Christmas Soap

While at the Mister's family Christmas, we had a Yankee Swap! It was great fun, with 27 of the 33 individuals participating. I contributed six bars of a Christmas Soap I had made for that express purpose.

I also gave about a dozen bars to my local Stitch-and-Bitch group for a set of holiday gifts we made for the restaurant that hosts us.

Here's the Recipe:

Essentially, this batch is made using two separate batches of hot process soap. First, you make the green, and then the red.

Ingredients:

• 6.5 oz water (x2)
• 2.5 oz lye - 9% superfat (x2)
• 8.25 oz olive oil (x2)
• 5 oz coconut oil (x2)
• 2 oz cocoa butter (x2)
• 2 oz shea butter (x2)
• 1.25 oz castor oil (x2)
• 1 oz jojoba oil (x2)
• green soap coloring
• red soap coloring
• Essential Oils (recommended): Pine, Treasure of the Season, Cinnamon Bark, Nutmeg, Christmas Spirit
• Crockpot, gloves, apple cider vinegar, scale, eye glasses, immersion blender, wax paper, pyrex baking dish, soap spoon, and glass tools/jars

Directions:

1. Measure out the oils and put the first set of oils in the crockpot to melt
2. When the oils are mostly melted, add a dash of green soap coloring. Stir it in until mostly disolved.
3. Measure out water and lye in separate glass dishes. Slowly add lye into water, stirring as you go to dissolve lye. Be sure to follow safety procedures.
4. When the lye is dissolved and slightly cooled, add it to the oils, and blend with the immersion blender until the mixture reaches trace (about a minute).
5. Put on cover and wait an hour or two for the cook.
6. Stir in one teaspoon of Pine Essential Oil and one teaspoon of Treasure of the Season Essential Oil.
7. Line a glass baking dish with wax paper and pour the first mixture into the mold. Place it in the oven at a low temperature to keep warm.
8. Repeat steps 1-5 with the second set of oils and the red coloring.
9. This time, add one teaspoon of Christmas Spirit Essential Oil and a half-teaspoon each of Nutmeg and Cinnamon Bark Essential Oil.
10. Take the first batch out of the oven and pat down the soap mixture. Pour the second batch on top and stir/swirl the two together.
11. Let the mixture sit for at least 24 hours before removing it from the mold and slicing it into delightful bars of soap!

DIY Essential Oil Rack

Everyone has a comfort food.  I have two.

Firstly: Kraft Macaroni on Cheese.  In the box.  Beautiful.  It tastes like motherly love and warm, cozy winter evenings bundled in blankets.  Of laughter that starts on your insides like a warm tickle and follows your soul out through your mouth.

Secondly: Crunchy, Nutty, Granola-y Cereal.  Hard work and persistence in a box.  With skim milk.  It tastes like early mornings, silently bonding with dad, preparing for a day of hiking or building a tree-house.  Of making things happen.

Three lines of Kraft; Glueing the second cereal box

And when I'm having a hard time, these I stick to.  Every morning starts with cereal, and (almost) every evening ends with Kraft.

Right now, I'm having a rough time.

I'm also in need of some place to store my essential oils!

Trimming edges in step 2

Back in January, I began my journey into Young Living essential oils, and though I haven't worked out all the kinks yet, I've certainly seen how valuable they are in my daily life.  Since I only use a few drops at a time, and Young Living has lots of free promos, I have, pretty quickly ended up with a decent collection of oils.  But what to do with them?

For a while, I have them lined up in alphabetical order on my dresser, but that didn't work.  They made quite a nuisance quite quickly.

Then I tried stacking them in an old YL box by the mirror.  Same result.

I started looking online, and saw many beautiful ideas for storing them vertically (which I had by now realized was optimal), but they were all expensive or required nailing something into the wall, which I couldn't do in my apartment.

Finally, it dawned on me.  I don't need a long term fix; I need something that will last me a few years while I continue to jumble from apartment to apartment, until I move back East for good.  And I need something cheap.

And so I made one out of old Kraft and Cereal boxes.

Adding the second cereal box

1. The process was pretty basic.  I cut most of the Kraft box off, just leaving about 3/4" of box left from the bottom.  I tried doing this with other boxes, too, like rice or spaghetti, but soon discovered that they were all ever so slightly differently sized and it would be better to just save up the Kraft boxes.  I also cut up the side of a cereal box and lay them it flat.
2. Using a glue gun, I attatched the Kraft boxes on their skinny sides, making three sets of four boxes.  Three oils pretty much exactly fit in each box, so that worked out nicely.  Then, I glued the first line of Kraft right on the edge of where the cereal box curled up.  I worked upward, adding the other two lines to make three shelves.  Then, I trimmed the edges to be even with the Kraft, and discovered that it didn't really stand up on its own.
3. At this point, I cut up the side of another cereal box, and glued it to the back of the first one.  I glued the edges over on the top and bottom, and bent the box up on the sides and glued it to the edges of the Kraft rows, and then trimmed the excess.

I really like the result!  Look at all those pretty oils in a row!

I'll probably paint it or cover it in wrapping paper or something later, but for now, I just need some organization.

Look at them all nicely in a row!  I love it!  And I had just enough room at the end to add a bottle of my own blend (LLP) and the promo packets.  Oh, and that box you can barely see on the left edge?  That's a box of extras/replacements!

What do you think?
Does anyone else have any other suggestions for Essential Oil storage?