Homemade Soap

I have been saying to my husband the past few weeks, "I'll make the soap soon.  I promise!  Don't go out and buy any."  Well, he didn't and we have been using my shower gel as hand soap the past week!  But today I finally got out and bought the items I wanted for this hand soap.  Here's what I came up with using what I do with my baby bum wipe solution:

1 cup of boiled water

1 T liquid castile soap (I use Dr. Bronner's because I love that it is Fair Trade and all-natural)

1 T olive oil

3 drops essential oil (I used peppermint, but I also saw on the shelf some other fun smells)

In a jar combine all the ingredients and let cool with lid off.  Once it's warm to the touch put the lid on and shake it up. 

I made a bunch all in one batch so that I don't have to make it up that often, otherwise I don't always get around to it right when we need it.  For handsoap it is easiest to use a foaming dispenser, since the soap comes out pretty runny.  My husband wasn't impressed when he first squirted it out and it ran all off his hand...his words, "oh this make your own handsoap is gonna be a lot of fun..."  Right.  So, I have researched a little bit and it looks like xanthinum gum should do the trick to thicken it up...now I have to find some of that stuff.

Other fun ways to use variations of this recipe: 

• I use it for my cloth baby wipes...minus the essential oil and use 2 drops tea-tree oil for the anti-fungal elements.  I put it in a spray bottle, spray the wipes as needed and wash the used wipes along with the cloth diapers.
• use for body wash
• since I use the baby mild unscented Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap it can also be used for baby body wash.

Super easy and super frugal!  I bought the largest bottle of the Dr. Bronner's at a bulk store for $20 which I guess will last me at least 2 years (if not 3 years) using it for hand soap and baby bum wipes.  The tea-tree oil came in a tiny bottle for about $7 and the peppermint essential oil in a small bottle for $8. 

The Diaper Sitch

It's a long weekend and we actually stayed home for a change. Usually we take every chance we can get to get up to my parent's place, in the summer, go camping, or visit family and friends in the States. But this time Kevin said that we needed to stay home, or at least he would and I could go up to my parents with the Babe if I wanted. I opted to stay home with him and then go up to my parents next week.

Kevin has been working around the house, getting things cleaned up, spreading wood chips that we were given to us by a friend and taking coffee breaks with Aletta and I. I on the other hand have been hanging up laundry from our vacation, doing a load of diapers (pictured below) and trying to find ways to save our resources with my maternity leave benefits coming to an end.

Saving your resources and yet not being cheap is a precarious thing. Especially when you are already frugal. Now frugality turns into creativity. I hope to share in the next few blog posts about how my frugal living the past year (which I thought was already creative) worked out in a few areas, and hopefully that will give some of you readers some ideas of your own as you try to be stewardly with your resources.

from left: fuzzi bunz pocket diapers, waterproof diaper pail sack, diaper inserts, cloth wipes

The cloth diapers was one big way that we wanted to save money and not contribute to filling up landfills.  I have about 20 pocket diapers and a whole bunch of prefolds.  We just came back from vacation during which we used disposable diapers...and I have to admit it is super easy to pull off the diaper, wrap it up and chuck it.  Amazing, really.  Coming back to the cloth diapers I wasn't so pumped.  I can see why its easier to use disposable.  BUT, we don't live in a disposable world, so I remembered why we did cloth in the first place and pulled out the brightly coloured, super cute diapers.  And they look fun on the clothesline while the sun dries and bleaches them.

time keeps on slippin'

And here I was going to write a blog once a week...and then life happens. It amazes me how for some people blogging is their life. How do they do it? Where do they come up with all the interesting stuff to write about and then write it in a way that sounds interesting to other people? You got me.

So, really nothing interesting has happened in my life that others might find interesting, BUT, plenty of things that are interesting to me and my little family. The Screamer is still screaming. Oh, I wonder what the future holds. Now she mainly screams when she is going down for a nap and when she bonks her head - which is far too many times.

She is just getting into too many things for me to stay on top of her. How do I let her explore and be happy and yet let her know for the millionth time that the wicker basket which is narrower on the bottom than on the top WILL NOT HOLD HER when she insists on standing up at it? I say "Ah ah, Aletta..." and she looks at me with big, wide mouthed, goofy grin that just screams "I am SO proud of myself. Look at me stand at this. I am SO cool." Really, how is she not amazing??? She not only is prooving to me that she much further ahead than me, but that she will always be one step ahead of me. How does she do that?

Well, today, she decides to go to town in my little pantry cupboard which just happens to be at the perfect height for her. For the most part I don't care that she is pulling things out of there, until it comes to the bottle of Diana sauce, which I explicitely say "ah, ah, Aletta. No." (What she doesn't understand about that is beyond me.) And she proceeds to yank it out anyway, away from me. Well, it falls on her ankle, to which she screams and flails herself forward and does a doozy on her forehead as she connects to that shelf at perfect height. To which she starts screaming louder, hopping up and down almost leaping out of my embrace. Ohhhh, I wonder what the future holds.

One other thing of interest, that isn't about our little Screamer, is that our basement is almost complete (it's been almost complete for a while now) and I just can't wait to declutter and finally move things downstairs from our mainfloor. Like the television. We have this big, huge, honkin old school TV sitting in middle of our beautiful corner window of our livingroom. I hardly even watch the thing, but have been watching it a whole lot more since it has invaded our serene main floor getaway. So I am thinking that once everything has gone down to the basement that I will have my peaceful, serene, calming livingroom back again and I can live life like I did antes Aletta. HA. Will life ever be peaceful again? Our basement looks peaceful right now since no one ever goes down there. But that will be the perfect area for Aletta to play in and hopefully get into less things...everything comes around to Aletta, doesn't it. And here I was so determined not to let a tiny little creature rule my life.

Well, the breeze has just cooled down and it almost looks like it's going to rain. I probably better take the diapers in off the line before I have to defeat the purpose of line drying.