Soap Making

Pinterest has been a beautiful and dangerous addition to my life. What an abundance of wonderful, creative ideas! If only I could quit my real life to spend days on end completing all of the amazing projects! Alas, I'm going to try to commit to not just getting lost in all of the boards but strategically finding ideas that are both useful and feasible for our day to day. Last weekend, in one of my first attempts to do just that, I made us a big old batch of homemade liquid hand soap. Here's my little story in pictures...

The ingredients - empty gallon jug, one bar of soap and glycerin (I found vegetable glycerin at our co-op - no hooves here, my friends!)

First, I grated all of the soap. A bit laborious, but not really that bad.

Then, I combined the grated soap, one gallon of water and 3 tbsp. of the glycerin and brought it to a boil to dissolve the soap. (Note to self - the soap could be thicker - next time I will try more glycerin)

Next I let the soap sit for 12 hours until it cooled/hardened completely. Mine was much harder on top than throughout, so after 12 hours I actually mixed it with my hand mixer. Then I poured it back into the empty gallon jug, which was definitely the most difficult and gloopy part of the whole job!

And voila! The finished product, as spotted in our new bathroom. The soap dispenser is also an idea from Pinterest, but I will be honest, I ended up buying ours at a local antique store. You gotta make choices, people. The soap is okay - not great, but it does the job and was a whole lot of bang for the buck. I will keep perfecting my recipe!