Summer Naturals

Halloween Bath Bombs

2011-10-03T21:30:00.000+01:00

Halloween is nearly here and my 8 year old is so excited so i said that we could make some Halloween Bath Bombs. Now, I have to admit that I am not brilliant at making bath bombs but we always get an end result that works. We thought these looked so nice we will use them as an autumn display.

So this is how we made them:

I decided being organised was the best way to go, although I realised that I'd forgotten the wooden spoon so I have my large mixing bowl, pumpkin mould, fragrance, colour which is food colour paste, witch hazel, 1 cup of citric acid and two cups of bicarbonate of soda. Then I handed it all over to my 8 year old daughter.

In goes the two cups of Bicarbonate of Soda and then one cup of Citric Acid, now we did make two batches of bath bombs, one in black and one in orange so she mixed the whole lot of bicarb and citric acid and then we split it and saved some for another colour, sadly Tiffany decided she liked playing with the mixture more than making it into bombs and who am i to spoil a child's play experience, lets just say I now have very clean sinks and toilets. So bypassing the black bath bombs....Tiff added the orange colouring and the fragrance before stirring really well.

In the next picture Tiff is spraying in the Witch Hazel only you have to imaging that there is orange food colouring already added in this image because yes, the colour and fragrance needs to go in and be mixed well before the Witch Hazel and no I won't blame this error on the eight year old.

So, the Witch Hazel is going into the orange mixture and is now being stirred frantically, the Witch Hazel needs to be spritzed in taking care to avoid the mixture bubbling when in go the hands to squeeze the mixture together, when it holds together it is ready to be placed into the mould.

Pressing the mixture well into the moulds, leave for half an hour to set and then turn out the pumpkin bath bombs and voila!

Citric Acid, Bicarbonate of Soda, Witch Hazel and Essential Oils can all be found at www.summernaturals.co.uk and we used a food colour gel from the food cupboard and the pumpkin moulds can be found in supermarkets at this time of year.

Its all Yummy at Yummy Bums

2011-10-03T17:15:00.001+01:00

With a beautiful new website, a Red Rose resource award and a recent feature in Vogue, yes Vogue! Yummy Bums really are doing their bit for the environment, and diverting 30 tonnes of waste from landfill is no easy task but Yummy Bums have done just that.

As a nappy washing service Yummy Bums will deliver your nappy's and then collect them again, wash them and return them, they also have an amazing range of nappies available. How lovely is this nappy?? It makes me want to have another baby!

You can find the range of lovely yummy nappies here: http://www.yummybums.co.uk/yummyshop/products.html And all the information about the nappy laundry service here: http://www.yummybums.co.uk/laundry.html Just click on the little circles on the website to find out all of the information that you need.

Countdown to Christmas: Gift Making

2011-09-15T12:27:00.000+01:00

As well as buying gifts for Christmas i love to make gifts and although it is only September I have started to prepare. This years Christmas gifts will be home made soap, bath bombs and solid shampoo bars, I will also add bath salts but I don't make those until the very last minute. I have 3 gift sets in mind, one suitable for women, one for men and one for children.

A few weeks ago I made a batch of cold process soap and a batch of solid shampoo bar, I am really pleased with both. Now I know that they look a little rough around the edges, this is because I am not fantastic at judging the amount of soap for the size of mould that I am using and so with the Shampoo bar which is the green one, I had far too much soap for my mould and the soap, well I had far too little soap mixture for the size of mould, all would have been perfect had I have swapped the moulds and so these bars do have a rustic look which i like.

The shampoo bar is Rosemary and Nettle, I used it on my daughter's hair last night and it was wonderful, no need for any conditioner and I could actually get a brush through it afterwards. I fragranced the soap with rosemary and pine essential oil and then added dried nettle leaf. The shampoo is Ph 7 so I am pleased with that.

The soap bar is Lime, Patchouli, Lavender and Ginger and smells just wonderful, the essential oils blended give a really pretty fragrance and I will use this soap bar for the gifts that I make for my female friends and family. I added a little bit of paprika to add a little tinge of colour so all very natural.

I will be making some hot process soap this week, I have never made it before and I intend to make a soap for children, I have beetroot powder to make a lovely pink soap that i think they will like. I can't wait to see the gifts all displayed and labelled ready to give.

The Home Made Wood Burner

2011-09-12T20:55:00.000+01:00

After finally opening up our coal fire last year we realised that there were two problems, the first is the cost of coal and really the inconvenience of having to go and buy it so we decided that burning wood was the only option, this brought about the second problem; wood can spit and sitting with a squirty bottle watching for embers burning holes in the carpet really isn't fun, for a start you miss anything decent on the TV.

So, I decided that a wood burner was the way to go. Last year my husband made a wood burner for use outside, so I suggested that he put it in the fire place and we try it for heat. It certainly removed the fear of burning carpets and generated some heat but not enough so he decided to make a new one for the living room.

He took one empty gas canister, the nice man at the tip gave us one for free. To make sure that it was empty he turned it up upside down with the valve open and then flushed it with water, I think a lot of care needs to be taken over this bit, it was rather a smelly process and I wasn't best pleased that he did this outside the back door. Then the bottle was taken into the garage and after a lot of noise and sparks he made it into this.

