Homemade Soap Tutorial

 

I shared this post over a year ago on another blog.  I love using my homemade soap so I thought I'd share it here!

This past Friday I spent the day with a dear friend and she showed me how to make homemade soap! I had been researching and trying to learn about making my own soap but I was a little nervous about trying it myself, so when I realized I knew someone who made soap I jumped on the opportunity to learn.

There are many different ways to make soap, different recipes, and you can be creative to your hearts content with how you'd like to personalize each batch of soap with scents or liquids or add-ins. I'm looking forward to making more batches in the future but for now here is what we did:

We made a couple batches, the first was made with raspberry tea (for the liquid), melonberry scent and we added dried raspberry leaves for look and texture.
The second batch we used coffee (for the liquid), vanilla extract for added scent and coffee grounds.

The recipe we used:

4 c. Water (or goat milk or herbal tea)
Stainless Steel Container
48 oz. Shortening (non-hydrogenated)
32 oz. Coconut Oil
16 oz. Olive Oil
12 oz. Lye (slightly heaping 1 1/4 c.)

(*have vinegar on hand to neutralize any lye that gets on skin. *Coconut oil makes it lather nicely and makes the soap harder)

First get everything together.

Grease pan, waxed paper or molds with extra shortening.

Cut shortening & coconut oil into smaller chunks to make them easier to add.

Put 4 c. liquid into pot (water or tea at room temp., goat milk cold.

Carefully pour lye into liquid.

**Never pour liquid onto the lye and wear gloves to protect your skin. If the lye touches your skin flush with vinegar immediately. Also, because of the chemical reaction between the liquid and lye and the fumes that it creates you may want to do this part outside.

Stir carefully with a stick blender.
The chemical reaction from the lye & water heats the liquid.


Add the shortening a little at a time while stirring.

Add coconut oil at room temperature and continue stirring.

Add olive oil and continue stirring.

Add any extras such as oats, essential oils, spices, etc.


Use stick blender to stir until soap begins to "trail" or "trace".
Be watching carefully as it sets up quickly and you want to pour into pan or mold while still liquid.

Finally, pour into greased mold or pan.

Cover with a lid and blanket so it cools slowly.
Check every 30 minutes.

Cut into bars when it is solid enough.
Cover again until soap is completely solid.
When soap is completely hard, stack and let them cure for at least 2 weeks before using.
Enjoy!

Pleasantly Surprised

Have I told you lately how much I love juicing?!  Nope, not lately enough.  Because I do.  I love juicing.  (check out my other favorite juices here) And I love the way I feel after drinking a glass of fresh juice.  You can't even begin to compare it to 'juice' that you buy in the store.  Even if it says 100% juice it's still lost so many of the nutrients that you get from fresh juice.  And when you juice you have the added benefit of adding in vegetables.  I try to keep my ratios 60% to 80% veggies to 40% to 20% fruits. 

Thus let me introduce to you the 'green juice'

Yeah that's right... green juice.

Okay I love juicing but I had not been brave enough to try a green juice.  I mean really, how good could it really taste?  It's mostly veggies... like kale veggies... Let's just say I was skeptical.  I love my green smoothie that you can check out here, but it has coconut milk in it!

Well, I finally braved the green juice... and... it was good!  No, not just good, it was great! 

I had no idea!

Now I'm not saying that you should go and drink a glass of green juice after you have a glass of extra chocolaty chocolate milk but that's the whole point of juicing anyway... health benefits and better choices. 

So here's my new green juice recipe that is totally worth trying for yourself.  You just might be pleasantly surprised just like I was!

Juice:
6 Kale leaves
5 Celery stalks
1 Cucumber
2 Green Apples
1/2 Lemon
1 piece of Ginger


Oh, and my kids loved it!

In Case You Didn't Know

I'm sharing this bit of information and our experience in case you didn't know about it.  I was in that same boat a few years ago until a friend told me about it and shared her story.  I was sold.  And I never would have known had she not.  So thank you El for sharing with me.  I must say, once I tried it, I loved it! 

What in the world am I talking about you ask?

Cloth Diapering.

Yep you heard correctly.  I love using cloth diapers! 

We first started using them with McKenzie and due to the events of this past summer, when we moved into the camper we made the decision to switch back to disposable since we didn't really have room for the diapers and our washing availability was limited.  And to be honest I was a little hesitant to break them back out once we moved into our house.  I had gotten use to disposable.  But I finally did and my first thought was, "Why in the world did I wait so long?!" 

