But.... we made soap yesterday!

ok so I got a new keyboard! hurray! I was so excited to find out that I didn't need to buy a new mac keyboard for my computer I could just get a regular keyboard with a usb plug-in.  Even better if your in-laws have an extra one laying around their office :)

here is the link for my last post on that Thanksgiving frame printable.  It's free and all I did was print it on plain paper and cut it down to fit an 8x10 frame that I had and then I painted it with some paint I had on hand.  done.  my kind of Thanksgiving decorating and I might just keep it up because I love the quote.

ok so on to the soap...
On Thursday I whipped up a new batch of my laundry detergent, because I finally used it all up (2 months worth of laundry for about 4 dollars worth of ingredients...and I do a TON of laundry).

  I am still really loving this laundry soap, if it has one problem it is that it doesn't have perfumes in it (which is actually why I am using it because of my sensitive skin) but since it doesn't have any perfume in it is not very forgiving if you forget your clothes in the washer all day...or weekend.  So if you depend on the over perfumed power of tide to keep your clothes smelling fresh this might not be the detergent for you.

On Friday my husband asked me what my plans were that night and I said I was going out with the girls for dinner and then coming home and making soap, and he said..."But we made soap last night!"  Have those words ever been said by anyone else?  I don't know but I thought it was funny that we have become the type of people who make soap more than once in a week.  So we decided I would make soap and he would watch a movie I wasn't interested in.  Marriage is all about compromises right? :)

I had been wanting to try making my own body wash for the same reasons that I was interested in homemade laundry soap.  Hives suck.

 So while Peter watched Tron: Legacy I grated two bars of soap into a big pot.  I chose Yardley oatmeal and almond because I know it doesn't bug my skin, it smells great and i can get it at the Dollar tree :)  (this is something I really like about this recipe, you can pick whatever soap you want, so if you have a favorite bar soap that doesn't come in body wash you are all set)

  The recipe calls for 2 cups of grated soap and I found that each bar was a little more than 1 cup so I just stopped grating as the bar of soap got small enough that I feared for my fingers.

 Just a warning...this bottle is $17.50 BUT...I will probably be able to make 20 batches of body wash with it and each batch makes a little over a gallon so you really are only using less than a dollars worth of Glycerin per gallon of body wash. Glycerin is a skin protecterant so I wouldn't recommend skipping it, it's what makes it so body wash won't dry your skin out as much as bar soap will.

 So the original recipe is to only use 1/2 gallon of water and I was able to fill these 4 bottles with that much, HOWEVER when the soap cooled it was almost as solid as the original bar of soap so I scooped that soap out and melted it down and added another 1/2 gallon of water and that made a much more liquid like body wash.  It ended up being the consistency of a creamy body wash, and I bet the type of bar soap you choose will affect the consistency of the end product so I would start with a 1/2 gallon and see how your soap reacts but for the soap I used I needed a whole gallon....which resulted in these 4 bottles being totally full plus another 1/2 gallon storage container. (2 dollars worth of soap and maybe a dollars worth of glycerin and a gallon of water= more than a gallon of body wash...cha ching!)

Oh and I love this body wash!  It smells great, it feels great, and it rinses nicely without a film left on your skin, so I'm calling it a success!  I'm definitely keeping this recipe.