At this stage I couldn't quite grasp where he was going with it but I have learned never to question his designs and so I left him to it. Oh and please note the safety kit, I think the mask is rather flattering.

A few days later I decided to visit him again to see how it was all progressing, angle grinder and welder all packed away and I have no idea where he got the chimney bit from but I suspect that he had been rummaging in a skip somewhere for it *rolls eyes*. The hinge and the fastener have probably been sitting in one of his many boxes of useful bits of junk for the past 10 years, nothing is wasted in this house, it may always come in handy some day. And that is where my quilt cover went!

I can't say that I was impressed with the face, he could have made her prettier, yes she is a she, a bit like people name their cars, I have named the wood burning stove, she is officially now named Bertha. So with a coat of paint Bertha was turfed outside and set on fire.

Ok, so that is that, the paint is now all nicely burned on and I still can't imagine how she will fit into our fire place or what she will look like, I am told that the air holes are all carefully planned for optimum burning power, it is all a bit technical for me but as long as it works who cares? Do you like my patio? That was my cellar floor a few months ago.

Hmmm not as delicious as I would have liked her but she works and this year I will be making my own logs out of newspapers and junk mail and hopefully she will add warmth to the house without having cost a penny.

Loverly!

Fantastic Holidays With A Difference - Doing it VW Style

2011-03-15T10:57:00.000Z

You don't have to be a hippy or a surf dude to have the opportunity to ride in one of these most beautifully restored iconic VW Campervans. The restoration of these vehicles makes them a particularly green option for a holiday, after all, they would now have gone to scrap so recycling at its best!

The beauty of the camper van is that you take it to wherever you are going, there is minimal setting up and you can just stop and stay, so you fancy a drink by the sea, its all there on hand and when you really think about it, a camper van really does allow you the maximum freedom and economy that a caravan or a tenting holiday just can't offer. Of course you will need to spend some time on camp sites for the luxury of a shower and toilets and there are some restrictions as to where you can pull over and stop for the night but there are many areas that will allow you to park up for the night, this means that you can visit many different locations and really see the country.

For a really different experience, these wonderful camper vans can be hired from CJS Campers, you can find them here : http://www.cjscampers.com/

A Recycled Bird Box

2011-03-14T18:07:00.000Z

Isn't it Brill? Well i think so because when my 7 year old said that she was going to be making a bird box I thought it would be out of wood, when she brought it in to show me and she had selected odds an ends that would have otherwise been thrown into the bin and ended up most probably in landfill, well I felt so proud, I seem to have got the importance of recycling through good and proper.

The roof of the bird box is made from a length of plastic gutter, the side are pieces of perspex and the front and back is made from oddments of wood left over from the soap moulds and soap cutters that we make here at Summer Naturals, oh and the twig, well the twig just made me smile, however i do have visions of some little bird perching on it and it falling off.

Just goes to show that you can make something really useful from just a few left over bits of rubbish. Sadly I don't see a market for this bird house but I look forwards to having it put up in the garden and hopefully some little birds will make it home from home.

World Book Day Costume

2011-03-14T17:40:00.000Z

Every year World Book Day comes around and every year I feel ever so slightly stressed at what costume my children will request. I have been doing the costumes for 16 years now and so have made a few ranging from the Tin Man to Verruca Salt and this year the Fantastic Mrs. Fox. I was actually very pleased with this year's result, now I did cheat and buy the apron but it will come in handy for baking, oh and I of course bought the mask, well making one myself could have ended in her looking like a ferret or a mouse and certainly not a fox at all so i played it safe. The arms and tail were all my own making though and by simply stitching the foxy coloured fir to one of my T shirts and attaching the tail onto the back was rather easy and not too stressful at all.

I just wish now that I had saved all of the past costumes and passed them down because now I wouldn't have to be stressing about what costume she might want next year, I think I have nailed it this year but each year seems to be getting more and more elaborate. The things we have to do!

My Face Mask Disaster :-O

2011-02-22T19:09:00.001Z

Scary isn't it and as you can see my thirteen year old Guinea Pig wasn't a happy bunny. I have a feeling that i did something wrong with the recipe which should have been really easy, I mean how hard can mixing a bit of clay and water be??

So no, this isn't stage make up it is Wyoming Sodium Bentonite made into a face mask. Now I know it looks ghastly but it really did do the job and when it had dried and she had washed her face, her skin looked great. She did have a few red marks on her face which is caused by the clay drawing at the skin to detoxify and pull out the impurities, these faded in a very short time and she stopped telling me how I had trashed her life. of course there are no after shots because at that stage I was the worstest mother in the whole wide world.

Anyway I am going to have another bash tomorrow and make sure that I actually follow the recipe properly and then I will put a few recipes on here. You can find Wyoming Sodium Bentonite here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68&products_id=667

Kids are making their own toys AGAIN!

2011-02-22T18:31:00.000Z

We get lots of polystyrene sheets in packaging and its not something that I like to pass onto customers to dispose of so we found a good use for it. Tiffany 7 drew pictures onto the polystyrene, that kept her happy for an hour or so and then using a hot wire she cut out the jigsaw pieces. A hot wire is usually used in modelling and my husband made this one himself.

