Growing an addiction

So I am still addicted to soaping and here are some of my new loves. You can find these at http://etsy.com/shop/nothinbutgoodstuff

Lilac

OK I have to admit I have a soaping addiction. I dont want to be cured I love it too much. From the moment I picked up the piping bag and applied decor to my soap I just cant stop. It is soooo pretty and it smells soooo good, and did I say it is so pretty? It is it's pretty this new one is Lilac and I have 5 new scents coming. One is Opium, remember Opium I sure hope it smells true. Well I will let you know. Contact me if you would like to order some stocking stuffers.
Namaste
Merilee

Hot Buttered Rum YUM YUM!

As promised here is the Hot Buttered Rum Yum Yum soap ready to go in a Christmas stocking. I have soap cake and I have 3 cupcakes. These turned out beautiful with cinnamon sticks and golden honey drizzle. Makes you want to take a bite!

Christmas Soap 2014

Well I must say it has been a while. I  have been busy....but not so busy as to ignore my blog.
I do want to show off my Christmas soap that I am making this year. Fully loaded with scent and other Good Stuff for your skin. You must be careful though, You will smell so good that someone may try to eat you! This soap is available to purchase as gifts for this wonderful season. The first one is 
Spiced Cranberry with the scent of Tart Cranberries, Warm Cinnamon, Clove, & Mandarin Orange. All of these scents compliment each other and blend to make a scent that male or female will love. Made with Soy, Coconut, vitamin E with added oatmeal and Paprika to be so gentle to your skin!

I know they look eatable but YUCK don't eat them! Its SOAP
The next one I made is Holiday Berries.
Scents of Raspberry, Orange Zest and Warm Musk.
I usually don't like most of the musk scents for very long but there is no overwhelming scent in this soap and I could smell it all day. As a matter of fact I bought a candle from Walmart. I fell in love with the scent and once I got it home and lit it I smelled it and then sniffed the soap.....sniff candle......sniff soap....Yup I do believe it is the same scent and I plan to buy more of this candle it smells THAT good.
Not only smells good it is pretty to look at with all the crazy colors and veins of gold mica!
If you would like to purchase any of the soaps you see here, please send me an email at woodlanddesigns@hotmail.com give me your phone # and what you are interested in and I will contact you. I plan to open an Etsy store in the near future so that will make buying easier but for now I have to go old school!
This is not all however. I have 2 more soaps waiting to be cut
Hot Buttered Rum and White Christmas. Yep it is all GOOD STUFF!
Namaste
Merilee

Good junk!

I do like to make things out of junk, I put a lot of time into my projects but its time I enjoy. Here are a few of my art projects. I am an outside in kind of girl. I could live outside if it wern't for the bugs. Nothing I hate more than to get eaten while trying to enjoy being outside! I like to work with materials I can find in nature. It's nothing for me to be pulling dead bark off of a tree or collecting bags of pretty green moss, twisted branches, baby pinecones......rocks, you name it. So I started doing birdhouses about 20 years ago. I do a lot of stuff in small rocks and I can say that, that takes up a large amount of time.

This lamp had a plain white lampshade. Needless to say that had to go....and so it did!

 Now this took a whole lot of time and is very heavy, I find these frames at a furniture store dumpster. They are just used to ship the furniture so really they are just short of being a plain old pallet. 20x30 17 lbs . I told you it is heavy. Subject made of aquarium rock!

 I knew when I saw this barrel, what it wanted to be, It went real quck and I love, love, love the way it turned out. I have another one that is larger that I need to start on but it hasn't quite spoken to me yet!

 Glitter comes in some really awesome colors now days. I saw a show on Martha where she did some art with glitter, The squares I got at home depot in the wood junk isle for like pennies and glue and glitter the subject. My husband has to take over where I leave off sometimes and it was  his idea to glue them to the 1xs which makes them 3D. 

