Soap, jewelry and 365 Organic black bean vegan soup

I hope you don't mind, but I'm varying from my usual food posts for just a moment. (Well, that's not entirely true... there's a bit of food at the end of the post.) I wanted to show off some of my recent craftiness. :)

My fiance generously sent me to a soapmaking class back in February as a birthday gift. It was a blast! I love making my own soap because I can control (and know) exactly what is in each bar. I've even been making my own powdered laundry soap! :) What you see above is a gift of soap that I plan to give to one of my friends this evening. From left is chocolate mint, oatmeal and lemon poppyseed cold-process soap. The chocolate soap has real cocoa in it and smells devine. The oatmeal soap contains ground oatmeal. The lemon poppyseed soap is completely natural, made with pure essential oils. The other two soaps are scented with synthetic fragrance oils. Several months ago, my fiance had a severe allergic reaction to the synthetic scented soap. It was disheartening to watch; I couldn't believe that something *I* did, did that to him. I've vowed to only make natural soap after this stock runs out. For the record, I personally used the synthetic scented soaps with no problems. And, I realize someone could still be allergic to a "natural" ingredient, too. I prefer the completely natural soaps, though, so that's what I plan to make from now on. Each batch of soap makes 20 bars... so my family and friends will be getting these lovely bars as holiday gifts, too! :)

I've also been obsessed with making jewelry lately. :) The set you see above is a gift for my friend tonight, too. I think what I love about both jewelrymaking and soapmaking is that the possibilities are pretty endless... the only limit if your own imagination! I drool over the aisles of beads in my local craft stores, and the abundant selection of beads available online. It can be mind-boggling sometimes. I really have to make an effort to be focused on just one project and not oogle over every pretty bead I see. :) One of the memorable moments from my recent trip (which I have yet to blog about... I know, it's coming!) is teaching my mom some jewelrymaking techniques. She had some wonderful ideas, and her style is a bit different than mine, so it was interesting to see the beautiful jewelry sets she put together after learning the basics. :) It was great mother-daughter time.

This last one I throwing in just so I don't feel too guilty about sharing my crafts on my food blog. ;-p For lunch today, I brought along Whole Foods Market's 365 Organic Black Bean Soup, which is vegan. I don't know if it's my favorite black bean soup, but it was a yummy and quick meal. At 150 calories and 1 gram of fat per serving (two servings per can), it was a healthy lunch as well.

I should mention that there may not be a Tempeh Tuesday this week. I know, I know... terrible of me to try to start something new on my blog and then not follow through with it on the second week, but I'm finding myself eating out more often this week. For instance, yesterday I wasn't sure if I'd see my fiance for dinner or not, so I didn't cook anything fancy and we just ordered Thai take-out. Tonight, I'll have dinner with my friend and may be able to blog about it depending on where we go... but as you can see, I'm missing my opportunity for tempeh. I might be able to cook it Wednesday and do a tempeh Thursday? Hmm...