To kick off my new to-do list, I wanted to make my swanky Italian bar soap into some shower gel. Ever since my lovely cousin-in-law (that's YOU, Jimmay!) broke off the soap ledge in our shower, there's not a neat place to put a pretty bar of soap. Plus, we're more of a liquid soap family anyhoo. I mean, it's easier to make a bubble bath with, you know?
- The groovy website that gave me the "recipe" for liquid soap- Savvy Housekeeping- which I found via Pinterest. I have to admit I did a search for this and didn't just come across it while ogling the site.
- A bar of fancy-schmancy lavendar soap my student got me while she was visiting Italy. So pretty!
- A pot, a funnel, a cheese grater and some water.
Recipe says to grate soap, so I grated the soap right into the pot. I added as much water as I could into the pot (the recipe said 10 cups of water, but in my infinite soap-making knowledge, I figured that would be too watery), which was about 5 cups of water.
I heated that concoction up. Imagine that. It got bubbly.
Then I poured this dissolved business into the handy empty bottle I got at Garden of Eden and which was waiting in my toiletries' closet for some good use. (Yes, I have a toiletries' closet. I'm a ballroom dancer. I gots a lots of toilets.) And I poured the remainder into this gallon jug I had previously stored a batch of chicken broth in. That chicken broth had sat in my freezer for awhile until I used it. Even with a thorough cleaning, it still smelled a bit chicken-y. Chicken-lavendar soap, it is!
About an hour after the bottling process, I looked over at my "shower gel" and knew immediately that it was now only slightly-less-solid bar soap. And now, it was packaged in a way to render it nearly useless. Neat!
Clearly, I need more water in my life. Didn't I learn my lesson with the popsicles?
So, "sun soap" it was. I added a bit of water to the proper bottle and filled the gallon jug's empty space with h2O and put the containers outside on my sidewalk in the midday rays. I figured the solar energy would heat my soap up enough for me to shake the crap out of it to combine it. It worked pretty well.
Since the bar soap had some exfoliating seeds in it to start, there's a bit of settling that occurs in between showers, but all in all, it's soap and it gets us clean. I shake it up before I use it and it's all good.
My problem with this handy homemade liquid is that it doesn't lather as much as I'd like. Maybe glycerin (called for in the [colonel's] original recipe) would help that? I didn't use it because that would have meant a trip to the store. Remember? Lazy.
Note to self: read the directions and follow the dang recipe.
Next up? Pretties!
Can you tell what series we're catching G up on?
