Canvas Print Giveaway Contest

I am pleased to offer a wonderful giveaway from UPrinting.com this week. One lucky winner will receive a 16 x 20 Rolled Canvas printed with the image of their choice. This is a great prize for my artist or business friends, or anyone who would like to transform their favorite photos or work into canvas art. Canvases are ultra durable and last a long time. This contest is open to US residents and includes free UPS ground shipping. There is a one day turn around the canvas UPrinting orders.



You have multiple chances to win.
1. For one entry leave a comment her with how you would like to use your 16 x 20 canvas.
2. For one extra entry subscribe to this blog.
3. For one extra entry tweet about this contest with @aquarianbath included in the twitter post.
4. For one extra entry post about this contest on your facebook page.
5. I am also hosting and Spring herbs blog party which starts April 1st. Participating bloggers are eligible for two extra entries. Follow the link for details about the blog party.

Please leave a separate comment with your activities and include your contact info. This contest ends March 31st at midnight Eastern time. I will use randomizer.org to choose a winner on April 1st and announce the winner on April 2nd.

Spring Herbs Blog Party! Call for Submissions

Spring is here and it's time for herbal planting, harvesting, and using your favorite herb of the season. Lets share what we are doing with herbs this time of year. To join the blog party, please make a post about this topic to your blog and send me an email with a link to your blog post by March 31st; aquarianbath@gmail.com. You may include a photo to me in your email if you would like it posted with the blog party. Please include a link back to this blog in your Spring Herbs blog post by April 1st when all the links to the blog party will be posted here.

********The Spring Blog Party Has Begun: Visit all the blog posts here**************

New Kitty Soap Fan

Kirsten at Garden Vibe recently featured my soaps on her blog together with her cat who took an interest in them. "They smell so great! and I was excited to use them! Little did I know though, I had someone else in the house looking to use them as well! ...Someone who likes to hang out in my Garden Tub when I'm not looking.. My cat, Cleo..." These are some of the best pictures ever made of my soaps and her cat is too cute playing in the tub next to them. Have a visit to her blog to check them out. Kirsten is also an etsy seller and has a great selection of jewelry at GardenVibe.etsy.com.

Sea Side Herb Society Annual Faire March 27th in Ormond Beach

My favorite event of the year is just around the Corner! The Seaside Herb Society's 15th annual faire will be held at the corner of N Beach St. and Granada on March 27th from 10-3. This is a free event, but you should really plan to bring $7 for the herbal luncheon which is not something you will want to miss. There are always wonderful guest speakers at the event as well.

Be sure to come early to get your pic of plants and soaps. Lavender soap is a favorite it will go fast. It is always hot at this event, and therefore it can be quite difficult for me to judge how much product to bring out for this event. I want to have enough product for every one, but I also don't want to over expose my products to the heat and shorten their shelf life. If you are planning to come and shop at my booth I would like to suggest that you put in you order in advance if you already know what you want. This year I will be including a free surprise soap gift with order placed in advance and prepaid with paypal; just email me me your order at aquarianbath@gmail.com to take advantage of this offer. You can find all my current inventory online.

New Sewing Project: a Little Break from Soap

I love my sewing machine, but it is really hard for me to transition among the various crafts that I like to do. In addition to soap and salve making, I also like to sew and make jewelry. Lately my sewing machine has gotten a fair bit of use. In addition to working on a custom design for a medical eye and TMJ pillow, I have also been designing and making baby diapers. Here is was my first version:


These diapers are made with a the fleece liner anchored to the inner flanner layer but not the outer flannel layer of the diaper of the diaper. This is to give the liner a chance to absorb the pee that moves quickly through the stitched inner layer. For the first version I did a straight stitch around the edges and double zig-zag, since I don't have a serger for overlock stitching. I'm very excited that my friend plans to give me her Serger after discussing these dipes together. I had the feeling like the dipes would hold with the double zig-zag, but I just didn't like the look of it.

Here is version 2. For this version I made an extra step or two so that the rough edges would be on the inside of the dipe.


I sent my pattern and instructions for version 3 to my mom who is a wonderful lady and is also an resourceful at collecting fabrics. It turns out she has yards and yards cute kid flannels, so I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with. She is responsible for giving me many of the fun fabrics that I use to make my microwavable flax neck wraps like these:

St. Patty's Day Farmer's Market Pictures

I had a great I'm at the City Island Farmer's market over the weekend. This mystery leprechaun in a colorful hat and a green trench coat came to visit me. Unfortunately my picture of the Daytona Balogney stone didn't turn out. I would have liked to have had a picture of the brave souls kissing it. The kids had a great time with chalk art and this time I even put some chalk to good use in front of my booth.


Here I am at my booth. This is the first picture of me that has been taken this year where I am truly looking pregnant beyond question. I'm 31 weeks pregnant in this picture. Many thanks to Jack White and my friends at Go Green Daytona for helping me with the tent and boxes to set up and unload.



The usual fruit and veggie vendors were on site. I'm already regretting I only got a half flat of strawberries instead of a full flat or two. The blueberries were also delicious and I'll be having Asparagas again this week from the market. Deep Creek Ranch was also on site with their grass feed organically raised beef. I do hope they will become regulars at the market.

I've said green is my favorite color, but this is a bit much, don't you think?




