What is Your Favorite Christmas Dish? (PARTY!)

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See! Alberta and more coming! Snow here till May..:tongue
 
casportpony said:
We haven't seen snow here at see level since February of 1976. :(
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I'm going to guess by your screen name that you are in California. I grew up there and thought it only snowed in the mountains. The weather man would always talk about snow at 2000 ft, etc. Then I went to Illinois and was astonished when I saw snow falling on that flat terrain. :lau I also couldn't figure out where the river came from. Where's the mountain? :lau I guess I just never thought about it before.
 
ValerieJ said:
Beautiful! I love ice storms.
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Me too... as long as I'm not going anywhere lol

ValerieJ said:
I had one that lasted a good 25 years, and even then I brought it to the Good Will. They used to make them quite sturdy. But it was heavy and each branch had to be put in place every year. I just wanted something easier.
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My parent's fake tree was like that. They had that thing my entire childhood then passed it to me when I moved out but it was at the end of it's life by then. I think we used it 2 years before we replaced it. It was nice and full and always beautiful though.
 
IamRainey said:
[Oops! Quote didn't quote. I'm referring to Chocolate Mouse's gem-like soap.]

I just spent a small fortune for some of these from a NYC department store. I gave someone a crystal soap dish and wanted one of these for it.

Would you share your recipe/method?

The one I bought had a gold vein running through it. Do you know what will create that?
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Luckily I read old posts so even though this didn't quote either I saw it. ;)

Yes, these are VERY easy to make! To make these I used;
Ingredients;
4lbs crystal clear glycerin soap base
Skin-safe fragrance oil
Mica powder (various colors, tiny amounts, less than .1oz for every color of the whole batch) (other coloring especially oil based could be used but mica's an all natural mineral and makes it shimmer really nicely)

Equipment;
Microwave safe bowl
Rubber spatula
Fork
Tinfoil or 5" deep container that is 7.5" long and 4.5" deep, plus smaller containers for smaller batches
Microwave or double boiler
Various knives (One big and one small, maybe also a butter knife)

(Note, Bulk Apothecary carries these materials fairly cheap and is a small business that you can go through if you don't want to order through amazon.)

Makes 12 large, 9 small and one more.

Step one, make your mold out of tinfoil by measuring a tinfoil rectangle or just get a container about the right size. Consider cutting all your soap base into small chunks in advance to make life easier and pours faster.

Step two, take about 1/3rd of the soap, make it into chunks and put it in the glass bowl, then heat it like you're melting chocolate (20 seconds at a time in the microwave), gently stirring and breaking up the chunks.

Step three, add some fragrance and pour about half into the base of the mold.

Step four; Work quickly or re-heat the soap gently to keep it liquid. Once melted add mica powder stirring to dissolve. Start with a pale color like silver. Scrape the skim that forms on the top of the molded soap with a fork to make it uneven and let some liquid soap show up, then pour the rest of the "clear" in scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula to get it all out. (This will make it stick to the next layer a little better).

Step five; Repeat step three adding about 1/3rd of the remaining soap in chunks each time and varying the colors to either get darker or start dark and get more pale. You can also take a tiny chunk of the clear and melt it separate and add gold to it to make that gold vein in a thin layer. Try to work quickly so you have a skim on the previously poured layer but still mostly liquid. Feel free to tilt your mold this way or that as layers dry to change the angles or depth of the layers (mine were just flat).

Step six; Once all your layers are poured, let it cool. Pop it out of the mold and trim the edges flat(ish) with a big cooking knife. Then cut into 12 equal tall rectangles. Take a smaller knife and simply slice off clean angles on each of the corners and around the top however you feel like.

Your big soaps are now done, but on the small trimmed pieces the layers can be broken apart without a lot of effort. So break them into their various color layers taking care to keep the clear and silver colorless. Then you can remelt them all together by their respective colors and get 9 more small ones (or a couple more big ones). You can either use the same bowl again for melting by starting with dark colors first (so the clear isn't contaminated by the dark colors you poured last) or you can wash the bowl. Trim those down and you'll have enough soap left over for maybe one more soap.

Some notes; Every time you remelt it the soap base quality gets a little worse and the fragrance aerosols a little. There's nothing you can do about this so take care to not let the soap cool too much while mixing the mica and only add the oil right before pouring. Clear melt soap base can only hold a few percent fragrance oils and maybe 1% other additives like mica colors. Don't try to add any lotions or substantial amounts of oils or the soaps will get very sticky. Cleanup is very easy cause it's just soap it washes out of everything with a little hot water.
 
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