fromt he post office, so I can't even see what is inside. 

So, the only new bath stuff I have used this week was another bar of really cool soap.  Now, I admit, I was somewhat biased against this soap going in.  It was cut with that corrugation edge which, for some reason, in my mind has always turned me off of the soap. It also came unwrapped in any plastic or wax paper, so the soap was just exposed in my LBB, which is somethign I typically don't like.  Having mentioned my neuroses and the negative of this soap, I have to say, I LOVE this soap!  The soap in question is by Inseine Creations and is the Brown Sugar and Fig scent.  It is such a nice scent and the soap is such a smoothing and lovely soap.  It leaves my skin so soft and comfortable feeling, and though there is a hint of scent left, it is not overpowering or strong, which is a good thing, since I am a perfume lover, and do not necessarily want to wear my soap's scent all day.

So that's it for my light week.  I will not be posting my reviews next week, so plan on a HUGE review for the new year!

Have a great end of the year, all!