Soapmaking Fun

At the end of January Coleman and I, along with a few other families went deep into the Aptos woods and up a mountain to make soap. Another homeschooling mama was gracious enough to invite parents from our homeschooling community to share in soap making for the day. Never having made soap Coleman and I were very eager to learn. The big block we made still sits in our studio awaiting the six weeks required for it to cure. Lye was involved so it was a potentially dangerous procedure, though no one was hurt this day. I am eager to try it again with a little less chaos surrounding the process and an essential oil or two to spruce up the bacon fat aroma.

There were so many wonderful things going on this day. My favorite part was that there were so many people around and the kids were playing together, chickens and dogs were wandering, moms were helping each other and there was general cheer. Coleman met a couple new boys who he really enjoyed spending time with. I was wishing for Max, but he was at school, perhaps this summer...It was all good.

Here's what we used in our soap:
3 cups water
1 1/4 cup lye
12 cups rendered fat (we used bacon fat from a local restaurant)
2 cups goats milk
2 Tbs olive oil
.5 ml cinnamon essential oil (it wasn't really enough, I could have tripled the amount or more)

Because this is a dangerous process, I won't actually go into it. But I can recommend a great site that will give you all the safety tips and directions on how to go about doing this: Soap Queen's four part video on cold process soap making is the perfect beginning step in learning how to make soap. There are a lot of safety precautions you have to take and she goes over all of them. We were way lower tech than the Soap Queen, we just used spoons to stir (I used a wooden one, but you should use a stainless steel one). But we did use gloves, eye protection and face masks to protect our lungs. We also did this outside where the ventilation was good. My next soap is going to have coconut fat in it and aloe...