My First Attempt at Soap-Making

soap-making
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soap-making

This was my first attempt at soap-making. It smells good enough to eat with pure vanilla essential oil, real cocoa powder, oatmeal, raw honey, goat’s milk powder, and coffee grinds as ingredients. I like this “making my own stuff”  thing. My girls helped me with the Vanilla Sundae recipe. It was fun and troublesome at the same time. They could not work in the kitchen with me without fighting, so we had to separate them into time slots.

Taylor – 15 minutes of soap-making with mom
Alexis – 15 minutes of soap-making with mom
Taylor – 15 minutes of soap-making with mom

I think you get the point! I hope I still have my sanity by the time they are grown and gone. Seriously, I love them to death. They are best friends and worst enemies at the same time. Weird and nutty. That is our family! Anyway, Alexis and Taylor gave a few bars of our soap to their teachers as “thank you” gifts. Now we are using the rest.

How do I like it? Well, I tried the melt and pour process. It is fairly easy and slightly messy. I bought a few pounds of clear glycerin soap base and suspension glycerin soap base and then followed a couple recipes from Soap-making, The Natural Way by Rebecca Ittner. I like her book. No, it is not all natural and organic. But it was a simple introduction for me to the world of soap-making. I like making something my family can use. I like essential oils and herbs and coffee grinds. Next time I will try another approach, rebatching all natural cold-process soap. Three reasons. First, I want to make an all natural soap for my family. The melt and pour soap base I bought is not all natural. You can buy organic melt and pour soap but I did not. Second, I think my husband is allergic to something in this soap base… because he has been itching since he started using my soap. Maybe some ingredient is just too harsh for his skin. Third, I like trying new things and the rebatch process seems kinda cool. Look it up online. Perhaps I will come back to the melt and pour process in the future and just buy an organic soap base. Who knows? I need to find something I can make that doesn’t make Brad itchy.

Why don’t I try cold-process soap-making? Or hot-process soap-making? Because I don’t want to fool with the lye. Lye can be dangerous if it is not handled properly. I have a small kitchen with three active kids and I don’t think we need to attempt lye at this time. That doesn’t mean that next month I won’t change my mind and write a blog about using lye.

Last but not least, my soap looks nothing like the soap in her book. Her soap is pretty. Mine is just good-smelling soap. And even though it makes Brad itchy it seems to be working for the rest of us. I think Brad is just being difficult and secretly rebelling against my home-making attempts ;)

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