WIP: Gingerbread Men and SOAP!

You know, today I woke up and just didn't feel like doing ANYTHING. Well, actually I felt like we might make Gingerbread cookies. But then I realize that before any of that can be done, we need to get dressed, change the diaper, make breakfast, clean up the kitchen, etc.... and suddenly making cookies seemed like a terrible and challenging feat. I hate that feeling.

Our goals today consist of going to the post office and continuing the laundry. Tomorrow is story hour (which we may or may not go to) but we do have to go to the library to return books... This morning we are making Mickey Mouse waffles and then we will hopefully start making these cookies for real. Ardyn has a "tie your shoes book" that was a hand me down, and she loves that thing. She likes to sit and look at it "shoe!" and drag it all over the house by the shoestrings. It's become her favorite book, all because of those strings.



Yesterday I tried a tutu on Ardyn that I had found for $5 at Marshall's. I always said I was going to make her one to play around in, the kind with the flower petals trapped between the layers. when I saw this one for $5 I knew that it was worth it, you can't really buy all the materials to make one for that. The smallest size they had was a 4, but holding it up I knew that it would fit, especially because it has to go over a cloth diaper butt to get to her waist. It fit perfectly when we tried it on yesterday and she played in it quite a bit. She would say "pretty" over and over again and had a great time with it.

12:12pm----------



Well, we made our gingerbread dough! It was tons of fun. She was so excited and counted each "cup" of flour, etc. along with me. She loved to stir the flour and scoop it. I loved seeing the recognition in her eyes when she matched up what we were doing with the pretend stirring that she does in her play kitchen. So now the dough is chilling in the fridge so that we can roll out and cut them into men this afternoon.



Daddy is sick with our cold, so he's on the couch with Ardyn, reading her the Christmas books from the library one more time before we take them back tomorrow. We've got the Christmas music going too.

Hope ya'll are having a good day!

3:28pm -----------



We have rolled out the Gingerbread men! Well, two dozen of them at least. Then "Quality Control" (see the photo of her taste testing) had to take a nap. There's probably another dozen, or perhaps 2 dozen left to go. We just made a half batch as we don't need them coming out our ears... especially if they are icky tasting. Hee.



I have been making soap today. I am using a glycerin soap base. I am making grapefruit scented and peppermint scented. I have decided not to use dyes... so the soaps are paraben free, dye free, and have not been tested on animals and contain no animal bi-products. I would like to make all our own soap, but I wanted to try 5 pounds of soap base before I decided to buy any base in bulk (being like 25 pounds- which is much cheaper.) You can save big money by making your own soap, and it is NOT hard if you use the melt and pour method. I have 4 grapefuit bars made, and 4 peppermint bars. I thought about giving some away as Christmas gifts, but I just know that people would be like "soap?" I guess homemade soap is not as exciting to everyone. LOL. I think it's pretty cool that you can save money, and control your ingredients, exactly to your specifications. I get bugged by the fact that pretty much everything contains parabens and all kinds of scary ingredients. If I were to give some away, I would package it up pretty with a nice tag, but if I am just going to keep it for our use (which is my eventual intention, to make all our soap at home) I will just put it in a box or a ziploc or something. I already have pretty packaging for gifting in mind, but I have yet to think of someone who would truly like it, appreciate it, and not laugh or complain behind my back. That's kinda sad, isn't it? Well, I guess that isn't true. Now that I think of it, Evan's mom's side would be really receptive to the idea. And their Christmas is this weekend, so maybe I will try that and see what happens.



5 pounds of soap base makes about 22 four ounce bars. That's about your average bar soap size. I spent $14.95 on 5 pounds of soap base, but if I purchased 25 pounds it would only run me $40 (including shipping, purchased online.) So currently the soap cost me $0.68 per bar, and if I were to buy the base in bulk (which I will do from this point forward, now that I know how easy it is) I would get about 110 bars of soap for $40, which would amount to $0.36 per bar. You of course have your cost of soap molds and fragrance if you choose to use those, but a mold cost me $2 and is reusable over and over, and the fragrances are between $3-10 each depending on if you use fragrance or essential oils... and it only takes about 3 drops of oil per BAR of soap, so it's pretty intense to calculate that down to a per bar price. If you buy Dove soap in BULK at amazon, you spend $1.16 a bar, not including shipping.