Cutting the puzzle kept her busy for another half hour.

As you can see she has quite a collection of various cut outs, she used cookie cutters too to make some shapes. The workbench comes in handy as a craft table and she is showing signs of having a love for craft.

She also seems to have a love for collecting milk bottle tops from school, she has lots of them and she has grand design ideas for them but that is for another day. The jig is on the garage floor for now, she seems less willing to want to make the jigsaw but certainly enjoyed making it. I am seriously considering getting all of the toys together that she has made and wrapping them up for her birthday :-)

Taking A Delivery At Summer Naturals - The Greener Way

2011-02-22T10:01:00.001Z

It's a winch! It soon became clear that "hand balling" as it is called, 25kg sacks of product from a lorry which basically meant the driver lobbed the sacks down onto you was not good for one's health. So we had to look for an alternative and the only one we could come up with was a Fork Lift. You can pick one up on eBay for a few thousand pounds but in the back of my mind i kept thinking how un-environmentally friendly a fork lift would be for a business the size of Summer Naturals and, when I am working so hard to make every aspect of the business as green as I possibly can.

So, my husband who is becoming more and more involved with the business looked into alternatives and came up with this. He then adapted it so that it would be stable. Fantastic, we could now winch pallets into the storage area. Only, the pallet truck that we have wasn't suitable so it was back to the drawing board. Then by accident he found this little beauty being sold locally.

It was old, tired and rusty but with some TLC and a lick of paint he transformed it into a working bit of machinery. The winch uses electricity but only for about three minutes a drop. This is my husband by the way. He comes in very handy.

This is the nice man, the very nice man delivering my pallet of Bicarbonate of Soda, he agreed to pose for this image but would like royalties. And yes I have had to lift all of those bags from the back of that lorry and carry them into the storage area before now.

The pallet was wheeled onto the tail lift, lowered and then the multi surface pallet truck pushed into place. See how happy the delivery man is to be helping out. The pallet is dragged free of the tail lift and the winch attached. I get to press the button to drag the pallet up the path and into the storage space. It is a very important job.

And there you have it, one pallet delivered in the safest and greenest way that we could find, there is still quite a bit of manual labour involved and pushing the button has its responsibilities but I think that we found a solution that works and that is kind to the environment.

Bicarbonate of Soda can be found here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=80

The powers of Witch Hazel

2011-02-21T09:54:00.000Z

Made from the leaves and bark of the Hamamelis Tree, witch hazel is a truly wonderful natural healer, and should be in everyone's first aid cabinet. It is an astringent and so works perfectly as a skin toner and helps to clear acne and works far better than the expensive skin treatments sold today. It is also antiseptic, anti inflammatory and anti fungal so can be used on cuts, bruises, athletes foot, jockey itch (Itchy bum) and hemorrhoids.

Getting Rid Of Algae The Easy Green Way

2011-02-20T16:56:00.002Z

After every winter our house which is made of sandstone and the sandstone paved paths become covered in green algae which can become slippy and unsightly. My husband used to clean it off with the jet wash which takes hours, excessive amounts of water and electricity. By accident, and I know that white vinegar has many many uses, I dropped a bulk bottle of vinegar on the patio, a few days later the green algae in that area had vanished. There had been no water involved, no scrubbing, no nothing.

We now use white vinegar to rid all of the green algae problems, just pour or spray it on. As you can see from the image above, this really works. I sprayed white vinegar onto the windowcill last week and left it. I must remember to go finish the job now.

Buy white vingear here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/

Fly Fishing and Fullers Earth - who'd have known?

2011-02-19T12:44:00.001Z

I learn something new every day! I started to sell Fuller's Earth a few months ago and to be honest, I sell so many products now that I simply can not be an expert on all of them. So a quick read up on the net gave me a few uses for Fuller's Earth and I added a little bit of information on the website. One of the uses is in fishing, you know, I really thought that it was used as bait, even when I thought that fish liked maggots, spam and sweet corn.

Anyway I gets a phone call the other day from a very nice man called Mel, well now it seems that fish are very intelligent beings because when fishing line used in fly fishing sits on the top of the water the fish can see it, well it occurs to me that the fish must be bright enough to work out that a line sitting on top of the water must mean that at any moment they will be caught. So, in an attempt to confuse the fish, fly fishermen use something called a "sinkant". A sinkant causes the line to sink! Fish can't see the line and voila you have landed your fish.

Apparently sinkant is very expensive so here is a recipe for making your own:

Mix Fullers Earth to a paste with drops of Washing up liquid, and 2 or 3 drops of Glycerine.

It is that easy!

Sinkant is used for fly fishing, trout and salmon fishing and the home made recipe is cheaper to make than to buy as a ready made product.

Fullers Earth and Glycerine can be found here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=80&sort=20a&page=3

And here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=68 In smaller quantities.

My first ever batch of homemade soap.

2011-02-18T17:53:00.002Z

Well I am so excited, my first ever attempt at making soap has been a success. The luscious fragrance of Lime and Patchouli is wafting throughout the house and my hands have never been cleaner or softer for that matter this really is excellent soap even if i say it myself.

