Tag: soapmaking

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Nominated!

Some of you might have spotted in the comments last week when Alia told me she had nominated me for the Beautiful Blogger Award.  I was stunned, humbled, and speechless (hubby liked that part best of all) at the idea of someone wanting to nominate me for my writing.  I am still kind of dazed at the thought to the point it has taken all week to try and write this simple post.  Please accept my sincere thanks to all of you for occasionally stepping into my little soapy corner of Texas to hear my thoughts and follow my adventures with soapmaking.  Now, please follow me thru this as I try to obey the award rules.  I’m sure Mom will be amazed if I follow all of them…

First, I am supposed to thank the person who nominated me.  Alia, are you reading this?  I’m still thanking you again and again!  I am then supposed to reveal seven things about me that most of you would not know before nominating my favorites.  This should be entertaining, right?  Here we go:

1.  I absolutely love food.  I don’t have one favorite thing that I love most of all because there are too many great things to eat.

2.  I have a lot of books at home (more filled bookshelves than I really want to admit) but still max out my library card almost constantly.  Our library has a limit of 75 books checked out at once on one card and that actually became a major problem in my house.  We opened a card for my son and still regularly max out both but somehow don’t incur a lot of late fines at all.  Knock on wood.

3.  I would rather scrub all the floors in the house with a toothbrush than to dust.  I avoid ironing if there is any way I can.  Seriously.  I iron quarterly if I’m forced, twice a year if I can get away with it.

4.  I’ve had gray in my hair since I was in my teens but do not dye it.  It’s still spreading all over my head but that’s life.

5.  I was not a well-behaved teen.  I spent most of high school grounded for one reason or another but mostly because I was hard-headed.

6.  I prefer barefoot or flip-flops.  Drives hubby nuts.

7.  You know that censor in your head that keeps you from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time?  Keeps the inappropriately timed comments from leaping out of your mouth or reminds you to act your age?  Yeah, mine went on vacation years ago and never came back.  Didn’t even send me a postcard or one of those t-shirts.

Now the other hard part.  I enjoy many blogs and tend to wander around them.  I am including AuNaturalEssence in this list even though she nominated me because her blog rocks.  I thought it before she ever did this and I will still send people her way.  In no particular order, I would like to nominate these great blogs and I will hop to notifying them.  Please make some time to stop by their sites as I think you’ll enjoy them too.  I enjoy them for their style, artwork, ideas, outlook on life, and/or hope to be like them one day if I ever finish growing up.

ahardyperspective-

Jennifer’s Handmade Soap-

Sirona Springs Blog-

Neecy’s Necessities–

Au Natural Essence–

Positive Energies-

Damsels in Regress-

Thanks again both to Alia for nominating me and everyone who stops by to visit us here on the blog, on Facebook, or real face to face.  We enjoy having real conversations with everyone and making people laugh a little along the way.  I am still amazed at this honor although I did recover my ability to talk.  (Sorry, honey.)  I will return next week to continue the posts of what treasures are on our drying racks.  Have a great weekend all!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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Laundry Soap Part 2- Pictures!

After my last post, I was asked about trying to put up some pictures of our laundry soap making process.  As some of you know, I am not the most tech savvy person in my household nor am I the best photographer so it took longer than I really would like to admit to make this cooperate.  Please forgive my shortcomings as I attempt to show how we mix up our dry laundry soap batches.  As mentioned before, I take a fairly young soap and shred it.  It sits overnight (sometimes up to 2 days) to dry a little on the rack and then I take over a kitchen counter.

Making dry laundry soap
Making dry laundry soap

The bowl in front has shredded soap and behind it to the left is the washing soda and borax that we add to ours.  (Like our recycled washing soda container there- reduce, reuse, recycle, right?)  That food processor was a great buy that is still kicking after all the abuse it has received.  To the right is my favorite soaping pot with a plastic storage tub behind it.  I prefer towels under my workspace for something like this because it is so easy to clean up after!