Okay, if you are like me, when I first heard 'cloth diapers' you imagine your grandma hanging layers of cloth on a clothes line outside, hours of work, large safety pins that you could pierce your precious baby's skin with and nasty scrubbing of baby poo in the toilet.  Or something along those lines.

Let me tell you, that is not the case, or it doesn't need to be.  The new world of cloth diapers is ingenious. 

There are tons of options out there for cloth diapers.  I'm going to share with you the kind we use.  FuzziBunz.  There are others, each mom you talk to will probably love the brand she uses.  But I'm going to talk about FuzziBunz cloth diapers because it's what we use.  Go figure. 

First off, they are super cute!  And colors galore!  Other brands I believe even have prints, but I'm not into that, just solid colors, simple, it's what I like.  I checked out the web site a little while back a noticed some new colors and I was tempted to buy them just because of that.  I'm not in need of any but they are just so cute! 

So, how do they work?!  Without all the drama.

Here's what the shell looks like.

Each Diaper comes with 2 inserts.  A small and a large one.

The FuzziBunz are made with snaps, which I might add, I love!  There are cloth diapers made with velcro but velcro will snag clothes and an assumption is that the velcro would grow weak.  The snaps on the FuzziBunz are extremely durable and strong.  I have never had one snap open while my kiddos are wearing them. 

The snaps are adjustable so the diaper will grow with the baby.  It will fit an infant up to a toddler.

With three snaps on each side to get a perfect fit.

To make sure there are no leaks there is adjustable elastic for each leg.

So you can fit the size of your babies leg.

There is an opening at the back of the diaper for the inserts. 

You can choose which ones, small and/or large, and how many to put into the diaper.

Here it is with an insert in.  Now the diaper is ready to be put on your baby!

Alright, so yeah, getting it on is not the messy part.  What about that, you ask.

Well first off, if you're changing diapers in the first place, even disposable, you're already dealing with everything that goes along with that.  There aren't many extra steps with a cloth. 

For wipes, we tried using cloth wipes but we found that it was a bit to much work than we wanted to deal with.  You had to have cloth wipes available and a pray bottle with water to get them moist.  So we just decided that using regular wipes worked best for us and then we just throw them away.

If the diaper is just wet then you just take out the inserts, fold up the diaper and stick it in the dirty diaper bag.  Here's our cloth diaper bag. 

With handles to hang it up.. We keep ours out of sight in the laundry room.

Like I said, just take the inserts out,

Fold it up and stick it in the diaper bag.  Then of course go wash your hands, the outside shell stays dry, its the water barrier, but the inserts are wet and you just barely have to touch them.

Well, here's where you might have a little extra work.  If the diaper is filled with #2.  But I promise it's not that bad.  All you need is one of these...

A diaper sprayer.  We bought ours off Amazon.  And it just hooks up to your water source to the toilet and hangs on the side or can be attached to the wall.

Just turn it on or off,

Get the sprayer,

And hold your diaper over the toilet and spray it off.  You don't have to scrub anything or get your hands dirty.  To be honest I hardy have to even use my diaper sprayer.  Most time I just dump the #2 into the toilet and I never get my hands dirtier than what they would by changing a disposable diaper.  (Sorry, TMI for some of you.  Just trying to keep it real and share with you what it's really like.  I promise it's not that bad.)

I wash my diapers every 2 to 3 days.  And this is totally easy and clean once again.

The bottom of the dirty cloth diaper bag has a zipper.

So all you have to do is unzip the bottom of the bag,

And dump it into the washer.  Once again without getting your hands dirty.

And you hardly use any detergent.  1 Tbsp. detergent.  That's all! 

They come out perfectly clean after washing.  A few, over time have gotten a little stained but all you have to do is hang them in the sun for the afternoon and the stains will disappear! 

The fabulous news.... how much you will save!!!  An average of  2,000 dollars per child in disposables.  And just like I'm doing, you can use the cloth diapers for multiple children.  That's hard to beat, with only a few extra steps that are not really much harder or time consuming from disposables. 

So just so you know you have options when it comes to diapers. 

And I just can't get over how cute my baby is wearing them!

Okay, there is one downside of cloth diapers for me.