It has been sat curing for what has seemed like a lifetime, anyway i got some Litmus Paper today and was surprised to see that it had reached a Ph level of 8 already so quite safe to use, I had been worried that it may have turned out wrong but it is all good.

I am looking forwards now to making more and more and experimenting with different colours and fragrances, this soap is all natural and I used essential oils for fragrance but despite using really good ingredients I am surprised at how cheap each huge bar has cost when i consider the quality of it. I am very pleased with myself now :-)

Diatomaceous Earth - still learning how to pronounce it!

2011-02-17T19:56:00.000Z

Today I added Diatomaceous Earth to the website. I used to sell Borax which people bought to kill pests but since Borax became less available in the UK, i felt that a replacement natural pest control product was required. So I searched long and hard until I found the Diatomaceous Earth. Unfortunately I can't yet pronounce it and I am not sure that I ever will.

So, what is Diatomaceous Earth? Well it is a natural powdered like substance that is made from diatoms. Diatoms are found in lakes and the sea, it is actually the fossils of diatom's that are dried and ground to make this very fine powder. Amazing really!

The powder has many uses but I am selling it as a natural pest control, it can be used to kill fleas, (Good for the pet owner), slugs, (Good for the gardener), Red mite (Good for the Chicken keeper) and bed bugs!

It can be found here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=89

The life and times of a mother with teens!

2011-02-15T21:53:00.000Z

It isn't that long ago that I had the most adorable little girl, sweet in every way, just wonderful, she was polite, helpful and considerate, she oozed charm and was such a little darling. Recently she turned 13 and I think that monster is possibly a nice word to describe her.

Tonight she approached me and demanded that i find her white T shirt, the one that I had lost. I decided that enough was enough and I could either continue to tolerate her bad manners and rudeness or I could ignore it. She stomped about, screamed a bit and I simply ignored her. She continued to demand and tantrum so I went and sat on the back door step. She proceeded to open her bedroom window and scream down at me. I reminded that if she spoke to me politely that she may get a response. I eventually got a "PLEASE"!

So I went and looked for the T shirt that she wanted, laid it out on the ironing board and walked away. Then came a further strop when she realised that actually I wasn't prepared to iron it. She spent about 10 minutes trying to work out how the iron worked, made some threat about burning holes in her clothes and how I'd have to buy her new ones if they were burned. My response, "Burn them, there are no new one's" Eventually she worked out how to iron her own T shirt - result. I will also refuse to do any of her laundry from now on - result!

She is currently repeating the words " Where am I supposed to get a job"? You can guess how that line of response came about - I am ignoring her and she is repeating and repeating. She is now shouting "MUM" voice has gone up 20 decibels and she is threatening to leave home - how wonderful that would be.

I am wondering at what stage this child turned from darling to horror bag and what did i do to deserve this?? I have asked her nicely to leave me alone. She has just told me that I am doing a really bad job at mothering. Maybe I should just give her a good slap??? Isn't that what I would have got had I have spoken to my parents in that manner???

Oh and now because I won't answer her she is threatening to throw things about - stay calm Anne! I just continue to write this and finally she has gone away. Do I think that this is a good line of behavioural correction? Then I considered Skinner (Burrhus Frederic Skinner) Jeez my days studying child psychology had to be of some use and think that actually, I didn't allow her to push me to the steaming nostrils stage, I didn't get the urge to stick mi fingers up her nose and physically remove her and I managed to continue with my blog.

We will see, I have to be consistent but it is clear that if I am to survive the teenage years of a female I need to be made of some pretty strong stuff. I will have my beautiful darling child back!

All of this makes giving birth feel like a doddle!

Product review - The foot scrubbie!

2011-02-13T19:58:00.000Z

I bought one of these from http://www.bellinghamsoapcompany.co.uk/ and I have to say that they are the best little product that I have purchased in the longest time - why? Because you know when you wear your sandals in the summer and your feet can get all grubby around the heels (Absolutely no criticism aimed at Tameside council at all) well these little beauties just scrub away the grime.

This is a soap soaked slice of loofah, the peppermint feel on the feet is amazing and of course the tea tree cleanses the skin leaving it all clean and bacteria free and so not just great for summer but for anyone who might suffer with a bit of athletes foot after having their feet tucked up in socks all winter.

I actually used this on my cellulite too (Shhh please do not tell anyone that I have cellulite!) so my thighs felt lovely and smooth and looked a lot better for a good scrub.

So, this has to be one of my top products of the year. I bought several of the soap's from here too, all divine and worth every Penny, they lasted for ages and ages and the ingredients in the soap are top quality, all natural and i think that these soaps make perfect gifts for anyone.

My kids eat veggies!

2011-02-13T18:47:00.000Z

My 7 year old loves veggies, hates meat but will eat copious amounts of most veggies and is particularly prone to enjoying the old Brussels Sprout. See i think that sprouts on their own are just awful and so I like to spice some of my veggies up, I add grated nutmeg to mashed potato, black pepper and butter to carrots and honey to sprouts. If you have children who simply won't entertain a sprout then a small amount of honey may just have them loving them.

