I thought it might be a good idea to give you an update on our soap making endeavours.

Over the past few weeks, we've made a few more batches of soap with the intention of giving bars out as Christmas gifts (and to of course keep some for ourselves!).

First, we made our regular soap recipe but used a snickerdoodle scented fragrance oil to make it a bit more christmasy. It is the most delicious smelling soap my nose has ever sniffed!! My husband and I have random cookie cravings every time we get a whiff of the stuff.

The next time we got together, we made 2 batches of soap (actually we made 4 and 2 the last time because we decided to double the batches to make thicker bars). The two batches we made were again our regular recipe with  pine tree and peppermint scented oils. To me, it smells like just like Christmas. I just love it, and keep lifting the lid on the soap to let the scent fill my kitchen. It is just wonderful.

We also tried a new recipe, called "Queen of the Nile". This one is an oatmeal, milk and honey soap. Here is the recipe:

198 grams sodium hydroxide

12.8 oz distilled water

1 pound olive oil

3.5 oz wheat germ oil

1 pound coconut oil

14 oz palm oil

1.5 oz beeswax

1/2 cup oatmeal

6.4 oz buttermilk

12 grams grapefruit seed extract

10 teaspoons honey

7 teaspoons pure essential oil or fragrance oil

Here is where I am going to tell you some things we learned while making this soap. We learned that things don't have to be exact. I take on this theory when I am cooking. I never follow a recipe exactly, I almost always substitute or add or subtract or simply come up with something based on what is in my fridge at the time. We sort of had to take this method on with the Queen of the Nile soap because we ran out of one of the essential oils and had to add some extra wheat germ oil and olive oil to make up for it. We also felt the soap needed more oatmeal, so we just added some and we even added more fragrance oil to make up for the not so sweet smell of the wheat germ oil. Anyway, we were a bit nervous because the first few times we made soap we felt we had to follow the directions exactly for fear of ruining an entire batch of soap. Even though we have yet to cut and use the soap, just by looking at it now, it looks (and smells) like perfection.



Our Winter White pine and peppermint soap, and our Queen of the Nile soap.



Our Snikerdoodle Soap - can you smell it?!