There has been no research, no polling, nor any cold calls to answer this question. It is simply an observation of how I “surf.” But the take away could be huge!

How did you get here? Was it through tygorden.com’s home page? Do you subscribe? Was it in link from Twitter or Facebook (will I even share this article)? And lastly, is it even still 2012 (nothing dies on the web)?

I realize that I’ve just dumped questions with no explicit value. And ultimately I’m left to ask myself for the website that I manage: If people don’t enter through the home page, what does this mean for the rest of the site?

You can’t judge a book by it’s cover if you’ve never seen it.

The plan was to replace the lard from last year’s recipe with palm oil. This would let me call it vegan soap. But truly, it doesn’t matter to me if it’s vegan, and palm oil has bee hard to find locally. So, back to my previous recipe… this time with colors and scents!

I’ve been researching and thinking about what to color the new batch of soap with. Beet juice might end up staining as you wash! So, I was thinking minerals, aka dirt. But ultimately, day to day, our trees provide another source: lichen. So, I plan to grind it up into a powder, and perhaps it will make a nice light green soap. This variety is called fruticose lichen.

Also, at the request of my lovely wife, I’m going to be using some wintergreen essential oils. She tells me that it makes her hungry. Basically, the little bottle smells great.

I have no idea of the proportions for colorant and scent. So, I’m guessing from things I’ve read. For lichen, I’m planning to use 1 Tbsp. per pound (olive oil being 800-920 kg/cu.m) and my 1 gallon recipe is approx. 7 1/8 lbs. We’ll say 7 lbs. As for the oil scent, um… I’ve read everything from 15-20 ml per lb. of soap, or 6-9% maximun usage. Either way, we’re talking 3-7 oz of scent! I’ll use the whole 5 ml bottle that I bought tonight which is about 5/32 of an oz.

Here are my ratios: 65% olive oil, 17.5% coconut oil, and 17.5% lard.

Resources:

• Cold Process Soap making
• Cold Process Soap making – General Questions

This weekend, my wife bought 8 lemons to make lemonade. Wonderful! But what about the peels? There is great flavor packed into those peels. So I juiced the lemons, then took a knife and peeled off the zest–which I then froze for later use. And finally, the rest of the lemon went to the compost pile. I love the idea of using all of something.

What about the chicken bones? We made an awesome chicken stew/soup this weekend too. We used chicken thighs. After the soup is cooked, we take the thighs out, pull the meat off and put it back in the pot. The dogs–if they’re good–get the “not meat” bits and I take the bones to a wooden box with a window on top that sits on my deck. A few days in the sun, and I have dried bones!

Ok, it’s not over yet. Why dried bones? When we planted our asparagus, the advice was to use bone meal for fertilizer in the holes for planting. So we bought some. Ugh. There are bones that pass through my house and in the past, went straight to the trash. But now, I can take my dried bones, smash them with something heavy, then sprinkle the wonderful fertilizer on the garden.

Why do I mention all of this? Isn’t it “normal?” Maybe not, but I’m just clearing my mind.

Last night I became curious enough to check out Inkscape and Gimp (the open source–free–alternatives to Photoshop and Illustrator). I’ve used Gimp in the past, and hated now my toolbox of hotkeys from Photoshop aren’t the same. I felt crippled. But just look at the Ferrari! It’s possible to become great.

At my first workplace out of college, I worked on a PC using the Adobe Creative Suite, and in their license agreement, the primary user can install a second copy on their laptop or home machine, so I did. At my current workplace, I use a Mac, some my home PC has resigned itself to being a internet browsing machine.

Enter Inkscape and Gimp. If I play around enough and learn their ins and outs, then perhaps I can get back into it at home too. I’m hopeful, yet realistic, and perhaps lazy enough to ditch the effort and cuddle up closely with Adobe for life.

To work then…I am sitting in my chair at work, North Rock Hill Church–Media Director (which means all things computers and even network stuff even if it’s not in my job description), and honestly, as I’m typing, I am considering what cool new posts I’ll come up with in the future.

I love everything from DIY, design, HTML5, and permaculture. I’m sure that I’ll ramble on about my daughter (8.5 months, teething). Is that 150 words yet? Ah, I see the counter… 125 words.

Fine, today I get the honor to work on the recurring publications for the church, including the weekly Info Sheet (read: Sunday Handout) and eNews (read: email newsletter). In my spare time, I’ll keep working on the new series graphics and even the series after that (the sermon planning went really well yesterday putting us a whole series ahead).

Well folks, I need to get to work. It’s about the time that the rest of the office starts showing up and I have some meetings to execute.

As we've been home with Aideen, we have already begun to notice signs of when she needs to use the restroom, and so today, Ashley put her on the training potty, and voila.

A friend in China told me about traditional methods of potty training.  I realized that many people for many generations did not or currently do not have access to diapers.  They use infant potty training, also known as elimination communication (EC).  I thought that it would be worth trying. The idea is to learn your baby’s potty patterns and signals and then to begin to introduce the potty.  Some people don’t use diapers at all, others use EC occasionally.  Well, Aideen has some potty patterns and I have been making an “S” noise (like the S in the word simple) when she “goes” to the bathroom in her diaper.  So for fun today I tried putting her over the potty about the time she would normally go and making the “S” noise.  To my surprise she urinated right in the potty.  I was so excited!  I will keep trying this.  The ultimate goal is that by the time a baby can reach the potty on their own that they will be used to going outside of a diaper.

The magic toy that keeps Aideen calm and quiet. Use sparingly.

Today is Sunday, church, and we felt rested enough to consider going, so off we went on one of the first (not the very first) excursions out with Aideen in tow. The diaper bag was packed, and she was just getting fed before we had to leave, hoping that would put her into her milk coma for an easy church service.

Well, after the burping was done and as Ashley was getting ready, she started to cry. I’m still not sure why she does that after a full belly. But, I tried rocking, singing, walking laps around the house, and she still was fussy. So, we pulled out the pacifier. It’s magic.

Ok, so it’s not a habit I’d like for her, but for Sunday when she needs to be quiet, it works. Eventually–I’m not sure how soon–we’ll put her in SafariLand with children’s ministry, but until then, the pacifier is our magic trick.

Just home from the birth center, maybe 3 hours after she was born, she meets her new uncle John for the first time.

Yesterday, at 4:05 am, my daughter was born! She weighed 7lbs. 10oz. at 19in. long. She is beautiful! I have since enjoyed one full day and part of another with her. She is now asleep with my wife (I have the photo to prove it).

We started the whole thing on Monday night, around 9:30 or 10:00 pm. Let’s see… 1… 2… yeah, 31 hours (give or take). While we were there, I did some Facebook posting since it was easy and fast, but not everyone can see things there, especially the new grandparents. I’ve been looking for new things to do with my website, and why not flood it with new parent type pictures?

I’ll start with one, since I haven’t taken the rest off of the camera yet, but I promise that I’ll load more.