Anyway tonight my daughter asked me if we could have honey sprouts "Of course you can sweetie". And of course I am in a real bad mood with my husband so sprouts and cauliflower are on the menu (Did I mention that his registration plate includes the word gas)?

So i steams the sprouts and cauliflower only to find that I am completely out of honey :-O Quick thinking needed and I chucks in a spoon full of treacle. Ya know what? Not one of them noticed and the topic of conversation throughout the meal was honey and apparently the school chef wants my honey sprouts recipe.

I will of course be sleeping in a different room to my husband tonight ;-)

Vitamin D deficiency - my own story.

2011-02-13T14:52:00.000Z

When I was a lass, I wasn’t slapped all over with sun cream, there was no factor 50, we were just plonked on the beach to bake. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t provided with sun cream, we just, yep you guessed – baked. I don’t ever remember burning, even in the summer of 76; we just spent time out in the sun and enjoyed ourselves. Then the oils hit the market and everyone used the lowest factor oils to grab the best tan they could. Its only about 19 years ago when I gave birth to my first child that I became interested in sun protection – he was born with Jaundice and after spending a week in hospital under the lights, we were allowed home and I was told to get him out in the sun. But the big names had already started their campaigns to let everyone know that the sun was actually dangerous to be exposed to, so on went the factor 20, which was the max you could buy back then.

His jaundice went and as well as the cream, over went the sun canopy and he was kept out of the sun as much as possible. It was what you did. And it’s what people have been doing since. Then came all the horror stories about skin cancers and people started to cover themselves and their kids even more.

Being fairly dark skinned myself, as are my three children, it never occurred to me that actually the chances of me getting a skin cancer was pretty rare, getting burned by the sun isn’t nice though and so I continued to use a particularly high factor. Then I started spending less time in the sun – who wants wrinkles anyway?

Anyway about 2 years ago, maybe more I started to gain weight, great, middle aged spread, just what you need – at the same time I started to feel incredibly low – nothing new there, I have been up and down like a yoyo for years – aren’t we all?? Now looking back, I think that its possibly the past 5 years that I have felt not quite right but at 43, well, it just doesn’t feel acceptable to feel approximately 90!

So started the many trips to the GP, many many trips and if anyone has a medal for hypochondria it has to be me because that is how I have been made to feel, after all, how many people can present with such non specific aches and pains as I for so long?

So, after feeling crappy, I bursts into tears in the GP’s office, out I come with anti depressants BUT I didn’t actually feel depressed, next time it’s with sleeping tablets, I have had intermittent bouts of insomnia, then I started with oedema, ahhh the old hormones. Then it was this, then it was that then it was the other. It got to the stage where every time I walked into the GP’s surgery I would reduce to tears and its true, I couldn’t cope, more anti D’s.

Then came the mood swings, then came the extreme anger, urine infections, carpal tunnel, severe pains in my feet, plantar fasciistis that one was, and and and.

I remember walking into see a female GP and me telling her that actually I felt like I could punch someone – by this stage I was doubting my own sanity and the brain fog I had put down to just having a baby, the fact that she is now 7 put doubt on that one BUT as I feel worse and worse and am being given no solutions, well you do anything to find an excuse for these feelings and disabilities.

The one big thing that was getting me down was the weight gain though and the fact that when eating a normal healthy diet I could gain 5 LB in a week, I’d starve for a week and could lose a few LBs but then it would just pile on – so taking the GP’s advice after being told that I must be eating too much food and not exercising, I came home and ate less food and exercised more and got bigger and bigger – I gained 3 stone but if I told you that over the past 2 years I must have lost at least 6 stone, that will tell you that I have actually gained much much more.

So when I realised one day that I could no longer jump off of a small wall or even run a few steps and that the job I do that should leave me with muscles like Swartzenegger was becoming so incredibly difficult I knew there was something wrong., I couldn’t lift even a few kilos, if I squatted down to get summat out of the oven I had to get my husband to get me back up again, it was awful.

Went to see a new GP and splurted it all out in tears, then she asked me when had I last been abroad, well that would have been 2 years ago, and then she asked me what my origins were, well despite being dark skinned I am all English, no doubt there is some genetic links to some foreign blood going back through the ages but where was she going? Then she said, I think you are Vitamin D deficient – what?? I laughed, how could anyone in the year 2010 be Vitamin D deficient???

Away went the blood, three weeks later the results were back, not only am I deficient, I am chronically deficient. Not only that, my bone density has been greatly compromised and I am now at risk of breaking, this may not be reversible and I live in fear of a fracture which frankly terrifies me because it rules my life.

I was told that it could take up to 4 months before I start to feel any better, I am taking Vit D and calcium, have been away for a week abroad and I am still feeling rubbish, still in pain, I have lost a stone and a half in a very short time – who’d have known that Vit D deficiency can cause your thyroid to stop functioning properly??

Anyway I started to think back over the years and I realised that what I thought had been mild SPD during the winter of my third pregnancy had been in fact the symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency, then I realised that actually I’d been mildly deficient on and off for at least 10 years, never really getting my levels back up high enough to be well for very long. It’s true; I had felt better in the summer months but never really well. Then it occurred to me that whilst I’d been deficient during pregnancy, There would have been no Vit D or very little in my breast milk – would that explain the break to my baby daughters tibia and then the even more severe break to her elbow, which had several breaks resulting in her now being deformed for the rest of her life and the possibly other fracture that showed up on X ray but I didn’t even know had happened??

