After making pans and pans and pans of lasagna for the Party, Suzanne and I had a little bit of play time last night. She had soap paste in the fridge! (How exciting, right?!) I’ve never kept any paste to experiment with later, it was all new to me. And it’s the easiest way to [...]

What’s the difference between homemade liquid soap and homemade bar soap besides the consistency? The type of lye that’s used in each one. By combining fatty acids and Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH), the sodium actually crystallizes to form a hard bar of soap. In liquid soap, the Potassium Hydroxide (KOH, caustic potash) is soluble, leaving it [...]

Why would I want to make homemade deodorant? Because I can. A few months ago, I noticed (and was a little concerned) on the back of my deodorant “Ask a doctor before use if you have kidney disease” and started researching. Basically, deodorants/antiperspirants contain aluminum (Aluminum Zirconium Tetracholohydrx GLY) which can’t be relieved from your [...]

Homemade soaps, sprays, lotions and now lip balms. One by one, I am crossing store-bought products off my list! You can create your own silky, non-waxy lip balm with just a few ingredients–beeswax, oil, and flavor oils (if you want a tasty balm!). A basic homemade lip balm recipe is 1 ounce Beeswax and 1.7 [...]

I made lotion this past winter just using oils from the kitchen. It worked great! In the winter. Before the coconut oil melted at 76 degrees. Now it’s liquid olive and coconut oils. I have a problem rubbing liquid oil onto my body–it’s a texture thing. So with a couple more ingredients, I’ve been experimenting [...]

It seems to be late in the season, but the mosquitoes are out full force here now. I’ve been waiting! I needed to try out my recipe of natural homemade mosquito repellent. It must be my sweet, sweet blood they love because I can be hit when no one else is, so I just knew [...]

With winter comes dry and sometimes cracked skin–very, very painful for many people. Like with cooking, I read labels now. Read the label on the back of your favorite lotion. They all contain oils…and many other ingredients you can’t pronounce. We don’t need all of those ingredients. In one product, they’re stripping everything out of [...]

I’ve made and sold bars and bars and bars of soap. I have ends left–sort of like bread heels–that adorn our sinks. There are all sorts of flavors of soaps at the sinks. One of the drawbacks–the kids have issues when using the bar soap. I have to break the bars up so the kids [...]

I had lots of soap scraps left when I made my Mini Cookie Cutter Soaps. I wasn’t exactly sure if I could just roll them back out like a cookie dough and cut more soaps or not. So I tried! First, I heated them at medium power in the microwave for 3 minutes. Then I [...]

I have a recipe to share with you! I’ve been experimenting with different base recipes by superfatting. Superfatting (sometimes referred to as a lye discount) is either adding an extra amount of oil into your soap recipe but keeping the lye amount the same, or using the same amount of oil and less lye. It [...]