Butterflies and Cherry Sundae Soap

Things have been hectic here the past couple of weeks! Our oldest son graduated this year, so it was a busy time. Things have settled back down a bit for now...

My daughter asked if we could go to a local butterfly garden this weekend, so we spent a day there. I used the occasion to practice using my macro lens and the butterflies made beautiful models! I hope you will indulge me as I share a few pictures :)

This butterfly noticed my daughter's outstretched hand, and flew right over and landed next to her hand. Then, it opened its wings to touch my daughter's fingertips. I think it was trying to show us how well it matched my daughter's nail polish! It stayed in this position for the longest time.

Then, I looked down on my jacket and spotted this little fella, who had decided to hitch a ride. He stayed on and toured the whole exhibit with me:

 Meanwhile, this pretty one landed on my niece's hair. Wouldn't you love to have this as a hair accessory?

They also had beautiful flowers, and I was especially taken with these ones...does anyone know what they are called? I forgot to look at the name.

The butterflies liked the plants and flowers too:

And we saw this little guy, who was desperately trying to escape his enclosure:

 

It was so hard to resist his pleading for help!

And now for the soap! This is one of the very few fragrances that I have used that has ever reversed trace. Have you ever had that happen? It was thickening up so fast before I added the fragrance, so I was trying to quickly move to do my in-the-pot swirl. It wasn't until after that I realized how thin the soap was; luckily, even though the soap was very thin when I did the ITP swirl, it held some definition:  

My planned soap was actually slightly different than this - I had to adapt to using the thinner soap, but I think it turned out better than I had planned. This is an important lesson that soaping has taught me, you have to be flexible and adapt...embrace the detours in your planned visions!  

 

And, I bought these gorgeous meringue cookies today....great inspiration for some soap or bath treats, don't you think?!

Hope you all have a fantastic week!