I stumbled, this is where I landed.

Hello and welcome to Cold Springs Ranch located in beautiful East Texas. Yep, that’s my feet you are seeing. I am just sitting back, relaxing and enjoying retirement. Well, maybe not completely enjoying retirement. I am a mom of four boys that are grown and on their own. I am also a grandmother to five beautiful grandchildren, with the sixth one on the way. Once I left the corporate world, I realized I didn’t really have anything to do. Sure, there’s housework, cooking, helping friends and family, but I still found myself with way too much time on my hands. Quite frankly, I got sick of my iPad, so I started hobbies. I started woodworking. I started gardening. I started crocheting. I started all the things I didn’t have time for while I was working. In my quest for finding another hobby, and trying to find something to help me mitigate overwhelming grief, I stumbled across soap making. I watched so many videos and all I could do was to get on Amazon and start buying what I needed to make soap. Soap, soap, soap, soap, soap. My husband thinks that the only word in my vocabulary now is soap. I am a perfectionist by nature, and this is the first hobby I have ever tried that it’s OK if it’s not perfect (the planned design that is, the science part must be perfect), because it’s soap. I have absolutely fallen in love with making and using handcrafted soap. My skin has never been softer. I used to get out of the shower and feel like Rango, from the movie Rango, when he hit the sun in the desert and shriveled up, but once I started using my handcrafted soaps and body butters, my skin feels like velvet. Now when I get out of the shower, I’m not already prickly. I can even go without applying lotions; however I love lotions and body butters. I love to hydrate my skin. I truly did not understand the benefits of all natural and handcrafted soaps and body products until I started making them and using them myself. Now I just want to run around and tell everybody you should use these better products. It truly is a simple pleasure in life that that’s good for you.

We all live in this world. We all have the same situations all over the world to deal with every day. Joy, sadness, love, hate, happiness, anger, confidence, insecurities, life, death, people lifting you up, people smashing you down, so why not just give yourself a good 20 or 30 minutes in the shower, enjoying your shower or bath. Just take the time to turn off your brain and think only about the water hitting your skin, the beautiful lather of your soap, the fantastic fragrance wafting up through the air. Everybody needs self-care, it is truly important to the total well being of a person’s spirit.