Thanksgiving is over, here in the U.S., and Christmas is just a month away. In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I encourage you to take a moment and just stop and be grateful. Here is a website that can help you do that. Light a Candle describes its cyber-purpose - to help you use the symbol of the simple candle to honor, memorialize, celebrate or otherwise focus energy onto someone or something you care about. "In many different traditions lighting candles is a sacred action. It expresses more than words can express. It has to do with gratefulness. From time immemorial, people have lit candles in sacred places. Why should cyberspace not be sacred?" So whether you light a candle to memorialize someone or something, or just to focus your spirit on the beginning or end of another day, give it a try - it's really a lovely site.

The holiday season is a time of both decoration and devotion. We decorate our homes with lovely symbols of light...and whether you call it a devotion or a prayer, lighting a candle for someone or something is a powerful ritual act...and common in many religions and traditions. The prayer candles that I grew up with were adorned with an image or a prayer - and the thought/belief was that the image or prayer was held in spirit while the candle is lit.
Here is a method to make your own custom prayer or devotional candles with text and images of your own design. You can use them to hold a special person, holiday or prayer in mind...or you can use them for more decorative rather than devotional purposes. They are easy to make, and impressive in your personal spaces - whether that's a table, an altar, a mantle or just a counter top. I love to do several of these in a holiday theme, with classic holiday images, or photos from last year's holiday celebrations.

It can happen to the best of us.
No matter how many batches you've made...no matter how much you think you know...the day will come when you open up your box of curing soap and see them - (cue ominous music) - dreaded orange spots, or DOS.
I've been cleaning and organizing my soap and candle room and consolidating some of the batches of soap I've made over the past while. I had one batch that was about a year old. I opened up the box to look at it...and there were the spots. DOS is not completely understood, though I've got several links to "explanations" at my brief article on Dreaded Orange Spots. You'll read that superfatting is the most suspected culprit of DOS. But this batch had a zero superfat. (I was going to make laundry soap with it.) The next most common suspected culprit is soft oils like sunflower. Nope...not here either. This batch was mostly lard. The one thing that may have been this batch's downfall was that it had no scent in it. I have heard that fragrance and essential oils have a bit of a preserving effect on the soap. So my guess is that it was just a combination of the age of the soap - perhaps some uneven curing - and an unhappy soap gremlin that got into my soap room and caused some trouble.
Click on the "comments" button below and tell me your DOS stories, and what you think caused it!

A new hotel with a wonderful luxury spa has opened.Their spa philosophy is "Ancient people have lived in balance with the rhythms of nature and have understood that each person is a unique combination of elements with individual needs at different times." Sounds cool, huh? And very much in line with our increasing attention, as soap and candle makers, to surrounding ourselves with pure and natural things, and treating our senses, bodies and minds with care. But this spa isn't in Santa Fe or San Francisco, it's in Mongolia. Located 50 kilometers north of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, the Terelj Hotel bills itself as the "Last Great Place on Earth." I wish I had more frequent flier miles, because it sounds really neat. "There is a place on earth, as yet significantly unspoiled by Western Civilization. A protected place, where travelers have only been freely granted access since 1992. Today, deep inside a national park, on the banks of a historic river and under the watchful eye of some of the most beautiful mountains in the world, you can experience this place. In utmost comfort and style."
So if you happen to be in China, Russia or Mongolia, drop on by...it sounds like a lovely place. For those of us on the other side of the world, we'll have to work on creating "utmost comfort and style" with some of our own hand crafted soap, custom candles, bath salts, massage bars and such.
Photo credit: ibeeby at stock.xchng