So then I did some research and realised that due to my dark complexion, in order to get enough D, whilst living in the north of the UK, I’d have to spend at least 2 hours in the sun a day to get the Vitamin D that I require. Then I looked at the food that contain Vit D, hmmm eggs, well I was told to avoid eating too many eggs because of my High BP and high cholesterol which, isn’t caused by an unhealthy diet but caused by something to do with something related to the deficiency although I really don’t understand all that. It is also found in some margarine, not something I eat a lot of due to fighting with the weight gain, some kid’s cereals, nope, not part of my diet and after that, not really a lot contains D.

So if you are pale skinned, you are more likely to absorb Vit D in much less time but not if you are plastered in high factor sun creams, are part of a religion that covers up or spends little time out of the sun or are dark skinned. And when I was told that it was highly unlikely with my skin tone that I would ever develop a melanoma, well I got this ill and for what??? Lining the pockets of the sun cream companies??

So, when it occurred to me actually that I needed sun to function, for my body to work as it should do, to be pain free, to be happy, I actually felt quite angry that whilst the people, be it the sun cream companies or the News, gave me only one side of the story – actually I had seen all the warnings about the sun on the news, but no one had talked about Vitamin D deficiency and all the effects that this lack can bring.

Today I am limping, today I am exhausted, today I am struggling to stand up, I am in pain and I am almost three months and one foreign holiday into my treatment, and I am still feeling incredibly ill, yep there have been improvements but it will be such a slow process to get my levels to the minimum. I am feeling less depressed but then I am also taking anti D’s still – my choice, not the GP’s she knows how ill I am feeling and so she allowed me to take them for a while until my levels are up and the dopamine levels in my brain improve.

I can’t even start to list all the symptoms that I have suffered, just mentioned a few but one thing I now know, I can never see the sun as dangerous again, yes I will protect my skin with sun creams but only in certain areas to prevent burning, never again will I coat my kids in sun cream, they will be exposed because they need to be, I will never allow them to burn but gone are the days of factor 50, I used factor 15 on my 7 year old on holiday, just on her shoulders and areas that have not had much exposure and that was just for a few days, in the UK, she is thrown out into the garden and plays with no sun cream. Foolish??? I no longer think so.

And now the children are making their own toys - recycling at its best!

2011-02-13T14:11:00.000Z

Isn't it just fabby??? My youngest daughter Tiffany who is 7 wanted a house for her Harrod's teddy to live in, so she took her daddy into his garage to make the teddy a palatial residence. En route she grabbed the inner tubes from the recycled paper that I use to pack all of my parcels with, she found some polystyrene that had been used for packaging and other bits and bats that were waiting to go to recycling. Now I rather think that her dad enjoyed making this just as much as she did.

The only problem is, she can't find her teddy :-( I think that I should supply her with all of my materials that need to go to recycling so that she can make all of her own Birthday presents!

I just made these:

2011-02-13T14:02:00.000Z

Yes I know that one looks a wee bit on the cringed side but really it wasn't that bad. I nagged and nagged for a range cooker with a griddle, this griddle was going to be life changing and look, it really was, I was able to make drop scones, savoury drop scones at that! Of course the husband would argue that i could have made these in a frying pan, hmmm just like he could have argued that he'd never run the back of his van into a lamp post.

So, they were really simple to make and extremely cheap, our food bill is huge and with this VAT increase and the van repair I really need to make some cut backs.

I lobbed 200g of self raising flour into a bowl, a handful of grated cheese, an egg and half a pint of milk and whisked away. It was that simple, I poured a dollop onto the griddle, chucked on some more grated cheese before turning and a few bits of ham. Voila!

The kids loved them and apart from the husband needing to add a sprinkle of salt and pepper because I had forgotten to season, (I never claimed to be Gordon Ramsey - easier to spell that Heston Blumenthal) they went down really well and cost pennies, well OK, maybe a quid but still a nice cheap lunch for a family of five.

I am going to make sweet one's next :-)

What do you do when your child sees ghosts?

2011-02-13T13:43:00.000Z

My eldest daughter Sadie is 13 now and she has always seen ghosts although she has never stated that she has seen a ghost, she tells me she has seen an old women or a child or a couple of children or whatever it is that she has seen.

I know that there is spirit in this house, it was the first thing that I sensed when I walked through the door, but I never realised that their presence would affect my child so much. The thing is, no matter where we live, she has always been able to see them and whilst I don't see what she sees, I know it is there, I can't tell you how many I have had to move on. Mostly nice souls I must add.

Anyway this morning one got up too close for comfort and she slept for 4 hours under the covers with the lamp on and it is clear that she is uncomfortable with her little gift, if you could call it that. She sees what millions would love to see and hates it. All I can do is remind her that her visitors have never hurt her and are simply interested in her because they know that they have a connection with her.