Thanks to Patricia Shaw for the great pictures.

Path of Peace: New Garden Bed and Garden Greens

We finally started planting and cutting back dead growth at Fair Share yesterday. Here is the new peace sign lettuce bed that was planted. This bed was started months and months ago with a truck load of Sargassum seaweed collected from the beach. It rotted down nicely and the soil is very dark and rich here.



The lovely winter hardy fennel is looking lush and undisturbed by January freezes.


We had a huge crowd of people at the garden. I guess people are happy to be out and about now that it has warmed up here. Luckily there was a lot of work to do. I may have to start thinking ahead though. A lot of people were asking me what to do next. Besides cutting back the dead plant material I started a lot of seeds in pots or direct sown into the raised beds. Some of the seeds that I started yesterday included Red clover, Rama Tulsi, Krishna Tulsi, Parsley, Lemon Eucalyptus, Tropical Tomato from Echo, watermelon, Agrimony. The kids also planted one of the raised beds with butter nut squash seeds that I had saved.


Arugala or Salad? Salad or Arugala? Or is it both? This was the big question about this flowering plant in the herb spiral. Well I think the answer is both. It grew up in the spiral underneath where the planted Arugala had gone to seed last year. And yes, this was quite near the 'Mesclun salad mix' bed that one of our volunteers planted, but Arugala is also a part of Mesclun salad, so I think the answer is both. I still think the Arugala is from volunteer seedlings from the mother Arugala plant, not just misplaced seeds from the salad bed.

St. Patty's Day Jewelry from LindaB

Green is my favorite color, so of course these St. Patty's Day items jumped out at me when I was browsing at Linda B's Beaded Jewelry Shop on Etsy. Linda loves color and what the gemstones and colors symbolize and create one-of-a-kind, unusual designs of handbeaded gemstone and glass pendants, bracelets, earrings, beaded bookmarks, rings, beaded keychains and car mirror jewelry. Linda also has a colorful blog that she updates frequently.


Linda is currently offering 10% off any Judaica item purchases through 3/12/10. You can convo her on etsy to change the price before purchase using the subject Judaica.

Saturday's Herb Farm Adventure

I had a lovely day Saturday at Magggie's Herb farm. The plants are coming along in the green house after a long freeze. I was happy to be able to pick up some new plants to replace the ones that I lost in January. Some of the herbs I took home included Calendula like the lovely flowering ones pictured here, Patchouli, True Rose Geranium, Tilo, and Lemon Balm.

Most of the mother plants were still recovering so we worked with dried herbs for making our tinctures during our Herbal Medicine Making class. My students chose dried Goldenrod, Motherwort, Lavender to make their tinctuers. Our honey cough and sore throat syrup came out nicely. We used a blend of thyme, yarrow, lemongrass, marjorum, and horehound for the decoction.


The big question was when are you coming back to teach? I am very happy these new students liked the class. I am not sure If I will be back there to teach there this summer, but I am hoping at latest to resume classes in the Fall. When Moira was a baby I never left her with others for long or took her out in the world with me to work as my students were suggesting. I love visiting and teaching at the farm too much to stay away though, so I'm sure we will find a good solution.

Think Spring! Spring Sale with Unique Women in Business

UNIQUE WOMEN IN BUSINESS THINK SPRING SALE MARCH 5TH - 8TH

All floral items from Aquarian Bath are on sale 20% off on Etsy: Floral soaps, floral perfumes, lavender neck pillows and more. Natural scents of Jasmine sambac, Ylang Ylang, Lavender, Rose Geranium, Vanilla. To receive your discount place your etsy order as usual and I will send a revised paypal invoice. Alternatively place your order and paypal as usual; I will refund 20% off your floral products.

Search 'UWIBSPRING' on Etsy for more sale items from other Unique Women in Business and visit our blog. I've included some of my favorites here which will be on sale or have discounted shipping from other UWIB members, the first of which is the Bleeding Hearts print from Lindentreephotograph.

Love Birds Necklace by Garden Vibe.


Green romantic shrug by Ayca


Spring Flowers Necklace by CobwebCorner.


Happiness by RobinMariaPedrero


Sea Grapes bracelet by AudreyGardenLady

Hello Spring!!! (or close enough for Spring Planting in Florida)

Hurray! Today is March 1st. For Central Florida in my growing zone that means the danger of frost and freezes has past. Quiet happily this coincides also with me coming back to my normal self after being in bed on and off all weekend with a head cold. I started out my day with preparations for spring growing. I pruned back all the dead wood from the Neem and Moringa olefiera trees, the candle bush (Senna alata), cork screw gingers, hibiscus, and various other shrubs and herbs. I weeded the old mugwort from mugwort patch. There are already lots of little baby variegated mugworts coming up. Finally I turned the raised bed and compost pile.

I've been looking through my seed box and have pulled a few items to get started in the raised be this week. I'm going to give butternut squash, amaranth, red clover, okra and watermelon a go in the raised bed. I have various other seeds to start in pots including holy basil, agrimony, calendula,tomatos and bell peppers. I think somewhere I have bok choi and parsley seed too.

Wednesday I will get the herbs pruned back and start seeds in the flats I prepared at the Fair Share Garden. I'll be sure to post pictures when things start growing.