Welcome to Century Farmhouse®!

The Creative Connection Event

 
During the past week we've been frantically wrapping 800 pieces of the new ASPIRE! soap for The Creative Connection Event being held in St. Paul, MN, September 15 -17.  Since we couldn't be part of it this year, the next best thing was to make certain our soap would be there!

 As we were wrapping, I gave some thought to how this soap came to be.  Sometimes an idea for a soap comes to me in a flash, sometimes it is inspired by travel, or art, or music, or the written word. 

Last year's Creative Connection Event pulsed with energy and creativity.  We met Mary Jane Butters and Heather Bailey and Amy Butler and founders Nancy Soriano and Jo Packham; we met women in the publishing business, and women who had taken ideas from the drawing board to store selves.  We shopped the Handmade Marketplace and worked there too.  I demonstrated soap making - making the INSPIRE! soap - one created exclusively for the 2010
event.  INSPIRE! had a soft, sweet, floral scent, and it's inspiration was the list of ideals and values of the entrepreneurial spirit - symbolized by the Victorian Language of Flowers. 

This year when I asked co-founders Nancy Soriano and Jo Packham what they thought about having a second soap for the event, we agreed that the new soap should shout "Success!" with a sparkling, irresistible scent. 

One of the fun parts of the Event is the bag of swag - and each attendee who receives a bag this year will have a travel-sized piece of ASPIRE! tucked inside of it.  We hope you enjoy it!  And enjoy the fabulous line-up of speakers and classes at this year's Connection.

ASPIRE! is designed exclusively for The Creative Connection, and is the sequel to 2010's INSPIRE! soap.  It's bright and bold lemongrass, rosemary, & mint scent is exciting and invigorating, and celebrates the effort and excitement and passion of creating a business of talent. 

That's what The Creative Connection Event is all about. 

Lavender in many ways

Lavender.

The word brings to mind soft colors, soft scents, and memories of soft, sweet hugs from grandmothers.  It also evokes sun-dappled fields of lavender growing in far-away places.

Ahhh, lavender. 

For our lavender grower in Port Angeles, Washington, August is a time of sweet smells of harvest.  The beautiful grosso lavender is drying in Joanna's shed, and the light, fragrant Royal Velvet culinary lavender is not far behind. 

Down the road, our lavender wand maker is hard at work crafting exquisite sachets of lavender using only ribbons and freshly harvested stems.  A lavender wand will hold its scent a long time - nearly 10 years - and is so pretty that it is hard not to want several for drawers and closets.  Imagine pairing antique pillowcases and a beautiful wand as a wedding or shower gift.  Oooh, pretty!  

Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to taste lavender cookies for the first time.  They were sublime.  In celebration of all things lavender, I'll share my recipe with you - I didn't make the first lavender cookies I ate, but I've made them since and they are wonderful!  You do need to be careful to use culinary lavender in the recipe.  If you have lavender growing in your garden, taste a tiny bud.  If it tastes like soap (strong, bitter lavender) it is the type of lavender grown for scent and oil.  Make potpourri of that!  If it tastes light and sweet - like lavender - it will be perfect for culinary purposes.  The recipe below is my adaptation of a Pecan Shortbread recipe that first appeared in the 1992 edition of Better Homes & Gardens' Christmas Cookies magazine.

 

Lavender Shortbread Cookies - my version!

1 1/4 cups flour

3 Tblsp. caster sugar (very fine cane sugar)

1/2 cup butter (don't try to substitute anything else!)

2 tsp. dried culinary lavender buds

1/2 tsp. vanilla

melted chocolate (optional) (use high-quality dark chocolate - mmmm!)

Prep:

If you'd like the lavender flowers to be tiny bits in your cookies, whirr them in a spice or coffee grinder for a few seconds. 

If you don't have caster sugar, regular cane sugar can be whirred in a food processor or coffee grinder to a fine consistency.

Combine:

flour and sugar in a bowl.  Cut in butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs, or work the butter into the flour and sugar with your fingers.  The mixture should start to cling.  Stir in lavender.  Sprinkle with vanilla.  Form the mixture into a ball; knead until smooth - but not too much!  The mixture should be a bit dry and crumble a little.  Too much handling will make the cookies rather tough.

Roll:

the dough into a log about 1 inch in diameter on a lightly floured surface.  If it is easier to work with a smaller amount of dough, use only 1/2 of the ball at a time.  Cut into 1/4-inch-thick coins.  Place about 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake:

at 325 degrees F. for 15 - 20 minutes, or until the cookies just barely begin to brown.  Cool on wire rack.  If desired, dip one side of each cookie in melted chocolate.  Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Mmmmmm.

 

Of froggies and soap

Imagine a bright and sunshiny day filled with fun and friends.  Yesterday was such a day, and we had a lot of fun learning about soap at Froggie's Child Development Center in Richfield, Wisconsin.  My new little friends eagerly spoke about when and how to wash their hands.  They asked great questions about soap, and had a lot of fun smelling soaps that were scented like familiar foods...lemonade (Rosemary & Lemons), spearmint gum (Wild Mint & Maple Syrup), oatmeal cookies (Maple Sap with Oatmeal & Vanilla), black jelly beans (Black Tea & Anise).  We also smelled soaps that reminded us of a walk in the woods (The Woodlands), and of Christmas trees (Fir Forest).

 

But the most fun of all was getting really messy and sticky with soap that was soft enough to cut into shapes  - froggie shapes, of course!

 

 

Many thanks to Susan Schaller and the staff of Froggie's for the invitation to share - and thank you to the children.  You know a lot about soap, and you really know how to wash your hands!  Your lovely card is hanging in the studio!

-Ann Marie