{"id":571,"date":"2015-01-23T12:29:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T19:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2016-02-11T13:12:35","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T20:12:35","slug":"homemade-soap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/?p=571","title":{"rendered":"homemade soap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"homemade<\/a>Soap making has been on the docket for years<\/a>, but something’s always stopped me from getting organized enough to make a batch. There are hundreds of cold-process soap recipes on the internet, and it’s hard to know which are reliable and simple enough for a beginner. I also knew I’d need to amass a small collection of dedicated cookware, measuring cups, utensils and thermometers so I wouldn’t end up mixing pancake batter in a bowl that once had lye in it. Speaking of lye, I was nervous about working with such a potentially dangerous substance– especially considering how often I manage to spill boiling hot tea on myself (more frequently than I’d care to admit).<\/p>\n

Nothing motivates me quite like the holiday season, so with the December deadline looming, I got to work. I used a similar base recipe for all the soaps, and subbed different liquids and additives to create each scent: goat milk, honey, & oat soap; peppermint<\/a> soap; coffee<\/a> soap; and beer<\/a> soap. The peppermint batch was the only one I tried coloring. I’d hoped to achieve a vibrant red and white swirl, but the bright red I mixed up faded to a kind of dull brick-red, and when striped with an off-white, resulted in what Nick referred to as “bacon colors”. So, I still need a little practice coloring soap. Because I wasn’t sure my soap experiment wouldn’t be a terrific disaster, I didn’t invest in a soap mold– instead, I spent a shockingly short amount of time saving empty quart-sized cream cartons and used two for each 5 lb batch of soap. After a day or two, the soap hardened and I peeled the cardboard off. These worked pretty well in the short term, but bowed a little when they were filled, which meant my finished bars were a little wonky.<\/p>\n

Each batch yielded 16 bars with a little trimmed off the top for testing. I used a crinkle cutter<\/a> to give each bar a fancy rippled top. After the bars cured for a month, they were wrapped in paper sleeves, labeled, and handed out to family and friends.<\/p>\n

\"homemade<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soap making has been on the docket for years, but something’s always stopped me from getting organized enough to make a batch. There are hundreds of cold-process soap recipes on the internet, and it’s hard to know which are reliable … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiments","category-soap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childerhouseblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}