Soap...Revisited

Alright, so my soap is FINALLY cured!! I stuck my tongue to it and it did not 'bite' me this time!! But, the problem with the soap is that it is white and discolored quite a bit! I've tried looking on different websites to find out what happened, but I've found NOTHING yet!! I'm starting to get super-duper discouraged! This is my second batch and it is a flop so far, too!! Well, the good thing about it is, I tried the soap and it DOES have a large amount of suds!! It smells too much like, well, soap!! It has an Ivory bar type smell! I used lavender and vanilla and it smells absolutely nothing like that, so, again I'm trying to find something/someone online that can help me with what happened!! There is a great website called teachsoap.com! I love that site, as they will give you recipes and lots of tips, too!!

My Uncured Lye Incident C:

Okay, so the batch turned out AMAZINGLY!!! As I was cutting it this morning, I didn't realize the lye would 'bite' like it did...outcome, one arm bitten by lye when I was cutting my first 'Real' batch of soap!!!

Live and learn I guess!!!

Christmas Gifts for Family

Here are some bath salts I made for Christmas...

Candles...

Ginger Cinnamon Sugar Scrub...

Lavendar Chamomile Bath Milk...

Second Batch of Soap

Okay, so I made another batch of soap!! This one is setting up far better than the first batch that I made late last year!! So, this time I made sure the read the directions CAREFULLY on how to get the temperatures just right for the lye/water and the oils! With the last batch, I didn't let the lye/water cool off enough before I poured them into the oils. So, with that being said, I think this will turn out much better!! I guess we will see tomorrow when I can take them from the pan and cut them to cure.

More Christmas Gifts...

Holiday Glitter Christmas Ornaments...

First batch of soap

Well, of course, just as I suspected, the first batch of soap I made three weeks ago was a flop!!  It's very brittle and although it did lather, somewhat, it has a patch of white on top.  I was afraid to try the 'bite' test on it since those white areas were on there.  

Well, maybe tomorrow I will try making yet another batch!  I guess it is all about trial and error, huh??!

Blaaaaaah Day...

It's been such a blah last couple of days here in our household.  Heather has Winter Color Guard on Monday nights from 6:30-9pm.  Hunter has basketball practice on Tuesday nights.  Heather will start having a second guard practice on Wednesday nights starting in January.  On Thursday's, Heather has choir practice for the Indianapolis Children's Choir.  She has a very busy schedule that keeps all of us moving.  Donovan constantly tells us that he has football practice on Tuesday nights...the same nights Hunter has basketball practice.  How convenient, huh?

My posts on this blog are probably going to be boring, since I have never really done any 'blogging' before and therefore have NO clue on what to blog about!

Last night I made Hunter a pillow on the sewing machine...my new sewing machine!!  He LOVED it!!  It is made out of fleece and is super soft!  The day before, I made Heather a pillow out of flannel material.  She absolutely loved it, too!!  Heather just turned 13 (I feel soooooooo old now) on November 26th.  I cannot believe I have a 13 year old already!  It is just too unbelievable to imagine.  Hunter will be 12 on January 9th and Donovan will be five on June 22nd.

Since I live in Indiana, the weather is too unpredictable.  Per the forecast for the rest of the day, the 'trained weather men' (what an oxymoron) say that it is supposed to get much cooler the rest of the day and snow about 2-4 inches tonight.  Further north of us it will be less snow.  I say BRING IT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I love the snow!  Last winter was an absolute nightmare!  There was ice on the roads, trees, cars, yards, and houses for about five days straight!  The kids missed a whole week of school I believe.  It was definitely a bad winter!  I missed a couple days of work and we had no electricity for almost 24 hours!  It was crazy weather last year that we had!

I guess one thing I can think of that is blog related is that I made my first batch of cold process soap three weeks ago.  It has been 'curing' ever since, so today I will check it to see if it will 'bite' my tongue or if it is soapy like it is supposed to be!  I really hope that it turns out, but the last time I checked it was a week ago and it looked all crumbly.  I am not sure if it will be usable or not.  There is only one way to find out and that will be to check it and let you know what it looks (and tastes) like!

I found it really hard to make that first batch without the older kids around, because Donovan likes to 'help' out and he cannot be near me when I am working with the lye.

Auf wiedersehen