Life on Planet Caddick

So, I ventured back into the kitchen to make some more soap. I'm sharing because I want to remember exactly what I did - yay for all of you! First of all, I don't make pretty soap. That's because I hot process in an old crock pot. It's kind of hard to make swirls and fancy things when the soap usually ends up gloppy. I've tried, I've failed, I've decided it's not worth it. Since I make soap just for us, it doesn't have to look good - it just has to work good. =) I like to use things other than just plain distilled water when I make my lye solution. I've made soap using coffee, and pumpkin ale. I don't know why I like using different liquids as bases, but it makes it fun for me (plus I get to say I made Spiced Pumpkin Ale Soap - sounds fancy!). This time I brewed some mixed berry green tea. Also, I made up a new recipe because I was running low on some oil. I never use fancy expensive oil because I like to be able to just grab more w...

First I'd like to give you an update on our hot process soap .  I've been using the unscented version of these puppies and they are very nice. Lather well, do all the things soap should do - but I do wish I'd had some scent to add to them. I guess I could rebatch them and add fragrance, but I'm not sure if I want to do that yet. In the meantime I will keep using them because I like them. But, Mr. Man asked for some kind of scrubby soap to clean his mechanic hands. OK, I think I can handle that. I did these the melt & pour way. 8 oz. Goats Milk M&P Base 8 oz. Olive Oil M&P Base .5 oz oatmeal (finely ground in my coffee grinder) ~This is a variation of a recipe I found on Soap Queen TV ~ I also tried to add some lavender essential oil, but I only had about two drops. The soap still smells good though. I decided to mold them in my silicone muffin pan. I don't use it for muffins so I may as well use it for something =) Here's what they l...

I've been researching making soap for a very long time. Very long. And there are many ways to make soap. We've been making melt and pour soap around here for almost a year. You can read about our first go round here . I make this kind of soap a lot because I found this bug repellent essential oil blend that works great when Erik is out hunting. But I still wanted to try my hand at lye soap. You can make lye soap two different ways, hot process or cold process. Although the cold process lets you make all these really cool swirls and such I'm not waiting 4 to 6 weeks to use a bar of soap. I think we all know I'm not a patient woman. =) So, I know I want to make hot process, but I also don't want to stand over the stove for a couple hours stirring soap. So, I sacrificed my oldest crock pot to try my hand this 'must try' thing. Now Google is a beautiful thing - seriously - google making soap. I dare you. This is how I found a recipe for crock pot soap usin...

I have been trying to be more domesticated. I'll wait while those who really know me laugh, rolling on the floor. Go ahead - I'll give you a few minutes. I found a blog, through a friend on Pinterest (I think) called The Virtuous Wife . This lady is awesome. She bakes her own bread, makes these freezer meals, homeschools. Generally all those things I think about doing, but don't. Check her out - she's not snotty about her ways, it's just how she is and that's great. So after checking out her freezer meals for weeks (or maybe months) I decided to give some of them a shot. Honestly, I get tired of cooking dinner - but if all I have to to do is thaw and throw it in the oven or crockpot, yeah, I'm on that. I made a few of them this past payday. So far all her recipes I've tried have been awesome. Next time we will do a little tweaking, just to suit our tastes, but there were none that we were like "Oh my this is disgusting!". That's a good ...