                                  
 Ahhh yea, collecting fall leaves, need I say more? I actually glued these down not long after picking them. I flattened them a day maybe. After glueing I did a clear spraycoat over them. The color is still good and this is their 1 year birthday

 Dumpster find! Brand new mirror with a crack in the top right hand corner,,,,,behind the tree branch! The frame wasnt all that great, but it is now!

 More of furniture pallets. This is an awesome idea if you have lots of blank wall space that you want to fill. You can use any material to jive with any decor and so much more can be done with this I haent even touched on. A window box at the bottom with maybe some silk grasses and a few silk flowers coming out of the window box and the curtains could be drawn up to the sides.
Well more later. I will leave you on this note......I do love junk!

Carve it out and stuff it Zucchini and Squash

Sometimes all you have to do is use what you have and see where it takes you.

This is what I had.

Having no idea what it is going to taste like I just keep on going.

I know I should, but I never do taste tests while I’m cooking. Fortunately most of the time, I surprise the hell out of myself. Although there have been some major failures on occasion

1 giant Zucchini

 3-4 good size yellow squash

1 hamburger coked and crumbled

½ minced onion. Sweet or Vidalia if available

1-snack size box raisins plumped in water

1 knob of ginger shredded

Small hand full of pineapple cut into small pieces

2 clove garlic minced

Drizzle of pancake syrup

¼ ½ tsp salt

Garlic spice

Topping

Cream cheese

Shredded cheese

Crumbled vegetable Ritz cracker crushed

Cook your hamburger and crumble it up, please drain all the fat off.

While you cooking your hamburger get all the rest of the ingredients together.

You are going to want the outer shells of your squash and zucchini so I used a melon baller to carve out the sq and zuc.

You may even what to skin a couple extra squash and cube them up if you have them but keep in mind that your vegetable shell is the star of the show! So you will need the shell intact.

Be sure to cut your shell so that it will sit with little fuss!

Place your shells on a pan lightly sprayed with olive oil. You don’t want to slip and slide!

Once you have everything on the top of the list throw it in a big fry pan, drizzle with a little olive oil and cook it down on med heat so that all the flavors melt into one another.

Once softened up take off heat and use slotted spoon, to spoon ingredients into the shells.

You may need to use toothpicks to straighten them up and keep them from falling over.

Top each one with a few small pats of cream cheese

Top that with shredded cheese

Sprinkle crushed Ritz crackers to top it off and pop in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Let it cool and enjoy.

Don’t just eat out of the shell, the shell it one of the best parts for you so eat the whole thing!

Same sex marriage

North Carolina’s Ban on Gay Marriage Appears Likely to Pass

By NATE SILVER

On Tuesday, North Carolina will vote on a state constitutional amendment that declares, “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized,” thereby banning recognition of same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships of any kind.

Both recent polls of the state and an analysis of past ballot initiatives in other states suggest that the measure,  Amendment 1, is likely to pass, although there is ambiguity over the outcome because of voter confusion about what the amendment seeks to achieve.

North Carolina already has a statutory ban on same-sex marriage, but it is one the few Southern states that have not yet changed their constitutions to ban it. Although all three are sometimes considered Southern states, there is also no constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in West Virginia and Delaware, and same-sex marriage is legal in Maryland. However, the other 10 states in the former Confederacy all have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and sometimes also civil unions.

Ok I had to add this article to this blog because most of us do not understand complex wording that the government places before us. Personally I think they do it on purpose to confuse us. So amendment one does NOT support same sex marriage or civil unions. Wow what a fight. It almost seems like blacks having to fight for their rights to be treated like humans, or Jews fighting for their right to be Jewish when in fact they or any other color or race should  never be treated as anything less than human. The government should have no right what so ever in saying whom can and can’t marry unless of course it has to do with minors. Really, how can anyone tell someone who to love, or that it is illegal to love someone?

So many people in general and so called Christians have prejudice against gays, lesbians, religions other than their own, interracial marriage, illegal immigrants and on and on and on. Don’t you know that they are THE chosen ones, the know alls, the ones god sent here to tell us how to live?……….Phooey! The GOD or higher power that I believe in wants so much for us to just learn how to love each other and set aside our differences.