What I don't know as a mother is if I should keep working at moving them on or if I should just try to get her to accept this? I don't know if she has any medium skills or if the most she is going to get is the sight of them and the fear attached.

Hey ho, yet another thing to worry about in the House of Summers.

BPA Free Plastics

2011-02-13T11:32:00.002Z

Yes this is still on my mind as I look at the 100's of plastic components that make up my business and I am wondering now if I have become ever so slightly neurotic. And then I wonder if one person's neuroticism can start a huge roller coaster of neuroticism. I look at my computer keyboard, that being the one that my fingers rarely tend to be parted from these days and ponder on myself leaching harmful chemicals, after all, the purpose of my life is to be as chemical free as I can possibly make it.

I have spent the last few days reading up on the properties of all of the different plastic bottles and the closures for them that I sell and I am pretty certain that they are all BPA free but then there are the containers that I buy in from other sources containing the ingredients that people purchase to live in the BPA free bottles - I am not able to contact all of my suppliers to make sure that they are using BPA free containers and actually that would just be silly. And really and truly BPA is only an issue it seems in containers that are used for consumable products like drinks and the biggest scare came about for baby's drinking bottles.

On the plus side this question to me has been very useful because it has prompted me to get round to adding more information about each bottle's ingredients, still getting round to it mind, but I have started researching in depth.

Who and for anyone wondering what BPA is, it is: Bisphenol A - this is an organic compound used to make polycarbonate plastics, I am guessing that it is included in many many plastics that we come into contact with on a daily basis and have done for many years. I have decided not to worry about it, but it is very clear that some people are and I do wonder if the original fear has come from some bloody forum post on the net somewhere that is full of inaccuracies and just snowballed into some huge scaremonger thread. After all that is usually how it works. Wow little bottle, what a lot of attention you have had this weekend.

The Bulk Shop

2011-02-12T15:34:00.001Z

Yup, I am opening another business! Why? because I am completely mad! Anyone who runs a net business will know that in order for it to survive there is a lot that you need to know and understand. Only when I launched Summer Naturals I knew and understood nothing. You have thrown your money into the pot, purchased stock, equipment and paid out for the website and you sort of expect people will just find the site and spend copious amounts of money with you - WRONG WRONG WRONG! That was my first lesson learned and it was a very hard one to accept.

So then you do the usual link dropping on various forums pretending to be anyone but the owner of the store in the hope that it will bring in custom, that does tend to work a bit but the time and effort you put in is rather a lot and there are only so many times you can cope with being called a spammer.

So, two years into Summer Naturals I decided that I would start a new business, Summer Naturals aims at a niche market and though having a niche can be good, very soon you find a million of the same sort of sites popping up on the net, everyone wanted a hand in the green business and everyone is aiming at a niche market.

Whilst my main aim was to provide products that at that time were hard to find, when you are investing 18 hours a day into trying to make a business work, some sort of payment is needed and five years on I still work for less than the minimum wage. The next problem I had was keeping the cash flow going and it looked pretty likely that closing Summer Naturals was the only sensible option so the solution was to open another site that didn't aim at a niche market - sorted, I could run another business to subsidise Summer Naturals and keep the dream going.

So, I had one business idea and did all of the ground work for it and then decided that actually that wasn't such a good idea, then I had another idea, did all of the ground work and then again decided it was a bad idea. Then I came up with the Bulk Shop. I am all for home run business and as there are so many women like me out there and of course men, working from home to suit school hours and holidays is the perfect job. If I could sell some of my existing Summer Naturals products on a larger scale then this would be a service to other home workers.

I found it almost impossible in the early days to find companies who would supply me with just one 25kg bag of Bicarbonate of Soda, no one wanted to know and it took months and months to source my stock and I have to be grateful to all of the companies that dealt with me so I wanted to be a company that considered any order no matter how small and hopefully just make starting up a business that bit easier for someone else.

The bulk shop will start off very small and very slowly, I know what I am doing these days and so that helps quite a lot. I am not sure how it will grow but I am doing it now and I hope to launch the site by the end of February, although it's been in the making for over three years so there is no guarantee but its' close.

I made these a few weeks ago - Pretty aren't they?

2011-02-12T14:39:00.000Z

They were for my eldest daughter's 13th birthday. It has been some years since i had the time to make my own cakes and I really enjoyed making these, and what is better, they tasted really good. The butter icing was made from butter, fresh cream and icing sugar and I had intended to decorate them all myself but as the children decided they had to help, it became a family activity. I would make things like this more often but for some reason I find that I eat them and keeping the weight off these days is no easy thing.

I may try to make some bath bombs and some soap that looks just like these, wanders off to find out how to do it.

And here it is part 2

2011-02-12T14:03:00.000Z

This is the Summer Naturals Soap Mould, it has an adjustable insert so that you can make just a few bars of soap right up to about 15 bars. I made 15 bars of soap and I think we possibly have enough to last quite some time but I seem to have a queue of friends and family wanting a bar. It comes in two different sizes but as yet only one is on the site, I am getting round to adding the second size.

You can see the mould and the details about it here: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=92

Ok here it is!!!