They are more bulky.  They really fill out their clothes and there is the possiblity of needing a size bigger than they are for their bottoms.  But it also makes for a soft landing if they fall down on their bums! 

So, if you didn't know about the options as far as cloth diapers go I hope this was imformative for you.  And I hope more encouraging that cloth diapers are a great option, than making the idea of them even more repulsive. 

Check out our cloth daipers here: FuzziBunz.

From E.R. to Allergy Testing

From the emergency room to allergy testing and all to no avail. 

About a month ago McKenzie and I ended up in the emergency room.  It was morning, I had gotten the kids up and we went to the kitchen and Zeke and Kenzie sat up at the bar to eat breakfast like any other morning.  I fed them their usually breakfast, a banana and yogurt, but this particular morning I gave them 'cherry' yogurt and that flavor was a first.  They ate their food quickly and I wiped them up with a clean rag, turned away for a minute and when I turned back and looked at McKenzie my first thought was "I don't think I wiped her face that hard."  I immediately went to go look at her face to see what was wrong and I realized she was having an allergic reaction.  Her face wasn't red from me wiping it but from hives that were beginning to break out on her face and hands.  In between the phone calls to the doctors office, Nate, my mom and the Paulson's (to see if they could watch my other kids while I took Kenzie to the E.R.) and getting everything ready to go, I kept watching her closely and asking her if she could breath.  Thankfully it was just hives and they went away rather quickly.

You can kinda notice the rash on her face and hands.

Hives on her hands.

Also on her feet, but they never were on her chest or back.

My poor sweet girl, the one prone to ailments.

I called the doctors office and the nurse told me to go to the E.R. so then I called the Paulson's to see if they could come and watch Zeke and Janessa, which they promptly came over so I could leave with McKenzie.

At the hospital

By the time we made it to the hospital after our 15 minute drive into town the hives and rash were faded and almost gone. She sure didn't look like she needed to be there. And apparently benadryl is essential to keep in your medicine cabinet at home. After we checked out from the hospital I made a stop at CVS to pick up a bottle.

So after all that happened, I quickly made an allergy testing appointment for McKenzie.  Funny, at the time I thought I should have originally made our first allergy testing appointment for McKenzie instead of Ezekiel (which you can read about his testing here) since we had just had him tested for allergies and his results all came back negative and apparently McKenzie was allergic to something, hence the hives and rash!

Well we had her tested and the results were also negative... what?!?!!  She was tested for banana, dairy and cherry.  Negative, nothing.  Which I suppose is actually a good thing, but something did make her break out in hives, so what was it?  Probably a die in the yogurt, or one of those crazy odd ingredients that you can't even pronounce the name of and they can't really test for those.  Oh brother!  So I'm thinking homemade yogurt, maybe. 

Anyways, she had a bit of a rougher visit than Zeke, aside from being painfully shy with strangers the doctor was a male, and all you who know McKenzie know that males are not her favorite.  (That's why I took pictures of her on your lap Brian, because you just don't see that everyday, it's pretty much a major breakthrough for her if that happens and it must be documented!)  Well, that and Zeke kept reminding her that she was going to get poked, over and over again.  This all did not add up to a great combination and a little muscle was required to get her to lay down on the table.  But once we got her there she was a trooper and made it through the drawing and poking and waiting pretty well, with only a small pond few shed tears!

Waiting for the poking to begin...

Of all times to have to wait for forever, I had all 3 kids with me and it was during nap time! 

Toys, and snacks and more snacks and more snacks.

Getting drawn on.

Getting poked, I think all the build up was worse than the actual moment.

My sad girl who just wanted her Mommy to make it all go away.

Waiting for the results...

still waiting...

McKenzie's crying and wants me, Janessa's crying and wants me, Zeke's a boy and just wants to touch everything.  God I think you missed a couple extra arms when you made us moms!

What a trooper.

A little sister love.

So the good news, the kids do not have allergies!!  That I am truly thankful for.

It still makes me a little nervous not knowing what caused the reaction for McKenzie, but I am now prepared with benadryl on hand!

And what I am still unsure of: how to handle an extremely shy little girl.  I feel like we've taken two steps backwards in this area recently.  She wouldn't even let the doctor look in her mouth with his little flashlight, I mean would not open her mouth, I had to force her head up so he could look into her nose and when he just looked at her... she could barely handle it.  Her solution to it all: mommy.  I'm having flashbacks to infancy days with my Kenzie girl... help!!