When it comes to same sex marriage most people honestly cant think past their imagination of 2 men going at it and are repelled by that. They don’t see THE relationship, the love that 2 people of the same sex have for each other. The fact is that there are too damn many people in this world that never find love and die without ever knowing it!

God condemns gay people; it says it in the bible. Know what people? God did not write our bible or anyone else’s bible for that matter, humans did! AND the books of the bible were not written by the people that the stories are about or at the time that these prophets lived. They were written by writers 100 or more years after the stories ever happened.

They say “Well they were written by the hand of God and God does not make mistakes” The books in the bible were chosen by the church and the only writings placed in the bible were THE ones that the church wanted so they could tell us how to live our lives by THEIR standards. There were so many books that were left out of the bible like the book from Mary Magdalene for one that never made it into the bible for fear that people would know that Jesus held women in as high esteem as he did men………..go figure Jesus thought that women were held equal to men, who would have thunk it?

They say “Well the church does not make mistakes” Yea right and none of the HOLY men in the church like to molest little boys either, knowing that THAT is a greater sin!

The thing is people, that like it or not, some people are just born with their likes and dislikes that don’t always mesh with mainstream society. Maybe its cause a gene went haywire maybe It’s in their DNA or many other reasons. I guess what I’m getting at is if you want to fight something, fight domestic abuse, child abuse, rapist, robbers, killers, pharmaceuticals companies that push pills on the whole human race, drunk driver, taxes, plastic, pollution, chemtrails , taxes, taxes, OH did I already say taxes? Well maybe you get the picture. I choose to pick and choose my fights and in my opinion when I see 2 people that love each other, same sex, different colors, different religions, short, fat, tall, skinny! Whatever! When I see love between two people that is not something that I want to fight against but I want to fight for because as I see it everyone is so different and unique in their own ways and everyone needs to love and be loved and there are more important things in this world to fight against. I will never fight against love.

And one more note quote……Common place minds usually condemn what is beyond their each of understanding! Comprenda?

 Love to all

Namaste


Man made religion, God made spirituality .........Do the right thing.....Be the change you want to see!


This is a next day update. I dont claim to know a whole lot about our bill of rights, I acutally just sat down a minute ago and read them again after being a grown up. Basically  they say that you have these rights, we give them to you, they are yours, UNLESS your state wants to take them away. Yes! Amendment 10 says to me that what ever few rights we have written on little sheets of paper called your bill of rights can be removed from you by the state. Oh wait! It does mention the people in there at the very end seeming kind of like an after thought and mentally by way of wording giving that power to the state before the people. Which means to me that we are the last that has a say when in fact the people make the state, just as the people make a church, or a family or a couple!
It says that the state has the right to pick our lives apart if the bigger government hasn't done it already!

• First Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

• Tenth Amendment – Powers of States and people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

To be quite honest I cant see anything in amendment one that says anything about unions between 2 adult people. To me it is in reference to assembly's of more than 2 people and to religion and speech and press, which has nothing to do with love and compassion which in fact is what unions between 2 people are. It is a coming together of 2 lights, 2 souls, 2 spirits and should have nothing what so ever to do with the government.

When government/state makes the union between to people legal or illegal they are seriously going to far into our lives. These unions will be there whatever the laws, just because they are what they are, unions of love and caring. That my friends is something that no man can take away or should dare to try. We the people have too few rights as it is, why the hell do we want to give more away?

Giving your rights away is giving your power away and is in effect saying that you are not capable of making a sound decision so someone needs to make it for you.

This amendment in NC shows prejudice and intolerance and hatred. It says that one person is better than another, it says that the government feels so big, so much more adult than you that they need to act as your parent!

Im leaving it here cause the more I think of it the more it ticks me off that  people in our government dont have better things to do with their time than to pick peoples lives apart! There are just too many more important things on this earth that need to be fixed other than unions between 2 people!