2011-02-12T13:48:00.000Z

I love it, as you can see it is a soap cutter and yes this is no new product to the market but this soap cutter is designed with a width adjuster, that is the bit of wood at the end with the wingnut thingy, you simply adjust that to get different widths of soap. I actually had to make my first batch of cold process soap to test this out and it is lovely soap and despite being terrified of using lye, it was really easy in the end.

Here is an article about how I went about making the soap: http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=page&id=21

Summer Naturals is now manufacturing a product - how exciting is that??

2011-02-12T12:56:00.000Z

Yes, we are, we have designed and manufactured a product, I say we, really it is my husband Philip who has done all of the hard work and he really has gotten his teeth into it. I will be designing the label which I suppose is a contribution. Actually he has designed and manufactured two products and done endless research on the matter. Of course this is in no way a unique product, though he does have some very good ideas and I think that some of his inventions are rather special but marketing them isn't so easy so when he found a product that could be sold at Summer Naturals, well he got very carried away.

I am going to be promoting the products and I myself had to do quite a lot of research and use the things that Philip had made to test them out, I really enjoyed it and both items have been launched on the website and are selling.

You want to know what it is don't you?? Well I will be back later with some images and lots more information but for now I really do need to go and do the laundry, the soapnuts are itching to be thrown into the drum and to oooooze their saponin filled little bodies into the fibres of 70 sweaty socks. Back later.

Have I taken on a little bit too much???

2011-02-12T11:26:00.000Z

You know, I never anticipated just how much hard work this business thing would be, anyone who knows the history behind Summer Naturals will know that I started Summer Naturals in order to supply people with the products that they struggled to find that enabled them to clean in a more environmentally friendly fashion. That was it, there was no consideration for finances, no spread sheets, no profit margins, no business plan, no nothing. I hadn't considered that I would have to deal with problems when things went wrong, or customers and I have to say it, some of the questions that are thrown at me are amazing, of course this then takes time, everything takes time and lots of it.

So I have dragged myself out of bed this morning, it is Saturday and I have dealt with two emails to customers, one of which has required much though, it has been the sort of email that actually is beneficial to the business and has made me realise that actually it isn't just about selling a product, it is about selling a lifestyle, this has to suit an awful lot of people and that is huge responsibility. I have to try to keep everyone happy and that is a lot of work for one person - yes that would be me. I am shocked by the amount of people who think that Summer Naturals is up there with the likes of Amazon who employs thousands and thousands of people, no it is just me and now my husband who does help me out with the heavy jobs, my health has deteriorated badly since i started this job and it takes it out of me.

So, this is a typical Saturday morning, I dread the phone ringing because it means more work and really I'd love to be spending some time with my children or even doing the laundry or just relaxing my sore hip and neck ( See earlier blog about December's car accident ).

OH and if anyone is interested in reading just how Summer Naturals was formed look here : http://www.summernaturals.co.uk/index.php?main_page=page&id=6

Why are blogs back to front???

2011-02-11T20:55:00.000Z

Would it not be better to be able to read a blog like a book??? I am struggling with this back to front thing.

Hmmm my second blog post.

2011-02-11T20:19:00.000Z

I was asked today if the bottles and jars that I sell are PBA free. Anyone who is reading who knows what PBA free means then 100 brownie points to you. Of course I ran off and googled PBA free - its is 7 years since I last had a baby and of course I breast fed and so the dangers of the ingredients of baby bottle manufacturing wasn't really a concern, didn't apply but now as of today it seems that PBA free plastic bottles and jars are very important.

After spending quite a while of my Friday night reading up on PBA I learned what it was - Bisphenol A - hey please don't leave, you can wander off and google it later.....Anyway from what I understand, it applies to drinks bottles and baby's milk bottles. But now, it also applies to the bottles and jars that I sell at Summer Naturals for cosmetic use. The strain of this new level of responsibility made the vodka bottle look incredibly inviting, I had to have a whole 200g bar of chocolate too.

So, instead of spending Friday evening with my husband and my youngest daughter, here I am looking at the bottom of bottles and jars, I had to borrow my husbands reading glasses to see - not sure if that is due to the vodka or if at the age of 44 my eyes really are in need of a bit of help.

Well it seems that some of the bottles and jars that I sell are BPA free but it could be that some aren't. You see I really do care enough to check this out, of course my bottle supplier is going to hate me on Monday morning when he gets my phone call and realises that his sales could drop because some of his supplies aren't as safe as I want them to be.

I am off now to get another glass of vodka, I didn't drink before I started Summer Naturals, but it seems that the stress of this job........................I will feel the need to come back and talk more about the responsibility of suppliying the public with chemical free products.

My very first blog post - where to start??

2011-02-11T19:55:00.000Z

I am not sure why i decided that starting this blog was a good idea, I had started one once before and deleted it, what a shame, I could have read it and watched it evolve. I am pretty sure that this blog will be entirely different, less business focused and more about how I have evolved, the things that I have learned and discovered along the way. One thing is for sure, you will either love this blog or hate it.

One other thing is very clear, in the 4 or whatever amount of years it has been since I last blogged, I appear to have remained on the same level when it comes to technical understanding when it comes to, well technology, do i really understand how to operate this blog? Of course not so if you are reading, please bare with me.