Since our house was a little messy last Christmas and I didn’t decorate, this year I insisted everyone come to our house to open presents.  It made me excited to decorate and also gave us a kick in the butts to finish those lingering items on our home improvement list.  We spent this past weekend getting things ready and after the new year I’ll share all those projects we’ve been doing.

For now, I’ll share our Christmas card we sent out this year.  We didn’t have any fancy photos of us like last year, so I went with the infograph year-in-review style.

The biggest thing to happen this year was obviously our kitchen remodel, that’s why I mentioned it, but also made the joke about all the dinners made at home.  We seriously have never eaten at home so often!

We had to reach to think about things for each of us to include about ourselves, and one of the things I kept thinking was, “Anyone who reads the blog already knows most of this stuff about us!” so I included the blog address.  Most of my readers are my family, but sometimes they forget to check in!  I also noticed that I’ve written more posts this past year, than any of the previous years.  Not news worthy really, it’s just interesting to me!

It also shows that I really enjoy this little community created here and I really like sharing what we’re up to.  And, people keep visiting so I’m going to keep sharing!

Thanks for following along this year and from the Danks’, Mike, myself, and Benelli.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

You have to know by now that we like making things.  We hang out with people who also like making things.  So, it may not come as a surprise that Mike and one of his buddies decided to try to make a little money from making things.  What are they making?  BEER SOAP! 

Actually, if we’re being honest, making money was not the main objective.  Mike and our friend Aaron were enjoying some beer (don’t all great ideas start out this way?), specifically their homebrew, when they came up with something that could be made with their homebrew, soap. Let me clarify, we’re talking Fight Club type soap operation here.  Okay, maybe not exactly like that, but I have to make it sound manly and to assure everyone they’re not over here making rose-petal-scented sea-shell-shaped soaps.  It’s manly soap, made with real beer!

The problem making soap is that you make an average of 12 bars per batch, and even the dirtiest person doesn’t go through that much soap, so we decided to sell it.  We came up with a name, a logo, and registered with the state.

Introducing Oast House Apothecary.

An oast house, or hop kiln, is a building designed for drying hops as part of the brewing process.  (Our garage becomes a temporary oast house come hop harvesting).

I’m not really sure why I haven’t mentioned this little adventure of ours until now.  But, we’re gearing back up for the holiday season and I figured it was as good of a time as any! 

Why beer soap?

Soap is made from three basic ingredients: oil, water, and lye.  Instead of water, we use beer.  The beer is heated during the saponification process (the chemical process that creates the soap) and loses some of it’s aroma, but for each beer soap, we add ingredients and fragrances to mimic that beer type.  

For example, our Honey Brown Oatmeal is made with a honey brown lager, as well as real honey, oatmeal (which is a great natural moisturizer and mild exfoliate), and cinnamon.

The boys look at each beer type, break down it’s components, and create each batch of soap to reflect that style.  One that mimics even the visual, our Chocolate Black and Tan:

The boys are in charge of soap production, and I handle the packaging, labeling, and shipping.  Aaron is also an accountant by trade, so he’s been a life-saver with all the annoying stuff like taxes.  Mike’s skills come in handy when building the molds and stands.

It’s a lot of fun and we’ve enjoyed the process of learning not only about soap, but trying to come up with new ideas and keep up with some seasonal batches as well. 

As I imagined, over the last year we noticed a majority of our sales are women either buying for themselves, or for the guys in their life, so this year we came up with some more feminine smelling soaps utilizing a girl’s best friend, wine!  

We sell on Etsy, as well as a couple local shops, mostly wine/beer supply stores.  We just restocked the Etsy shop, and have a couple more batches curing ready to be added soon.  So if you’re looking for a unique stocking stuffer for that beer-lover in your life, or just like the idea of a fun, handmade product try a BRÜ BAR from Oast House Apothecary.

Also, like us on Facebook to keep up with new offerings, as well as giveaways!

And, as a thank you to all my readers, please enjoy 10% off any of our soap products using the code DANKYOU in our shop!

I’m pretty happy with our main floor right now.  The kitchen and dining room remodel was one big upgrade, while the living room took a little longer, with multiple changes along the way.  I feel like they are finally the adult, slightly masculine, modernized space that I’ve been working towards. 

Now that those spaces are taken care of, I can move my focus to other rooms.  First on my list is the guest room.  When we moved in almost 5 years ago, my main focus was getting the paint on the walls, and using what we had to fill up the rooms.  I didn’t always get the paint colors right, but I’ve felt good about working with what we had.  My major mistake was trying to complete entire rooms quickly.  I’m now finding I don’t like a lot of the accessories I added in haste just to call the room done.

The guest room is functional and has all the major pieces, but the colors and accessories feel a little immature for our current style.

I’ve never really liked yellow, so I’m not sure why I wanted those pillows so bad.  But those with the light green headboard were bothering me (this is what happens when you take 3 years to make a headboard – you run the risk of changing your design likes).  So I bought some fabric and decided to do something about it!

Since Mike built the headboard to slide onto the bed frame, it was really easy to remove. 

I just ironed my new fabric, still green, but a darker, more saturated color, and stapled it right over the old fabric.  Took maybe 30 minutes.

I also made new pillows.  That’s right I made them, zippers and everything! 

The large shams are made with Nate Berkus Cole Stripe Paramount Ebony fabric from JoAnn’s.  The smaller pillows upfront are made with some handmade hmong batik fabric I bought from eBay.

They come in thin, long “table runner” pieces and I sewed two pieces together to get the right width.  I used a plain linen fabric on the back to save money and fabric.

After 4 pillows I got really good at sewing the zippers.  I used Centsational Girl’s tutorial and it was really easy to follow.

I really liked the deeper colors and the more “mature” patterns.  I’m not sure which pillow formation I like better, but I’m not sure where I would store the actual sleeping gray pillows if they weren’t on the bed.

The other update is a new lamp. 

I found this one on clearance at Target for $3.48!  The gold was actually bright blue, but I gold leafed it.  I really like the texture of the concrete. 

I’m contemplating painting the side table something, maybe black, maybe a dark blue.  Right now it gets a little lost in the window, trim and bedspread.

So there are the updates for now.  I still have to change out the artwork on the picture ledges, and change what’s going on on top of the dresser. 

Unlike before, I’m not in a great hurry though and think it’s best if those changes happen over time with pieces that I really like.