Into the mixer goes one cup each of the soap shreds, washing soda, and borax.  I give it a few spins to mix and add in any fragrances we might want at that time.  Sometimes we use none at all, but our favorite is a clean laundry scent.  Go figure, huh?  If you are creating this at home, I will pass the same warning to you as my teacher gave me: let the bowl sit for a minute before you pop open the top!  As you mix these in the mixer, they will give off some powdery residue that you really, really don’t want to breathe or spread around your workspace.  Once the dust settles, the mix is ready to go into the big soap pot.

Dry laundry soap mixed up

After all of the shredded soap has been mixed up and everything has been poured into the big soap pot, I usually will give one or two more stirs in the pot just to make sure all is combined.  We will also adjust the scent as needed.  After it passes inspection all that is left is to place it into buckets for storage.  In this run, I made about three buckets full and we should be set on laundry soap for awhile.  It really does only take about one scoop for our laundry.

Laundry soap into the pot

The scoop in the picture below is just a regular coffe scooper- you might find them in your local dollar stores.  I got mine there over two years ago.  My soap teacher found these buckets in Home Depot and they have been the best for laundry soaps!  (Anna, have I told you lately you rock?)  That faded green thing in the pictures?  I confess that I still prefer to hand shred my soaps and I wear my old gardening glove while doing it so I don’t take off any more chucks of my thumb while I’m rocking out.  Shredding soap is great for thinking time but can be hazardous if you’re not careful or dancing around too much.  Time involved?  Not counting the shredding soap part, you can whip this up and clean the room back within an hour for a batch like this.  Want to try but don’t want to worry about shredding the soap?  We regularly make the laundry soap bases and sell it shredded for you.  You only have to decide which soap base to play with in your kitchen.

Finished laundry soap

Hope you enjoyed my little attempt at pictures here and that it might make you realize just how easy it can be.  Feel free to shoot me any questions you have and I’ll try to answer here on the blog or to your email directly.  Don’t forget you can find our little Facebook page too and catch us there!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy

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Texas Pioneer “Kids”

Texas Pioneer Kids CHA Donation
Texas Pioneer Kids CHA Donation- “It’s a Jungle In There” was created with my child for local fundraiser auction. She designed and I followed her orders. Fun times!

I have had a few questions about our “kids” line and decided to add our explanation to our blog to make it easier.  At this current posting time, we do not have a line of products that are designed for kids only.  All of our soaps, unless specifically marked on the package, are safe for all use on ages.  That means that as long as you only use it externally (on your skin only, please don’t eat my soaps) the entire family may use any soaps.  We will occasionally pour some soaps up into fun shapes or themes but we’re not ready yet for a kid’s only line.

What then IS the Texas Pioneer “Kids” label for?  Soaps created with my children for local donations, in short.  The nature of cold process soap making is not child friendly but my kids seem to love helping my mad scientist tendencies.  The soaping bug has bitten them also, I’m afraid.  They get to occasionally design their own soaps from start to finish and those become the “Kids” projects.  They will pick a melt and pour base, scents, colors, additives, and any mold they desire.  We work together on their projects but it is pretty much their soap.  I can only claim supervisor role as I try to make sure everyone follows safety procedures while cooking and the results are safe for use.  There are some fun and interesting results when the kids get in the kitchen!

We try in our family to teach our children to appreciate what they have and to give back to their community.  We have tied this to letting them have a creative expression in their soapmaking and then sharing it with others.  The “Kids” soap line is almost entirely donated to local charitable groups.  We enjoy spending time together in the kitchen, mixing up something fun, and making memories they can pass on to their future kids.  They select a bar or two to keep out of the batch as a keepsake and then the rest are made into gift sets for charitable fundraisers or we deliver the bars to a local charity or worthy organization.  I am working on finding a local nursing home or other ideas of places who might enjoy these.  Do you have any ideas?  I would love to hear them as the kids have summer soaping plans!

I hope this has helped clear the confusion and not created more.  I must now get back to the soap pot.  Another busy week is ahead!

Happy Washing!

Dorothy