Welcome to December – the best month of the year! This month has so many of my favourite celebrations – my mum’s birthday (today), Sasja’s gotcha day (16th), my dating anniversary with Raymond (19th, 32 years), my birthday (21st), Christmas (25th), and New Year’s Eve (31st), which is also the day I was adopted, something I celebrated with my parents every year, commemorating when we became a family! So much good stuff to enjoy!
The last five weeks have been a bit of a struggle for me health wise. Back in 2024, I shared that I had a diagnosis of ME/CFS and fibromyalgia, and it flares up from time to time. I have a whole bunch of great things to help me heal – medications, Botox for my headaches, trigger point injections, epidurals, massage therapy, exercises, my heating pad, topical cream, and so on – which I’m actively doing and things are getting better, but it takes time, which is boring and annoying. Things are getting better as I write this, so I’m hopeful I’ll be doing better by the end of the week. 🤞
I did quite a lot of work in November. I shared almost 14,000 words, wrote a lot in four different e-books I’m working on, did a ton of research for my oils & butters reference e-book, and created posts for two new series – a beginners’ guide to the chemistry of emulsions and six ingredient lotions – which is a lot, but a lot of it hasn’t made it to the site or into a finished e-book yet.
Oh, and I finished up October’s e-book, which was over 28,000 words. So 42,000 words – another banner month!
And I took a course on making toothpaste, which was surprisingly interesting. I’m unlikely to make my own, but it was great information on creating textures and increasing/decreasing viscosity.
What do I have planned for December?
We’ll continue the cold process emulsifier series through December – Formulating Friday cold process emulsifier series: SEPILIFE™ NUDE and SIMULGEL™️ EG – increasing the viscosity by adding a butter (part 7 with formulas and new instructions), this is the last post I shared – with a few more posts on the current emulsifier and maybe the next one by the end of the month.
We’re continuing the Chemistry Thursday introduction to cosmetic chemistry series/course through the month.
I have a six ingredient formula lotion series – a short one for now – where we can make simpler lotions with the ingredients you likely have in your workshop.
And I’m sure Santa has a few more goodies to share here for things you might like to gift or use yourself!
I’d love your opinion about this series…
I’m thinking about and getting ready for the new year for posts, and wondered if you’d be interested in seeing this series – One ingredient, five products formulation series: Are you interested in seeing this again? – if so, pop on over to that post or comment here if you’re interested and maybe make a suggestion or two for the ingredient of choice?
Don’t forget we have these monthly posts for subscribers…
Open to all Foundation, Formulation, and Innovation subscribers: Duplicating requests and Ingredient substitution ideas?
Open to Formulation and Innovation subscribers: Monthly Q&A – ask any question you might have about formulas, formulating, ingredients, and more! I love when you share your thoughts, so share any questions you have over there!
Thanks for joining us in December! Hope you’re having a great month filled with loads of formulating and fun!